Was it illegal to rip the cheque up?

There is a rather interesting look at the laws about donations over on Iain's blog. It appears that by ripping up the cheque from David Abrahams proxy (as has been reported) then the donation was never technically returned under the law and so should have been registered anyway. Yes a little bit legally pedantic, but still, the law is the law is the law right?

More here

Is Huhne paying attention to the news?

I have just read this post by Fraser Nelson on the Coffee House where he notes that Chris Huhne has been playing a blinder on "Donorgate" and that it might help him in his leadership challenge for the Lib Dems. I am however a little concerned that Huhne may be paying too little attention to some of the details of the story about Labour's dodgy donation, meanwhile Clegg has just disappeared.

The small detail that Huhne should be paying attention to relates to the law and registering donations for political activity and/or loans, credit card usage etc that might be spent in the process of that political activity. In fact, he was even on Newsnight last night when they were discussing the possible that Harriet Harman had broken rules about registering her lonas, donations etc properly.

I bring this up simply because Chris Huhne has been campaigning now for well over 30 days and neither of them have yet to register a single penny with the Electoral Commission. Sure, getting carried away with kicking the Government is understandable, but you'd think he'd be making sure he wasn't going to find himself in the same situation in a few months time wouldn't you?

N.B. Clegg hasn't registered anything either.

It must have been love... but it's over now!

Made in October.

Money, money, money!

Labour advertise for Downing Street administrator

The closing date is today, but the Labour Party are advertising for an Administrator at the No.10 Political Office. The full job description outlines the following roles (with additional crib notes from yours truly).


1. Administer and coordinate the diary and correspondence of the Political Secretary - ensuring that all meetings with dodgy donors are not recored in case of Police investigation
2. Maintain accurate and up to date records of contacts with the political office - except where the accurate and up to date records might incriminate the boss.
3. Assisting with the organisation and logistics of Political Office events, receptions and other activities - other activities may include soliciting money from people that wish to remain anonymous as well as typing out letters of thanks to said donors.
4. Arranging meetings as necessary and responding to callers and contacts with the political office - telling Her Majesty's Press Corp to 'sod off', 'no comment', 'won't you please leave us alone', 'nothin' to do with us Guvnor' and 'that Harriet Harman's a bitch we hope she dies in her own bile.'
5. Coordinate between the political office, the PM’s constituency office and the Labour Party head office as required - making sure that there is always plausible denial that the boss didn't know about any criminal activity.
6. Assisting with the logistical and travel arrangements of the Political Secretary - arranging secure safe houses where staff and the boss can go to ground when the brown stuff (no pun intended) hits the proverbial fan.

And the one they missed!
7: Full Criminal Records Bureau checks will be carried out on all applicants as a lack of criminal record is not ideal for this role. Dodgy associates with money may however be sufficient for success.

HMRC advertises for security experts

Interesting job advert for "IT Security Risk Consultants", working in a Government department, mostly in Essex at the location of HMRC offices.

So much for security procedures being in place and just not being followed. If they're having to adevrtise for expertise it sounds more like they know they're procedures are totally knackered or more likely they don't know their arses from their elbows.

When will a photo appear?

It is surely just a matter of time now isn't it before a photo of David Abrahams with Gordon Brown appears? The photo itself would not be conclusive but it would certainly raise even more questions about who knew him, when they knew him, and how much they knew about him. If anyone has a photo do send me a copy.

Peter Hain fails to register donation from Mendelsohn?

It's being reported on the newswire that Peter Hain has failed to register a donation of £5000 from, of all people, Jon Mendelsohn?!?! You couldn't make this up. Was it Mendelsohn's money? Or was Mendelsohn himself a conduit?

Brown didn't even need a war to hit rock bottom

A rather brilliant comparison over at Shane Greer's blog that notes that the Telegraph poll by YouGov makes terrible reading for Gordon 'Mr Bean' Brown.

The poll should that only 23% of the population are satisfied with Gordon 'Mr Bean' Brown. Meanwhile, across the pond, 33% of Americans are satisfied with Bush's performance and he's been in the job for nearly eight years and been engaged in an unpopular war for four.

Stalin to Mr Bean in weeks indeed. That's gotta hurt!

The kicking and screaming strategy

So let's get this straight. Chris Leslie says that they didn't want the Brown leadership campaign to go near Janet Kidd's money with a bargepole because they knew it was dodgy. Then Harriet Harman says that she only went to Janet Kidd after Chris Leslie sent her in that direction (which he has admitted)?

