In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Barker insisted that the Conservatives should not be tempted to adopt a more Eurosceptic stance to win an outright majority at the next election…….we don’t need to follow UKIP into swivel-eyed rhetoric. People expect grown up statesman-like leadership on Europe, and with David Cameron, that is what they get.”

A very smooth (and rich) chap the Energy Minister is said to be a close chum of David Cameron and George Osborne and one of the key figures planning the Tory strategy for the next election. His view is that the Conservatives need to capture the “fertile ground” where 21st century elections will be won.

Mr Barker said the Tories had to attract more voters from ethnic minorities as well as homosexual and lesbians. He said: “Absolutely – it is policy for the whole country.”

Ah yes – that’s “Greg” Barker, who in the past has faced questions about his links to Russian oligarchs and who also had his own starring role in the MP’s expenses scandal.

In December 2006, Mr Barker briefly moved the second home allowance back to Cheyne Row, where he claimed a further £3,492 for his mortgage interest. He also claimed £4,400 in food allowances – 11 months-worth in one go.
He moved house after leaving his wife Celeste in October 2006 following an affair with William Banks-Blaney, an interior designer, but he still claims the house he shares with her and their three children in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, as his main home.

Nice to know that Barker and his friends are still addicted to the myth of the centre ground and pimping the electoral genius of team Cameron/Osborne. Problem is that team Cameron/Osborne were unable to deliver a crushing victory over what was possibly one of the most unpopular and discredited governments of all time even though they were aiming for Barker’s “fertile ground”

As for “Greg” I suspect his “swivel eyed” rhetoric jibe had a slightly personal edge to it for it must be so irritating to see a man he and his pals in the Tory establishment had believed to be consigned to the “dustbin of history” in East Sussex in 2001 leading what was once seen as a “fringe”party (UKIP) which is now gaining considerable momentum in current opinion polls.

Keep on digging that hole you are already in, Greg, just don’t blame anyone else when you find you are stuck in it…..

Mr Cameron told last year’s Tory conference in Manchester: “I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.” Last week his spokesman said he was “passionate” about the issue.

So passionate that this proposal was never mentioned in the 2010 conservative Manifesto – nor, indeed, in the manifestos of the Labour Party or Cameron’s Coalition colleagues the Liberal Democrats.

Yet suddenly we have been told by no less a government figure than Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone (an obscure liberal/left chattering class busybody who is now something called “Equalities Minister”) that she will soon be asking for a public debate about how gay marriage can be introduced.

Excuse me? I must have missed the previous debate about whether gay marriage should be introduced.

No I didn’t – because there never has been a debate about whether….instead Ms Featherstone trills rather meaninglessly about “the people”

Mrs Featherstone, however, has argued that marriage is “owned by the people” and that governments have a duty to change laws to bolster the “underlying principles of family, society and personal freedoms”.

Total drivel.

I have no issue with the current situation. Same sex couples already now have the same legal rights as married heterosexual couples via the civil partnerships introduced by Labour in 2004. They can even have their partnerships blessed by a priest to give their relationship a religious dimension.
However I can detect no massive groundswell of opinion throughout the land demanding a such a fundamental change to the concept of marriage that has been established in these islands for well over a thousand years. But what does exist is a well orchestrated campaign by a tiny group of activists with a hotline into our media/political elite and Cameron the former PR man is deeply embedded into that elite.

Over the last half century changes of direction in several key social and ethical policy areas such as abortion, penal policy and immigration policy have been driven by the liberal/left against the wishes of the majority. Yet, partly through fear of being branded as ignorant and intolerant and partly by sheer inertia these deep seated changes to the social fabric have been absorbed by the public with little overt resistance. The result? The emergence of a dysfunctional society and an accompanying breakdown in social cohesion.

But perhaps at last the silent majority will no longer remain so acquiescent. Voices are being heard in opposition to the Cameron/Featherstone diktat and some of those voices are being raised in anger.

The government has sown a wind – they might find themselves facing a whirlwind…..

On the other hand the whirlwind might prove yet another storm in a teacup and the silent majority will just once again give way to the relentless march of those who wish to transform our society into something more malleable – and easier to manage and control…

After David Cameron criticised the BBC for its attempt to define the recent outbreaks of looting and vandalism as a reaction against public spending “cuts” that will not actually take place until 2012/2013 (for quite a while their reports were describing the rioters as “protesters”) the BBC reacted with sorrow rather than anger….

Responding to his comments, a BBC spokesman said its coverage had been “impartial and balanced.”
“The BBC’s coverage and analysis of the recent riots endeavoured to explore all aspects, as our audiences would expect. We also sought to reflect a range of views as to the reasons behind the riots,” he said.
“We are confident we did this in an impartial and balanced manner.”

A BBC Spokesman....

Obviously over the last few days the great and the good at the BBC have become rather unsettled as control over the urban mob violence and looting narrative began slipping through their fingers.

Shocked by the tsunami of contempt that hit them when they tried to frame the discussion in terms of “protestors”, poverty and/or race the Beeboids and their allies in the left wing media/academic cultural elite have been desperately searching for a way of regaining control of the issue by shifting the parameters of the debate.

The initial attempt was laughably unsubtle. Making much of a bevy of leading police officers, spearheaded by ACPOs big cheese Sir Hugh Orde, the aim was to portray the Cameron government as being out of touch. “Leave it to the boys in blue” became the watchword.

Unfortunately the evidence of a lack of leadership and control from the higher echelons at the Met over the first 2/3 days of mob rule in parts of London was so overwhelming that the utterances of Orde and Co. had a very hollow ring.

