Flashback: The 1992 election

Twenty years ago today it was the 1992 general election. A record breaking election that saw the Conservatives win a fourth term, with the most votes for any party in British electoral history. And they did it without spin - compare Neil Kinnock's grandiose Sheffield rally with John Major going out on the streets and speaking common sense on a good old fashioned soapbox.

Yet for many Conservatives 1992 has become a forgotten election. For some the victory is an uncomfortable truth, that the party could win elections without Margaret Thatcher and thus justified deposing her. For others the memory of the next five years is dominated by so many problems that they'd really rather not remember them and secretly wish the election had been lost.

However there are signs of a slow change in John Major's reputation with even some of his old critics starting to reappraise his record - see for example It's time to give John Major the credit we so cruelly denied him by Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph. And the various historical rankings of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom have seen Major slowly rise up the charts judged by academics, in recent years overtaking Edward Heath (University of Leeds: Academics rate Brown one of the worst post 1945 PMs). Maybe he will rise further in years to come.

Would it have been better to lose the 1992 election? It's hard to say, though if the party hadn't deposed Margaret Thatcher it's likely we would have lost. Indeed if the landslide had come five years soon, Thatcher might even have had the humiliation of losing her own seat. Such a result could have been the necessary blow to the neo-Thatcherite wing of the party and silenced the sirens who spent much of the last twenty years claiming that going more Thatcherite than even Thatcher did was the solution for the country. And some of the more Machiavellian might point out that a loss would have given the chaos of Black Wednesday to Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Perhaps the Conservatives would have taken rather less than thirteen years to return to government.

But losing would have meant the country being run by Neil Kinnock. And that's truly a horrific thought. Whether losing might have been better for the party, it would have been far worse for the country.

So as the BBC Parliament channel reruns the 1992 election coverage, a big cheer to John Major for achieving such a victory and saving us from that nightmare.

The Sun is not 40 tomorrow

Shocka as The Sun gets it wrong!

Tomorrow The Sun is celebrating its fortieth birthday. (The Sun: We are 40 tomorrow) Invariably this is leading to much self-congratulation.

But The Sun has made a very basic error - the first edition did not "burst on to news stands on Monday, November 17, 1969". Depending on your preference (or whichever is the nearer excuse for self-congratulation) The Sun began either on September 15th, 1964 (see for instance the five year old BBC News: Forty years of The Sun) or on April 15th, 1912.

The latter date was when a newspaper called the Daily Herald was launched. It lasted under that title for over four decades, during most of which it served as the official newspaper of the Labour Movement (so its later "desertion" of the "family" is a key reason why many in Labour hate it). However by 1964 sales were heavily in decline and so it underwent a relaunch and a title change as The Sun, which was initially a high-minded broadsheet (publishers IPC already had a tabloid, the Daily Mirror). But after five years it was doing even worse than the Herald and so IPC sold it to Rupert Murdoch who relaunched it as the tabloid it is today on November 17th, 1969. But I guess "40 years of Rupert Murdoch" is not so good for publicity.

I can't remember if The Sun itself was celebrating 40 years in 2004 but the BBC News story suggests it was. And I won't be surprised if in 2012 The Sun celebrates its 100th birthday, then its 50th in 2014 and again in 2019. It seems The Sun has more birthdays than the Queen.

You don't have to be white to be racist

The last time I heard the n***** word being used in person was a couple of weeks ago when coming home on the train. A fight sort of broke out on the ram packed train because people were being pushed into each other as the trains have limited capacity and the inside layout makes it worse. An Asian man started having a go at an Afro-Carribean man, culminating when both they (and I and about a hundred others) extracted themselves from the train at Forest Gate. As we all headed up the stairs the Asian man shouted the n***** word. Fortunately the flow of the crowd prevented any further incident.

I recall this because a story has come my way of a councillor in Bristol who has been embroiled in a racism row, calling an Asian councillor a "coconut" - i.e. suggesting a BME person is really white on the inside - who says "How can I be a racist when I'm black?" (The Sun: Race row over 'coconut' jibe) This must go up there in the cannon of wriggle-out clauses along with "I can't be racist/homophobic, I have BME/LGBT friends".

If a white councillor had used such a remark there would be rightly howls of outrage. I am glad that there are many who are not taken in by Cllr Brown's protestations. Let's be clear - it's a derogatory term based on preconceived stereotyping about what role a person of a particular race should fulfil, what attitudes they should have, what they should support and so forth. That is racism pure and simple. Cllr Brown should be ashamed and consider her position.

If she resigns from the council, it seems it won't make much difference as apparently she's been making only occasional attendances to qualify for her expenses. There's more on this, plus the footage of the incident itself, at Bristol Dave: Want to know who actually supports all this equalities shit?, Bristol Dave: Shirley Brown/Marshall Part II and Bristol Dave: Shirley Brown/Marshall part III.

One year older

And so today I turn twenty-five, clocking up a quarter of a century. Having a birthday in mid August has often felt anti-climactic due to everyone being all over the place. Often I've been away from home - spending birthdays in places such as Kenya, Tunisia, Yugoslavia (as it was - now Croatia), Austria, the Netherlands, Shropshire, Westmorland or right now Lanarkshire - and this can often split up celebrations even further.

August is also a rather dull time for anything happening in the wider world - once for a study task I looked up the newspapers from the week when I was born to find out the major news stories of the time. It was the battle between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidency. This is hardly exciting stuff at the best of times! The Sun this week has it even worse - a front cover devoted to astronomers discovered a bunch of stars that can have lines drawn between them to look like Victor Meldrew! BBC News's "On This Day" feature for August 11th usually highlights Edward Heath's greatest achievement as Prime Minister - leading the country to victory in the 1971 Admiral's Cup - and the Kray brothers being allowed to go to their mother's funeral. The other big story is the eclipse of the Sun in 1999 - but in the broad scheme of things this is not particularly distinct on an international scale. And a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for today shows a good number of people were born on this day but the only names I recognise are Jerry Falwell (the US televangelist), Pervez Musharraf (President of Pakistan), Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine in most Star Wars movies), Hulk Hogan (the wrestler), Sylvia Hermon (Ulster Unionist MP for North Down) and Jim Lee (the comic book artist).

To some twenty-five may not seem much at all. To others it seems like a great age! Personally I feel it's just another milestone on life. The past quarter of a century has had its ups and downs but it has in general been fun. And the future, well who knows? But it will be interesting finding out!