In praise of Hayes

Back in the early 1990s I used to regularly watch a discussion show on late night ITV called "Whale On" hosted by James Whale. A regular guest was a Tory MP Jerry Hayes. That is the first time I came across him and he regularly commentated about issues on the programme from a political perspective.

I hadn't really heard of him again (he lost his seat in 1997) until I noticed him popping up on Twitter recently as @JerryHayes1. He seems like a nice chap with some views I agree with. He is clearly on the moderate wing of the Conservative Party.

The thing I have most noticed about him though are his generally very good pieces on the "Think Politics" blog which he tweets links to. They are often thought-provoking, very well written and he is not afraid to criticise elements within his own party which I am always pleased to see.

I would recommend checking them out if you get the chance.

Ian Tomlinson Fighting Fund

Following on from the news this week that the CPS will not be pursuing any charges against the police with respect to the death of Ian Tomlinson who died after being struck by a policeman during the G20 protests, his family has launched a campaign and are raising funds to help support their fight for justice. I blogged about this utter travesty here.

The blogpost from the Tomlinson family site is here.

Here are the details:

Many have asked if there is anything more they can do and today, we are launching a Campaign Fighting Fund. There is still long road ahead in the fight for justice and the Fund will help the Tomlinson family to make decisions about the direction of the campaign without always having to worry about the financial costs, especially when the emotional ones are tough enough already.

Donations by PayPal won't be up and running until next week, so check back then. But if you personally or your organisation (union branch, community or campaign group, for instance) can help by making a donation, please make cheques payable to 'Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign' and send to:

Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign

c/o Newham Monitoring Project

170 Harold Rd

London E13 0SE

I hope the family can raise enough money to help them get justice. I will certainly be donating something myself.

You have been reading...

Here are the five most popular posts on this blog from the last week in case you missed them:

• The Ian Tomlinson decision is a travesty of justice
• BBC News iPad app not available in the UK - unjustifiable
• Zac Goldsmith needs to handle the media better than this
• Everyone is a liar apart from Ed Balls apparently
• Coalition survival sweepstake

And you should have been reading this: Police wrongly seize photographer's camera after crash. Despite the many times politicians and senior police officers have publicly stated this must stop it is still happening. This one was just up the road from where I live.

GDP 1.1% up - good sign but let's not read too much into it

So the figures are now out for growth in Q2 2010 and it is looking like it is almost double what was predicted by economists. They thought it would be 0.6% and it is actually 1.1%

Predictably both Labour and the government are trying to claim that the better than expected figures vindicate their policies. Alistair Darling claims that they prove the previous government's "measured and balanced" approach is working. Meanwhile George Osborne claims that they show the current government's plan to cut the public sector is the right approach (only 0.1% of the growth came from the public sector, the remaining 1% is from the private sector).

I think it is too early to say what these figures show with any certainty. Also, they cover April, May and June which is almost perfectly bisected by the two administrations. April and the first half of May had Labour at the helm whilst for the second half of May and June the coalition was in place. But the idea that the decisions taken by the coalition in recent weeks would already have percolated through to the growth figures is I think a little far-fetched. If anything I would say Labour have the stronger claim as it is their policies in the last year or two that will still be having their effect. But even then, there was a strong expectation that Labour would not be in power after May and so market sentiment for what it thought would happen may also need to be priced in.

So I don't think either side should get carried away and make overblown claims at this stage. not least because these are only preliminary figures which could end up revised down in a few weeks time.

I would suggest that the growth figures in the next few quarters will be more instructive as to whether we are on the right track now rather than what we have seen today.

George Osborne's lips betray concentration not conspiracy

I noticed on a couple of blogposts yesterday (Lib Con and Hadleigh Roberts) that they were drawing attention to the fact that when Nick Clegg made his now infamous statement about how Jack Straw had supported "the illegal invasion of Iraq", George Osborne appeared to know what he was saying before he said it as he was lip-syncing along with him.