Sounds to me like a "If I'm going down you're coming with me" strategy is unfolding doesn't it? Harman knows that her days are numbered and she's going to make sure that the dirt she has on the others gets thrown at the same time with the hope that it will stick - and the way it looks it probably will. Something tells me Chris Leslie won't be winning the selection for Prescott's seat now.

Another Friend from the North East?

Say hello to Kevan Jones, the Labour MP for Durham north. I've been wondering all day if he knows David Abrahams or not. What I do know is that he signed Harriet Harman's nominations paper. Maybe she should have invited him out to dinner in Westminster and seen if he knew who that cheque for £5000 was really from? They could have found a booth somewhere so no one saw them and whispered.

Update: Fixed typos and appalling sentence construction

EXCLUSIVE: Team Harman closes ranks as the back stabbing begins?

As Guido has noted the Evening Standard has said - despite legal threats - that it is sticking with it's story that Jon Mendelsohn was involved in secret donation cover-ups. According to the Standard it considers its source excellent.

This source wouldn't be one of Harriet Harman's parliamentary supporters spotted in Westminster last night at Shepherd's Restaurant with the journalist from the Evening Standard that wrote the story, would it?

Nah... I'm sure it's just a coincidence! They wouldn't start stooping that low and stabbing each other in the back just to save their own skins? Would they?

Some more Friends in the North (East)

Property developers seem to be cropping up every where at the moment don't they? Take Sterling Capitol Group PLC who have many different limited company subsidiaries across Yorkshire, and up into the North East doing regeneration work in partnership with Government agencies.

For example, Sterling Capitol Group PLC are currently redeveloping Capitol Park Goole in partnership with Yorkshire Forward, who are the regional development quango that reports directly into the Government. Just for reference it should be noted that Sterling Capitol have given donations to the Labour Party of £170,000 in the past three years.

Electoral Commission screenshot. Click for large version
One other thing, the company Chairman is Bob Murray CBE, former chairman of Sunderland Football Club, and also a personal Labour donor. He's made two donations, the first of £25,000 in November 2002, and the second of £100,000 in February 2003. He received his CBE in the New Years Honours list announced in December 2002. Former Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong was a regular guest of Murray's at Sunderland matches.


Electoral Commission screenshot. Click for large version

MoD slammed by Select Committee

The Ministry of Defence has been slammed today in a report from Select Committee on Public Accounts that looks at it's management of the Defence estate. The report concluded that over 40% of family accomodation and more than half of single living accomodation is substandard.

The report criticised the department's ability to understand its own requirement saying it "has no effective way of knowing where funding is needed most." At the same time it appears that in 2006-07 the department cancelled maintenance work to its estate to the value of £13.5 million because of budget cuts, but then proceeded to resurface tennis courts and create sport pitches.

Priorities huh?

Prison Overcrowding: The Solution

From the pages of Hansard. Boris goes for the youth vote?

Click Image for Large Version
"Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court, and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You are an habitual caner, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard, and presumably accepts getting stoned in the same casual manner. We therefore feel constrained to commit you to the maximum term allowed for these offences — you will get stoned with a water bong for five years."

A Brownwash

CBI or WWF speech? I don't know!

Proof that donations don't always buy you influence

Remember how back in September Saatchi & Saatchi won the gig to do Labour's advertising? They beat off competition for the contract from the agency that masterminded Blair's campaign's, Beattie McGuinness Bungay. Back in May of this year, Beattie McGuinness Bungay gave donations to the Labour Party of £6,500.

So you see? Money doesn't always buy you influence after all (even if the word 'bung' is in your name). Sometimes you just lose. Never let it be said that I only ever attack the Labour Party, sometimes I don't, like now. Instead I just make poor jokes.

Who gains from an easier planning system?

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Hazel Blears announced changes to the planning system to make planning procedures faster and apparently make local people more powerful.

This will be achieved by creating a new quango to oversee planning which will be unaccountable to the electorate, as well as central Government ministers setting national priorities for what infrastructure should be built.

I wonder what Blears' personal donor of £10,0000, Brian Scowcroft, will think of these new proposals? Come to think of it, I wonder whether the other many property developers that have pumped money into the Labour Party (openly or secretly) will be pleased with the proposed relaxation (or should I say centralisation)?

