Some assorted politics for a Monday.

Congratulations to Martin Tod on being selected as the new Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Winchester. He’ll be a hard-working campaigner and would make an excellent MP.

Liberal Democrat Voice highlights David Cameron’s record as he marks his first year as Tory leader, and directs me to these articles in the Daily Mirror which highlight some amusing volte-face:

CAPITALISM
Dec 2005: Supports it. “In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed educate our citizens about the facts of economic life.”
Jan 1 2006: Er, opposes it. “I don’t believe in ‘isms’. Words like communism, socialism, capitalism and republicanism all conjure up one image in my mind: ‘extremism.'”

CHILD TRUST FUNDS
May 4 2001: Against. “The more I thought about it, the more I realised it was an election gimmick, with drawbacks.”
Dec 15 2003: He’s for them. “The Government have been accused of promoting child trust funds as a gimmick. I think that that is a bit unfair.”

PATIENTS’ PASSPORTS
June 29 2004: He likes these. “We will say to people languishing on waiting lists that if they do go private they can take with them one half of what the operation would cost on the NHS.”
Oct 21 2005: You’ve guessed it. “I think the patients’ passport is not right, because it takes money out of the Health Service.”

Not quite politics, but I recommend this BBC News article about agnosticism (my neck of the woods).

Finally, I have signed some more petitions on the Downing Street petition engine all of which are worthy of support.

I’m currently working my way through a three-months-for-the-price-of-one offer from those nice people at and consequently watching far more movies than usual.

This week’s two films would struggle to be more different: bona fide 1950’s classic All About Eve and 1998’s slasher Bride of Chucky. What they have in common is that both are surprisingly funny.

Having enjoyed Bette Davis’s peformance in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I ordered All About Eve, which reignited her career in middle age. It tells the story of stage star Margo Channing (a scene-stealing Davis) and her adoring fan and budding actress Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). George Sanders also stands out in a strong cast, which features a small role from Marilyn Monroe. It’s a drama and filmed in a stagey style, with some rooms noticeably filmed from one side only, but given the subject matter of actors and actresses and some sensibilities of drawing room comedy, this is not a problem.

The real star, alongside Davis herself, is writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz extremely sharp script right from the conversational opening narration. The film buzzes with one-liners, witty retorts and sparkling badinage, and the actors lap it up. The result is a funny but dramatic story, mostly told in flashback, ending with one of cinema’s classic shots. My only criticism was that the second half was slightly long for my taste (the film is over two-and-a-quarter hours long), but arguably that’s just more bang for your buck. I blogged back in spring 2005 that I’d seen less than half of the IMDb‘s 100 then top-rated films. I haven’t made much advance since then, but at least I can tick off All About Eve and I heartily recommend it.

One film I wouldn’t have predicted a few weeks ago that I would be watching is Bride of Chucky, aka Child’s Play 4. Child’s Play 3 is a particularly notorious video nasty in this country and, not a massive fan of slasher films, I’ve never been tempted to watch any of the series. Recently, though, I read somewhere a review of the fourth film that indicated it was, unlikely though it seems, an entertaining change of direction for the series and worth a look, so I took advantage of my unlimited rentals to watch it.

And the review was right. Whereas the earlier films (so I read) concentrated on being violent, Bride of Chucky is a comedy first and a horror film second. It’s self-deprecating (on seeing the doll a chracter remarks, “Chucky? He’s so 80s!” while Chucky comments later “If this were a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice”). As horror comedies demand, it parodies the genre, including visual references to Hellraiser, Bride of Frankenstein – obviously – and Psycho. It’s no more violent than some of the Scream movies and, to my surprise, manages to be funnier.

The cast includes Gordon Michael Woolvett off of Andromeda, Sunset Beach‘s Nick Stabile and Family Guy‘s Jennifer Tilly, with rent-a-madman Brad Dourif (off of Babylon 5 and Lord of the Rings amongst others) returning as the voice of Chucky. Coincidentally, Peter Preston’s Observer review draws comparisons between Tilly and Bette Davis – and, as if to prove this film is worth a try despite its pedigree, Peter Bradshaw hated it.

Not a BBC Three spinoff from Doctor Who, but Bearwood Corporate Services, the medium of choice through which Lord Ashcroft funded various target seat campaigns for the Conservatives in the general election.

The Electoral Commission’s latest news release details donations and loans reported in the third quarter of 2006, but also include a list of donations that should have been declared earlier but weren’t. Sat on the naughty step with £207k of late donations are the Labour Party, followed by the Tories on £168k. (The LibDems were late with £23k, for which certain local parties deserve a metaphorical clip round the ear.)

Of particular interest are donations made before the 2005 general election. If that seems a long time ago, it’s because it was. The only LibDem donation to fall into this category was a transfer between councillors in Cannock Chase and their local party. The Tories, however, managed to fail to declare on time a number of Lord Ashcroft’s generous pre-election donations: £5,000 to the Harlow Association, donated in January 2005; £5,000 to Brighton Kemptown; £2,145 to the Hastings & Rye Association.

What may amuse LibDem and Labour bloggers is the constituency which received the largest previously-undeclared pre-election boost from Bearwood Corporate Services. Anyone want to hazard a guess? Yes, it’s the £7,993 donation to North Norfolk Conservative Association – and I think we all know who was the candidate there. Now I have no intention of casting aspersions on Iain, of course – PPERA reporting is not the parliamentary candidate’s responsibility – but I couldn’t help a wry smile at the coincidence. (And lest anyone forget, despite Ashcroft’s cash Norman Lamb romped home in North Norfolk, increasing his majority.)

That said, this donation nevertheless is trumped by larger previously unreported donations in Reading East, Wirral West and from the notorious Midlands Industrial Council to the Tory campaign in Shrewsbury & Atcham, among others.

All the main parties need to do better to ensure compliance with the PPERA, but some have further to go than others.

If you’ve seen the excellent US animated series Family Guy, you may be familiar with this clip of Stewie Griffin performing a version of Elton John’s Rocket Man:


Naturally I assumed when I first saw this that the writers had come up with this particularly absurd performance. How wrong I was. Back in the dim and distant past (the 1970s), some fule invited (or possible allowed) host William Shatner, notorious “interpreter” of hit songs, to, er, perform this track at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards. We are blessed that a recording of this momentous event has survived. Do watch it all the way through to fully appreciate its, um, brilliance.