Here is the relevant clip so you can judge for yourself:

Having watched it several times now I have come to a different conclusion. I think Osborne is engaging in a form of unconscious mimicry. I have noticed this amongst some people I know. It seems to often manifest itself in repeating the last word of somebody's sentence just after they have said it but I have also seen it where someone appears to be half-heartedly lip-syncing with the speaker too. This is what appears to be happening here. Osborne is sort of making the same mouth movements as Clegg but if you watch closely it is a split second after he has said each word. He is also nodding along with the rhythm of Clegg's speech pattern. The look on his face is one of intense concentration, I suspect as he is taking in what Clegg is saying rather than knowing what it will be before he has said it.

This actually makes more sense than Clegg and Osborne having colluded on this. Osborne voted for the Iraq war and also does not consider it illegal. Why would he want Clegg to say that? It just puts him and his colleagues in an embarrassing position. And if there was collusion you would expect Osborne to do everything in his power to suppress any urge to mouth the words as Clegg said them. As for the pointing at Straw and laughing as soon as Clegg sat down, well that's what happens at PMQs. I do not think we need read anything much into it.

So in this case I think that all Osborne's lips betrayed were intense concentration and a slight nervous tic rather than some conspiracy.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 22nd July 2010 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and the Live Chat starts on this blog from 10:30pm as normal. Matt Raven will be in the hosting chair although I will hopefully be around for most of it too (I am on taxi duty so may have to duck out).

There will likely be an end of term feel to proceedings tonight with parliament breaking up and this being the last #bbcqt until September so bring your games in with you. Bagsy Slinky.

David Dimbleby will be joined by the Immigration Minister Damian Green, the shadow transport secretary Sadiq Khan, UKIP's Nigel Farage, the RMT leader Bob Crow and the economist Ruth Lea.

Join us below from 10:30pm:

The Ian Tomlinson decision is a travesty of justice

The CPS have announced today that there will be no prosecution of the police officer caught on film striking Ian Tomlinson in connection with his death during the G20 protests last April. Mr Tomlinson was walking away from the police with his hands in his pockets when the assault took place. I blogged about this incident at the time.

There are various reasons given for there not being any prosecution. Firstly, they claim that because there were two post-mortems performed on Mr Tomlinson that prosecutors would not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was a connection between the assault and his death. The first post-mortem found it was a heart attack, the second one found internal bleeding was a cause. The CPS also ruled out a prosecution for assault because too much time has elapsed. Charges need to be brought within six months. They also ruled out charges of ABH and misconduct in public office.

So the result of a 15 month long investigation into the death of a man who was just moments before caught on camera being assaulted by a police officer, where until the filmed evidence was produced the police appeared to close ranks and deny even that had happened is that nobody will be prosecuted.

To say that this is outrageous it an understatement. The pathologist used in the first post-mortem has been removed from the Home Office register of accredited pathologists and is under two separate investigations regarding his conduct. Surely given this, the CPS could have a reasonable chance of discrediting the initial post-mortem and hence enhancing the credibility of the second one and therefore a chance at least of establishing in law if there is a link between the assault and the death?

Also, the reason it is more than 6 months regarding the assault charge is because the CPS have taken 15 months. This is an utter travesty for Mr Tomlinson's family. They have been denied justice by a system that is surely now utterly discredited when it comes to investigating suspicious deaths where police are suspected of being involved.

We cannot go on like this. The public have to have faith in the police and faith that if those wearing the uniforms transgress, that they will face the same consequences as everybody else would.

If you think that I am being unfair, ask yourself this. If this had been the other way round and on that day Mr Tomlinson had assaulted a police officer from behind who had died a few minutes later, do you honestly think that 15 months later he would have discovered there would be no charges at all against him?

No, neither do I.

Don't panic!

So in the latest Sun/YouGov poll the Lib Dems are down to 13% (not far off half of what they got in the general election just two and a half months ago) with the Tories on 44% and Labour on 35%. On a uniform national swing this would see the Conservatives with a majority of 36 and, demonstrating yet again the iniquity of the electoral system - the Lib Dems almost wiped out on 15 seats (down 42 on the GE).