Nuclear decommissioning specialist donates to Labour Party

Whilst all those other scandals have been going on, few people have really made a comment on the nuclear energy question. Part of Gordon's "fightback" speech at the CBI was about it. The Government has a view already on this, which is build more of them. Almost all their press releases have spoken about consultation and there have been allegations that said consulting was rigged.

As noted previously here, Brown's Government has some rather strong links into the nuclear power industry. His brother Andrew, is the Head of Media Relations at EDF, whilst Yvette Cooper's father (Ed Balls' father-in-law) is a non-executive director of the Government quango called the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which has an interest in there being things to decommission.

What is also interesting though is that Brownite MP, and former Labour Party Chairman, Iain McCartney is a senior adviser to the management team of the Fluor Corporation on a salary of £110,000 to £115,000. Fluor is a company from Texas, who specialise in, amongst other things, nuclear and environmental remediation and public-private partnerships outside of the US.

It's worth noting as well, that in April this year, the Labour Party registered a £5,100 from Fluor, and as some might remember back in January the Government announced plans to use PFI for "nuclear new build decommissioning and waste management". Fluor have used a company called Sovereign Strategy for most of their PR. Sovereign Strategy is owned by Alan Donnelly, former leader of the Labour group in the European Parliament. Since 2002 the company has given £118,448 to the Labour Party.

Not that I'm suggesting for one moment that any of these things are connected of course.

Name that Scandal!

Forget the actualities of the last scandal that is engulfing the Labour Party and Brown's Government. There is a much more important question that needs to be answered. What do we call it? This point has been raised by the Times sketch writer Ann Trenemen today. 'Cash for no Honours?' was one of her suggestions.

So here's the deal, it's competition time. Let's name this latest scandal and winner will get...erm... a blank cheque from Mickey Mouse made of rubber made out for £25,000 that you could either try to cash or perhaps give to the Labour Party. I was thinking 'Cyphergate' maybe. I considered 'HotpointGate' but I think Hotpoint - who clearly make marvellous washing machines -might not be best pleased with their name being dragged through the Brown stuff.

You never know, your entry could end up being recorded in the anals [sic] of British political history if it's really good, although don't bet on it! Over to you.

Donor denies knowledge and says she's a Tory

Channel 4 News has just run a piece with a doorstep interview with Janet Dunn, who was used by Abraham to donate £25,000 on January 31, 2003. She said that she has no knoweldge of the donation and said, whilst standing with her husband, "we have always been Conservative supporters".

That changes the allegations a little doesn't it? If Janet Dunn is telling the truth the implication is that someone used her name without her permission to make an illegal donation to the Labour Party. So we don't just have an illegal donation, we have potential identity theft too.

Update: Quick update, apparently the husband made a statement last night saying that Abraham's had called them and told them to check their bank statements. It seems Abrahams paid £25K into their account and they gave him a blank but signed cheque for the amount but they had no idea what it was all about.

Dealing with tax credit complaints costs over £6 million a year?

I always knew that that the tax credit system was in a bit of mess, but I have to admit I was staggered to learn that the cost of just handling complaints is over £6 million each year. It seems the Treasury don't actually know the exact figure, but the Treasury minister, Jane Kennedy, said in Parliament that the "cost of dealing with complaints in the Tax Credit Office between 1 November 2006 and 31 October 2007 was around £6.5 million".

If you're wondering why it's not an exact figure that is because "it is not possible to provide costs for other areas of HMRC that might also handle complaints relating to tax credits". So basically the Treasury thinks it might be even more. That's an incompetent system, and incompetent accounting of how much the mess is costing all thrown into one!

Wonder how much that seat cost?

The Mirror's video content has pointed something of interest out this morning. Is that David Abrahams sitting in the front row at Blair's final farewall consitituency speech in Sedgefield on the day he left Downing Street? An invite only event for family, friends, close activists, colleagues and donors?

Why yes it is!

The easy way to an unaffordable mortgage

During the last ten years, as Brown has continued to remind us, we;ve had low interest rates. As a result we've seen lots more people leaping on to the housing ladder in order to take advantage. In the case of Northern Rock and some others we also saw irresponsible lending to people who should never have been given mortgages.

How did these people get mortgages? Well for a start there is self-certification where you just say "I promise that I earn this much" and if the banks is stupid they lend you money and then probably repossess at some later date. However, I've just learnt about something else that has probably helped out a bit for those not self-certing.

A website that will create "genuine" payslips for you (at a price) with whatever salary you fancy. They can also provide you with a "copy" of your P60. Just tell them how much you want earn and bingo!

