chris mounsey | House of Comments

Apr

2010

22: The Lib Dem Surge

This week Conor Pope of the Audacity of Pope, and Chris Mounsey of the reborn Devil’s Knife join regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about this week’s political events through the prism of the UK political blogosphere.

We chatted about:

Following Nick Clegg’s performance at the Leaders Debates, the Liberal Democrats have broken past Labour in the polls, and some polls are even putting them ahead of the Tories. Is this ‘surge’ a flash-in-the-pan that will be gone by next week, or could it be sustained all the way up to election day?
Electoral mathematics make it unlikely the Lib Dems could win an election outright, but the political system is being given a shake up. With predictions that Labour could end up the party with the most seats but the smallest number of votes, will we soon be seeing electoral reforms come to pass?
The other parties seem unable to figure out a good line of attack against this third party uprising. We discussed some of the tactics they appear to be trying, and whether any of these have worked at all.
Chris was interviewed by Andrew Neil for The Daily Politics recently in his capacity as leader of the UK Libertarian Party, but by most accounts did not come off very well from the interview. We asked for his side of the story, and whether writing a blog under such an aggressive persona as Devil’s Kitchen is compatible with holding ambitions in the ‘respectable’ world of politics?

Jan

2010

In the first HoC podcast of 2010, Chris Mounsey from Devil’s Kitchen and Will Straw from Left Foot Forward join regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about politics, the blogosphere, and the events of the last week.

We discussed:

The #KerryOut campaign to try and oust Labour MP Kerry McCarthy from her Bristol East seat at the next election. Is this a positive sign of the power of online grassroots action or a puerile spat between Twittering egos? Or a bit of both?
Climate change continues to provoke controversy in the blogosphere. Chris and Will (who regularly blog on the subject themselves) discuss the issues from different sides of the argument and in the process go for the world acronym quoting record!
Following the attempted bombing of a US bound flight on Christmas Day, it has been announced that full body scanners will be introduced at airports. We discuss the implications for privacy and civil liberties. Also, will they even work and could the money be better spent elsewhere?
And in a related discussion can racial or other sorts of profiling to screen bombers work?