News reaches me from a parallel universe identical to our own except that Labour won in 1992 with a tiny majority. Unfortunately it lost power after being blamed for the ERM fiasco and the Tories have now been in power for twelve years. Aided by his junior minister Iain Dale, Home Secretary David Davies has just pushed through a bill to detain terror suspects for up to ninety days with no recourse to any sort of judicial review. This follows a series of attacks in London which popular blogger Alistair Campbell, amongst others, allege would have been prevented had the Tories not slashed the budgets for the police and secret services. His blog has been shut down under wide ranging powers in the prevention of saying nasty things act of 2007. There are 4 million unemployed and I've emigrated (so not all bad news there then)...

Us Tory supporters have to support.

Please tell us all again how good the liebour party are. Petrol went up again round my way.

gordon is a plonker and you all know it.

I will not feel offended however if you defend him. Liebour supporters have to defend.

stevie... were you in the same English class as newmania at school?

By the way... the government don't actually sell petrol (and frankly, I couldn't give a toss if you are offended or not).

Hughes Views, I have just read your comment out to David Davis who was most amused. He says the main thing wrong is that it is clearly ludicrous that he would ever have agreed to me being a junior minister. I would have had to get elected first!

And in any event, it would be Ministry of the Interior...

I think tory blogs do better, partly because the media give them more publicity. But mainly because tories tend not to read left wing blogs or paper's It is the same with newspapers. Compare the circulation of the tory papers to the left wing ones. It is obvious right wing people refuse to read left wing blogs. There is nothing in tory blogosphere that you cannot get on the left. I would advise left wing people to simply read left wing blogs more, and not read the right wing blogs so often.

I quite like Hopi and even this nest of leftism but there is a problem with being exciting when you are just following the progressive orthodoxy. Its not so much the Party in power as the zeitgeist.

What will the position of the "right-wing" bloggers be if, and when, a Conservative government gets elected. Hmmmm...... (sorry for the long pause, I was just rolling the words "Conservative government" around in my head, much like a wine snob to appreciate the heady notes that they produce). I suspect, nay hope, that they will act as a sort of conscience. Mrs Dale, I fear may collapse after his almost certain election to a safe Tory seat, into being a blogger in name only. Somehow, I cannot see someone who has that level of desire to be an MP carrying on as an independent voice. Guido, I suspect, may turn out to be a much more interesting character to keep an eye on. (Just as an example, I took the liberty of checking on his latest "Sleazeathon" round-up, it name-checked a group of MPs, one Labour MP in particular, and one Tory MP in particular, that sounds pretty even handed to me.) There are many issues that people of a libertarian/right wing bent are going to keep banging on about that are never going to be introduced by a Conservative administration, at least not in my lifetime I suspect. Have a look at the fine folks over at Samizdata for example. They have the viewpoint that ordinary citizens ought to have the right to be able to carry handguns for personal protection. Could you really see "Cuddly Dave" standing up in the House and advocating this? Of course not. Nor do I see there being any chance of that nice young Mr. Osborne standing up during his budget statement and announcing that the UK is going to introduce a 'flat tax' system whereby everybody pays the same level of Jizyah to the government.
There will always be a group of people out on the edges of right-wing thought that would want a Tory government to go further. It's funny, for years people always used to say that reality had a left-wing bias. I wonder, has time now changed all that, does the internet (and by association collective human thought) now have a right-wing bias?

The issue of right wing blogs and left supporting bloggers 'mixing it' with them in their territory has caused a stir in these parts.
Why do it? enquired a few puzzled members.
Why not?

Anyway, the bottom line is that a few politically challenged people around here are dubious of yours truly having a go back for the cause.

I think I've given them a weapon of which to hit me with. Gary says this (shock) Gary says that (horror) and (this is the best bit) Did you see what Gary wrote?

Get a life.

Politics is an unusual sport in so much that it allows contenders to contend in the only field of occupation they are any good at and that is knocking for knocking sake.

They have no ambition, no political ambition and no sense of righting the wrong being published on the blogsphere ona daily basis ferocious Tory blogging websites.

Labour is about five years behind Conservatives on the net and that means about ten years for Stoke-on-Trent.

Personally I think that anyone who can string an argument or a case together on the move within the blogsphere has a certain advantage over those that need to research everything.

That catches people out and they don't like it.

eg. My election campaigns 2007 and 2008 saw an increas of 11% this year and 28% overall.
Around the Country, the vote crashed and here in Stoke almost all went through the floor.

Mine went up because of blogsphere tactics.

My critics can't accept their own failings and are puzzled at how I gain.

They read the Daily Mail Group of newspapers and I use the net and blogs.

Iain Dale made a good point a while back that bloggers can roughly be split into two categories: those that follow the party line and those that stick to principles. The ones who stick to principles will still stick it to their own party even if they are in government, the former will not.

