It's bureaucracy gone mad, I tells ya:
[caption id="attachment_680" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="Said the dog, 'Send back this man. I said I wanted him medium-rare!'"][/caption]

Something about that's just not right...

The Observer has profiled six Tory totty highly-successful and articulate ladies - showing off just a few of the young women making waves in the party, including candidates Louise Bradshaw and Annunziata Rees-Mogg, and NW London CF social action Liza Chantelle.

The pick of the quotes is from Annunziata:

I'm not sure I want to look like these ladies, but I do admire the ability of people like Ann Widdecombe, Gwyneth Dunwoody and Barbara Castle to stick to their beliefs and say what they thought.

[caption id="attachment_667" align="aligncenter" width="178" caption="Liza... outside the Carlton Club. Miss Right?"][/caption]
Erstwhile fascist fuglies and Labour ladettes should take note.

Now, we're not too fond of left-wingers here at KeepRightOnline. We're also not too fond of vegetarianism. Such a dangerous fad has already infected some in Conservative circles, with Lucy Roblin, the power behind Ed Hallam's throne, succumbing to only eating things that don't cast a shadow.

He may have been a Democrat, but Richard Ravitch had the right idea when the Democrat took the oath of office for New York state Lieutenant Governor - in a steakhouse:

They came a little early — I believe it was two men and two ladies — and they were joined by a fifth person and switched to a larger table. They drew out some documents, and they were very excited and everything. Mr. Ravitch said, "This is my favorite restaurant, and I wouldn’t take the oath of office anywhere else."

Mmm! The defection of a Republican state senator probably means Ravitch doesn't need to take office in a hurry, so the whole affair may have been moot, but at least Ravitch got a steak out of it: something that may anger some lefties.

As Joey tells the vegetarian Phoebe in Friends when she has meat cravings: if you're gonna do something wrong, do it right.

Looks like everyone's favourite socialistdemagogue has been taking some lessons from Slick Willy.

[caption id="attachment_642" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Damn Nic, you see that wagon she be draggin\'?"][/caption]

I wonder what Michelle said when she saw this picture?

For the next two days, the world's G8 leaders will be meeting in Italy to discuss the world economy whilst all around is in ruins. Quite literally, actually, as host city L'Aquila was hit by a devastating earthquake in April.

So, as a thoughtful gesture, after the quake, they moved it to the city to "stimulate the economy". Call us old-fashioned, but we tend to think the best way to help people recover from an earthquake is to rebuild their homes: not to host an opulent umpteen-course banquet for our leaders there.

[caption id="attachment_585" align="aligncenter" width="289" caption="Man, that must have been a good party last night..."][/caption]

On the plus side, last year, they spent £142m on policing, as the world's molotov-throwing communist fruitcakes anti-globalisation protesters hit the streets of the host city. Bet the homeless people of L'Aquila can't wait.

The other day, KeepRightOnline dismissed the leftists' bleating about the Conservative's new international development policy as being myopic. We cited schools in Kenya as evidence that the left simply refuses to acknowledge that public services are better delivered from the bottom-up.

Check out today's Telegraph editorial on the topic:

Britain's approach is wrong-headed because it is wedded to top-down policies. HMG is the largest funder of state primary education in Kenya. Yet ordinary Kenyan parents complain that the quality is far worse than the indigenous schools that they have established. The Tories are right to suggest that more aid should be given in the form of vouchers so that people – not bureaucrats – can decide how to spend the money.

Wellity, it looks like the Telegraph is catching up with KeepRightOnline. Told you they were getting sounder.

There seems to be a bidding contest going on as to how much a government - any government - would have to cut from public spending to return the country to fiscal health.

• The politicians think it's 10%.
  
  
• The Canadians think it's 20%.
  
  
• John Major thinks it's a third.
  
  
• The Adam Smith Institute wants a third.
  

Any more? The highest bid gets our vote.

[caption id="attachment_568" align="aligncenter" width="298" caption="A pillar for each of those who lost their lives"][/caption]

Let's not forget those men and women who needlessly died when the United Kingdom was attacked on July 7th 2005.

The Labourgraph might be getting a teeny bit sounder now that Jeremy Warner is on-board as assistant editor. After squillions of years at the Independent (where he was probably the least leaf-eating contributor), you'd think he'd bring along his wet ways. But not if his first column - titled 'the City doesn't need any more rules' - is anything to go by:

The FSA's failure in banking oversight is widely put down to the prevailing consensus of the time – that the operation of "light touch" regulation with a minimum of interference was good for the City, good for the economy and therefore good for tax revenues. In fact, there was never any such thing as "light touch" regulation. The establishment of the FSA led to an unprecedented flood of rules and regulations. If all that was required to protect the public from the folly of bankers was more rules, codes of conduct and statements of principle, then the FSA would have been a champion several times over.

Failure by regulators to see the risks was one thing, but by lulling everyone into a false sense of security, instructive regulation also had the perverse effect of making the financial system more irresponsible and therefore less safe.

Sound.

The absurd New Economics Foundation, darlings of Guardinistas campaigning to stupefy the world save the world, has published what may be the most stupid piece of international research in history. Eschewing traditional economic measures, such as Gross Domestic Product, as bourgeois trinkets, they've ranked countries for their 'Happy Planet Index', taking into account whatever gives them the results they want.

And what results. The United Kingdom (on 43% 'happiness') lags behind dissident-boiling Uzbekistan (50%), monk-bashing Burma (51%), protestor-shooting China (57%), Islamic theocracy Saudi Arabia (60%), and, of course, socialist-wonderland-and-not-at-all-oppressive-all-round-nice-guy Cuba (66%). And it's not just us - just look how bad the US comes out!

