My Pre-Review of Tonight's Progress Event and The New Beta Blogger
Okay, I just wrote this quickly in an email to a friend, but felt it worthy of posting here. Its my pre-review of tonight's Progress meeting inventively entitled "one year On: Is Cameron Shaping A New Tory Party?"
"I'm supposed to be going to a progress debate on whether cameron is
forging a new conservative party, but I'm not at all impressed with the title.
its got giddens, deborah mattinson and stephen twigg, and some others I
think.
twigg's chairing, and he's a pretty good egg. mattinson will talk about
women voters returning to the conservatives and how cameron has caused
this(despite the fact that she and harriet harman actually had a meeting
with alan milburn during the 2005 election campaign to tell him women were
deserting labour to return to the tories, and this was prior to cameron
even being known or touted as a future leader, but hey).
giddens will do his messiah-complex stuff(as my british politics tutor
would say, she had the displeasure of studying under him for a while) and
will talk about the third way a lot without mentoining it by name.
some clever sod (possibly twigg) might actually deign to point out that
cameron isn't making a new party at all, since what he's doing (not
explicitly at the moment, but it will become so soon) is returning to
the one nation conservatism of the 1960s which was itself an echo of
Baldwinian new conservatism. however, he is arguably making a "new" tory party, in
the sense of trying to create the ahistorical impression that this venture
is completely new and unrelated to the pragmatism which has been the
hallmark of the conservatives since their inception.
so I pretty much know what will be said."
It actually also involves Ed Miliband MP. He's a good egg. As is Stephen Twigg. So I should go for those reasons. But two and a half hours (since I'll have to kick around the parliamentary estate between 5pm and 6pm if I go) is a long time to spend on seeing a couple of good eggs briefly. Mattinson gives the impression of also being a good egg, but two and a half good eggs is still too little to warrant that much time. In this weather.
Also, am I the only one loathing beta blogger? I have to log in twice since the main page doesn't recognise my google account and I have to use my old one to be told that it has been merged with the google account and will I please log in with that. Buggers. But its a free and otherwise decent blogging site.
"I'm supposed to be going to a progress debate on whether cameron is
forging a new conservative party, but I'm not at all impressed with the title.
its got giddens, deborah mattinson and stephen twigg, and some others I
think.
twigg's chairing, and he's a pretty good egg. mattinson will talk about
women voters returning to the conservatives and how cameron has caused
this(despite the fact that she and harriet harman actually had a meeting
with alan milburn during the 2005 election campaign to tell him women were
deserting labour to return to the tories, and this was prior to cameron
even being known or touted as a future leader, but hey).
giddens will do his messiah-complex stuff(as my british politics tutor
would say, she had the displeasure of studying under him for a while) and
will talk about the third way a lot without mentoining it by name.
some clever sod (possibly twigg) might actually deign to point out that
cameron isn't making a new party at all, since what he's doing (not
explicitly at the moment, but it will become so soon) is returning to
the one nation conservatism of the 1960s which was itself an echo of
Baldwinian new conservatism. however, he is arguably making a "new" tory party, in
the sense of trying to create the ahistorical impression that this venture
is completely new and unrelated to the pragmatism which has been the
hallmark of the conservatives since their inception.
so I pretty much know what will be said."
It actually also involves Ed Miliband MP. He's a good egg. As is Stephen Twigg. So I should go for those reasons. But two and a half hours (since I'll have to kick around the parliamentary estate between 5pm and 6pm if I go) is a long time to spend on seeing a couple of good eggs briefly. Mattinson gives the impression of also being a good egg, but two and a half good eggs is still too little to warrant that much time. In this weather.
Also, am I the only one loathing beta blogger? I have to log in twice since the main page doesn't recognise my google account and I have to use my old one to be told that it has been merged with the google account and will I please log in with that. Buggers. But its a free and otherwise decent blogging site.
posted by Scrybe at 12/06/2006 03:32:00 PM
2 Comments:
While I agree that Stephen Twigg is personally pleasant, he is the man who memorably championed the creation of a New Labour Party that was "massive and passive".
Things don't seem to be going all that well on either count at the moment.
beta blogger sucks. really difficult code, and it works really weirdly. and won't let you use non-widgety code.
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