Obama campaign cavalry rides in to save the day for GORDON BROWN.

Gordon Brown, Britain's increasingly desperate hapless twit of a PM has, with the help of Obama's campaign "wizards" come up with a sure fire winning slogan specially crafted to keep Labour in power for at least the balance of the Obama Administration.

Get ready, here it comes, the campaign theme that's gonna rock the British electoral system to its foundations. {Drum Roll}

"A future fair for all."

Huh ?????? Bwahahahahahahaha. Good luck with THAT Gordo!

D'ja evah think you might be getting set up Mistah Brown?

In fact, were I betting man I'd put money on that one being a reject from Barry's own 2008 campaign. Looks like ya might just have paid a whole lot of silver for a slogan they wouldn't even use themselves. Sucka...

Labour party gets tips from Obama campaign

Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:40pm GMT

LONDON (Reuters) - The Labour party is taking a page from U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign book by contacting voters directly and encouraging word of mouth campaigning by members, its election coordinator said.

Douglas Alexander said Labour, which has been clawing back some of the opposition Conservative party's commanding lead ahead of an election that must be held by June 3, has been in discussion with the Obama team for more than a year.

"Their key campaigning insight in an age of cynicism about politicians is word of mouth," Alexander told the Guardian newspaper for an interview published in its Saturday edition.

"The (opposition) Conservatives are fighting a broadcast election in a networked age. What we are going to offer is not a one-way communication, but one-to-one communication," he added.

"Obama better understood community organisation and peer-to-peer communication than any recent candidate and we are applying that lesson."

He said Labour had made 400,000 voter contacts in marginal seats since the start of the year -- double the number of such contacts in the 2005 election -- using software that allows party members to set up phone banks in their homes to contact voters and build a relationship with them.

Revealing a new election slogan, "A future fair for all" -- due to be officially unveiled by Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Saturday -- Alexander said it had been chosen to counter what he called the Conservative's "empty" offer of change.

"Change is a process, future is a destination. People want a sense of hope, possibility and pride about Britain," he said, adding that beneath the anxiety and anger over bankers' bonuses, the expenses scandal and the recession, there was a "submerged optimism" among voters.

Gordon Brown: In Over his Head

Nickie Goomba has a superb post at itdontmakesense discussing a daily telegraph story on how 25% of the U.K. annual budget is now attributable to welfare payments.

Welfare related payments are "[a]lready the largest single item in the budget, by 2013/14 spending on social security will dwarf every other item of Government expenditure."

I won't bother to re-post or paraphrase Nickie's piece. I urge you to read it yourself here.

UK Police Bust Up 30th Birthday Party on Private Land

Even though Jacqui Smith, former dim-watted U.K. Home-Secretary, has left her post, (admitting after the fact that she was woefully unqualified for the job.... hmm, wouldn't it be great if Gordon Brown were so introspective?) the U.K continues to trounce civil liberties in the land of our former imperial masters. Lesson here: RAVES = "The New Terrorism"

UK Police Raid Barbecue Because it was Listed as “All-Night Event” on Facebook

By Brad TaylorPublished: 20 July 2009 Posted in: Minor features, News

UK Police recently broke up a barbecue celebrating a 30^th birthday because it was advertised on Facebook as an “all-night” event.

The celebration, with all of 17 confirmed guests, was to be held in an isolated field in Devon last weekend. The event was listed on Facebook as being overnight, in case any guests wished to stay over. Unfortunately, police in riot vans, body armor, and a helicopter (!) crashed the party at 4pm, ordering everyone to leave before the hosts had a chance to turn on the music.

The birthday boy, Andrew Poole, was understandably quite surprised by all this: “It was on private land. We were nowhere near anyone. We weren’t even playing any music. What effectively the police did was come in and stop fifteen people eating burgers.”

Police in the UK have been granted special powers to stop “raves.” A rave is defined as “a gathering on land in the open air of 100 or more persons (whether or not trespassers) at which amplified music is played during the night (with or without intermissions) and is such as, by reason of its loudness and duration and the time at which it is played, is likely to cause serious distress to the inhabitants of the locality.” Of course, there don’t actually need to be 100 people for the police to shut down a rave. An officer simply needs to believe that two or more people are preparing for a rave, or that ten or more people are waiting for a rave to begin.

The police are defending their actions by saying that if they hadn’t stopped the party early, more police resources would have been used to break up the inevitable hamburger-fuelled (sic) riots. Don’t you feel safer, Brits?