blog off for Christmas

Merry Christmas

Thanks to both of you who read this blog. As Christmas is now almost upon us I will be turning my attention to family matters until the 27th.

I have been tagged by Caroline Hunt in the 8 for 2008 meme and I think that I will give it some thought over the next few days, I will also post my review of 2007 for you delectation.

Have a fantastic Christmas, I hope that you get everything that you really want and not too much of what you don't.

Tony Blair become a Roman Catholic

Not a huge surprise, this has been rumoured for some time. I just wonder why he felt that he couldn't do this while still in office.

Christmas message

Lib Dem front bench

I don't think that we can read too much into Clegg's front bench appointments although for someone who claims to be all about change there are plenty of old names still about. To be fair he hasn't got that many MPs to choose from.

I'm very disappointed to see Sarah Teather in the Business portfolio, what the hell does she know about business?

Well done Nick Clegg

By just 511 votes Nick Clegg becomes the current leader of the Liberal Democrats.

All the best.

Blink has gone bonkers

This article on Blink.org.uk is well worth a read. Have a look and tell me if you think that the group that met has any grasp on reality.

Boris on public health

I was at Policy Exchange this morning listening to Boris' speech on public health. I wonder if it is going to get anything like the amount of exposure in the media that it deserves?

Livingstone's time in office will be remembered for his throwing huge amounts of money at transport while almost completely ignoring other elements of London governance. Public health is one area of screaming omission.

Issues like HIV, diabetes, childhood obesity and heart disease are important and to hear that London has some of the highest levels of these in the country is saddening, particularly when we are one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

This was a serious speech, there were light moments of course and it wouldn't be Boris if he didn't get in a plug for more cycling but it was too important an issue for gags.

Boris proposed serious reform of the London Health Commission, this is one of the policy ideas that he and his team have been working on behind the scenes, it is what an impatient media have been asking for, I wonder if they even bother reporting it?

Livingstone’s response to the Lee Jasper allegations shows why he is not fit to govern London

Last week Andrew Gilligan wrote a series of stories alleging the serious misconduct of a senior Livingstone aide. The Mayor released a press statement within a few hours, completely dismissing the article and accusing Gilligan of a racially and politically motivated attack on the wider “black community”.

Livingstone’s response was so swift that he couldn’t have had enough time to look into these allegations. Dismissing hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of pounds worth of lost funds without any investigation should be a cause of alarm to all Londoners. Someone who is unconcerned by the loss of up to two and a half million pounds of public money should not be in charge of London’s budget.

As well as his nonchalant attitude towards wasted tax funded grants, he has shown a disturbing willingness to accuse people of racism. Racism is a serious issue and as such deserves to be dealt with in a mature and rational way, it is easy to accuse someone of racism and almost impossible to prove that you’re not. For this reason it should not be spraying around by people purporting to be serious politicians.

I have worked in publishing for years and in my experience journalists don’t just make up stories, and when the story is of this magnitude they make sure that they have the evidence to back up what they have written. I don’t believe for a minute that Livingstone really thinks Gilligan is a racist, he has played the race card purely as a diversionary tactic because the Standard’s allegations of financial irregularities are coming a little too close to the Mayor’s door.

Livingstone could end all of this quickly and easily. If he called in independent auditors, opened up the books and answered the questions put to him no one could then question his or Lee Jasper’s probity? I doubt that he will do so and his failure to should tell you everything you need to know.

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

From Westminster Cathedral with the Fire Brigade on Thursday to drinks with Guido Fawkes in the Marquis of Granby on Friday.

London Fire Brigade carol service

I had a very pleasant evening last night at the Fire Brigade carol service at Westminster Cathedral.

Johnny Vaughn from Capital Radio and Graham Cole from The Bill were amongst those who did readings. I would like to extend my thanks to the London Fire Brigade.

Uniform responce

I wrote about Brian Paddick's uniform a little while ago. You can read it here.

Jonathan Isaby picked it up and wrote about it in the Telegraph. You can read it here.