I still do not think there is any need to fret about this. Our party has just entered a coalition with a party whom some observers (and indeed party members) think was not its natural choice. The government has ensured it has got a grip of the finances and started to put into effect some of the "difficult decisions" that we so often heard referred to in the abstract prior to the election but which now have to be implemented.

The bad news has come early on, and indeed will likely continue to come for some time and of course the Lib Dems are fully involved in taking these decisions.

I am also unsurprised to see the Conservatives increasing in the polls. There is usually a honeymoon period for a new government and Prime Minister. We even saw this with Gordon Brown in 2007. We have an odd effect at play here though in that one of the coalition partners has gone up whilst the other has gone down. I suspect that this is a reflection of the fact that Conservative minded voters are more inclined towards the cuts that have been announced whereas the Lib Dem base is (understandably) a bit more nervous. I think it is also likely that the public is still adjusting to the facts of life under a coalition.

Now I am of course not ecstatic about the polls. I would prefer it if we were doing much better but this parliament is likely to run for 4 or 5 years. Between elections in previous cycles we have been as low as 11%. Those low points have not been translated into woeful electoral results previously and I am optimistic that it will not happen this time either.

By the time of the next election, either the economy will be back on track and both parties within the government will get credit for this or (less likely I think) things will not have improved much and Labour will have a much stronger claim that they would have done it better. Either way I think that the two parties of government will take their share of the credit or blame. I cannot see this divergence in party fortunes persisting for several years when they are both taking the decisions.

The important thing is for the Lib Dems to talk up their achievements. There were some good things in the budget for example (£1,000 tax threshold rise, capital gains tax rise etc.) that would simply not have been there under a Conservative government. There are plenty of other examples too. We need to make sure that at every opportunity we rebut the "betrayal" narrative that we see from Labour and others and ensure we point out just how much of a positive difference our influence within government has made.

Now is not the time to panic.

Other Reckonings - 21st July 2010

• Jonathan Kay writing for The National Post thinks that conservatives global-warming sceptics are a liability to their cause.
• Eaten by Missionaries asks if Labour is having a reverse Clause 4 moment. Is that in the Karma-Sutra?
• Tom Harris reckons that David Miliband poses the biggest threat to the coalition. I'd say he poses a bigger threat to Labour.
• On an historic day blog guru Mark Pack ((c) Channel 4) gives us the history of PMQs.
• Caron Lindsay on two tales of law enforcement activity.

Can Clegg answer some PMQs "in a personal capacity"?

I am seeing reports on Twitter (e.g. here) that a Number 10 spokesperson has claimed that Nick Clegg was speaking "in a personal capacity" during PMQs today, I think regarding the legality of the Iraq war.

Here is exactly what he said taken from Hansard:

The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman may bellow as much as he likes. I am happy to account for everything that we are doing in this coalition Government—a coalition Government who have brought together two parties, working in the national interest, to sort out the mess that he left behind. We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.

He makes reference to various things that the government is doing using the term "we". He then concludes by accusing Jack Straw of having been involved in the "illegal invasion of Iraq".

Some people on the Live Chat I was running at the time commented that it was amusing to see Hague and Osborne sitting alongside Clegg as he said those words knowing that they had both voted for the invasion.

Is it feasible though to have a government minister standing at the dispatch box, answering questions on behalf of the Prime Minister/government and then a few hours later have those words "clarified" as a personal statement?

Perhaps we are coming up against a problem of having a coalition government formed of two parties which in some areas have very different views about issues, Iraq being one of them. Clegg's parliamentary colleagues of the party he leads would overwhelmingly have supported this statement but of course the massed Tory ranks behind him will not have done. In fact I think it is more accurate to say that Clegg was speaking in a "Lib Dem capacity".

Perhaps it is OK for ministers to say things that are not directly aligned with government policy. Maybe that is something that will have to be accommodated as part of the "new politics". It would certainly be a novel approach but would appear to sit uncomfortably with our existing procedures and structures. However, as I have argued before collective responsibility can be ridiculously constraining sometimes even when the government is formed of only one party.

Of course this is now being interpreted as a "gaffe" and Labour activists are having a field day with it. I do think the government needs to be clearer about what it is doing with respect to this.

