The past twelve months (and prior) have seen several very popular blogs either shut down or change editorial hands. As the year draws to a close, what better opportunity to reflect on those bloggers “no longer with us”. Starring Iain Dale, Tom Harris, Derek Draper and others, we’ve finally completed our end-of-year video.
This is our tribute to those who have bought their site a one-way ticket to Zurich.
Glasgow North MP Ann McKechin has declared that she is to run in the Shadow Cabinet elections, Scrapbook can reveal.
A lot has changed since we last wrote about the aspirant Scottish contenders with the woman tipped as the next Shadow Scottish Secretary declining to run. Meanwhile the blogosphere’s favourite, Tom Harris, spent five minutes in the race for Chief Whip before backing Jim Fitzpatrick. Tom’s now thrown his hat into a tight Shadow Cabinet field with only 13 places for men.
With Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander both as keen to avoid being stuck with the Scotland job as their Welsh counterparts are with the Wales job they’ll likely put considerable effort into ensuring another Scot is in the Shadow Cabinet, a task which is undeniably easier in the women’s section.
Having voted against the Iraq War Ann McKechin openly describes herself as ‘soft left’, and is one of Ed Miliband’s Scottish lieutenants along with Margaret Curran. With Scottish Labour more than doubling the number of women they send to Westminster they now have proportionately more female MPs than the rest of the Labour Party. It therefore seems only natural that they would want one of their own in the Shadow Cabinet.
Jim Murphy might just have dodged the bullet.
So freshman Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert has rankled Tom Harris with his patronising suggestion that MPs should undergo a science training course so that they are “able to understand the information they were being presented with”.
With a PhD in biological chemistry, brainbox Huppert churned out papers on such accessible topics as the “Prevalence of quadruplexes in the human genome”. He will presumably, therefore, understand the following notation:
ClCH2CH2Cl + 3 Cl2 → Cl2C=CCl2 + 4 HCl
According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), this is the chemical reaction to produce tetrachloroethylene, the chemical used in, erm, dry cleaning.
“I’m not really lovin’ it, no…”. This tweet from @TomHarrisMP sounded like the standard cryptic link to his latest post on the And another thing blog:
But apparently not! Scrapbook can’t read Japanese Chinese, but it’s safe to say the site below does not feature an in depth analysis of the Yen’s decline to a two-week low against the Euro:
Let’s hope he didn’t charge the taxpayer £10 for that!*
*Of course, the account has been hacked. But it is more fun to suppose otherwise.
Conclusive proof that the conference fringe is always more interesting than the main event:
UPDATE: As Hopi Sen isn’t going to conference this year it has been announced that John Prescott will replace him in the ‘Labour Bloggers Revue’. Tickets are limited. One at a time please, ladies!
Hat tip: Tom Harris
Tom Harris wouldn’t want us to miss Auntie’s serialisation of his diaries, and has helpfully pointed his readers in the direction of the BBC radio listings:
Removed to protective custody?
Good to see the Labour whips haven’t lost any of their zeal.
