The best server for the main site

Over the past week we've introduced a new server on the main site. If you have problems getting through please link to this

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/

Going to the old URL should point you here but this is not happening in every case - so bookmark the above.

My new grandson

Today has been dominated by the birth of my new grandson, as yet unnanmed, to my elder daughter, Cayt and her husband Colin. It is their second child.

These things make you feel very proud and emotional so I thought I'd put up a picture.

Doesn't this picture say it all?

Is Gord capable of inspiring his party and the nation?

This is picture that was first featured here at the end of 2006 several months before Brown became prime minister. There he is, amongst enthusiastic Labour supporters and you would expect him to at least make the effort to show that he is delighted to see them. 

But look at him - he is rigid and cold as a cucumber. He's hardly an inspiration to even the most ardent enthusiast.

Yes it's easy to say that politics has become about personalities and not policies - but if a leader's personality makes it hard for him/her to inspire supporters about party policies and the vision behind them then you might as well not have them in the first place

Although you can get trained to deal with the technical points of communication the ability to make a compelling case is something that you either have or don't have. Brown's in the latter category.  

Will he survive tonight? Probably. What will be the consequence? The wounded leader will drift on, there'll be more YouTube and Alan Sugar-type gimmicks and the probability of a Labour melt-down at the general election will become even greater.

To me it's blindingly obvious that with Brown Labour is dead - only the demise will be prolonged. Without him the party stands a fighting chance of impeding the Cameron band-wagon.

(This post has been posted here as well as the main site because of the problems some people have had in getting through)

Marf's view

Euros 2009 results thread

This will be the thread for the Euros results outside the UK.

A couple of useful links:

TweetElect09

US Election Atlas International thread

The Netherlands voted on Thursday and detailed results are available here, with Geert Wilders' PVV finishing second with 17% of the vote.

I'll be aiming to keep track of the following countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK - but please post results and links from countries not in this list, and I'll try to look at the Czech Republic and Hungary too if possible.

Double Carpet

Getting onto the main site

We are having major problems with Register.com which manages the Politicalbetting.com domain.

To work round this use the following URL

www2.politicalbetting.com

You will then be able to open the latest main page but won't be able to get comments running. To get round this use the WWW2 prefix before politicalbetting in the URL for comments. Thus

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/06/07/are-7-cabinet-ministers-for-the-chop/#comments

I will put similar URLs for new threads as they appear.

Problems accessing main site

For some reason many are having a problem getting through to the main site. Instead of the latest page you get a cached page from April. To get round this please use this URL

http://87.106.214.196/

If it doesn't work first time then try again.

Many thanks