BUSH DOESN'T USE EMAIL: Rather odd, this one: George Bush doesn't use email because he doesn't want his personal material archived.

"There's got to be a certain sense of privacy," Bush said. "You're entitled to how I make decisions and you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer. I don't think you're entitled to read my mail between my daughters and me."

Right. You're supposedly this hotshot Harvard graduate, and yet its beyond your wit to get a gmail account for your personal stuff?

 
LABOUR'S NEW BIG IDEA: Hanging around outside school gates. There's a name, surely, for people like that?

 
A FIT OF THE VAPOURS: Interesting little piece of coverage of Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas campaign on Today just now. A young man came up to the orange one and took issue with Silk's thick rant about Arabs. Kilroy's reaction? He called a policewoman and tried to get the lad arrested because he'd used the f-word. Bobby, son, if you flush with shame everytime someone says fuck, you might find the rudery of modern politics a little too much.

In the same bit, marking the launch of the Veritas manifesto, Silk admitted "We don't have an agenda." Erm... so what do we vote on, then?

 
HOW TORIES POLITICK: Leaving aside the unseemly mucking about with photos that blew up in the Tories' faces in Dorset at the start of this week, elsewhere in the county there's been more evidence of desperate behaviour by the Conservatives. Tory candidate for Winchester George Hollingbery is cyerbsquatting in a site bearing the name of his Lib dem challenger.

Hollingbery, when confronted with this trickery, resorted to the sort of Year Five smirking that reminds everyone why having this bunch in power would be such a catastrophe for the country:

[Oaten is] "an experienced politician...[who] should have bought all of his own web addresses".

Well, perhaps. On the other hand, Hollingbery's behaviour would appear to be clear breach of the rules:

In order to have the domain name transferred or cancelled, the trademark holder must establish (1) that he has a legally recognized trademark in a name that is identical or confusingly similar to the domain name; (2) that the current registrant of the domain name has no legitimate rights in the name; and (3) that there has been some evidence of bad faith or abuse.

Yep, all three would be ticked there, then. All the parties have done this sort of thing in the past, of course. It doesn't make it any less childish.

 
GEORGE MICHAEL POLITICS: An interesting little spat has broken out in the Reading East constituency. Labour candidate Tony Page has upset Tories by mentioning his cottaging convictions in his election material. Interestingly, the local Conservatives reject Page's claims that they've been poking about in his past planning to make political capital out of the record, and that they're homophobic, but clearly local chairman Paul Swaddle still has trouble with whole issue:

"For someone who has personally been involved with fighting for people's rights it was annoying to say the least.

"The Banner reads as though we were trying to get information about Mr Page that was not already in the public domain - and that we were mud-slinging it around.

"He is trying to make light of his convictions. What someone does in the privacy of their homes is up to them, but he broke the law, not once but twice. The law would still have been broken even if it were a man and a woman."

Mr Swaddle added: "One of our previous chairmen, Richard Willis, was gay, so to try and insinuate that somehow we are homophobic is wrong."

Ah, well, if there was a gay in the party at some point in the past, then there's no way that they could possibly be homophobic, then. That's alright. We don't know if Mr. Swaddle has any details on the conviction rates for men and women having sex in public.

 
WE'RE SURE IT'S JUST AN OVERSIGHT: What is wrong with this website (at michaelhowardmp.com)?

Local MP launches Manifesto

Local MP Michael Howard has launched the Conservative pitch for power with a promise to "battle for Britain" and make the country a better place in which to live.

With 24 days to go to the election, the Party Leader unveiled a manifesto programme designed to replace Labour's wasted years of squandered opportunity, talk, and broken promises with a new era of action to improve public services, reduce the burden of taxes, and provide better value for money - with politicians held properly accountable to the public.

Factually, it's almost correct, but "local MP"? Surely Michael knows that calling yourself an MP after Parliament has been dissolved is a breach of Electoral Commission guidelines?. There is no Parliament; there are no members of Parliament.

 
HIGHLIGHT OF THE ELECTION SO FAR: Michael Howard is the best thing in the election, just two days in: we thought that appearing to have the words "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" permanently superimposed on his chest was funny enough; but it's clear that that Aussie chap they imported to try and run their campaign has decided that whenever Howard appears on TV, he should have a small crowd of admirers and supporters behind him. Like George Bush did.

Trouble is, Bush had millions of Republicans to choose from. Howard is trying to assemble a crowd from much thinner material - it's a ploy that would always look a bit shit in the UK; the only sort of people who hang around in the back of shot on British television are mouthing "hello mum" anyway - but a couple of times their crowd has been so thin it's made them look like they're huddling together for warmth. And having seen the faces of people who Howard is surrounded by... well, that's got to be worth a two point swing to the Lib Dems right there.