Now you might think this is illegal, but as far as I can tell it's only fraud if you actually use them for such purposes. Mind you, given the current mess that HMRC seems to be I bet you could probably get away with submitting fake P60's to them and they wouldn't notice.

Some other sites include Office Slaves, Payslips 4 You, and Wage Slips 4 U. The last one has a brilliant line that says "whilst we will NEVER condone any form of fraud; we pride ourselves on adopting a pragmatic view in preparing replacement wage slips / P60’s." So it's not about fraud, it's about pragmatism. Hmmmm. How long before we have our own credit crunch?

The number one issue concerning Americans

Onion News NetworkHat Tip: Crossed Pond

Crazy new poll in the Independent

So tomorrow there is a poll in the Independent by Communicate Research that gives the Conservatives their biggest leads for quite literally years of 13%. The figure that is causing shock and conseternation though is the Labour one which has them on just 27%. The headlines figures are Conservatives 40%, Labour 27%, Lib Dems 18%.

Perosnally I never trust the polls because I always remember 1992. What people tell the pollster and what they actually end up doing seem to be two very different things. However, for amusement and interest I trhough the figures into Electoral Calculus. Apparently, if it happened that way the Conservatives would ahve a 64 majority. More interesting still was that Alistair Darling, Charkles Clarke, John Hutton and Jon Cruddas amongst many others would all lose thier seats.

General Secretary of the Labour Party resigns

Peter Watt, the Genertal Secretary of the Labour Party has resigned over the latest funding scandal. Apparently he knew that the money had been donated through intermediaries but didn't know it was against the law the Labour Party created.

Class warfare in Southend West?

What a strange motion by the Tory MP for Southend West, David Amess (also signed by Bob Russell, Lib Dem MP for Colchester). Amess has called on the FA to reassess footballers salaries, managers salaries, and also the ticket prices.

That this House calls on the Football Association to re-examine the organisation of the country's national sport, paying particular regard to the salaries of football players and their managers; and further calls on the Association to look at the ticket prices for Premier League and international matches on the basis of affordability and value for money.

Here's the thing though, do these two both want to kill off their local clubs? Colchester and Southend United both charge around £15 to £20 for tickets. Your average Premiership side charges about double that.

So if they're price is brought down, and you pay more for the higher leagues because of quality of football, then clubs like Southend and Colchester will have to reduce their prices and struggle to operate.

Frankly, politicians should keep their noses out of the business of football. To see a TOry MP calling for interventions on salaries and prices is even stranger.

Prif Weinidog Brown's website

The other week I found it mildly amusing that the Foreign Office Minister, Meg Munn, had told Parliament that the FCO didn't know how many people in its department spoke Welsh, and didn't record such things. What amused me most was that other departments seemed to know the answer, and that the FCO seemed like the sort of place where you would ask, as a matter of course, what languages people spoke.

Anyhow, it seems to me like Meg Munn might have been slightly mistaken. You see, last week, Mark Hoban asked the Prime Minister who did the translated versions of the Number 10 website and how much they cost, to which the answer was, "Translation services are provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the costs for which are met from existing budgets."

The perceptive amongst you that click the link to Number 10 might notice that there is a flag with a dragon on it which takes you to the Welsh language version of the site. So like I say, looks like Megg Munn was mistaken, someone, somewhere in the FCO knows who speaks Welsh!

Have to admit though that there is something quite amusing about how Prime Minister in Welsh is "Prif Weinidog"*. Seems quite an apt title really.
Hat Tip: Croydonian for spotting that.

Lib Dem leadership race: Free of coverage and errrr... free?

The Lib Dem leadership is hotting up to the finish right now as everyone knows. Ok, I'm lying, it's not hotting up at all and no one really cares either way, however, something that I've been getting confused by is how the two candidates are paying for their campaigns, or more correctly who is giving them financial backing.

Last time round in 2006, Chris Huhne managed to raise nearly £30,000 in donations for his bid. Now I guess it's possible he might have some of that leftover, but it surprises me that there are no entries at the Electoral Commission or on the Register of Members' Interests for donations to him.

The same is true of Nick Clegg. He officially launched his campaign on October 19th so you'd think that by November 26th there might be something on the register or with the Commission, but there's nothing, zip, diddly-squat.

