St George's Day 2007

8pm ToryDiary update: Party Board's decision on MEP selection

6pm BritainAndAmerica update: Will the world act now in Darfur?

3.30pm ToryDiary update: William Hague reacts to Boris Yeltsin's death

BBC | CNN

3pm ToryDiary update: Will Miliband, Balls and Reid be Gordon Brown's triple crown?

12.30pm ToryDiary update: Sarkozy would be good for France but not for Turkey

ToryDiary: Cameron insists he was right about Greg Dyke

THE "NEW KIND OF POLITICS"

"David Cameron decided to ignore all the obvious worries, and press ahead, for one overriding reason. He was convinced that Greg Dyke would be a vastly better mayor than Ken Livingstone. Even if he was not a Tory, there would be much less waste and no further attempts to run a mayoral foreign policy. If the Dyke plan had worked, Mr Cameron would have claimed that he had put London first. As it is, Menzies Campbell saw a chance to embarrass the Tory leader and irritate his natural supporters." - Bruce Anderson in the Independent

MANIFESTO FOR A BETTER SOCIETY

"Conservative leader David Cameron is calling for a "revolution in responsibility" to counter a rising tide of anti-social behaviour. He told the BBC Labour's "knee-jerk" reaction to any problem was to bring in new laws - but they often discouraged people from taking action themselves. Less state intervention will be part of his "manifesto" for a better society." - BBC

"Britain has become a country of "incredible incivility", where people are rude to each other, David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said yesterday. He urged people not to "walk on the other side" when they witnessed bad behaviour, but to intervene and play their part in building a stronger society. Mr Cameron will today set out a Conservative manifesto for a "responsible society" and argue that the trend to worsening behaviour can be reversed." - Telegraph

SCOTTISH TORIES HAVE THE ONLY REALISTIC MANIFESTO

"Scotland's leading public-finance expert, who has criticised the spending plans of both the SNP and Labour, has praised the "transparent and realistic" policies of the Scottish Conservatives. The positive analysis by Professor Arthur Midwinter is revealed today in the final part of an exclusive series for The Scotsman on the main parties' financial plans." - Scotsman

FREE NHS IS A MIRAGE SAY 'DOCTORS FOR REFORM'

"Patients will have to pay far more for more private health care to make up shortfalls in the NHS, a group of doctors says today in a damning report.  Faced with long waiting lists and postcode lotteries, the doctors say that patients are increasingly paying extra private payments to upgrade the treatment they receive.  Despite the Government pouring billions of pounds into the NHS to improve the quality of care, they claim that top-up payments will increase in major areas of the health service such as cancer care and heart disease.  The report shatters the NHS's founding principle that health care should be free for all at the point of delivery.  Patient groups said the study highlighted Britain's "two-tier health system", where people with money had access to a range of treatments and those without did not." - Telegraph

EU REFERENDUM DOUBLE-TALK

" There is considerable agreement that the European Union badly needs reform, including constitutional reform, but there is a division between Britain and Brussels about the direction that reform ought to take. It is a question of who should get the power: Parliament or bureaucrats. Most British people want to to see a more liberal Europe, with more democratic values. What they now see is an increasingly bureaucratic Europe, in which power is still moving towards nonelected bodies." - William Rees-Mogg in the Times

SAVE THE WHALES

"In a career spanning four decades, Lord Ashcroft — born Michael Anthony Ashcroft — has assumed a variety of mantles. He was a callow accountant, an up-and-coming contract cleaning entrepreneur, a Thatcher-era corporate raider, Belize’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and treasurer of the Conservative Party. Yet it is his latest incarnation that may raise eyebrows. Meet Baron Ashcroft of Chichester KCMG, ecological warrior." - Times

REMEMBERING THE BARD

"Shakespeare did more than understand his country. He defined it, giving it a set of ideas and a vocabulary that have shaped its development to this day. No other corpus of writing is at once so peculiar to a people and so universal to mankind except, perhaps, the Torah. This is what England should celebrate on St George’s Day. Our power may wane, and all our pomp of yesteryear be one with Nineveh and Tyre but, as long as English is spoken and Shakespeare’s canon preserved, we shall never be just another country." - Daniel Hannan MEP's Telegraph blog

MINISTERS ACCUSED OF BREACHING CODE 100 TIMES

"Theresa May, shadow leader of the Commons, sent Mr Brown a dossier showing that Government ministers had been accused of breaking the ministerial code 100 times. In an indication that the Conservatives now see Mr Brown heading for No 10 without any serious challenge, Mrs May said: "Gordon Brown has an opportunity to clean up government. I hope he takes it." Mr Brown, who has kept his distance from the "cash for peerages" scandal engulfing Mr Blair, believes that the Tories have escaped the scrutiny that has caused such damage to Labour." - Telegraph

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