blimey Bob fame at last? I think, well done i now prefer your blog to Tom Watson's

Interesting post and internal links. I actually 'found' your site from the Independent article this morning so at least a big 'hurrah' for Ed Howker !

Top o' the world ma! Made it,then, son. Well done. The Independent, eh?

Pity no bugger reads the bleedin' thing.......

Blears deserves all the bad press she gets over this ill-informed attack on those who attack corruption and sleaze via blogs from all sides of the political debate.

As I said on my blog this morning, her speech would never have even been made if the left-wing blogs were anywhere near as influential as those on the right.

That is a good write up, yes. Even gets the point about low turnout being linked to safe seats in as well, that's unusual to see pretty much anywhere. Have edited it into my post, thanks for pointing it out.

"I think the point about the size of the popular mandate is rather exaggerated"

My reading is that 64,000,000 voted for Obama. The next highest personal mandate in history as far as I can see is George Bush in 2004 (62,000,000).

If you can identify a larger mandate, I will happily stand corrected.

I wouldn't want to split hairs over this James, but.... I think to say Obama got more votes than anyone has ever obtained could be interpreted as correct, although over one hundred million people voted for the Indian Congress Party in the 2004 election so you could say that Sonia Gandhi had a far larger popular mandate. But the mandate should just mean more than being the leader in a country with a lot of voters. If you count the votes for McCain as being against Obama, then he had one of the largest votes in history against his leadership.

I would argue that if the leader of a smaller country had almost universal support, they could claim a larger 'popular' mandate than Obama... although that is fraught with difficulties too because on that basis you could claim Saddam had a highly popular mandate!

Blears has certainly got some front. It's not bloggers that have created so many cynics, it's clueless politicians such as herself and the rest of the New Labour project.

Still, it's good to see Brum getting some good media coverage today:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=LTOXlo1npmY

I accept all your points Bob. My reason for going on about Obama's personal mandate is that if you cast your mind back four years ago the Republicans and their Tory friends were keen to bang on and on and on about how George Bush had the largest personal mandate in history and I'm just enjoying parroting them too much.

Congratulations on your elevation to the blogging peerage, Bob, even if your taste in football managers has not improved over the years (or team for that matter :)

But I do agree about Hazel Blears. What are these people so frightened of? The truth I'd guess. If she and the rest of her colleagues think politics is being undermined by cynics then politicians have only themselves to blame. They seem to be upset that we are now better informed about their deceits and double-standards and would dearly love to put the clock back. It's up to them to get their act together and be aware that people are watching what they do and what they say. If that means they can't pull the wool over our eyes as easily as they used to, then it can only lead to an improvement in standards.