Run with Eric:
Politics

*tumbleweed*

Look, I'm sorry. I am. I really am. But what with jobbing, blogging once or twice a week over here and moving house and indeed city, I'm struggling to find the time to visit this dusty corner of the web.

It's a shitter, really. There's so much I want to comment about in all areas of the news, but it inevitably ends up instead on my Twitter account, sandwiched between football ramblings and rants at Neighbours.

Today: the Budget. I'd love to talk about it in more detail, but I've become so innured to 140 characters that -

Sorry. Old joke. The Budget was fascinating, but more for students of politics than of economics. The main talking point, really, is Alistair Darling's decision to axe Stamp Duty on first-time home buyers spending less than £250,000 on their property. Seeing as it's currently 1% of the property value, it'll probably save them around £2,000. Good stuff. Not quite as good, obviously, for the owners of million-pound homes, who are seeing their Stamp Duty rise 5%.

That'll be 5%, please
It's a move that sees Labour move to their traditionalist roots... oh, come on, we know that's bollocks. It's an appeal to their core voters, that's all, but what did you expect in a pre-election Budget? It's interesting, though, that penalising well-off southerners in the commuter belt whose homes have ballooned in value through no fault of their own may cost Labour as many votes as they win through helping first-time homeowners - who, by the way, won't be as poor as all that, since the move affects properties worth between £125,000 and £250,000. Basically, mummy and daddy's mansion tax pays for their first step towards their own mansion. What's that song? We are all bourgeois now?

Still, this Stamp Duty move will probably end up a votewinner rather than a voteloser, which is more than you can say for David Cameron's efforts with Gay Times. If you wanted proof the only principle this man has is that he should win the election, there you go. "What's my stance on gay people again? Wait, I know this one. Turn the camera off, let me get my crib sheet... "

Cameron: direct (well, not really)
So in conclusion, I'm rubbish, Cameron's rubbish, the Budget happened and if you are reading this, thanks for sticking with me. Now I'm settled, almost unpacked and actually have the internet at home, I can start blogging on here a bit more often than once every Twilight film.

I'm back, I promise, and I'll start... oh, next week sometime.

Just noticed this on the BBC about the race for countries wanting to host the 2018 Football World Cup. I have one main concern with the proposed host nations. Who?

It's encouraging - very encouraging - that smaller nations are striving to host such a major event. Ambitious building projects bring in capital, the country improves etc. etc. Basically, hosting the World Cup energises the country in exactly the way hosting the Olympics does not.

However, it seems to be getting less about the football.

Eyebrows were raised when the USA hosted the global tournament in 1994 because their chances of passing the group stages were slim, effectively killing any local atmosphere for the more interesting knockout stages (it also didn't help when an unnamed American expert said 'soccer' was the fourth-most popular sport in the country after baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey - add that one up). To be fair, the USA got to the last 16 - i.e. the second round - before losing only 1-0 to eventual winners Brazil, but fans the world over were still far from convinced with the country's supposed love for the sport.

Eyebrows were raised yet further, somewhere into the fringe, when the 2002 World Cup was offered to South Korea and Japan, but again a surprise was in store: joint hosts South Korea reached the semi-finals, beating Portugal, Spain and Italy on the way. Fair play - but two goals in five and a half hours of football in the knockout stages showed their lack of real talent. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Still people remain unconvinced by smaller footballing nations hosting the World Cup and yes, I am in that category (uh, in that I'm unconvinced, not a small footballing nation).

Now we have Qatar and Indonesia wanting to host the 2018 World Cup. Neither has competed in the tournament ever before, although Indonesia technically did in 1938 when they were the classed as the Dutch East Indies. A rich footballing history there, then.

Qatar, meanwhile, has a population of only 1.3 million and will struggle to persuade players to play in a sweltering Arab desert in the middle of summer. Even the proposed underground stadium - an admittedly cool idea (pardon the pun) - will only host 11,000 fans. That's just not feasible.

(Khalifa Stadium's nice though.)

And yes, Japan, South Korea and the USA are all bidding again. God help us.

Of course it would be short-sighted to suggest only the best of the best footballing nations should host the World Cup. It is important to give these smaller teams the chance to improve their sporting prowess as well as their infrastucture (look at the Italian rugby team improving since the Six Nations). But surely one prerequisite should be that they're good at football. What's the point letting Indonesia host the tournament if they're just going to be humiliated in every match?

