I loved the bit of the old site giving a link to Brown's non-political speeches. How did he give them? With his mouth shut? I think we should be told.

Paris 'cos she's got more competence than the whole body politic put together.

They're the Government. They don't HAVE to explain why they do ANYTHING!

On a lighter note, another victory for the "blog bullies"

No, those are the ones he gives with his mouth open. The political ones are given with the mouth closed (or, more usually, miming along) as he's actually talking from the other end.....

...and won't they bang on and on and on about it, congratulating each other in what is in effect a mass circle jerk. Thankfully for the sanity of the nation most people will remain completely oblivious to their hysterical ranting. The problem is that lazy/overworked/unanalytical journalists seem to regard bloggers as an easy way of trying to work out what 'the authentic voice of the people' is saying, when in actual fact it's far more likely to be talking about curry/ house prices/ breasts/ the weather/ breasts etc.

That'd be us here, pissing away our time commenting on this shite.

Bugger!

"...and won't they bang on and on and on about it, congratulating each other in what is in effect a mass circle jerk. ....By Tim J Posted Tuesday 15th April 2008 14:08 GMT

Only the jerks, Tim J, for there are always other blog bullies in need of and ripe for exposure when not thinking and spinning that they don't HAVE to explain why they do ANYTHING!

PS I'm a leg man myself, for at least the most of them are real and lead you straight to Seventh Heaven. :-)

... for fear we might see, hear or feel something that upsets our poor precious selves.

Or to put it another way; what a load of shite. So what if they had a link on their page? They're a LABOUR government ffs.

What are the bloggers fearful of? Millions of tory, lib, green, ukip, monster raving loony, natural law and bnp voters, visiting the government site click on this link (which is unlikely to appeal anyway!) and are - shock, horror - taken to the NuLab website, prompting an immediate brainwash and causing an otherwise close-run race to be a landslide victory for Gordy Brown and chum(p)s?

Or will the page open, people go 'ooh Labour' or 'urgh Labour' and read on or close the web page as befits their political persuasions?

Anybody who sees a link to "Gordon Brown's Political Speeches" and *clicks it* is beyond pity.

Some government hack left it in a taxi when they nipped into a pub. They should learn to be more careful with their links, security policy is one thing but if some idiot in .gov leaves a link lying around then someone is going to remove it. Just hope you are not one of the people affected by this link going amiss. Why oh why can't they encrypt links properly instead of leaving them out in plain view.

Downing St should not be advertising the newlabour party. In my eyes it's the equivalent of them stringing vote labour across the roof of the commons, just because they lead parliament.

Ethical issues aside is not against 'guidelines' to use public money to fund a campaign for a party?

I doubt that newlabour pay for the bandwidth, hosting, design etc of the site.

Um, no, it's clearly not an appropriate link for a government website unless it links to the main sites for all political parties. Someone overstepped the mark and it was removed for good reason.

Some spin doctor must have heard that having links on a web page can lead to all kinds of "good things" so he decreed that there should be one in the Downing Street web page and, Lo and Behold, it was so !! Of course, they ignored such inconvenient facts as that such a biased link is not allowed by law unless there are links to all the other parties' website too !!

Now that the link is removed, and like all good(?) spin doctors, they'll tell you that there was no such link and that it's all in your imagination and that, even if there was, it was for the sake of national security or some such tosh !!

Icon because that's what they'll do to your rear !!

Well do they put the link on the LEFT or Right or Centre of the page?...

Politics is so er, correct these days.....

Not sure they're 'beyond pity'. But I am sure it's further evidence of the failure of Care In The Community.

As with sex, so with politics. Life has moved on. Grown ups of whatever age realise there's now nothing shameful about sex. Politics though. . . that's now too obscene for words.

Let alone speeches.