Wardman Wire Magazine

You are browsing the archives of 2008 September.

Purely in the spirit of being a nasty, vindictive blogger targetting the Mainstream Media because nonsense is sometimes published about “bloggers”, I can report that in the 10 Editorial Days from 19 September 2008 to 30 September 2008 the corrections column of the Guardian contained no fewer than 41 separate items, which comes to around a thousand a year if you multiply it up.

I should note that:

• Some of these are gorgeous spelling errors or typos: “Ordnance Survey, not the Ordinance Survey“, “Mike Harding, not Mark Harding“, “A glotteral stop“.
• Some are funny (and the corrections correspondent has a sense of humour): “It’s not a hospital, but a school for boys, although it did once provide the venue for an episode of Casualty “.
• One looks actionable: “We apologise for unfairly failing to give her an adequate opportunity to respond and for making inaccurate personal references about her.”
• There are a couple of absolute howlers: “Margaret Thatcher was MP for Finchley, not Grantham. She was born and brought up in Grantham.”
• It can take days to publish a correction.
• I am using the Guardian purely because they make the information available in an easily accessible form.
• These corrections are - presumably - ones reported, and do not include columns or articles based on incorrect facts, a vivid imagination or gibberish.

There is usually some sort of debate this time year about who has the advantage going in to the conference season in terms of order. Every year it is the smaller parties first, such as UKIP and the sort, then the Lib Dems, followed by Labour and then concluding with the Conservatives. The [...]

Lots happening here today, with the conference hall abuzz after an emergency speech on the economic crisis by David Cameron. Mr Cameron promised that he would set an example to US Congressmen by supporting Gordon Brown’s legislation.
Taking a moment of respite from the country’s economic woes, the partying was contining at full force last night. [...]

A cracking example of a category error in the comments at Labour Home - money that doesn’t go through the Government is not paid by taxpayers:

“The cost of ID cards is only a few million at the moment, so cancelling it won’t yield much savings. As for your mooted £5bn cost - only if the taxpayer bears the entire cost of ID cards. If people buy them in the style of passports, the cost to the taxpayer drops. As they will be voluntary (as passports are voluntary), I believe there will be a charge. It’s only if they become compulsory that you have to make them free. “

Reply:

(Leaving aside the revealing problem of a philosophy that assumes that expenditure by anyone outside government doesn’t actually cost the taxpayer anything)

Logically strictly accurate, if you divide the population into “taxpayers” and non-taxpayers (ignoring indirect taxes which everyone pays).

The cost to the government drops, and the overall cost to the people stays exactly the same but is partly redistributed from those who earn enough to be in the direct tax net to those who do not pay taxes.

So we would have a poll tax on the non-direct taxpayers, and the direct taxpayers paying somewhat less.

Not a good idea for Labour to put a poll tax on the less well off as a way of paying for an expensive white elephant.

Ouch.

A hard act to follow
George Osborne had a hard act to follow after he stole the show with his inheritance tax announcement last year. As if to make things even harder, the government today announced the nationalisation of the Bradford and Bingley which is also vying for the news headlines. It does say [...]

Conservative Conference Coverage

Garbo on the Floor

Garbo, who writes here weekly, will be posting updates in between his real job.

Video

We will be posting a number of videos, as they become available.

Conference Diary

During the Conservative Conference we will be running a Conference Diary from the “Reform” think tank. It will probably be each day, but I’ve just said “post when you like as long as it is interesting”.

Where to find our coverage

Four places:

• On the blog.
• In the “Party Conference 2008″ Tab on the Magazine View.
• In the RSS Feed for all Party Conference Articles.
• In the “Party Conferences” category.

Experimental Advert

Also, I’m experimenting with a Messagespace “Leaderboard” advert at the top of the page for the next week or so to see how it fits.

I have requested that they don’t use the “Popout” version on the Wardman Wire, as I consider that to be too obtrusive.

In my opinion one of the competitive advantages of blogs versus Media sites is that a simpler presention is possible, without us needing to pursue monetisation via such obtrusive adverts - popups, popunders, expanders, auto-play videos and the rest. I hope that I can hold that line as I play around with different types of advert here.

Apologies that this update has been a little while in coming, but that’s largely been due to a very frantic and busy first day here at conference. We arrived on Sunday morning and Birmingham was very quiet, the ICC near-empty - but by lunchtime the masses had descended and it was heaving.
A couple of good [...]