It is no longer about the football. It's about the money. Good for a country's infrastructure and development, yes, but not so much for fans all over the world.

Shame.

So, then, The Observer. National institution or financial dead duck? Ongoing liberal tradition or failing piece of press history? Last hope for decent Sunday newspapers or... well, you get the picture.

The problem is that many people don't. The news - or more appropriately, rumours - that Guardian-owned Sunday staple The Observer may be set to close has been greeted by cries of indignant outrage from the left and centre and cries of ugly derision from the right (i.e. almost every other newspaper).

No surprise there, perhaps, and it's good to see people coming out in force to condemn the proposed closure, oppose the Guardian Media Group's pessimistic murmurings and in some cases, call the whole thing a fascist coup. I'm one of them. I've joined a Facebook group and everything. AND I'm following 'savetheobserver' on Twitter. GMG, feel my web 2.0 wrath.

However, I feel the need to tar the rose-tinted Observer portrait with the brush of realism and bad metaphors. There's no smoke without fire, and in this case the fire is coming from an almost ritualistic burning of money from people bowing to a false idol of unerring tradition.

The Observer has not turned a profit in 16 years, ever since the Guardian bought it in 1993. Let's think about that. No profit in 16 years. And it's thought to have lost £10-£20 million every year in recent times. The Telegraph's business section has some more depressing statistics, although I must add that I don't condone the irrelevant comparison of the newspaper's losses with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's salary increase.

On Newsnight a former editor of The Observer, Donald Trelford, said the Sunday newspaper is being made scapegoat for The Guardian's losses. I don't agree. Once again, it hasn't made a profit in 16 years, and it's allegedly losing a million pounds a month.

Now I'm not a Godforsaken pennypincher, and I believe in political ideals ahead of profitable business, but can the GMG really afford for this to continue, and now of all times?

It's time, as ever, for a disclaimer.

I am a Guardian reader and an Observer reader. I detest almost every other newspaper from the Sun to the Mail - especially the Mail - for being irresponsible, reactionary and just a little bit racist. You may have noticed that my news links above took you to a story in the Times and the Torygraph, but only because, in spite of everything, they are at least trustworthy newspapers for getting their facts right. I just don't agree with anything they say, that's all.

So when I say we have to be realistic about The Observer, that doesn't mean I want it to die. I simply recognise that there may be no alternative.

But could it find some other way of saving money? Both The Guardian and The Observer have more staff each than the Chinese when they were building their Great Wall. If you were to walk past everyone who worked for these papers, you'd never reach the last one. There's just too many of them. The wage bill must be absolutely epic.

I don't want people working for The Big G or The Big O(we) to lose their jobs, though, partly because I know some of them. So could The Observer be smaller? It's a weekly so it's huge, naturally, but it could probably halve its page count before it had to halve its staff (uh, the number of staff, that is - I'm not suggesting it literally cuts its staff in half, despite the pleasant rhyming).

But if none of these cost-cutting measures are possible, what should the GMG do?

Shoot me for saying this but in times of dire need for a balanced world view, The Guardian must take precedence over The Observer.

The Tories are almost certain to win the next General Election (God help the delusioned sinners that vote for them), and we need The Guardian at its strongest to repel every right-wing newspaper out there. It's the guardian of liberal thinking and good journalism; it is not guardian of The Observer. And it can't afford to keep losing money.

Yes, I'm a bastard. But I do recognise The Observer's proud reputation and prouder history, which is why I think the proposal for it to become a midweek magazine is almost insulting. THAT would be the death of it. It's a 200-year-old newspaper, for goodness' sake. When World War One veterans are on their deathbed, do you cake them in gaudy make-up and call them Ruby? No. You let them die with dignity. I'd rather see The Observer close than see it become a midweek mag.

But just to make things clear, I don't want The Observer to close. If alternatives are lacking, however, we can't let blind brand loyalty get in the way of responsibility. Because if The Observer continues to print and continues to lose money, it could just bring The Guardian down with it.

And we really don't want that.

If ever you wanted an example of a) how influential Wikipedia is now, and b) how absurd politics is becoming, look no further than here.

Utterly ridiculous.

Thank God for faceless men in suits: if it wasn't for organisers at the Eurovision Song Contest, Georgia could be sparking another war with Russia.

