Nick Clegg's announcement today

Alan Johnson is a nice guy in some ways, he's like your friend's dad from school, you know the dad of that kid who could play football really well, but obviously he's just way way wrong.

In fact former Home Secretary Johnson's response to Nick Clegg's absolutely correct announcement today, much of which this little blog has campaigned for in the past, just goes to show how dangerously out of touch Johnson and Labour have been on this issue.

And this is what we have been saying here in the past.

Johnson actually calls the decisions to reign in Labour's police state as "rampant hyperbole" and suggests that Clegg has 'joined up different issues' re CCTV, ID Cards, DNA database, Contact Point child database etc.

But the problem is, as we've long talked about here in the past, is that these aren't different disperate issues, they are all part of an all too visible rock-solid trend, where one part of the trend, dangerously appears to reinforce the necessity for another, and that overall dehumanizes and degrades.

And if Johnson can't actually see that, it really does make you wonder about the rest of his judgment and what he was doing in office all that time.

By the way, I think this coalition with the Lib Dems, is all quite healthy and I think in principle a good outcome for voters has come out of the general election here. I really have no complaints about it at this time.

And it's absolutely right that Clegg and the Tories start to dismantle this pile of terrifying nonsense that Labour has willfully and dangerously created and put it where it belongs: in the dustbin of history.

" Secret tape reveals Tory backing for ban on gays"

Just some news from the Guardian/Observer that caught my eye today.

"The Tories were embroiled in a furious row over lesbian and gay rightson Saturday after the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, was secretly taped suggesting that people who ran bed and breakfasts in their homes should "have the right" to turn away homosexual couples.

The comments, made by Grayling last week to a leading centre-right thinktank, drew an angry response from gay groups and other parties, which said they were evidence that senior figures in David Cameron's party still tolerate prejudice"

At the heart of this issue lies the most fundamental and precious principle we have and that is the right of association. To tamper with this right, to force people together is the most grotesque and stupid attack on the very fabric of what makes a society tolerable at all. The Conservative Party, especially as we approach an election, should be championing that right and being open about protecting it.

No one should be forced to associate with people they don't want to. It needs no explanation, no annotation. No apology. It's a given.

Who is this 'modern' multicultural society actually for ? Is it bringing dignity to anyone, or is it making a ridiculous mockery of everyone ? While we all watch this elephant in the living room no one is supposed to talk about.

Presumably The Guardian/Observer think they have 'discovered' some way to attack the Tories in the lead up to the election but actually have done is shone the light on a slice of reality.

And this problem of creating a kind of ethno-sexual smog of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' is something at some point that, I'm sorry to say, is going to have to be sharply corrected into the reality it needs to be in, rather than the completely grotesque and painfully stupid one it is today.

"Labour depends on the votes of Welfare Britain"

Daily Mail: "Labour has been accused of relying on the 'welfare vote' after the Conservatives published a provocative league table ranking Commons seats according to the number of benefit claimants.

A total of 189 constituencies in the first 200 are represented by Labour MPs, which the Tories claim explains why Ministers are failing to tackle the spiralling welfare bill.

Gordon Brown and 12 Cabinet colleagues represent seats in the top 200, while just four have a Tory MP. "

Guardian: Polls: Tories on course for landslide

I'm not going to talk about the Swine Fever thing right now, I see plenty of other sites are.

Some light, but interesting analysis from The Guardian on the political landscape. Surely The Guardian, just as Labour, will seek to motivate their constituency, but it's nonetheless interesting.

I haven't been studying political polls for some time, but the trend is clear overall as I understand it being reported and started to become all too obvious some time ago. It's just such a shame that, by and large, that old adage about the party in power loosing the election rather than the opposition winning seems to be what we are looking at.

However, I reckon we will be able to rely on the media and the Labour Party doing everything they can to evade why they lost the election; to put it down to a bunch of spurious political reasons, and 'lack of leadership' and so on, while the attempt to create a shocking police state of bobbling slaves, the legacy and endowment of Tony Blair and complicity of Gordon Brown and others of the Iraq War, amongst other horrendous crimes will never even come into it.

Guardian: "We've now had three polls, from two different polling organisations, since last week's budget, and they're all saying much the same thing, which suggests that they are worth taking seriously. The news is dire for Labour: on current form, the Tories are heading for a landslide.

For the record, here are the figures:

ComRes in the Independent (published today)

Conservatives: 45 (up five from ComRes last month)

Labour: 26 (down two)

Lib Dems: 17 (down one)

Conservative lead: 19 (up seven)

YouGov in the Sunday People (published on Sunday)

Conservatives: 45 (up four from YouGov in the Telegraph last month)

Labour: 27 (down four)

Lib Dems: 17 (no change)

Conservative lead: 18 (up eight)

YouGov in the Daily Telegraph (published on Saturday)

Conservatives: 45 (up four from YouGov in the Telegraph last month)

Labour: 27 (down four)

Lib Dems: 18 (up one)

Conservative lead: 18 (up eight)

I've fed the ComRes figures into two websites that provide election predictions on the basis of share of the vote numbers, Electoral Calculus and UK Polling Report. Electoral Calculus says the Tories would have a majority of 186. UK Polling Report, which uses a slightly different methodology, predicts a majority of 170. Either way, it's still pretty big"