Blogging Accountability

IT is a bleak time for journalism with job losses and redundancies biting at daily and regional papers across Britain.
With profits down at Johnston Press, the company is looking to shake up its management on newsdesks upwards making painful job losses. The same is true at GMG where the Reading paper is going bi-weekly and there are set to be horrific losses at the MEN and its weeklies.
Soon, we could get to the stage where there are simply no local papers left or all that remains is news run on tight budgets by few people with no resources. The result - a poor product which people will not buy anyway making the situation worse.
The internet has flourished with blogging, Twitter and all the rest. It has been good for papers to embrace this but the problem is - it doesn't make anywhere near the same money that traditional newspapers did (note the word 'did'). This is made worse by an active online community of untrained journalists blogging away rivalling the sources where people once went for their news.
And I must admit, today, I too read blogs instead of going to newspaper websites because the content is often more interesting, free from the constraints of owners or editors and can be exclusive.
With papers going out of business as I write, there will be few quality reads left alongside a growing amount of blogs and tweets or whatever attracting the reader.
My only worry is the lack of journalism training tied to those writing them and the resources they have to gain access to the movers and shakers. The authors also often have little concept of libel so risk being sued.
I think it is time for the Government to look at the issue of the decline of newspapers and the media - especially as it is supposed to be a key part of democracy.
In the meantime, as a trained journalist, I'll hedge my bets by blogging, writing for a newspaper and tweeting (or whatever else I can do right now to get people's attention!).

Worst Political Quotes of All Time

TO celebrate idiocy in British politics, let's celebrate some of the worst quotes, or misquotes, of our time.
Feel free to add your own by tweeting @betterpolitics

1. "Now is not the time for sound bites. I can feel the hand of history on my shoulder." - Tony Blair

2. "I did maths for a year at university. I don't think I was very good at it. And some people would say it shows." - Gordon Brown, who recently told the House of Commons he had "saved the world".

3. "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3." - Boris Johnson

4. "I don't make predictions. I never have and I never will." - Tony Blair.

5. "Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters." - John Major.

6. Lady Astor to Churchill: "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison"
Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it"

7. "Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man." - Iain Duncan Smith, shortly before resigning Conservative Party leadership.

8. "We're not saying, 'We're politicians, trust us.' We know you don't trust us." - Michael Howard.

9. "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for Government." - Former SDP leader David Steel before his party came third in the 1983 election.

Phil Woolas - It's Time to Knight Him

STEP forward Mr Phil Woolas, our favourite Home Office minister.
And isn't it about time we knighted this man especially as he goes on a new crusade of slagging off the Office for National Statistics.
He claims it is playing politics by releasing data to the general public!
Heaven forbid should a statistics body release statistics - what were they thinking?
Oh, wait up, it seems the immigration minister is not happy they are releasing information about immigration figures specifically about the number of British residents born abroad. It is "naive" and "sinister", he says.
But let's get real here, isn't the real politics taking place by the minister himself by making an issue of this so publicly.
And in an era of "open Government", it should not matter if the public knows such information - we are legitimately allowed to have it. We don't live in a former Communist dictatorship, and we quite frankly find the minister arrogant and he has shown appalling judgement here himself.
This is bully-boy tactics of the first kind and I now welcome the Manchester student who recently and successfully threw a custard pie in Mr Woolas' face.
See http://tinyurl.com/afsexv for BBC story.
Relive the classic cream pie moment:

Right Said Fred

A CONTRACT is a contract and as sickening as this sounds it is allowing Sir Fred Goodwin, former RBS chief, to walk away with a disgusting £650,000-a-year pension.
RBS has posted massive losses - the worst in history though this is still less than predicted.
But Sir Fred was bred under a system which rewarded failure as much as gain.
Now, it is all good and well to moan and point to him and use Sir Fred as the scapegoat for banking's failure.
But he is merely cashing in on what was promised.
It is sickening, it is wrong, but it is too late and Government ministers should quit moaning about it and make sure this NEVER happens again.
See Sir Fred in action:

A Funny - Draper v Dale

Here at Better Politics we like to stay out of online spats such as the on-going tit-for-tat stuff involving Labour's Derek Draper and the Conservatives' Iain Dale.
But this video spoof of Downfall is sure good value.

Supermassive Black Holes

IT'S time that we as tax payers stop forking out millions and millions to the pension pots of local government schemes.
Better Politics knows of one local government scheme in England which has a growing deficit of £25 A SECOND - that equates to over £2m a day. Yes, the stock market has gone down but even the scheme's own financial expert does not think it can come back to parity - it is currently £2.1bn in debt. He says there's only a 35% chance of this happening in the next 20 years!
And who pays for this in trying to plug a dying pension system? Well, surprise surprise, it's us - the tax payer. We are the mugs - again.
One pension expert thinks that one day there will be nothing in the pot left to pay out pensions. This, though, will never happen while the Government guarantees these dying gold-plated systems based on final salaries.
No one in the private sector these days can retire on final salaries yet council officers can.
We pay around £35 a year from our council tax bills to go towards other people's pensions - it's not on and it needs changing now.

Bankers v Politicians

Darling knows how he does it but the next in line for vitriol are the bankers (again!). This time, quite rightly, RBS.
Yes, it is disgusting that bankers, who are failing spectacularly, want to continue paying themselves big bonuses in such an economic climate.
But what on earth can Darling do? He's clearly angry that we've just bailed out RBS for £20bn abd £1bn will be paid out in bonuses. This is bloody annoying.
But we need to be serious when tackling this and start to bring back teeth into government before making empty threats.
RBS should be ashamed of themselves, of course, but let's see action before we go into rant mode on Sunday morning television.
My answer would be to threaten to withdraw our hard-earned tax pounds in any bailout.