Their song for 2009, We Don't Wanna Put In - an unsubtle reference to Vladimir Putin - has been ruled unacceptable for the competition because no entries will be permitted with "lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature". Strange, that, because I seem to remember a slightly political entry last year called Peace Will Come. The entrant? Georgia.

Clearly the worry is that given last year's events in Eastern Europe, letting Georgia slag off the Ruskis - in their own country - in one of the (tragically) biggest European soirees of the year isn't great thinking, and so the song has been forcibly withdrawn.

Probably for the best.

Not really misleading as such, but the story is a massive disappointment after the headline 'DURKAN WARNS OF 'ZOMBIE MINISTER''.

Two Indian child actors who helped the film Slumdog Millionaire to its Oscar success have been relocated from slums to new houses in Mumbai.

Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali, who played the youngest versions of characters Salim and Latika in the film, had been living in the same slums as they were before being discovered by casting agents. Ismail's family home was recently demolished, forcing him to live under a tarpaulin on a busy road.

It has been suggested by critics that the move, paid for by the Mumbai government, represents a publicity-grabbing political manoeuvre months ahead of India’s general election, but Amarjit Singh Manhas, chairman of a Mumbai housing association, has said, "Since the children have made the nation proud, they must be given free houses."

My opinion? Yes, it is a publicity stunt. But who bloody cares, eh?

Well hung, innit? I'm hanging like a parliament. Hang this. Etc. The jokes everywhere are from the news of a hung parliament, as the British public - well, 65% of it - went to the polls and voted for no one in particular.

Some of us were foolish enough to stay up all night to watch the results come in, and for a more in-depth, more drunken look I recommend trawling through my old tweets at www.twitter.com/weekspotblog. But for those of you with lives to lead (I did update so many times I broke Twitter and was told to stop posting), here's a summary of how no one bar the Greens can be happy with this result.

And fair play to the Greens. It's a fantastic outcome for the single-issue nutters.

Anyway, here goes: the Top Ten 'Oh Fucks' of the night:

1. Oh fuck. The Liberal Democrats had a shocker last night, and this is where it all started to go wrong. Clegg's collective had been making promises of a genuine challenge to Government and 110 seats. Instead, they lost five MPs, and currently stand on a paltry 54 (16 constituencies are still to be announced).

Again, it all started here. The LibDems' no1 target seat saw a 6.9% swing AWAY from the yellows and into the hands of a gleeful Tory party. No doubt for Doughty; no paradise lost for Milton.

Clegg considers his career options

2. Oh fuck. The Conservative Party actually had a pretty bad night of it as well, despite what this terrifyingly blue map of the UK might aver. Seriously, if they just counted votes in England, not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well, the Tories would walk it.

But they won't be at all happy with failing to reach a majority, and it was in constituencies such as this that they fell. It really looked like the Blues would take Tooting, but despite a healthy 3.6% swing against them Labour and Sadiq Khan MP held on. 'Yes we Khan' were the chants. Yes we Khan. +10% turnout too. Good work, Tooting.

Not Tooting his own horn here

3. Oh fuck. Labour had to endure a torrid night (this was a particularly painful one to lose - just 54 votes in it), and what will really hurt is losing some big names. Two former home secretaries, Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith, were among the casualties and although Clarke is anti-Brown and anti-Balls, he's an old head they didn't want to see go.

How fucked? This fucked

4. Oh fuck. Labour weren't the only party to say goodbye to some prominent figures and again, this was the beginning of the end for the LibDems. Lembit Opik, he of Cheeky Girl fame, lost his seat in Montgomeryshire as the Tories made another gain - this time, with a massive 13.2% swing. Cheeky.

5. Oh fuck. Evan Harris also went - a massive blow for the LibDems. There were only 176 votes in it.

6. Oh fuck. The British National Party didn't win any seats, which is great news, but I wish I could be more optimistic about half a million voters putting an X by their name. I can't. It's disgusting.

Interestingly, the BNP actually lost 1.7% of the vote in the constituency where Nick Griffin plumped his fat bonk-eyed arse.

Understatement?

7. Oh fuck. Essex has a lot to answer for. Chavs, white stilettos and Jamie Oliver aside, the county has a nasty habit of being pretty right-wing in its voting habits. The constituency that best summed up its extent of fail last night was Basildon South & Thurrock East, where they successfully got rid of a Labour minister, voted in a Tory and gave more than 2,500 votes to the BNP. Well done.

