Arriving with the advent of a new political season, comes a wonderful political scandal from Australia

If you feel the urge, then today is a fine day to take a stroll along Whitehall and up to Parliament Square. The area is buzzing with action and colour as MPs drift back into the city after the summer holidays, fresh with the latest briefings under their arm and whispering hushed plots of betrayal and ambition.

Now is the perfect time to start turning our attention back to politics; and although we have to wait a little while yet for Black Rod to start knocking at the doors to the Commons, we haven’t been kept waiting for a new political scandal – and this is a rather amusing one which has arrived by way of Australia.

Newspapers and blogs around the world are reporting that just three days into his new job as the Police Minister for New South Wales, Matt Brown has been forced to resign by the state governor after he decided to dance atop a sofa dressed in just a pair of underpants.

The Guardian reports that Mr Brown was only appointed to his role at the beginning of the week, and decided to celebrate his new employment with an impromptu party. Doubtless swept along by something strong in a glass, Mr Brown danced away ‘to techno music on a leather couch in “very brief” underpants.’

State governor Nathan Rees demanded Brown’s resignation after the minister first attempted to deny the claims, later claiming that: ‘Embarrassment doesn’t begin to describe it.’ Meanwhile, Mr Brown himself was a little less forthcoming, only responding with the cursory reply, ‘I made a mistake and I am going to cop the consequences of that mistake.’

Clarifying the situation, Mr Rees revealed that, ’ I subsequently put it to former minister Brown late last night that there are too many reports of you in your underwear for me to ignore. He (then) conceded that he’d been in his underwear, and that gave me no option but to demand his resignation.’

Perhaps the antics of Mr Brown could be a harbinger of what’s to come from Westminster over the next few months. The prospect of our Mr Brown donning an elephant thong and grinding away in the cabinet table may be a little too much to hope for, but there is bound to be a political scandal or two brewing beneath the surface.

Whilst the politicians purport to be concentrating on the important issues and getting down to the grit of society – there is always going to be a scandal to fuel the tabloids and knock them off course. Australia’s Mr Brown has lit the way: who’s going to topple next?

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Another north eastern gem

Elbow are yet another glittering band to emerge from the north east of England, and last night, in a career that has more resembled a marathon than a sprint, they scooped one of the biggest prizes in the British music industry: the Mercury Music Prize.

Congratulations to Elbow, you can find out much more about their music by clicking here. In the meantime, here is one of the songs taken from their award winning album, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid.’

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Having survived the rain, the wind and the mud, Peter Moore muses as to why British people are drawn to muddy music festivals

Like it or not, us Brits just have to put up with the fact that we are no longer one of the global big boys. In the event of Russia or China sending up a few scuds, or the Indians taking a fancy to skittling us with some carpet bombs, the best we can hope for is hiding behind the skirts of the Americans.

These days we gather our self respect from rather different quarters. Because whilst the mines of Wales have been trumped by Middle Eastern oil, English factories have been squashed by the Chinese and Scottish shipyards have fallen empty with the emergence of Eastern European ports, there are few countries in this galaxy or any other that can keep pace with the British music scene.

I’ve just returned to my clean, cheerfully furnished office from the deepest throes of the English countryside, where all weekend the mud sat around my ankles, the wind ripped through my ears and the rain collided viciously against my face. That is to say, that I have just returned to London after a music festival.

What is it, you might ask, that compels otherwise sane individuals to such levels of insanity as a stint at a festival with 30,000 others dangerously close to the beginning of autumn. Some tents flooded, others collapsed, a number of people were hospitalised with hypothermia, mobile telephones faltered by the thousand, and those who forgot their Wellington boots have now got trench foot.

Indeed, by the time I left our ramshackle campsite yesterday it resembled a cross between an African refugee camp and the Third Battle of Ypres. I half expected to see Field Marshall Haig on the way out asking me ‘how it went.’

The reason we Brits put ourselves through such horrid conditions is quite simple: we love our music and we are passionate about it. Over the past half century we have given the world a million bands from the Shadows to the Klaxons and for all their cultural superiority the Yanks have never come up with a band that is half as good as The Beatles.

