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Is it a storm in a Westminster teacup? As long as the News International phone-tap story continues to make the political weather, Andy Coulson – the Conservative’s Director of Communications – will remain under pressure. The question is how long it can run. Mike, in the previous thread, suggests that it won’t be long because the story’s essentially mined out for the moment. I’d agree with that but also put forward another reason: none of it resonates with the public….

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SkyNews Where does “Hackergate” go now? One of the key lessons so well demonstrated in April by Paul Staines (AKA Guido), with his “Smeargate” emails is that if you want a story to continue to make the headlines then the news machine needs feeding little by little. You don’t give them all the goodies all at once which I think might have happened to the Guardian’s “Hackergate revelations”. It’s doing its best this morning to keep the story going but…

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  At what point does Afghanistan stop being worth it? Afghanistan has always been the worthwhile war, the one for which there was a genuine casus belli and the fighting of which was supposed to make Britain and the world safer. However, the deaths of seven more British soldiers in there this week raises the questions of just what is being achieved and at what cost. It’s well over seven years since the Taliban were deposed from Afghanistan’s government –…

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Are the rules stacked against any indie challenge? A feature of the Norwich North by election which might have repercussions has been the way that the BBC and other broadcasters are able to deem who is a serious candidate or not. And inevitably only those who are representing the main parties are designated the former category and get featured in the coverage. For the others we are usually told to refer to the programme’s website where there is a full…

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But why not more elections? I’ve just read the full transcript (courtesy of PoliticsHome) of David Cameron’s speech on quangos. He specifically says that what he is proposing is not ‘a bonfire of the quango’ but a deliberate move to limit their scope, number and budgets. Interestingly, he was prepared to single out some large and powerful organisations that will be culled or disempowered should he win power – including OFCOM, NICE, and the QCDA. The argument is simple and…

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ICM Guardian polling series Why the only comparisons you can make are with ICM We’ve discussed this before and will, no doubt, discuss it again because there’s a widespread belief out there that the evidence suggests that Labour will recover as we get closer to polling day. Even last week in the FT the eminent telly historian Professor Niall Ferguson and fellow academic Glen O’Hara were comparing the Tory’s current polling shares with the 60+% shares for Labour that were…

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