But, as David Vance at Biased BBC noted yesterday, a new editorial line had been adopted by the BBC suits and programmed into the robotic Sarah Montague as she fed the appropriate cues to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, over sentences handed out to looters. Naturally he came back with the appropriate response – “a collective loss of proportion” This triggered Sarah’s circuitry and produced the key phrase we shall be hearing over and over again at this weekend’s North London dinner parties.

Moral panic.

It’s all out of proportion, you see. There’s no real threat but a lot of opportunists have jumped on this bandwagon to further their own political agenda.

Moral panics allegedly arise when an event is perceived as a threat to society and its values. Those who foment the panic are said to be motivated by a fear of losing control. They therefore attempt to channel potentially disruptive energy by portraying another person or group – “folk devils” – as more of a danger than they actually are. So the Sarah Montague/BBC line appears to be that Cameron is using the riots as an opportunity to demonise the disenfranchised and divert attention from his austerity drive and, strangely enough, that was the angle recently taken by The New York Times…..surprise, surprise….

Heavy stuff, indeed…

But wait a minute – “no real threat but a bandwagon to further an agenda”……”folk devils”…..that seems to ring a bell….

Rupert Murdoch, Anders Breivik, bankers, EDL, AGW deniers, Israelis – now there is a collection of folk devils for you, always presented as the symbols of dark forces ever ready to take us back to some Thatcherite nightmare away from sweetness and light.

Moral panics? At the BBC it’s what we do…..

The New York Times, the house journal of the Obama administration, has obviously been given the nod from the White House to convey an important message to UK Prime Minister David Cameron from the Presidential golf course.

You have got it so wrong on the causes of those riots.

Mr. Cameron…..has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.

That is so naive.

It’s about being POOR, man. The rioting and looting was a cry for help from the blackberries of the penniless, starving hordes of England’s shanty towns as well as a political protest against Cameron’s savage budget cuts.

What’s that? These are scheduled cuts for 2012-2015? Spending for 2011 is still much the same as previous years?

Irrelevant.

It’s the perception,stupid…..the masses trust only the BBC and the BBC has, since May 2010, been constantly warning them about THE CUTS.

That is why the “protesters” (as the BBC preferred to call them) needed all those flat screen TVs. They were to be used as COMMUNITY SCREENS so that the downtrodden could bypass government propaganda and hear the truth from the BBC.

Fortunately President Obama from his years of executive experience in Chicago can redirect Mr Cameron back onto the path of righteousness.

You don’t solve these problems with “draconian punishments” and “excessive sentences”

Britain’s urban wastelands need constructive attention from the Cameron government, not just punishment. His government’s wrongheaded austerity policies have meant fewer public sector jobs and social services……..What Britain’s sputtering economy really needs is short-term stimulus, not more budget cutting.

That is how it was done in Chicago by Obama – and it is now, presumably, one of the safest cities in the western world.

So there you have it, Mr Cameron. The NYT is telling you to spend more money and ignore the debt and those scaremongers at the credit rating agencies. I am sure they could put you in touch with the Chinese bankers who have been so helpful to President Obama.

On the other hand…..perhaps you could just tell the NYT to STFU……

Wow – the Archbishop of Canterbury keeps his beard but discards his sandals for Doc Martens and gives Cameron a good kicking.

Naturally the BBC has an orgasm.

The tone and strength of language used in Dr Williams’ attack on the coalition has taken ministers by surprise.
Accusing the government of being committed to “radical, long-term policies for which no-one voted” is an overtly political statement and one Downing Street has quickly rebuffed.
But they can’t ignore the broad sweep of criticism or questioning of their mandate to govern.

Thus warbled Jo Coburn, alleged to be BBC Political Correspondent.

Well, Jo, one effective strategy might well be to ignore it. After all Williams has form on this and his attachment to the Guardian/BBC zeitgeist is as established a fact as Polly Toynbee’s property portfolio in Tuscany. Nobody outside the NW1/Oxbridge media/academic elite gives a fig for what he thinks. He is head of a religious structure that is as empty a husk as the official cult of Rome in the early years of the first millennium. If you want fervour and commitment you go to the evangelicals or other faiths. Williams and his ilk have done more to secularise our culture than any humanist league of bores – so why give him any more oxygen?

The other option, however, is to rip into him tooth and claw, ignoring any screeches from the great and the good. Like Prince Charles Williams believes he has a pass to step up and pontificate from a richly endowed soapbox and hector and lecture us without fear of response except from elements of the tabloid press. Maybe it’s time those soapboxes were kicked away from under their feet.

Tim Montgomerie has already entered the fray with a blistering exposure of the Archbishop’s hypocrisy over social issues. What irritates me is the prelate’s claim that he articulates the concerns of Mr & Mrs Public.

At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context,” he said.
In a wide-ranging attack, he accused the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of creating “anxiety and anger” in the country by introducing reforms without sufficient debate.
………
“Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around questions such as these at present,” he said.

What he means, of course, is the “anxiety and anger and fear” being expressed by the cartels and special interest groups that feed at the trough currently overflowing with taxpayer’s money, particularly in the field of education, the law, health and social services.

If he really wished to articulate the fears of the silent majority in this country, the people who try to obey the law, pay their own way without incurring massive debt and accept the fact that they have responsibilities as well as rights he would be following a different path by

Asking why it is that so much of our daily life is now decided by faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats from Brussels

Voicing the concerns of the poorest elements in our society worried by the apparent inability of successive governments to confront the issue of unrestricted immigration.

Condemning those who use taxpayer’s money without regard to transparency, fiscal rectitude and effective and meaningful outcomes.
But then he wouldn’t get the great and good seal of approval from James Naughtie, Simon Jenkins and Polly Toynbee – and that would never do…..