Welcome to Suburban Central

The blogosphere is a disparate and wonderful thing, filled with views and opinion from across the spectrum; some well honed, others rough and ready. Suburban Central comes from a standpoint - conservative with a small c - and from a pro-business, libertarian and suburban perspective. The suburbs are a wonderfully British thing; a mixture of urban convenience and density with rural tones where the pleasures and issues of the environment and open spaces are mixed with a physical closeness to our neighbours which make for a blend of views.

So this addition to the blogosphere is aimed at representing something which is a blend of the above. That sounds blurred until you realise that it is where the bulk of people in Britain today live and so is where the majority of us are from, not just geographically but culturally and politically too.

Suburban Central welcomes views from all standpoints and none, from those in the suburbs - however they are defined - and from inner city and rural communities, who want to comment on the issues that impact that well hackneyed phrase; middle Britain.

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Sunday, 9 May 2010

Not everyone is acting in the National interest

Much has been written over the last few days about the commendable way in which all three party leaders have conducted themselves in light of Thursday's inconclusive election result. The press and the media have generally behaved in a similar way; most commentators have written and reported thoughtfully and carefully about the issues facing messrs Clegg, Cameron and Brown.

Not everyone though. Today's Observer carries a hugely misleading story entitled 'Tory-Lib Dem coalition threatened by secret hardline memo on Europe.' I know a lot of Sunday papers' scoops don't contain a lot of beef, but this one takes serious liberties with the truth. Firstly, you have to read to the end of the story before being told that "This is a draft paper, drawn up by FCO officials on their own initiative as part of the civil service's normal and private contingency planning...the document was not shown to any representative of the Conservative party... "

So quite how this can be a 'draft letter by William Hague', as the article headline states, isn't clear. Secondly, despite some tangential suggestions about general Lib Dem policies on Europe and some criticism of Gordon Brown by John Mann MP, there is no comment from the Lib Dems, so it's hard to find anything to back up the assertion that they are spooked by this in any way.

When an article states two definite propositions; one that a memo is from the Conservative party when it isn't and two; that the talks between the parties have been threatened by said memo when they haven't, there is a strong argument that the article shouldn't have been run.

Under normal circumstances, you could just put this down to the usual Sunday paper inflation of gossip. Under current circumstances, there is a serious question over what sort of editorial propriety allows such a vacuous piece to be run at such a sensitive time with the only apparent aim being to force a breakdown in talks. Someone at the Observer should take a long hard look at their journalistic integrity.

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