Indeed, the British musical legacy only begins with our bands. Just think of the dance music, the funk and the punk, there are singer songwriters by the bucket load, we’ve more indie bands than we have NHS doctors and the urban music scene has gone off in an atomic mushroom.

All of these wonderful things have sprouted, quite literally, from the minds of those that are willing to spend a weekend of their lives getting drenched in a field. If you think of it, music festivals combine many of the things that us Brits hold dear: our unpredictable weather, vast quantities of drink, silly dancing and music that is fit to rock the world.

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With a new season of television programmes imminent, Sky One have decided that the time is right to change their style. Peter Moore explains more

Just as September heralds the start of a new academic year, it also ushers in the beginning of a new wave of television programming. The nation’s most prominent channels frequently use the autumnal season to promote their latest series and, of course, with the full fanfare of an elephant parade the top sports providers unveil their all-new coverage of the new sporting seasons.

Along with the barrage of new programmes, new presenters and new action, one of the leading digital channels, Sky One, has undergone a thorough makeover. Traditionally considered an afterthought in Sky’s programming selection, suffering in the shadows of Sky Movies and Sky Sports, Sky One has undergone something of a renaissance during the past eighteen months.

The catalyst for this change seems to have been the appointment of Richard Woolfe, the former controller of Living TV, as the channel’s boss in early 2006. During his tenure, Woolfe has re-organised the rather cluttered schedule of Sky One, which traditionally hid behind thousands of Simpson repeats, and encouraged a rich blend of new programming: from the return of the clinging lycra of The Gladiators, to the exploits of Ross Kemp with the British Army in Afghanistan.

Woolfe’s achievements at Sky One were recently recognised that the ‘Broadcast Digital Channel Awards’ where they received the winning accolade as the top digital channel. As a reward, it seems that Sky bosses have bestowed a thorough paint-job on the Sky One image, which has seen the website and logo disappear under a new colour scheme of midnight blue and black and punctuated by floating airborne ice cubes.

So, times look exciting at Sky One, and a cursory look over their programming schedule reveals a host of autumnal treats just waiting to be dispatched. There is a second series of The Gladiators, a new series of Ross Kemp on Gangs, a new series of Lost and the musical Hairspray. All in all, it seems that the return to the office, the school or the university can be stomached much better with the return of quality British broadcasting.

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As the first punches are being thrown in the Obama McCain presidential duel, the Democrats will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of an early-arriving all American scandal. Marie Kemplay explains.

A fascinating little rumour regarding Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain’s newly announced running mate Sarah Palin, is currently doing the rounds. If it is to be believed his butter-wouldn’t-melt vice-presidential hopeful isn’t quite as saccharine sweet as they would have you believe.

There is talk that 44 year old, Sarah Palin’s fifth child, Trig, born four months ago with Down’s syndrome, is not actually her son but rather the child of her eldest daughter, 17 year old Bristol Palin. Ironically enough the former beauty queen is regarded by many as a whiter-than-white candidate with no real scandal to her name, but having had her personal life thrown into the public sphere, she might find that that is about to change.

Although, admittedly, this story is very much hearsay there is quite a lot of compelling if not necessarily conclusive evidence to support it. Here goes:

There are a number of photos circulating showing Palin looking decidedly svelte when she would have been 7 months pregnant. Her staff also expressed shock when at 7 months Palin announced the pregnancy; none of them previously had any idea. Palin claimed she had been hiding the bump with ‘scarves’.

Meanwhile pictures of her 17 year old daughter Bristol from a similar time show what some have described as a ‘definite pregnancy bump’ rather than belly fat. Coincidentally Bristol was also absent from school for the final three months of her mother’s pregnancy with mononucleosis (glandular fever), a common excuse for absence among teenage girls at Roman Catholic schools

Even more interesting is Palin’s behaviour the day of the birth. On the morning of April 30^th she supposedly began leaking amniotic fluid but rather than attending a medical facility she delivered a keynote speech to the Republican Governor’s Convention in Dallas, Texas. Speech over, Palin then took an eight hour flight back to Alaska and gave birth a few hours later. This is reckless behaviour; for safety reasons women are not supposed to fly after seven months of pregnancy, Palin was about eight months pregnant and she had already started to have contractions.

