Police Investigating 15 Burglaries Next To Headquarters

Embarrassed police are investigating 15 burglaries in four weeks at houses surrounding their headquarters the Mirror today reports.

So far no arrests have been made following the raids in the village of Nettleham, near Lincoln. The homes involved are some of the most expensive in the area, and patrols have now been stepped up.

Parish Council Chairman, Cllr. Terry Williams, said:

"I can't remember anything like it. Local people are concerned and unsettled."

GE2010: General Election Summary Day #12

More progress for the Welsh Conservatives. A YouGov poll last night for ITV Wales had the Conservatives on 32% (Up 1% point), Labour on 35% (Up 1% point), Liberal Democrats 13% (down 1% point) and Plaid Cymru 13 (down 1% point). That would mean nine more Conservative MPs from Wales if translated into a uniform swing on election day. UKPollingReport has more (here).

Labour plan five new pledges for the General Election campaign. Gordon Brown is drafting five reasons to vote Labour and five reasons to reject the Conservatives. ConservativeHome has more (here).

Overnight, there were newspaper stories of immediate cuts from the Conservatives, cuts in the arts budget, cuts in the aid budget, cuts in middle class welfare, cuts in defence. ConservativeHome front page was plastered with it (here). However, The Economist was not satisfied (here):

"The squeezes [George Osborne] identified amounted to £7 billion ($11.4 billion) a year. In 2009-10 the deficit is £178 billion."

David Cameron underperformed at Prime Minister Questions on Wednesday. The Evening Standard (here) did not think Mr. Cameron has really been winning PMQs for a couple of months now, nor can it be said he been losing. He normally provides enough of a strong soundbite for the news bulletins and that is where his battle is to be fought.

Grant Shapps, Conservative (Welwyn Hatfield) and Shadow Housing Minister, has had a hit rate in the media which has been truely remarkable. He had a big splash in yesterday's Sun (and other newspapers) which showed that government spending on propaganda advertising was soaring in this election run-up. Labour ministers, said Mr Shapps,

"should not be raiding the taxpayers' pockets to try to keep their own seats."

Meanwhile Nick Clegg, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats told Attitude, a gay lifestyle magazine, that David Cameron was

"someone who is 'very difficult to trust' on the issue of gay rights."

I wonder if he will play as dirty in the televised debates?

Watching the media, watching us. One of the most important roles that the blogosphere can play in the election campaign is to keep an eye out for media bias. Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome knocked The Telegraph yesterday evening for a story that The Mirror would have been proud of (in fact, it was written by an ex-Mirror journalist now working for the Barclay Brothers). Iain Dale has a bigger target today. He's got the BBC's One Show in his cross-hairs for an appalling piece of anti-Conservative bias last night.

Acknowledgement: ConservativeHome | ToryDiry | 15/01/10

The Morning After the Pre-Budget Report Before.

If the chancellor had a pound for every negative verdict on his budget plans in this morning's papers, the United Kingdom's finances might be in better shape!

The Times says Alistair Darling's pre-Budget report is the latest instalment in a farcical but unfunny comedy series it dubs 'Carry On Spending'. Whilst The Daily Express reports a 'furious backlash' over an epic election spending splurge.

'Pain postponed' is the view of the Independent front page.

A Guardian editorial suggests the chancellor 'did enough... to secure a few not-entirely-awful headlines'. But that prediction is only really backed up by the Daily Mirror, the front page of which offers in tabloid style: 'Bank you Darling!'

"Some early Christmas cheer"

was delivered, it says, by a tax on bonuses

"bashing the bankers who dragged us to the brink of economic meltdown".

More typically, the Daily Telegraph brands it a 'political survival plan' not an 'economic recovery plan'. The Daily Mail suggests that it was a time for:

"acutely painful and inevitably unpopular measures necessary to pull Britain back
from the brink of bankruptcy".

But the chancellor

"shut his eyes to the reality of our plight"

Amid

"the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes"

Mr Darling's answer is replacing old boilers, jeers The Sun.

And finally The Daily Star offers its readers 'one silver lining', pointing out that:

"Darling's likely to be unemployed himself by next summer!"