It has unfortunately overshadowed what was otherwise a very good performance by Nick Clegg.

Claire Spencer and Alex Massie on House of Comments - Episode 35

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion blog is now live. The 35th episode which we recorded on Tuesday 20th July is now available to download, raw mp3 file here or you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Failing that you can listen to it right now below:

The format is to invite political bloggers on each week to discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week we were joined by Claire Spencer of the Labour "Noonday Thoughts" blog and Alex Massie of The Spectator.

We discussed David Cameron's "Big Society" idea and whether it can really make a difference, potential cuts to the BBC license fee and the political furore in the USA regarding the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

From now until the end of August we will be doing these fortnightly instead of the usual weekly recordings so the next 3 episodes will be recorded on August 3rd, August 17th and August 31st (and in each case released shortly afterwards).

If you are a political blogger and would like to participate in the future, please drop me an e-mail here.

Nick Clegg's first PMQs Live Chat - 21st July 2010 - #PMQs

To mark Nick Clegg's first PMQs I thought I would host a Live Chat on here whilst it is in progress.

PMQs starts at 12:00noon with coverage on BBC Two and the chat will start a few minutes before. Join us below:

Lib Dem ministers and MPs become more high profile

The results of a nationwide survey were reported yesterday on Politics Home. The main headlines were that Nick Clegg is apparently more popular than David Cameron and that Vince Cable topped the chart.

These results are both good news for the Lib Dems (although we need to bear in mind our very low voting intention figures at the moment which might just check any enthusiam) but I do not think it is the most significant finding from the research.

The poll also tests the profile of politicians and this is where it gets interesting.

David Cameron is top of the profile ratings with 67%. However Nick Clegg is not very far behind on 61%. There are a few Labour figures better recognised than Clegg (Harman and Mandelson are slightly higher and Balls is tied with him) but of course they were in government for 13 years. I expect their recognition will fade as time goes on especially if none of them have significant roles in the opposition after September.

Clegg is actually better recognised than any other Conservative in the survey apart from Cameron and Hague. We should bear in mind that Cameron has had nearly 5 years as leader of the opposition and Hague was leader himself from 1997-2001 and a major figure since. I think this is quite a remarkable turnaround for someone like Clegg who many (non political) people would have struggled to place earlier this year. He is better recognised than the Chancellor of the Exchequer!

Vince Cable has a 55% profile which is very high as well. In terms of the Cabinet it is only Cameron, Hague, Clegg and Osborne who are better known than him.

Even further down the ranks people like Simon Hughes and Chris Huhne are both on 33% which is higher than Conservatives like Andrew Lansley and Philip Hammond. They even pip Andy Burnham currently running for the Labour leadership who is only on 28%.

The reason I think this is significant is because it shows that the Lib Dems are having an impact. I am pleased that the approval ratings for Clegg and Cable are high but in the longer terms the fact that people are really starting to know who our senior politicians are shows that they are paying attention to what our party is saying. It demonstrates that we can really have an impact on the national conversation and make a difference.

I also expect overall the recognition ratings for our MPs to rise as time goes on. For example Clegg is taking PMQs later today which will raise his profile further (and will do so whenever Cameron is not available) and with the AV referendum campaign starting soon, the first national referendum for 35 years, building towards a climax next May with Lib Dems at the forefront of a yes vote that can surely only further contribute to this rise in recognition.

Of course it's all very well being recognised, the broader task is capitalising upon that and ultimately translating it into voting intentions.

But given how difficult it has been historically for our politicians to even be heard I think an important first hurdle has been vaulted. It's up to us as a party and especially our leaders with the national platform they have now got to capitalise upon that opportunity.

PS: Speaking of Nick Clegg's first PMQs, I will be running a Live Chat on this blog to mark the occasion from 12:00noon today.

Nick Clegg has a great opportunity when he takes PMQs tomorrow

If Nick Clegg is a bit nervous tonight he can be forgiven. Tomorrow he will stand in for David Cameron for Prime Minister's Questions for the first time.