Could it be that both men are fighting for the leadership using their own wallets? Doesn't say a lot for the faith of their endorsements if none are chucking a few quid there way to fight the good fight does it? Or perhaps they've just been so busy that both of them haven't filled the forms in yet?

The One Trick Pony Prime Minister

Why is Brown giving a largely economic speech to the CBI as if he were still Chancellor of the Exchequer? What this says about Alistair Darling's position I'm not sure. However, using a popular culture analogy, Simon Cowell on X Factor - along with the other judges - always go on about how the winners of such competitions must be able to perform outside of their "comfort zone".

Can Brown do it? I think not. He's a one trick pony who's comfort zone is boring economic speeches. He clearly doesn't have a vision which is why he can't do the "vision thing". There are just lots of statistics and buzz words like "world class".

Update: How amusing, he's just basically said that the welfare system is knackered and doesn't work. So what has he been doing for the last ten years?

Update II: He's going to enshrine "training rights" for people that are in work. So he's just extended Government fingers into the management of companies and their staff.

UN says tasers are torture

Apparently the UN have decided that tasers are a form of torture. The UN's Committee against Torture said that "[t]he use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture.... In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events".

Next week the Committee is due to report on handcuffs and fists and is expected to conclude that they can cause acute pain and so constitute a form of torture. A new campaign called "Make Fists and Handcuffs History" is expected shortly.

Ben Brogan's Lonely Planet Hotel Guide

Imperial Royale, Uganda

Brogan Verdict: "$400 a night for no hot water, no mattresses, backed up drains and a random supply of bog roll". No wonder the title of his post begins with the words "Brown returns".

The REAL Steve Mclaren Press Conference

Contains naughty words but it made me laugh.

SFGate implements clever comment banning feature

Back when I was still posting on Bulletin Board systems there was a feature I used to love called "Ignore". You could set your profile up so that any posts by a person that annoyed you simply wouldn't appear. They could thus flame you all they liked and your blood pressure remained low as a result (unless someone quoted them and then you knew).

The feature effectively put the power in the hands of users to ban those they didn't like without telling them. This feature seems to have appeared in an automated type at the lefty San Francisco Chronicle (although they are banning users for everyone). The SFGate website apparently, now has a system that automatically deletes the comments of banned users but still makes the comment viewable to the banned user so they don't know they've been banned.

Note the comment by "JimJams" on the right. This shows up when logged in as that user but when not logged in the comment is deleted.

Evidently there are some people up in arms about this, mostly on the Right because SFGate is on the Left. Personally I think it's a great feature because if you actively ban someone and tell them then they are far more likely to try and get around the ban. By making them think they are still commenting you avoid this (at least for a while anyway).

Of course, there will be those that say this is an affront to freedom of speech. However, the commentators freedom of speech in my view hasn't really been infringed. They are still free to say what they want, they've just been restricted from saying it on someone else's property.

Put it like this. In the real world, if a company banned you from standing in their car park and shouting off your mouth about them, would that be considered an oppression of freedom of speech? Of course it wouldn't, because freedom of speech is about being free to say something, it's not about where you say something.

The banned users are perfectly free to go and start a website up that chronicles all the comments they make that are being deleted after all, or to "expose" SFGate's site administration policies that they dislike as the above link has. Now some might say SFGate's policy is dishonest because it gives someone the impression that they are still involved in a discussion thread when they're not.

I don't buy that line though because if the same user knew they had been deleted they'd still be up in arms about it claiming censorship and all the other expected arguments about how the site is dishonest and doesn't want open discussion. Basically, when it comes to comments you can't win because someone will always scream about being deleted and/or oppressed in some way. The fact that they remain free to moan about it publicly seems to be lost on them.

Update: Just wanted to point out that these sort of things are inevitable now that media organisations are taking comments and thus turning what were static news sites into forums. Anyone that's been part of a forum will know that the "censorship argument" turns up every six months or so. Eventually people will just start linking to previous discussions about it instead of wasting their time writing the same arguments over and over again.

Archbishop attacks American "imperialism"

Whilst in the last post I said that politicians in the UK don't do religion, the same does not happen in reverse and religious men most certainly do do politics. Thus we have the Archbishop of Canterbury reported in the Sunday Times giving an interview to a Muslim magazine and pushing the all too typical anti-American line about how the US is a nasty imperial nation. As usual the word imperialism is not used of course and instead we have the notion of it being the "one global hegemonic power" instead.

