LibDem Voice has asked whether Boris and Ken Livingstone can keep up with Brian Paddick (he’s the LibDem candidate for London mayor… no really they have someone in the race).  Of course they’re actually referring to the fact Paddick is going to take part in this year’s London marathon, rather than the race for Mayor itself (where the question could be more accurately put; can Brian Paddick keep up with the Green candidate?).

But focusing on the marathon for a moment I don’t know… could Boris keep up with Brian?  I guess he’d stand a decent chance if he was a keen jogger or something.  Oh wait…

Still in the LibDem spirit of fairness as applied to school sports days perhaps Boris should sit the marathon out to give Paddick a moment of glory.  After all, competition is only fair if weaker candidates are guaranteed a place on the podium…

I don’t usually post about Conservative Future (because it tends to be quite dull for obvious reasons), however Dizzy has just posted about something that simply can’t be ignored. It would seem the CCHQ’s paid CF staffer Michael Lunn has been interfering with the current elections for the CF board (NME).

“Back in November, there appears to have been plans for a quasi-CCHQ backed launch of a female candidate for the CF chairman position by the CF national organiser Michael Lunn, who said in an email to the potential candidate that he had “reservations” about the current candidates that were running.

In the emails it is made clear by Lunn that he “cannot endorse any candidate” but he later goes on to say that he has “some reservations over the current national candidates” and that the party chairman and David Cameron would welcome a female chair if she was to run. The emails go on to say that “[i]t would be great if you would be willing to stand for cf chairman, the centre is very keen to have a fresh start and attract more women in general, happy to meet you and discuss if u are interested.”

A few days later in an email thread where the potential - and unknown - candidate has declined the offer, Lunn says, “[b]e careful how you use me, if you need to consult me can you please do it personally. I cannot afford a whole long paper trail on my involvement or even remote support.” This time the email appears to have been sent from a personal account rather than a conservatives.com one.”

Let’s just repeat the quote from the last paragraph: “I cannot afford a whole long paper trail on my involvement or even remote support.” Sounds a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

It would seem Michael Lunn has a lot of questions to answer.

Oral exams… apparently they’re too stressful.  But isn’t that the point, or at least part of the point?  Knowing how someone performs under pressure is important.  If you’re an employer you want to know that if employee X or Y isn’t going to collapse into a heap as soon as you give them a deadline, or a particularly complex task.

Exams aren’t meant to be easy, be they oral or otherwise.  I remember doing Spanish orals, and I also remember how stressful they were (and how badly I performed).  But should I have been protected from that stress?  No.

I don’t doubt that results would improve if orals were no more, but the improvement in results would be a direct result of the bar being lowered, not because the students were anymore capable.

The Centre for Policy Studies has an interesting report out on politics and the internet. The most startling fact to come out of the report, which is well worth a read, is that the BNP website has a larger market share than the Labour, Conservative, and LibDem websites combined.

What’s the explanation? Sadly it’s the fact that none of the main parties have learnt to effectively harness the power of the internet. Can you think of a decent reason visit their websites on a regular basis? I know I can’t.

As I’ve mentioned before I use Google Reader to stay up to date with what’s happening in the world of politics.  In my Google Reader account I have feeds from numerous blogs and of course from the main news sites.  It’s brilliant, I get to read about what I want to read about when I want to read about it.  But there’s a problem; because my feed is so tailored I miss out on items of news that aren’t specifically political.  Up until a few minutes ago though I hadn’t realised the depth of this problem.

What do I mean?  Well, put it like this, I only just found out about the fire in Camdem Markets.

Needless to say I’ll be spending some of this evening adding some breadth to my feeds.

If there’s one group that stands out from the rest on the conservative side of the aisle it has to be the TaxPayers’ Alliance.  In an incredibly short space of time they have come from nothing to easily the biggest and most effective player in the field of think tanks (although they describe themselves as an activist group).  What makes them so effective?  Simple, they are masters at shifting the debate and motivating people to action.

At the moment for example they are trying to mobilise people in Bournemouth to call their councillors to urge them to vote against a pay rise of 32% for councillors (with a 34% rise for the leader of the council).  The question though for the people of Bournemouth, as TPA rightly put it,  is “can you say that the quality of council services has gone up by 34%?”.

If you’d like to find out more about the campaign and would like to help stop the payrise then look no further than the TPA blog.

Over the past few months quite a few people have asked me what I’ve been up to given that I haven’t been presenting for 18 Doughty Street. Well, I can now tell you that I have been helping Iain set up a new political magazine, Total Politics. There’s nothing I like more than getting my teeth into a new project and watching it go from concept to reality. Needless to say the past while has been very exciting.

One of the things I’m most excited about is the team that’s been put together. From the Editor to the Head of Sales it’s fair to say Total Politics will benefit from the best people around. What’s more the team, who will be joining the magazine over the next couple of months, represents the range of political persuasions in mainstream British politics.

So what will the magazine be like? You’ll just have to wait and see…

As a general rule hippies are quite nice and mean well (even if they aren’t very well informed). But as with every other general rule there are exceptions, and in this case the exception is the hippies that make up the Green Party. How are they the exception you might ask? Well, as Samizdata points out, their policies are a little bit… well… let’s just say the BNP would take to them quite happily:

Absolutely astonishing stuff. But there you go: Vote Green, Go Facist.
[Hat tip = Iain Dale]

From Dick Morris’ column for TheHill.com:

“Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination…

As the election turned from Super Tuesday to the heartland, where there are few Hispanics or new immigrants, Hillary’s campaign has lost its momentum and its prospects of victory. Obama’s victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state, and his probable wins in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, show how complete is his mastery of states without immigrants blinded by the Clinton name to sustain it. Hillary’s hopes for victory in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina are a fantasy. The Latino population in those states is well below 10 percent and not enough to carry her to victory.

The super-delegates will not be enough to reverse Obama’s primary and caucus victories and they will run for cover and join the Obama bandwagon anyway…

But the mistakes and strategic errors of the Clinton campaign gave Obama an opening that he exploited masterfully. It is Obama’s charisma that is winning this election, but it was Clinton’s mistakes that opened the door.“

I’ll be honest, it’s difficult to disagree with his assessment. Hillary’s campaign has failed to perform as expected and Obama’s has confounded expectation. Does that mean I no longer think Hillary can win? No, anything can happen in politics and the race is a long way from being over. Whilst Morris’ argument is difficult to disagree with the fact remains that anything can happen in the coming weeks. And one of those things is serious negative campaigning from Hillary in the form of 527s. Will they make the difference and seal the victory for her? At this point they’re about the only thing that can.

[You can subscribe to Dick Morris' columns at his website]

It comes as no surprise that Boris will be putting crime at the centre of his campaign for Mayor of London.  What might be surprising is the approach to crime that Boris seems to be advocating; namely an application of the broken window theory.  In Boris’ words:

“I believe that by systematically tackling small crimes we can drive out more serious crime.”

The theory was successfully applied by Rudy Giuliani during his tenure as Mayor of New York, resulting in a massive reduction in crime across the city.  Giuliani’s application of the theory manifested in a crackdown on minor crimes such as graffiti, jaywalking, turnstile jumping (in the metro), and urination in the streets.  One can only wonder at the number of minor crimes that would come under the gaze of the law in London if the broken windows theory was applied.

What can’t be disputed though is that the application of the theory in New York (one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world at the time) worked; New York became one of the safest large cities in the United States.

Would the same be true of London?  Elect Boris Johnson and I guess we’ll find out.