Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

it was silly ... but it's as if a kind of showmanship and silliness has taken over from all else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh3UlZcRQrY

"things are hotting up in blogland"

Lib Dem blog commenters not down with Vine. Maitlis "distancing herself from those... blog... comments..."

it's the drummer from blur!

This is some crap spinning from Southampton dude, here.

Jeremy Vine is now manning a graphic whereby the best result for Gordon Brown is that he is perceived as Stalin.

BNP pick up three in Rotherham, their first ever seats in South Yorkshire.

Conservatives lose Colchester and hold Plymouth.

Is there really no Labour-controlled council in the south of England?

Reading?

(labour since 97)

LOL OMFG!!!! BORIS DONE A GUFF!!!! ROFL!!!!!!! THE MAN IS A LEGERND I TELL YOU LOL!!!!! I CARNT WAIT 2 SEE HIM RUNNING THE INTIRE CITTY!

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4910/ptr13bo3.jpg

bunch of kunts. boris heading for victory.

Lots of Toryboys on TV going "prrp prrp prrp" smugly.

I'd forgotten what THEY looked like.

WTF

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7379267.stm

This is what we was referring to above. Not only a stupid presentation with robo Clegg graphics, but absolutely pointless in terms of content to boot.

Gutted to the core about the BNP in Rotherham (where I grew up) - a sad sad sad day.

This is not boding well at all for Ken, is it? Or is that the point of Ken, that he can be seen as a non-labour thing entirely with his purple campaign and generally disassociation from the party? I can only frickin hope.

R4 suggesting labour in third place based on the local results ... 160+ seats lost? luckily, everyone's saying: "yeh, but the tories are still cunts." (well, not in so many words at 7.30am, but you get the idea.)

labour's lost hartlepool!

R4 also v quiet about rotherham ... four minutes into the 8am bulletin and it's not been mentioned.

Can't believe I'm on this thread this early. How's life in bold new Tory Britain?

bn-cunting-p have gained 8 seats, according to BBC news website.

cameron surprisingly and mercifully unsmug about tory gains, which is something, i guess.

Fucking depressing (x-post)

One of the main problems Labour's now got is that business/media/anyone influential doesn't see any point in engaging with it.

With that background, trying to take forward any major policies that might make a difference will be virtually impossible for Gordon B.

Personally, I'm starting to feel precislely the opposite of whatever it was I was feeling on 2/5/1997. May have intensified considerably by dinner time.

Can v easily envisage Tories winning next gen election now.

I wonder if Ken wonders if he should have simply have apologised to that Standard journalist at the outset and avoided a long-term personalised campaign against him.

john humphrys to nick robinson: "so, labour will have lost london too?"

i'd like to think that's not a given; that ken transcends labour; that boris's pointlessness transcends protest voting (and indeed zany student pranking). but i fear the worst.

fucking stupid england.

Can't believe I'm on this thread this early. How's life in bold new Tory Britain?

Same as it was yesterday.

Oh good grief.

I think that's all I can manage.

If voting actally changed anything, it would have been banned years ago!

I just watched Vine's Shootout Saloon again and - yes, it's utterly daft - but it actually kind of impresses me, the way he remembers the script and delivers it, and keeps his silly accent as long as he has his hat on.

I'm afraid that jokes about Stalin are in terrible taste: how about graphics of Cameron as Hitler, wondering if he can make a big push? No good.

People on this thread are lamenting the (local) results, as though a Tory Britain is a terrible thing, and Labour / Lib Dem losses are sad. I agree entirely. But were you all saying the same thing for the last 10 years, or disdaining Labour and ignoring the Tory threat? Have we perhaps been complacent about the prospect that faces us now? (Not that our complacency, if it exists, makes much practical difference one way or the other.)

i've been rather more concerned about what's going on up here than in england. and, y'know, we managed to get rid of labour WITHOUT USHERING IN THE MOTHERFUCKING TORIES, for fuck's sake :)

also: tory "britain"? no, i don't think so.

really, as if i wasn't pro-independence enough already. fuck me, bring on the woad.

acc R4: turnout in liverpool central <10%. i'm speechless on that one.

If only the SNP had put forward a candidate for Mayor of London.

xp

(in all seriousness: a tory england is one of the best selling points scottish independence could have: this has been discussed by iain macwhirter and others at some length now.)

If only the SNP had put forward a candidate for Mayor of London

i think salmond might have quite relished that, just for shits and giggles.

a tory england is one of the best selling points scottish independence could have

OTM. However Rangers reaching the final of the UEFA Cup might have given support for the Union a little shot in the arm.

The top four recommended comments are actually scary.

National share something like Con/LD/Lab: 44/25/24? Amazing(ly awful). I mean, you can lop off 10 from the LibDems in a General Election, maybe divvy it up 6/4 to Lab, and perhaps Con have a 3pt swing over Lab at local level, and then there's Scotland to factor in - but anyway you slice it, this maps to at least a 1979-level Tory GE win. Lot of work to do in the next two years.

Jeremy Vine stuff last night was just beyond parody. I think it may have been beyond Pluto. You can take your Day Today DVDs and throw them in the bin. They're useless now.

Jeremy Vine = Fake Plastic Snow

The top four recommended comments are actually scary.

'Socialist fascists' eh!

Those people on that BBC thread are the people we share a country with. Perhaps I am too often apt to forget that in a haze of fellow feeling for my compatriots.

They write so badly - it's amazing what people will happily stick online, for the world to see, under their own names.

But it's amazing that people would vote BJ, and they do, in hundreds of thousands (or is it millions)?

JOIN ME.

.. and that's a 'moderated' board.

How did that "if Ken wins, it's the biggest voting rigging scandal ever, RMugabe would be proud" comment pass, legally standing?

Those BBC favourite comments give me the fear. The Bee En Pee messageboard must have coach trips there to vote anything mentioning them up, right? Ugh.

go Boris! Those of us in greater London cannot wait to see the smirk wiped off the face of Red Ken as he faces having to work for a living!

Ah, good old hard-working Boris, kicked out of a succession of first jobs (Times reporter/management consultancy - yr average working person's early-20s jobs, obviously) for reasons like "found it all terribly dull" or "oh, just make it all up, who cares?".

Er, yeah, I have to stop now or I'd be spitting bile at all of them ("aren't poor people disgusting" in same post as "oh noes 10p tax rate debacle", etc).

I've long thought that 'comments', as with other communications to newspapers by readers, should be screened for spelling, grammar and general coherence before appearing in any forum of any newspaper of record.

by whom, and who is going to pay them?

Ed, newspaper sites are moderated so someone's already basically being paid to filter comments; what's wrong with spiking those which don't come up to x standard of written English, and making it clear when people register to leave comments that this is the case?

The fascists are probably just recommending each others comments to drive them to the top.

The last few times I've visited London, it's been wholly pleasant, I felt it would be a good place to live. Glad I don't live there now.

People on some musician's board I post on (probably take a step back from it a bit now TBH) are all "haha those thieving labour cunts deserve a good kicking" WTF GAZE INTO THE ABYSS FOOLS.

Unfortunate timing of lead review on Pitchfork.

Moderated yes, subedited no

xposts

what's wrong with spiking those which don't come up to x standard of written English

Conversely, however, that would also filter out comments from immigrants for whom English is a second language.

I really felt like wearing a black armband today.