David Cameron today urged people to sign a petition calling on Gordon Brown to dissolve Parliament and hold a poll. He says that trust in politics was in pieces and that people should not have to wait another year to pass judgement on Westminster. Cameron said that he will use the Tory campaign for Euro and council elections on June 4th to call for a general election. Cameron calls for a general election.
The British public is turning on it’s elected MPs as the expenses scandals continues. A window is smashed, a garden is vandalized and vengeance is demanded from the Westminster representatives. Many people feel that the greed in Westminster is ‘not politics, but theft’, and the pressure is mounting on Brown to call a general election. The British public wants revenge.
The expenses scandal keeps on rolling. Today we have heard from David Cameron, who is apparently appalled over some of the Conservative MPs expenses claims, and promised that he will lead senior Conservatives in repaying excessive expenses, warning that he will boot any MP who refuse out of the party. Will Blears be the first sacrifice?
An opinion poll carried out for the Mail on Sunday gave Labour the worst result since 1943. Carried out on Thursday and Friday it gave Labour 23 % while the Conservatives got 45%. That is enough for a landslide victory if repeated at an election. This paints a bleak picture for Gordon Brown, who faces a parliamentary election due by mid-May 2010. That is not a long time for Labour to turn things around, and with one scandal following the next, it seems impossible at this point in time. Worst Labour performance since 1943.
The Forfeiture Committee is to consider whether it should act to strip Sir Fred Goodwin of the knighthood he received in 2004 for his services to banking. The former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland has caused widespread public and political anger after he took early retirement and subsequently got a £700,000 yearly pension from the bank he so nearly bankrupted. Goodwin to be stripped of knighthood?
The outbreak of swine flu is the latest avenue for our governments to act out as the ‘parental’ states they are. Here in the UK we are pretty used to always being told what to look out for. ‘Mind the gap’. ‘Look left’. ‘Take care when alighting the bus’. Now there is a new campaign out from the NHS, telling us how to sneeze. Or rather, what to just after we have sneezed. Are we being infantilized by our governments? Or are we just lazy?
It seems that a swine flu pandemic is imminent. A pandemic of any sorts creates panic amongst people, which is far more damaging than the disease itself. The EU Health Commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou said yesterday that a possible pandemic would not necessarily cause widespread deaths. She said that Europe is well prepared and there is ‘no need to panic’. EU warns against swine flu panic.
After months and months reporting on the economic downturn there is finally a new kid on the block; swine flu. This week there hasn’t been much talk of unemployment figures and recession, but much, much has been said about sneezing pigs. So much, in fact, that the media has a whole country fooled. The swine flu is great for the media.
Gordon Brown wants the ties between Britain and Pakistan to become stronger to help fight the threats posed by extremism and terrorism. Speaking in Islamabad, the Prime Minister called for a ‘strategic dialog on all issues’. The visit to Pakistan suffered a blow when President Zardari pulled out of a joint press conference, amid tensions over recent anti terror raids. The press conference went ahead with prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani instead, whom with Brown also held talks. Brown wants stronger ties with Pakistan.
Chancellor Alistair Darling delivered the budget yesterday. Not many people envy him his job these days, and not many people believe they can do a better job. That doesn’t mean people don’t criticize. City experts warns the Chancellor is being too optimistic when anticipating that the economy will grow by 3.5% in 2011 and continue to grow by 3% plus in the next two years. Over-optimistic Darling puts up a fight.