Weekend Round-Up (Feb 1st)

• George Osborne announced Tory plans to install super fast 100Megabit broadband to the majority of homes by 2017. He pointed out rather cleverly I thought that this was an infrastructure investment along the lines of railways in the 19th Century and motorways in the 20th century. His plans to pay for it with private investment and if necessary a percentage of the licence fee weren’t met with too happy a response though.
• David Cameron said that he believed that burglars leave their human rights at the door, leading Mandelson and others to accuse him of having no respect for human rights (usefully forgetting the Labour party’s views on detention without charge amongst others). In the same interview he also announced that there would be no “swingeing” cuts, leading Labour to accuse the Conservatives of lacking a coherent policy on the defecit (as opposed to theirs!)
• Guido pointed out that this is the second time Andy Murray has lost a tournament after being wished well by Gordon Brown. The curse of Jonah strikes again.
• Oxford Spring reviewed Peter Watt’s book Inside Out, leading Iain Dale to defend the decision to have no pictures in it
• There were yet more damaging claims against Brown in the Mail on Sunday including that he had man handled a secretary for typing too slowly (why didn’t he type it himself then) and physically lashed out at an aide. ToryLandlord asked if this was really a suprise to anyone and suggested the Tory’s should be using Brown’s temperament against him. Whilst Declan Lyon pointed out that “we can’t go on with him” and drew parralels to the Thick of It. 
• The News of the World reported on secret Conservative plans for a second election shortly after the first, the idea being that they would carry out a number of key piece of legislation and then go for a stronger mandate as little as a year later. This Led Tory Totty to say that what CCHQ really needs ot win the election is the conviction of Thatcher.
• Guy the Mac won a ticket to view Blair at the Iraq Inquiry but decided to stay at home. He still wrote up his thoughts on Blair's Performance though.
• Archbishop Carnmer asked if Richard Dawkins should be arrested for incitement of religious hatred
• A Conservative in London said something stupid about unemployment in the North on Twitter leading everyone else to scream nooooo that’s not us, we do care. Oxford Spring wrote a piece about it as did Byrne Tofferings
• The polls went up down and up again, including two polls from YouGov one putting the Tory’s on just 7% and the second putting them back at 9%. Richard Willis wrote about them.
• I finally got my political website project to a beta stage, and registered a domain name and everything. So behold ToryGator an aggregator of Tory blogs, all the blue blogs in one place. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

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