Mar/10
15:38 27
David Cameron’s “hairbrush moment” is 3rd most viewed YouTube video
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With more than 39,000 45,000 views, David Cameron’s airbrush hairbrush moment posted by Scrapbook on Tuesday is the 3rd most viewed clip on YouTube. And that’s internationally – not just in Europe or the UK.
Notwithstanding the fact Scrapbook wouldn’t want his hair blowing all over the place either, the most effective campaign memes reinforce what people already think: in this instance that Cameron is vain and shallow. As one journalist suggested yesterday, it might not be Bercow’s rudeness to journalists or Brown storming off Boulton, but it ’s another droplet in a social media drip-drip effect that is undermining the Tory leader. The content of a video may be less significant than whether it goes viral – as this one has.
With tens of thousands of views in such a short period, the velocity of little clips like this could be deadly in the hours following each so-called “Prime Ministerial debate”.
“And here’s Mr. Cameron’s view coming right up!”
Mar/10
14:01 3
Facebook to sue Daily Mail over “child grooming” story
“Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.
I was deluged by strangers asking stomach-churning questions about my sexual experience. I was pressured to meet men with whom I’d never before communicated.
So I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook before being brutally raped and killed.”
And so began the Daily Mail’s double-page hatchet job on Facebook (edited legal retreat version here). This would be incredibly damaging for the social networking giant. Damaging, that is, if it happened not to be a load of b****cks:
- The original author, Mark Williams-Thomas, had told the paper that the social network he referred to in the article was not Facebook.
- He re-asserted this when sent a draft of the story with Facebook named.
- The Mail’s own expert backed up Williams-Thomas, repeating that the network described couldn’t be Facebook.
But they went ahead and published it anyway! Global Dashboard has the full story.
Daily Mail: keeping you afraid since 1896.
Mar/10
16:07 55
Because he’s worth it? David Cameron uses Sky News camera lens to style his hair
UPDATE 10 MARCH With more than 10,000 views in one day, this little video has gone viral!
UPDATE 11 MARCH Dave’s “hairbrush moment” is now the 3rd most viewed YouTube video in the world and is due to crack 40,000 views barrier later today.
Living up to an airbrushed version of yourself must be hard going. It’s therefore reassuring to see that Dave has been taking hairstyling tips from former US presidential hopeful John Edwards: never allow a live camera to compromise the status of your barnet. There was no mirror to hand but Dave gets extra points for improvising with the Sky News camera lens.
As Paul Waugh tweeted earlier:
Scrapbook has managed to track down some video!
The look on Dermot Murnaghan’s face sums it up: cringe!
UPDATE 16:35 Hats off to MyDavidCameron for this tweet: “Cameron in need of a hairbrush, not an airbrush!”
Mar/10
06:30 11
Times/Populus poll puts Labour and Tories “neck and neck” in crucial marginal seats
A Populus survey for The Times has Labour level pegging with the Tories in the crucial seats that will decide the next election.
- The Times’ Peter Riddel writes: “The poll suggests that recent talk of a Tory “wobble” has affected voters’ expectations” with “a swing of about 6.7 per cent to the Tories from Labour since 2005 in those seats”.
- Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report calculates that “the swing this poll suggests in the marginals is the equivalent of a 10 point lead nationally, a larger lead than most polls from other companies have been showing in recent weeks”.
In YouGov’s daily poll the Tories maintain their slender five point gap over Labour with both parties up 1 against the Lib Dems.
Curioser and curioser.
Mar/10
17:49 12
International Women’s Day, Indian Parliament style!
Alongside the welcome column inches (and LabourList guest editors) which have accompanied this 102nd International Women’s Day, it’s great to see some real, tangible strides forward in the cause of gender equality:
A third of seats in India’s Parliament are to be reserved for women under a law to be put before the legislature today — International Women’s Day — in one of the country’s boldest steps towards gender equality since independence in 1947.
Unfortunately, someone forgot to circulate the script amongst India’s parliamentarians. India’s IBN reports:
Voting on a historic bill that reserves 33 percent of legislative seats for women was deferred till Tuesday after a dozen members opposing it tore up the document and hurled pieces at Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari.
Astonishingly, it could have been worse. In scenes redolent of brawling football hooligans, a previous debate on sensitive civil rights issue descended into an all-out ruck. The honourable members tore (metal) microphone stands from desks and hurled them across the chamber:
Bercow wouldn’t stand for this nonsense!
Hat-tip: Nex Left
Mar/10
23:08 6
Norman Tebbit says vote for UKIP (again)
Tory curmudgeon Norman Tebbit has told the Politics Show that Conservative activists should be free to campaign against speaker John Bercow in Buckhingham. Numerous opponents are expected to join the fray despite convention that the speaker stands as an independent candidate unopposed by other parties. Tebbit has already rankled Tory high command with his coded endorsement for UKIP in the 2009 European elections.
Of course, the noble lord wouldn’t touch the (pro-European) former Tory MEP John Stevens with a bargepole. Who, then, could he possibly be endorsing?
Mar/10
21:12 6
Brave Sir Donal ran away!