[caption id="attachment_551" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="The worst places to live in the world are in red: sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq... and the USA."][/caption]

But at least we agree on something. We'd rather they lived in Burma, too.

Update: Alex Singleton has singled out the report's conclusion that Burma is a nicer country to live in than Britain. We still think boiling opponents alive is more classic baddie mode than just bashing monks over the heads with truncheons and changing the currency so all denominations were divisible by the dictator's favourite number.

Sarah Palin has announced she's to resign as Governor of Alaska, supposedly sparking rumours she's cranking up a presidential bid. Sources close to Palin are saying she's out of politics for good.

People that want the Republican Party to stand a chance in 2012 (or 2016...) are probably breathing a sigh of relief. People who want their politicians to look hot and talk nasty are probably in mourning.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Wave goodbye, Sarah..."][/caption]

Thanks for the memories, even though they weren't so great. At least we still have the pictures...

Over the past week, there has been lots of Tory blogging about gay politics, and the consensus seems to be the mark of true progress is when identity politics cease. The other side doesn't seem to get it. To paraphrase an old poster, "Labour call them gay. We call them British".

Take Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant. Two gay ministers are appalled that gay people are voting Conservative, cast unsupported accusations of homophobia at the Tory benches, and have threatened that gays will "rue the day" they turned their backs on them (can I pretend no pun intended?).

The BBC think that there are three gay cabinet members, but that includes the unelected Mandy, leaving two gay MPs in the cabinet (Bradshaw and Nick Brown). There are also two (Duncan and Herbert) in the (smaller) Conservative shadow cabinet. As the Broon would say, there are 0% more gay MPs in the Labour cabinet.

We all have a long way to go, but to treat gay people like idiots, and threaten that they'll 'rue the day' they exercised their democratic right duty to kick out this no-hoper government, would be considered homophobic from the mouth of a straight person.

So it takes a certain brazen dishonesty for Bradshaw to accuse us of homophobia. Then again, it takes a certain brazen dishonesty to be a Labour minister.

Obama is taking to YouTube to answer viewer-submitted questions in a 'town-hall meeting' style at 6:15pm tonight (that's London time, natch).

It's just another indication that he gets the modern world far better than the dinosaurs squandering the Right legacy in the US talking about the Internet as a series of tubes.



You may not like his arguments, but no matter what he does, at least he can't come off as much of a twat as our Beloved Leader.

Update: If you're not really into Obamania, you can get your fix of American political commentary from Freedom Watch with Ron Paul and other guests at 7pm (again, Zulu Time!).

David Cameron gave a speech to the Party's Social Action Conference today, highlighting the work done by the party's social action why people in politics should engage in social action projects. A lot of people don't buy some of the rationales given for social action projects. Honestly I don't, either - but my co-editor may have something to say about that!

If we want to help charity, we can do on the side, rather than distracting from the political task of undoing all of Labour's misdeeds in government. Certainly, politicians and wannabe politicos would serve their constituents and compatriots better be learning how not to shaft them when in office (by, say, reading some Mises) than by playing with goats in Gateshead.

But, in today's speech, DC did (eventually) identify the right reason the Party coordinates social action, as his final of four flings at the right answer:

We don’t automatically think about what the government should be doing in a top-down way - we start from a position of asking what each of us as individuals, as communities, should be doing.

Damn straight. If we believe that private charity will pick up where government is rolled back, we have to be there to prove it with our own hands: goats optional.

So the Institute for Public Policy Research wants us to believe that during a time of growing global instability, rising unemployment and foreign threats, we should slash our defence budget and scrap Trident, the UK's nuclear deterrent?

Well, you read my view on this in the title of this post. What a bunch of bloody buffoons.

Not happy with Brown's acheivements thus far in discrediting the United Kingdon and it's economy (read: our financial crisis, the FSA and the gold reserves, his inability to handle parliament and not forgetting of course, his face) the IPPR now seeks for the UK to hand over its sovereignty, urging, "a broader appeal for Britain to do more to co-operate with Europe and stop relying on the US when it comes to security."

Way to throw it in the face of our special and enduring relationship, boys. If you want to steer the UK toward Europe, you'll need a hell of a bigger ore than that.

Alan Milburn will step down as an MP at the next General Election. Shocking that another Labour MP has lost complete faith in the direction of the party. (Ed: The party has a direction?)

How is this still news?



Update: Down to number 31 on Google trends for 7th July? Say it ain't so!

The Guardian has made yet another cheap pop at the Conservatives' new Movement for European Reform allies, the Polish Law and Justice Party. They demonised the entire eurosceptic movement by citing one MEP, Dr Urszula Krupa:

Global warming is a lie, homosexuality is a "pathology" and Europe is becoming a "neo-totalitarian" regime ... [for this] militant Roman Catholic and strong Polish nationalist

They go into depth about her background and associates at a radio station of which she was once editor. All very damning. Just one problem: she's not a member of the Law and Justice Party.

She is, actually, a member of the League of Polish Families, which is a militant traditionalist anti-capitalist Roman Catholic nationalist party. And whilst some of its members are in the same European grouping as Law and Justice - and will, thus, probably sit with the Conservatives - Krupa does not: she sits with UKIP.

Apology please.

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[caption id="attachment_306" align="aligncenter" width="224" caption="Beaten to it by Mick himself!"][/caption]