BRITAIN
A political party that does what it says on the tin
The 2010 general election will see a new arrival on the British political landscape—and there can be little doubt in voters’ minds as to what they stand for. The Abolish Half Parliamentary Seats Now Party, Prospect learns, is planning to field between five and ten candidates in an effort to draw attention to what its leader, Arthur Bullard, told us was “a symbolic issue, representing a breakdown of trust and confidence in our political classes.” Britain, he points out, has more MPs than any other country in the world apart from China, and “that probably isn’t a very good sign for our democracy. People are absolutely staggered when I tell them. It’s a shorthand for the need to grasp the nettle of political reform.” Cameron has already suggested a 10 per cent reduction, but Bullard believes this “simply isn’t radical enough. Our MPs have lost the trust of the nation, and they don’t seem to have noticed.” Time, then, for a sharp reminder.
MEDIA
Giving the newspaper game away in London
Here’s a quandary to keep the pen-pushers at the Office of Fair Trading occupied. On 12th October, the Evening Standard—on sale in London for 182 years—went free. It was a surprising move, given that Rupert Murdoch’s thelondonpaper had folded a month earlier arguing that “free” didn’t work. Still more surprisingly, the other evening freebie London Lite—set up by the Standard’s old owners Associated Newspapers as a Murdoch spoiler—kept their presses rolling.
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