If she was indeed in labour during the flight she managed to hide it pretty well as an Alaskan airlines representative claims that ‘she didn’t show any signs of distress.’

After landing in Anchorage, despite apparently being hours into labour, she was driven for a further 45 minutes to a remote regional medical centre where she finally gave birth, rather than choosing any of the much better equipped medical centres in Anchorage. Perhaps she was fleeing the prying eye of the public?

It is difficult to gauge how such a scandal would affect the Republican presidential campaign, and so far there has been no official response. In the turbulent world of American politics Palin’s actions could be read in a number of ways: is she merely a selfless mother who is protecting her daughter, or has something a little more sinister occurred?

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McClaren’s Academy of Odd Accents

Perhaps we are a little late with this one, but I reasoned that it was probably too good a video to pass up. We’re all well acquainted with Steve McClaren after his disastrous stint at the helm of the English football team; a spell so disastrous in fact, that he had to travel as far as Holland and the little known team of FC Twente to resurrect his career.

Anyhow, a touch too much of the Dutch Edam seems to have taken its effect on the Wally with the Brolly. His grammars gone, his answers defy explanation and the hand gestures are, well, operatic. Enjoy Steve McClaren and a lesson in ‘Dutghlish’. Yeesshhh!

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Barack Obama passes an important milestone in American history as he officially accepts the nomination of the Democrat Party to run for the office of the President of the United States

It is only a few short months since the American Democratic Party were caught in a tremendous internal squabble, but last night they gritted their teeth, buried their differences and stood to applaud the Illinois Senator Barack Obama as he accepted their nomination to run for the office of President of the United States.

It did smack a little of a family emerging with bright smiles to a public event, having only recently endured a fearful argument behind closed doors. But Obama, clean cut and with the requisite snow white smile, seemed unfazed, declaring that: ‘America, we are better than these last eight years,’ to the excitable approval of the assembled crowd.

On evenings such as these, Americans are at their very best. Naturally more demonstrative than us Brits, they dress in vibrant red, white and blues, wave flags, applaud enthusiastically and whoop in delight, at all of the appropriate moments. The speeches themselves are a carefully balanced delivery of rhetoric, promises, patriotism, flattery and the odd inoffensive joke.

It is hardly needs documenting, as it has been said a thousand times before, that Obama thrives in this environment. It is quite a skill to be relaxed and personable in front of a crowd of around 80,000, but with an effortless grace Obama carries it off, and for that reason alone he should be relishing live tussles with the more-robotic John McCain.

We should not forget that last night marked the passing of an important milestone in American history. Accepting the nomination, Obama became the first American of African descent to be selected as the presidential candidate of one of the two main parties; and in a country that is openly proud of its history and heroes, it was by no coincidence that last night was also the forty fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream,’ speech.

A key element in Obama’s success will be his ability to appeal to broad sections of the Democratic Party, and mindful of this one of Obama’s first statements was one of gratitude and magnanimity towards his erstwhile foe:

‘Let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanies me on this journey, and especially the one who travelled the farthest, a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours: Hillary Rodham Clinton.’

But his main thrust of attack was a clear and steady attack upon the one man who stands between him and the Oval Office. ‘John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,’ Obama argued. ‘If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but it is not the choice that America needs,’ he continued.

This is an odd period of the American presidential campaign, following a dip in the action during the two summer months. Collectively Americans are drawing in a slow breath, waiting to be submerged in a barrage of publicity, advertising, pledges and posters. By November the country will have lost its sanity, drenched in colourful bunting and being ‘God blessed,’ from all directions.

American Presidential elections are an odd mixture of things – and for a nation well capable of putting on a show, the 2008 Presidential knock out promises to be compelling.

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Here you can see a video of Barack Obama’s address to the Democratic Convention four years ago, in what was to become one of his most famous speeches. To follow all of the latest news and political development regarding the US political elections and for round-the-clock-coverage, look into the digital news channels, for unprecedented coverage.

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Here is the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in his own words making a speech after the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

‘Ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the nineteenth century and it was called wiff waff.’

‘Other nations, the French, looked at the dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play wiff waff. That is why London is the sporting capital of the world.’

‘And I say to the Chinese, and I say to the world, ping pong is coming home!’

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