Ladies and gentlemen, Donal Blaney has left the building! The credentials of the UK’s #11 Conservative blogger as a freedom-to-offend commentator in the Rush Limbaugh mould were left in tatters yesterday after he pulled his blog at the behest of CCHQ. Visitors craving for the stylings of this p*** poor Richard Littlejohn are now greeted with the following:
So, why will those looking for bile about gays, muslims and immigrants now need to look elsewhere? The Young Briton’s Foundation (chief executive D. Blaney) has provided ideological and campaign training to 2,500 Conservative Party activists, including 11 Westminster candidates. Today’s Grauniad has done a number on the YBF, exposing the group – which aims to indoctrinate young Tories with a virulently right-wing agenda – as electoral kryptonite. Policies espoused by the YBF leadership include scrapping the NHS, the use of waterboarding by security services and a US-style liberal firearms regime. Anyone familiar with Blaney’s writing will be unsurprised to discover that many of the most damaging elements of the article were sourced from his blog.
This could be dismissed as a non-story were it not for the fact that “there is an informal understanding that the YBF is the main provider of training for young Conservative activists”. To compound the embarrassment, the latest gathering of the YBF was addressed this week by none other than Eric Pickles and Liam Fox, who number among six Tory frontbenchers to have spoken at group conferences since 2003. Blaney’s personal blog, resplendent in it’s ’Nasty Party’ worldview, also features endoresments from Daniel Hannan, Michael Gove and Douglas Carswell.
Sunder Katwala has done a brilliant job of setting YBF in the context of a ”long tradition of ’so right-wing you probably think we’re joking’ wing-nuttery” in Conservative youth circles:
“Contrast Norman Tebbit closing down the Federation of Conservative Students for being too right-wing in 1982 with the extent to which the ProgCons engage and champion this Maggie’s Militants rump today … I doubt anybody could believe they are so ill-informed or lazy enough not to know about YBF’s right-wing “radicalisation” mission – which was causing CCHQ disquiet when IDS was leader – and exactly where they are coming from”.
The removal of his blog is some climbdown for Blaney, who has revelled in his image as a champion of (right wing) free speech and a bête noire to the left. Those wishing to crow express their feelings on the matter through the medium of song may find the following appropriate (video below so you can sing along):
Brave Sir Donal ran away.
Bravely ran away away.
When danger reared it’s ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Donal turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the braaaave, Sir Donal!
“He’s buggered off!”
“So he has, he’s scarpered!”
Mar/10
11:42 14
Macrory meltdown: Tory head of press proves David Cameron right with bizarre Twitter tirade
The Labour Party has inflicted some some pretty impressive wounds on itself over the last three years but it is clear now that these are eclipsed by the Ashcroft saga. If Scrapbook was a Conservative activist he would be spitting feathers and it seems one of their number finally lost patience this week, causing a storm with an email which led Channel 4 News yesterday evening: ”Didn’t David Cameron or his colleagues understand that it should have been sorted out years ago rather than in the middle of a general election campaign?”
This was yet another news item they could do without in what has been a nightmare week for the Conservatives. But one struggles to fathom what their (usually sane) head of press, Henry Macrory, was thinking when he flooded his Twitter stream with a torrent of weak personal attacks on the senior Conservative lobbyist responsible for the email:
If senior Conservative staffers think that this is a strategic way to kill a story off then the party might be in more serious trouble than everyone thinks. The episode was spotted quickly by several politicos, including Mark Pack from Lib Dem Voice:
“The first one I saw made me wonder if perhaps a message had been sent by mistake, or an intended private message broadcast to the world in error. But that doesn’t explain eleven tweets, nor does a momentary piece of bad judgement. It’s a pretty unappetising picture of how to handle a negative story: send a long series of personal jibes. Perhaps though it’s good that they were sent via Twitter; that way we can all see how the Conservative Party’s press operation conducts itself” – Mark Pack
What did David Cameron say about “too many twits”?
Mar/10
17:38 26
“This is like watching a lion rape a sheep”: Malcolm Tucker et al on Mark Thompson’s BBC 6 Music interview
Malcolm and company are not impressed as the BBC director general Mark Thompson twists in the wind on Newsnight:
Save BBC 6 Music!
- Complain via Auntie’s consultation: srconsultation@bbc.co.uk
- Join the Facebook group (and invite your friends)
- Write to your MP
Hat-tip: Media Monkey*
*Take note, Grauniad. Bloggers credit each other, capiche?
Mar/10
23:51 33
Carol Vorderman metamorphosises into Sarah Palin on BBC Question Time
Numerous tweeters had noted the similarity between the shrill, shallow, populist Carol Vorderman and the shrill, shallow, populist Sarah Palin before a member of the audience did so with some style, adding that that Boris Johnson wasn’t the only Tory on the panel.
Dimbleby had it about right:
“This programme is an hour … it felt like more to me”.
UPDATE 5 MARCH Guido has pitched in with this:
For someone who has been on television for donkey’s years, her performance last night was less than exemplary. Reading constantly from CCHQ briefing notes she gave a blizzard of Tory lines. As head of the Conservative “Maths Task Force” Vorderman seems to be edging towards a peerage, though this idea took a hit last night.
UPDATE 8 MARCH The internet, it seems, has an insatiable desire for all things Carol. Scrapbook is getting so many hits that it’s worthwhile posting some “highlights” (if you can call them that).
Palin-O-Meter
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