If someone had suggested 4 months ago that by July Nick Clegg would be taking PMQs you would probably have thought they had gone a bit peculiar, but here we are. One of the duties of the Deputy Prime Minister is to answer the questions when the PM is away as he currently is in the USA.

What I am particularly interested in is how he handles the inevitable mischievous questions. You know, the ones that will deliberately pick a part of the government's programme that the Lib Dems are known to be uncomfortable with and effectively try and embarrass the DPM by showing up "splits". I hope he deals with them in a mature fashion explaining that that is how coalitions work. He should not feel compelled to pretend that he and the Lib Dems agree with every dotted i and crossed t of the government's programme.

I also hope that he does his best to answer the questions fully. David Cameron impressed me on this in his first week but seems to have slipped a bit recently. Clegg would do well to demonstrate that he can properly answer questions and not try to use every question as an opportunity to score points off his political opponents. The more statesmanlike he can appear, the better the prospects in the longer terms for the Lib Dems. Our party has often been accused of not being serious about power. What could be more serious than our leader being held to account in the House of Commons by fellow parliamentarians on the key political issues of the day?

Nick Clegg widely impressed in the first leaders debate during the election campaign. The public knows him a little better now but tomorrow is still a great opportunity to further cement his reputation as a substantial political figure.

I fully expect him to rise to the challenge.

Why Windows reports my 2TB drive as 1.81TB

Before you read on, I should warn you that this blogpost is about ways of measuring computer storage and it gets a bit mathematical.

I got a new hard drive for my computer today. It is advertised as 2TB (or terabytes) of storage space. However when I installed it and had a look in Windows Explorer to check the capacity it is reading as 1.81TB. This is before I have copied anything to it.

I expect many other people have had similar experiences like this. There is an explanation for it. the storage space has not gone anywhere. It is because there are two ways of measuring what a terabyte is.

Back in the day when I first started using computers in the early 1980s the units for measuring computer storage space were usually bytes, kilobytes or at a push megabytes. A byte is a unit of storage that contains 8 bits (a bit is either a 1 or a 0, the lowest level of storage in the computer). So a byte can hold a value anywhere from 0 to 255. This is the building block upon which the much larger storage amounts are built upon.

Because of the way computers work using binary or base 2, it is convenient for them to have things expressed in powers of 2. In the example above regarding the number of bits in a byte, the number of different configurations that a byte can hold is 256 or 2 to the power 8 (2^8). When I first started using them, a kilobyte was 1024 bytes. Again, this is a power of 2, 2^10 bytes. A megabyte was 1024 kilobytes. As computers started to need more and more space the larger units we regularly see today such as gigabyte and terabyte started to be used. A gigabyte was 1024 megabytes and a terabyte was 1024 gigabytes.

The problem is that using 1024 as a multiplier is not a very accessible way for humans to think about these levels of data storage. It's much easier for us with our ten fingers and thumbs to think about things in base 10 or decimal as we usually refer to it. So people started rounding them down. Instead of a kilobyte being 1024 bytes it became acceptable for it to denote 1000 bytes. The same went for all the other units of computer measurement so a megabyte became 1000 kilobytes (or 1,000,000 bytes) etc.

In the year 2000 it became clear that there was too much confusion so a new system was brought in whereby what used to be referred to as a kilobyte was renamed a kibibyte. So officially 1000 bytes became a kilobyte and 1024 bytes are a kibibyte. 1024 kibibytes are a mebibyte. 1024 mebibytes are a gibibyte etc. etc. This enabled people to refer to the standard units using their more easily accessible multiples of 1000.

So why is Windows reporting my storage space on my hard drive incorrectly?

Because for various reasons computers are still using the kibibyte, mebibyte etc. way of denoting storage space. So when a hard drive turns up that has what the manufacturers and the marketeers all claim is 2TB, the computer takes one look at it and says, OK, so there are 2,000,000,000,000 bytes here. It then divides this amount by 1024 4 times to work out the number of tebibytes which in this case is approximately 1.81.