8. Oh fuck. Every time I switched over ITV's coverage was absolutely God-awful, from Alistair Stewart constantly interrupting everybody like he's king of the fucking world to filming outside a pub where David Cameron was drinking. It's a pub - just go inside!

9. Oh fuck. Jeremy Vine's house of wank was the reason I kept switching over in the first place.

10. Oh fuck. Last but not least, I was very sad to see this man lose his seat. Richard Taylor is a doctor who ran as a single-issue independent in 2001 to keep Kidderminster Hospital open, and absolutely slammed Labour's junior minister David Lock into the ground. He then held on in 2005 to become the first independent MP to retain his seat since the 1970s. He's such a hero that the LibDems didn't put up any opposition against him on either occasion.

Unfortunately, the Tories did and this time round they won. Bastards.

So, what a bust that was. Here's to a hung parliament seeing some good change put through. What? It could happen.

Oh yay. OK, then, one piece of good news: bag of balls David Heathcoat-Amory, 17 years in power, lost his seat in Wells, Somerset. He literally owns this constituency. It was pretty damn satisfying seeing him lose control of it.

But don't listen to me - listen to them!

The Economist has produced a superb piece featuring some fascinating statistics on the claims behind 'Broken Britain' - teenage pregnancies, a rise in alcohol consumption, etc. In short, they're not true.

So read it - please. At least look at the pictures. Enlightening or reinforcing - either way, they're important.

Sorry, that's all you're getting from me. There's nothing I could add that can't be summarised by calling the Conservative Party a bag o' wankers.

Many thanks to the excellent exclarotive for bringing this to my attention.

This is just a brief respite from my enforced silence to highlight this story and the reporting of it.

First up, The Sun has reacted with typical understanding and calm, making a towering mountain out of the smallest of molehills by highlighting every alleged error. And yes, I do mean alleged. Bad handwriting is not a crime, and frankly I - yes, even I - can excuse a couple of spelling mistakes from a man with a lot on his mind.

It's another example of The Sun's, and most other tabloids', confused politics of war. They want to beat the big nasty terrorists, but they want Our Brave Boyz out of Iraq. They complain about soldiers having substandard equipment, but complain about military overspending (or at least tax, which falls easily under their 'Gordon Brown Iz Rubbish Innit' banner). And they want Brown to do everything at once, but take time out of his schedule to write a perfectly-constructed letter in iambic pentameter to grieving parents with a chip on their shoulder about the war even happening in the first place.

Secondly, both The Sun and the BBC included an addendum along the lines of, "Mr Brown has previously admitted problems with his eyesight." Because naturally THAT'S relevant.

Thirdly, all hail Number 10 spokespeople for yet another idiotic press statement - one of my favourite yet - which runs: "[Gordon Brown] would never knowingly misspell anyone's name." Brilliant. It's good to know that even in times of stress, our Prime Minister doesn't say to himself, "That David Cameron really pisses me off. I know what I'll do. I'll write him a letter addressed to 'Mr Camron'. That'll really get him."

Lastly, the woman complaining about the letter in the first place has found completely the wrong outlet for her grief, and shouldn't have been given the publicity (and certainly not with the grim picture The Sun arranged of her holding her son's photograph - it just reminds me of this brilliant website).

I just wish the reporters had included all of the spelling mistakes I am absolutely sure she committed in her own letter. Muphry's Law is an absolute gem.

Well, well, well. Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Norwegian board awarding the prize said, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future." (More here.)

That's certainly true. But is this enough to merit the most prestigious award there is? I'd be the last to suggest Obama is all mouth and no trousers, and I'm confident he'll deliver on his promises - but the point is, in terms of world peace (the simplest of achievements, surely), he hasn't made a fantastic deal of progress yet. So what exactly is this Nobel Peace Prize honouring? An indirect inspiration to this fantastic poster?

Personally, I'd like to have seen Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai recognised for his attempts at overcoming corruption and restoring order in Zimbabwe. But then, I suppose he didn't succeed either; part of a tragic year in which he also lost his wife in a car accident. Perhaps it's right to reward effort, rather than results.

After only nine months in power Obama's Peace Prize is surely a sign of hope, not achievement. But maybe that's the point.