Vox Polis

The week’s Gordon Brown news from The Man Who Would Be King.

• Hanging out with celebrities
  According to this morning’s Metro, Brown’s been dining with celebrities such as Kylie Minogue in order to transform his “dour” public image.
• Husting alone
  Although it seems certain that someone will get the 44 signatures needed to stand against Brown for the leadership contest (even if it’s to make Brown’s coronation appear democratic) it’s interesting to find that Brown would have to campaign even if he was the only candidate.
• Student load deja vu
  The FT is speculating that Gordon will privatise the student loan system in his budget next week.
• Would you work for Gordon
  Do you like to be at your desk at 7am?
• Kinnock: from unelectable to unelected
  It looks as if Neil Kinnock will continue his political career as an unelected drain servant of the British people by becoming Leader of the House of Lords under a Brown Government.
• Gordon Brown’s politics for beginners
  For those who want to understand Brown in 3 minutes.
• Taxing times for airlines
  This morning on GMTV Gordon attacked the Tories airline tax plans.
• Ten years to remember
  Gordon Brown is to face his biggest challenge yet.
• A green role reversal
  Liberal society is good at informing and educating people about the environment, but it struggles to create environmental consciousness.

The week’s Gordon Brown news from The Man Who Would Be King.

• No Super Thursday for us
  The Sunday People’s on a roll.
• “Fully elected House of Lords” are the headlines, but will Gordon shelve the plan?
  Was tonight a great night for democracy?
• Chancellor Straw?
  According to the Telegraph, Jack Straw is to become Gordon’s first Chancellor, with Reid staying at the Home Office.
• Buying office in Euros
  The BBC have been running an excellent documentary on 10 years of Blair called Tony Blair: The Inside Story.
• Mafia Boss Brown
  Tonight Channel 4 finally began showing the latest series of the Sopranos.
• Brown’s first policy pledge
  If the rumours are to be believed, one of Brown’s first decisions as PM will be to get rid of the DTI, and give the Treasury monopolistic powers responsibility for business.
• No snap election under Brown, Blair says
  In another meandering wide-ranging interview, this time with the Observer, Blair informs us that Brown will not hold a snap election.
• Ming Deal or No Deal?
  Ming’s speech to the Lib Dem Spring Party Conference is being spun as a shopping list for a lib-lab deal if, as frequently predicted, we are faced with a hung parliament at the next election.

The week’s Gordon Brown news from The Man Who Would Be King.

• Another Blair Prediction
  The ever accurate Sunday People predicts that Blair will quit at 6pm on 24th July.
• What ever happened to…
  Matthew Parris today looks at some of Gordon’s mythical initiatives.
• Is it Mili-Me that has 2020 Vision
  Writing in the FT, James Blitz argues that the 2020 vision website launch yesterday was “a last prod to see if Mr Miliband would stand”.
• Brown spends more on websites
  Was spending £75,000 on a website to initiate a debate on the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review, good value for money?
• Forced voluntary service under Brown
  So Brown wants all immigrants seeking British citizenship to conduct voluntary service.
• Looks like there could be more…
  We get to see what Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke are up to tomorrow after their “we’re worried about the Labour party under Brown” email.
• Backseat driving
  I always thought that when he became leader, Brown would send Blair abroad to avoid the problems Major faced from old Maggie, who haunted him from the Lords.

There’s an interesting new blog all about Gordon Brown over at wouldbeking.co.uk. It aims to find out all about the man who almost certainly will be the next Prime Minister in 6 months time. Hopefully, it’ll reveal some interesting facts.

There may be some strangeness for the next hour or so while I upgrade the site to version 2.1.

I’ve just installed a small upgrade of WordPress from 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. Please let me know if you spot anything strange going on.

Now that they’re finished doing their annual shift for Santa the Vox Polis elves have got time to do some maintenance work. The usual upgrade related warnings (moderate chance of rains of toads, threat level orange) apply.

Yes, it’s a year to the day since the first post went up on Vox Polis. Some birthday statistics:

• In a year we’ve had 110098 hits.
• In the launch month we had 1299 hits; this month we’ve had 23265 hits so far.
• We’ve written 198 posts.
• Currently the most read post is Anniversary of No vote! (also a fine example of what happens when I don’t hit DogPatch with the grammar stick enough).
• Most common search term was “defra wiki” (second most popular was the ever popular “polis sex”).

So, all in all, a good year. Champagne all round!

I’ll be upgrading our Wordpress install this morning, weirdness may follow.

Update - Everything seems to be ok but please let me know if you find anything I’ve missed.

According to the Iain Dale-o-meter of the top 100 non aligned blogs, Vox Polis is 82nd! - And I didnt even think anyone had noticed us.

If you add together all his top 100s to include those aligned to Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems, then we’re about 340th out of 400! - Plenty of room for improvement…better start blogging more.