This might seem like a very arcane discussion but I see this as a big problem. Most people do not understand what I have just outlined above. Therefore they buy a drive that says 2TB on the box but when they install it it says 1.81TB in Windows and there is no explanation as to why this should be.

The difference between a kilobyte and a kibibyte is about 2.35%. It's not very much. The difference between a megabyte and a mebibyte is still less than 5%. But by the time we get up to the difference between a terabyte and a tebibyte the difference is nearly 10%. And as storage space increases in the coming years this difference is only going to get worse as we scale up and all those 1024s get mulitplied together. the next two levels up, petabytes and exabytes lead to a disparity of over 11% and 13% respectively. And if you think storage will never reach those sorts of levels in domestic devices, gigabytes and terabytes seemed impossibly large to us twenty or so years ago.

I am very happy with my new drive and I knew I was only going to get about 1.8 tebibytes out of it. There will be others however who will feel ripped off by this disparity. At the very least, computer manufacturers should be a bit clearer what they actually mean and perhaps the software and operating systems should also do a better job of defining exactly what they mean by MB, GB and TB.

That way, by the time we get to PB and EB the disparity will be understood and accepted rather than being the bane of technical support lines as customers try to work out where their "missing" storage space has gone.


You can read more about this subject here if you are interested.

Are the Lib Dems too London-centric organisationally?

I have recently been made aware that there is a potential problem with the way the Lib Dems organise their Federal Policy Committee. Apparently the meetings of this group are largely held in London.

I know that there are some people who live far outside London who would like to put themselves forward for election to the body but because of the travelling involved would struggle to travel the distance regularly for various reasons.

I can understand the logic behind holding the meetings in London. There are facilities available in the form of Cowley Street. It is near parliament which makes it easier for the parliamentarians to be involved. Also, if you live in the South East, the most populated part of the country then it is fairly central.

But what about all those members who do not live in the South East and although able to spare the time for the meetings could not spare the time to travel for several hours there and back to London?

I think there is a real risk here of excluding people who would be very good on the FPC purely for geographical reasons. I also think that as a party we are risking our policy making process being too dominated by people from London and the South East and hence there being a London-centric bias in the way decisions are taken.

I should make it clear that this is just based on concerns of mine. I do not have direct evidence of what I have outlined above in terms of bias and unbalance. It just seems like ensuring that the focus is so London based is taking a bit of a risk. Especially for a party that is so committed to devolving power.

I don't have a specific solution to this but here are a few suggestions:

1) The meetings could sometimes be held in different places. Perhaps every other meeting could be held somewhere else, e.g. Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow etc. That way it would be easier for people outside of London to attend some of them and hence make it more likely that they would feel able to run in the first place. It would also mean those living the the South East would have to do more of the leg-work.

2) Use technology to help ease the problem. Skype can be used to do video-conferences nowadays. We use it in our business and it works very well. It can only be used for free between two locations but that could potentially mean that say some of the meeting participants could be say in Newcastle and some in London. If there were big enough screens being used on a decent fast connection then this could actually work well. It is also possible to pay for better technological solutions which would allow more than two locations to be used in this way although I can understand that cost issues may militate against these

3) This one will be controversial but an option might be to base the FPC in another place altogether which is more central. Perhaps somewhere in Derbyshire would fit this sort of bill as I think the "most central place in the UK" is in that county. The BBC has moved a good chunk of its production to Manchester, perhaps we could be in the vanguard of doing this for a political party?

It could also be a combination of all three of these things.

I expect there will be objections to all of these suggestions, some of them will be fair ones no doubt. But I think we need to ask ourselves what sort of party we want to be. I am uncomfortable with the idea that we may be excluding people from our policy making process who would be very good but cannot do so because they live too far away from London.

I think we should at least be trying to make it easier for people to get involved to ensure that the process has the best chance of reflecting the diversity of people within our party.

BBC News iPad app not available in the UK - unjustifiable

Recently I have been trying to find a good general news app for my shiny new iPad. There are a few out there but what I really wanted was something that provides content of the quality of the BBC News website in an iPad friendly form. Unfortunately I could not find a BBC News iPad app when I looked.