The problem with the Archbishop's neo-marxist analysis of geopolitics is that as with almost every one on the Left who makes this argument it ignores the nature of power in the global arena. Thus America, because it is the top dog, is, by default, the cause of all the world's trouble, and in fact, Western modernity as a whole comes under attack.

Before one blindly accepts the Chomskian world view of America though it's worth remembering this. If America wasn't the "one global hegemonic power" someone else would be, and the alternatives are much much worse. The idea that if we could just bring America down a peg or two the world would become a giant group hug of love is absurd.

Countries like, China and Russia know this very well, but it serves their purposes to feed the idea that a single hegemonic power is a bad thing, but be under no illusion that if they could replace the US as top dog they'd be more than happy too, and the world would be a much worse place if it happened.

That bloke's a nutter!

This morning's Sunday Telegraph has one of the best headlines ever today with "Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'". In the next episode of the BBC's Blair Years he apparently says,

"It's difficult if you talk about religious faith in our political system... If you are in the American political system or others then you can talk about religious faith and people say 'yes, that's fair enough' and it is something they respond to quite naturally.

"You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter. I mean … you may go off and sit in the corner and … commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say 'right, I've been told the answer and that's it'."

Blair is absolutely right about the difference between the US and UK, and if you think about it for a second it's actually quite odd. In the US, you have a nation state that constitutionally separated the church by removing the right of Congress to make laws which established any religion. As a result religion and politics sit side by side quite happily, and does anyone doubt that the US is a majority Christian country? There is no legally established religion, but there is an established religion.

Meanwhile in the UK, we have a nation the state that continues to have the church intrinsically linked to it, which seems to have led to an unspoken convention that talking about God is strictly off limits for politicians. Effectively the disestablishment in the US Constitution appears to have created a greater dominance of religion over political power, whilst maintaining the system that the US Constitution sought to end has had the opposite effect in the UK.

Or maybe Britain is just a nation of part-time atheists?

Strange search referrers

I've had some pretty weird referrer searches from Google since I started this blog. One that sticks out in my mind was someone who was obviously looking for something 'different' in Scotland who landed on a Big Brother opening night post of mine. I had used the word transvestite and Glasgow in the post because one of the housemates was errrr... a transvestite from Glasgow.

This evening I've learned that someone out there has been searching for "white hart lane niggers" on Google, and, rather bizarrely I come top. Ironically this is again the fault of Big Brother, because it was in a post about the racism incident in the last series and someone mentioned White Hart Lane in my comments.

I'm not alone in being in the results though. The Guardian's Comment is Free comes fourth, just ahead of some sort of Eastern script based language site. What I'm wondering is why someone was searching for that specific search term?

Tonight on Radio Four

Should you be lucky enough to listen to the iPM show on BBC Radio 4 this evening between 5.30 and 6 you may hear yours truly in a short discussion with Lynne Featherstone MP about politician's use of the Internet and blogs. This is assuming they manage to edit it into five minutes as the actual discussion lasted eleven. The full thing will be available as a podcast.

I'm sure that I said something stupid but that's life I guess. I'm posting via email from my phone so there are no links but I will edit it later. Hopefully my robust defence of anonymous comments that took the form of 'don't read them' will get past the cutting room floor. I will do a post tomorrow expanding on what I said a bit.

Update: Here's is the full 11 minutes.

How to make 'viral' videos

If you've ever wondered how you can make a video on YouTube become a most viewed video and go "viral" then you should definitely have a read of this article titled "The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos" on TechCrunch. I can imagine that those people utterly obsessed with sockpuppets will have a major issue with some of the strategies outlined in the article.

For example, creating multiple identities on YouTube and starting an argument with yourself in the comments to generate controversy. Embedding the video on forums and doing the same thing there with multiple identities. Thing is, who really cares if the video is good?

It's worth noting that these sort of techniques are used with blogs too and Google index optimisation. Getting a blog high up in the Google index is most often acheived by having many fake advert type blogs that link to the relevant content. This is how some bloggers manage to push themselves up the index in rapid time.
From TechCrunch via Jag

The not so lucky button?

Are you one of the 1% of Google users that press "I'm Feeling Lucky" instead of viewing all search results? If you, it's been estimated that you are helping Google to lose about $110 million of revenue each year because you're not being delivered the sponsored links and ads in the search result.

Should you be an anti-capitalist socialist who hates large corporations and how they don't share the wealth with the proletariat you now have a way to "stick it to the man". Obviously you need to be careful what you search for or you might end up at a porn site automatically.