The future is...orange?

An orange-looking David Cameron at a photo call, launching their election campaign on education inside a Labour-built academy in Walworth. © Magnus Andersson

In mid-January I covered a photo call with Conservative leader David Cameron. They had just launched a poster campaign were he appeared heavily airbrushed and the Tories came in for a lot of criticism for it. Judging by his pigment tone on this occasion, he certainly appeared to have spent the morning in a sunbed or a spray booth, quite possibly both.

Almost immediately the spoof posters started turning up as well, I've included a couple of them in this post and you can find more of them over at MyDavidCameron.com.


Spoof poster from MyDavidCameron.com.

On that day, Cameron visited a newly built academy in Walworth and it was very cheeky of him to be standing there trying to take credit for a brilliant new school when it was all proposed and built under Labour initiatives. Same old Tories?


David seems to loose his concentration as Michael Gove, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, explains their educational pledge. © Magnus Andersson

There was quite a few photographers and journalists there on the day and on his walk around one of the agency photographers was assigned so I never got any shots of Cameron chatting to our local pupils, but in the reception I noticed BBC News political editor Nick Robinson having an argument with one of Cameron's press aides.


Orange on red; David delivers his educational pledge inside a Labour built academy. © Magnus Andersson

Apparently she didn't want to hear any questions about the proposal to give married couples a tax break. The Tories had first suggested it, then started backtracking when they realised they had no idea how this tax break would work, and now the press aide pleaded with Nick not to ask about it on their live interview in a few minutes. Her argument? It wasn't 'newsy' enough. Yeah right.


Nick Robinson, political editor at the BBC, points out that David Cameron doesn't really know what he is talking about now, is he? © Magnus Andersson

Around this time the Tories were almost 10% ahead in the polls. This weekends' poll shows that there are now only 2% (well within the margin of error) between Labour and the Tories and there has been much speculation that Gordon Brown is about to call a snap election.

Perhaps the airbrushed posters have backfired on the Conservatives? The future is always bright but the future might not be orange after all.


Another spoof poster from MyDavidCameron.com.

Post amendment: here's what David said earlier today and it includes the poll figures I alluded to in this post.

And the correct answer is...

© Magnus Andersson

...UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

I put up a little quiz a few days ago, and the response was overwhelming, NOT! I got one reply, from a person that went to the same class as me. Cheating - I believe I mentioned it - will not be tolerated! That someone owes me a drink.


cutting from today's Guardian. © Magnus Andersson

Today has been a day of endless frustration though. I was supposed to have the morning off and not start until 12.30 but got a call at 10am from my editor. I was needed to photograph the parents of yet another teenage murder victim.

OK, I'll try and be there for 11.15. Turned up on time but couldn't find any parking for the next 20 minutes, saw our crime reporter knocking on the door as I went past trying alternative roads, found a spot and knocked on the door myself. Spoke to one of their relatives and apparently there had been a misunderstanding. They had NOT agreed to a photo in the end, so my morning of lie-in-turned-exclusive-photo-opportunity had become an early start on a day when I'm supposed to be working late.

I managed to get back to the office for a few minutes to download the jobs from the day before, but didn't have time to edit them in Photoshop. Had to go off to the remaining three jobs and after that got home to download, at 19.30.

Earlier in the week I'd ordered some new RAM for my computer at home and tried installing it when I got home. Bad mistake.

The computer broke. Damn machine! As soon as I turned it on again it started beeping every second and wouldn't go through the boot routine. It got stuck on a 'PCI Device Listing' screen and did nothing else. In the end I gave up and downloaded my jobs on my girlfriends laptop instead, which doesn't have the Nikon software that I use for captioning, and its damn slow, so it meant a lot more work.

While waiting for the download I googled my PC's condition and after much re-starting and fiddling, I managed to get it to work on one of the RAM sticks, but not both. So this post is brought to you on 50% RAM capacity, not 100%. I wasted 4 hours getting here, but hopefully I've only wasted a minute or so of your time.

Apologies.

The last pic is from today, of some kids whose life is a lot worse than for most of us. Yet they still achieve. More on this later perhaps. I'm not complaining anymore.


© Magnus Andersson