Imagine my bemusement then when I discovered today that there actually is such an app and it has been (unsurprisingly) downloaded over a million times globally but that it is not available in the UK. Apparently the BBC Trust is worried that it might hurt the domestic commercial media market.

This is surely unjustifiable. It is the BBC. That first B stands for British. How can it be right that the rest of the world has a nice application to get BBC news content on the premier tablet computer platform and yet in the country where the license fee is levied that pays for the gathering of this content we are denied it?

Why does this same rule not apply to the BBC website for example? Surely that competes with things like subscriptions for The Times online and the Financial Times' paid for digital offering?

In my view, either the BBC releases this app in the UK, or it withdraws it altogether. It is totally unacceptable for the rest of the world to have access to this whilst we in Britain do not.

Coalition survival sweepstake

I had a bet with someone yesterday about how long the coalition government will last. They were convinced that it would not go beyond the end of May 2011. I on the other hand expect it to go the full distance and to end on 7th May 2015 as the government has indicated.

It made me think however that it might be fun to have a sweepstake type thing (albeit you don't need to pay any money in). Just pop the date upon which you think the coalition government will end in the comments below, along with your reason(s) why it will not last beyond that date. The winner will be the one who gets closest to the actual date. They will be lauded as predicting King/Queen of the internets and I will also provide a prize.

Because the date the government has already stipulated is 7th May 2015, you are not allowed to pick it and if it does go the full distance then this sweepstake is off. It is only for dates that fall outside the official timetable.

You should also note that there does not need to be a general election for the government to end. It is possible that the Queen will not grant a dissolution in the event of government collapse. We are just looking for the date that this particular government in its current form (i.e. combination of Conservatives and Lib Dems) ceases to be. If the PM and/or Deputy PM change but remain from the current parties (Tory for PM, LD for DPM) then this will not be considered the end of the coalition.

I will close the comments after a week as I do not want "predictions" popping in there in a year or two's time perhaps when it has become obvious that things have changed quite radically!

Good luck.

I am a guest on David Mellor's LBC show today from 12noon

I will be on LBC from 12noon today with former Conservative cabinet minister David Mellor reviewing the papers and talking about politics.

You can listen to it on 97.3fm if you're in or near London or via this link online if you aren't.

Zac Goldsmith needs to handle the media better than this

The blogs and Twitter were ablaze last night with talk of Zac Goldsmith's interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 News last night.

He had been invited on to discuss allegations about his election expenses in Richmond Park. However the encounter turned into a bit of a car crash for Goldsmith when he spent the first six and a half minutes of the interview repeatedly accusing Channel 4 of having lied about arrangements for previous interviews.

Here is the encounter:

I am not an expert on electoral law but having read a number of posts about this it looks like Goldsmith might have some questions to answer about expenditure on jackets, posters and use of vehicles.

But of course that is not what was so bad about the interview. It was the way he tried to focus it on the apparent behaviour of Channel 4.

I am sure that Goldsmith felt wronged by the channel. They deny his allegations but he clearly wanted to try and put his side of the story about when he was and wasn't available for interview. The mistake he made was in repeatedly pursuing this for several minutes. The viewer is not really interested in that, they want to know about the allegations regarding his election expenses. If he had spent 30 seconds or a minute on his gripe I expect most people would have thought it was fair enough. Instead he ended up spending well over half the interview on it and it is clear that Snow had to extend the time allotted to accommodate this as well.

The problem is that the performance makes Goldsmith look arrogant in my eyes and of many others who watched it. In the end I was cringing, willing him to move on to the substance and stop arguing about the minutiae of how an interview was or was not agreed previously. It allows his opponents to claim he was trying to obfuscate about the substantive allegations against him. It also looks like he is more concerned about a personal slight regarding the timing of an interview than his election expenses.

I know from personal experience that Zac Goldsmith can be very charming and a good communicator. It is a shame that on this occasion he misjudged the situation and has left himself open to these charges. Far from clearing things up it has made them even worse for him.

I suspect he will be mortified about this and will have to rethink how he handles the media in future.