A few small announcements, small-but-sweet stories and clippings...
First of all, this story interests me on the BBC's website. Although I'm no fan of the government, given a choice between Labour and Conservative MPs as people in themselves, I'd have to say I respect Labour ones rather than Tories. Having worked for two Labour MPs before I went to university, Margaret Moran and Patrick Hall, they came across as nice people - down to earth, hard-working, a bit more like my own parents than their Tory counterparts. While the people I worked for in 2005 are nice, and when I met Michael Howard, John Redwood and Theresa May on the same campaign they came across as very likeable people, the photographs of PPCs and MPs alike on Conservative Home don't tend to exude the same personability (yes, John Redwood IS personable, he apparently mellowed when he met his new partner Nicky Page, wore paint-spattered cords to a canvassing day for the Swallowfield By-Election in early 2005, and kissed and cuddled Nicky persistently while out on other electioneering runs the same year), looking more like clones of David Davis serviced by the same wigmaker who makes Michael Fabricant's hair. Laura Moffatt's self-professed desire to return to the NHS if she loses her seat at the next election is a lovely idea; although I would as a Tory hope she has every opportunity to pursue her dream, to me we need more people like that prepared to stand for the Conservative Party now we are supposedly no longer the "nasty party".
And foxes might fly. Who knows, if Redwood (himself another vulpes vulpes totem) is personable, then some of the Tories I regularly see on Conservative Home might be too. But if we are to match the success of Labour over the past twelve years, I reckon more people like Laura Moffatt need to be persuaded to stand in relatively winnable seats to improve the feel of the party. So far, according to Janet Daley, the modernisation project has failed. What better way to kickstart it? Maybe even Ms Moffatt (insert joke about spiders and tuffetts here) could be prevailed upon to cross the floor? She may even end up as leader the way things are going.
On to other news, courtesy of the Reading Evening Post (given a nice endorsement by Michael Howard himself, no less). Back in October I phoned our local paper regarding my research into electoral statistics and possible ways of finding whether the kind of fraud registered here by the Council of Europe could be seen through the raw statistics. It turns out that the number of seats with no results ending in 5 or 0 has declined rapidly since 1987. Coincidentally, that was when Labour started getting popular. Given the potential for the postal votes to be mishandled (such as the accusation there that not all of them tend to end up in the final count), one would expect it to account partly for the discrepancies in 2005, by far the worst year with just 23% of seats not having round number results. However, the evident manipulation goes right back before postal votes began accounting for more of the total votes, which means there is also dodgy accounting going on with hand-cast ballots. How they do this is beyond me, but at least this shows there is a problem we need to address before another general election can be fought.
The article was finally published on Wednesday (the photographs were taken the week George Osborne got into trouble over Yachtgate) and I will scan and upload a copy as soon as I get one (I have to send them a cheque for 98p to get hold of a back issue, and I go away on the 24th until the 8th December, so it may not be until I get back) - the story was not put up on the website.
The research table is in Excel form but I need help in uploading or publicising it. If anyone out there can help me, please get in touch via louise.stanley@live.co.uk.
That's all for now - I will upload the next reading later on or tomorrow.
STOP PRESS - Look who's talking too...David Davis putting his foot in it again. Come in number 4, your time is up?
