Yapolitical

Despite me now being a blogger I'm still not particularly immersed in the blogosphere but I have in the past gazed over the odd political blog. The Lib Dems were the early leading lights in this field and I still gaze at a few centrist sites from time to time, but now the Conservatives seem to have taken the lead. One of the better known British examples of this is Guido Fawkes' supposed anti-politics blog, although 'anti-Labour' (who just so happen to be in power at the moment) is a better label. Recently the main man behind the site went head to head with Derek Draper, who recently started Labour List as an almost direct reaction to the amount of Conservative-friendly blogs in comparison to those of the centre-left. The Daily Politics provided the neutral ground for them to meet on and through the below link you can find the archive of their spat. But the clip I want to show you is what of a very eloquent speech given by a little-known MEP which took the blogosphere by storm but got next to no TV coverage ... of course all MEPs are little-known but you take my point:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/7965909.stm

Talking of the EU, I'll be casting my views on Libertas sometime soon. (Something to look forward to eh?)

The big politics story of the last few days has of course been Jacqui Smith's husband wrongly deciding to claim a couple of blueys on her parliamentary expenses. Would you once again like to see his rather awkward and embarrassing apology? You're not really going to find many people that would back his decision to claim for expenses but there is a more even debate on the idea of a man in the privacy of his own home scratching an itch whilst his missus is elsewhere. I wont state my own views but, after listening to part of the debate on Jeremy Vine's show on the way to work yesterday, it does seem fairly clear that if the man doesn't see a problem with it but the lady does it's a recipe for disaster. Relationships seem to have a much better chance of working if both people have a similar view. Not rocket science I know but it's a certainly a much overlooked point in the debate.

On a side note I will one day have to explain what Yapolitical refers to and wax lyrical on my podcasting past