He's only been blogging for three days but it already looks like the blogosphere has found a new star; Lord Tebbit. His posts are full of his trademark strong views but also a willingness to pick up and engage with comments left by his readers.
Here are extracts from his first three contributions:
Blogging on the BNP: "So what about the BNP? The trouble is that it is a national socialist party. Take a look at its 2005 election manifesto. You won’t find much about reducing the power of the state and increasing that of the individual. It has a curiously dated air of the 1960s and 1970s, with talk of controlling the commanding heights of the economy and building barriers to trade. To be kind to the BNP, one might call it a corporatist party. To put it more roughly, one might say that it is a fascist party, a Left-wing authoritarian party. One thing is certain. As a socialist party, the BNP can only be part of the problem, not part of the solution."
Against multiculturalism: "Having overcome rivalry between Protestants and Catholics, and learned to live in harmony with the Jewish faith and other minority religions and cultures by accepting a society based on Judaeo-Christian principles, we should be wary of those who seek to implant a rival culture with its own legal systems and standards of public behaviour to keep separate its followers from the mainstream of our majority. Apartheid is made no better by being voluntary."
Call me Norm: "London cabbies usually address me as “Norm”, to many others I’m “Lord T” , the very correct use “My Lord”, the less so, “Oy, you” – but please not Sir Norman or Mr Tebbit, as they are simply not correct."
Praise for Nick Clegg: "I hate to say it, but only one party leader seems to have grasped that, if you construct a system where unskilled people are worse off by taking a job than by staying on welfare, they remain trapped in poverty – and that is Nick Clegg. Lord knows, Frank Field and Iain Duncan Smith spelled it out in words and figures that only a simpleton could fail to understand, but the two main parties are unwilling to bite on the bullet and commit themseves to raising the income tax threshold from £6,475 to something like £10,000 or £12,000."
Absence of grit: "About the only leading politican to show any [grit] these days seems to be the much-abused Prime Minister Brown. Grittiness and the stiff upper lip seem to have been replaced with emotional incontinence, political correctness and open-necked shirts worn with well cut suits."
Tim Montgomerie