A Conservative government would certainly lead to some interesting divisions in the centre-right blogosphere.

As we have established on more than one occasion Bob , English and its use , is one of the many subjects about which I have forgotten more than you will ever know. Unlike you ,however, I have to work and cannot spend all day proofing idle chatter .I am also up for a good part of most nights and in general busy.
In short I am real person not a Party whore like you self cast as a sort of gnarled old NCO to the young troops . The real problem with left wing blogging is that any individual voice is against the collective which is why although those on the game themselves , like you , have a lovely time you will not get voices from the battery chickens you create .

Compare the Literary output if the US and the Soviet Union ...well ok since you will be ignorant of either , take my word for it . You yourself respond to the wild freedom of Western music , if you were really happy to live the cubicle life your supposed philosophy recommends , you would prefer some state organised brass band exhortation to stop smoking.

This is the hypocrisy of the left wing politician

There, now that is much, much better, and almost coherent. I knew you had it in you if only I kept on encouraging you. Ok, you could still work a bit on punctuation, and the content is the usual pile of steaming horse shit, but you make things much easier for people to read the crap you write if you write it in a way in which they can understand it.

Given the time constraints you claim to be under, perhaps you should consider writing less of the shite and devote more of your time to thinking about the construction of your sentences, spelling, grammar, punctuation and all those other silly little things that make life easier for the reader.

On your final couple of points I doubt I would trust your word alone if you told me today was Monday, and as for my musical tastes I'm not sure what you are defining as 'Western' music. The majority of my musical collection is from Africa, Cuba, the Middle East, and Latin America, although I do have some music from North America and Europe too. On past form though, your reference is probably to the theme from 'A Fistful of Dollars' (which I don't have).

I feel the strategy of labour bloggers should change. We should comment more on our fellow labour bloggers blogs than tories. Everytime we add a comment on a tory blog, or visit a tory blog we make the media think their blogs are the place to be. Let's make labour blogs the place to be. If the media see we have more comments and more visitors it will not be Iain Dale or Guido Fawkes, or any other tory blogger invited on shows as the voice of the blogs. It will not be their news agenda the media follows but ours. Let's choose some big labour blogs these the places labour people visit. And make labour blogs the centre of ther internet argument. We have to make our blogs overtake the Dales and the Fawkes. This is not censorship many left wing blogs do insult the government but they do it from our angle not the tory angle.
Look at the way guido fawkes stood up for Dominic Grieve when the independent ran stories about him investing in Zimbabwe. Guido will always hit labour harder than the tories because he is a tory. We need to publicise our bloggers. :

Our mutual friend The Tory Troll blogged about what would happen to right-wing bloggers if Camoron were elected: basically a large number would turn into ringlickers overnight (as if they weren't that now), whereas some would stay in opposition, especially the "libertarians", who were against Camoron to begin with. (link attached to my handle)

I also think that there would be a thriving left-liberal opposition to Camoron, which would produce some excellent blogging. The USA has many fine opposition blogs. In general, I think Labour would be revived & become truer to themselves in opposition, as you are as well aware than me that they've lost their way.

asquith, that seems a reasonable analysis. On your final point, sadly, you are correct there too. In office all parties move to the right.... including your bunch in local government.

Bob, Asquith knows almost nothing about the Liberal party as it exists in real life.He is romantic ..idealistic .... ie cannot sit the right way round on a toilet seat without a manual.

btw-Wrong as ususal on right drift.The New Labour Party moved to the left over time. Remember no tax rises ? The truth is that structures , like the EU eg , which make politicians powerful are strangely less annoying when you are in power yourself.

Although there are some splendid left bloggers such as Skipper, Hopi Sen, Paul Linford, Political Futures and Sadie's Tavern to name but a few, it is obviously more difficult to be both constructive and critical when the part you support are in office.

Bob, I would say that you may be accused of the same. Those are all good blogs, and I read them, but aren't you also guilty of saying those blogs that excessively criticise the Labour government (as I did) aren't part of the left but 'wishy washy liberals'?

You forget that even when the Conservatives are in power 'da Left' will control the academia, the BBC, most of the press, the telephone call centres etc. etc.

Ben, good one. Very funny.

Sunny, I can tell you don't visit here very often. I'm always being accused of carping and criticising the Labour Government (not the party, by the way, to them I'm loyal).

I don't recall criticising you for being too left. My objection was your advice to 'brown people to vote Tory' if I recall correctly, which I don't consider to be a left position, surprisingly.

I've tracked down one of newmania's forefathers, a poet. Here is a selection of his works:

http://dev.hil.unb.ca/Texts/EPD/UNB/view-works.cgi?c=austinal.812&pos=19

See especially "Why England is Conservative".

That's good, that. I especially liked the one about whether life was still worth living. Towards the end I began to think probably it wasn't if this godforsaken drivel is all we have to read.