Smith, pay and policing

I absolutely cannot condone any form of strike action by the police, it would lead to mayhem.

I suspect that the police know this and they have little real desire to go on strike, the fact that they are even considering this course of action shows just how badly relations between the police and the Home Secretary have become.

Just like the military, the police have seen more militant public servants getting huge increases in funding while they have been asked to do more and more with less and less. The explosion in street crime, increased terrorism threat, etc. have not been matched with increased funding. The police, like the army, are getting fed up.

Personally I feel that this is more damaging that Northern Rock (but not as damaging as the whole dodgy donor scandal).

Old news

I wonder why the "Boris is s racist" stories are bubbling up again? You may remember that these allegations first did the rounds in the summer when Livingstone was clearly hoping to scare the Conservatives out of nominating Boris.

Suddenly the same story is floating around again, firstly in the New Nation and then in the Mirror and the London Paper. Is this sudden Resurrection anything to do with diverting attention away from the string of financial mismanagement stories running in the Evening Standard?

Answers on a postcard.

Is Brown playing politics with the troops again?

Maybe I'm getting really cynical in my old age!

Gordon Brown is running away from trouble yet again. In the height of lost data, funding scandals and appalling PMQ performances Brown runs off to Iraq to give us a bit of good news about troop numbers. I guess he hopes it will flood the news and distract us all.

I didn't work last time.

Self portrait

This is what happens when you play round with a photo editing package while half regretting not taking up a place at art school twenty years previously.

To see how it's meant to be done visit Julian Opie's website

Is this appropriate?

This is a screen grab from Brian Paddick's campaign site as at the 9th of December 2007, I notice that he is in a police uniform.

I thought that he had left the police. I wonder if this is a recent photo, if so is he impersonating a police officer?

It just gets worse

The situation with David Abrahams just won't go away! Poor old Labour.

Just when the dodgy donor scandal would have dropped off the front pages the Jewish Chronicle story puts it straight back there. Then Mr Abrahams comes out fighting and ensures that he will still be front page news for this weekend's Sunday papers.

For a "publicity shy" man, he's very good at keeping himself in the news.

Power to the people

I like the idea of generating my own power at home. I have long felt that small, local should trump big and distant wherever possible, so small and local power generation is a naturally Conservative solution.

It would be good for the environment, improve our fuel security situation, reduce waste and keep a little bit more money in people's pockets. If we can generate (sorry for the pun) a real consumer demand for these technologies I believe the manufacturers would pull all the stops out to supply.

Was it me?

There was an incident earlier this year that I didn't blog about at the time, perhaps I should have.

Blink wrote an article about the reactions to Doreen Lawrence's article in the Guardian, it was entitled "Doreen Lawrence savaged by Tory bloggers". The savaging by actual Tory bloggers totalled Iain Dale asking "Who put Doreen up to it" and me saying that while I had a great deal of respect for her, her remarks were unjustified and unfair. Hardly brutal.

I took particular exception to some quotes in the piece from my blog. This is how it was reported on Blink:

James Cleverly, a Conservative candidate for the London assembly, refused a
plea to remove a similarly odious comment from his own blog.

An anonymous contributor writing on Cleverly’s blog said: “I have spoken to
one of Stephen Lawrence's mates... far from being the church going saint made
out by the family he was part of a particularly odious inner city black gang who
took particular delight in beating other rival gang members to within a minute
of their life. Those who live by the sword....”

Another poster, Chris Paul, asked Cleverly to remove that comment but the
Tory candidate refused to delete it citing “free speech” and insisting “I have
no idea whether what you say about Stephen is true or not.”

And this the complete reaction that I wrote:

None of what you have written is relevant to this discussion, Stephen
Lawrence's killers are walk free today because of a botched investigation by the
Met Police. McPherson concluded that it was botched at least in part because of
racist attitude with the force.

I have no idea whether what you say about Stephen is true or not. Lots of
people claim lots of things to make themselves look big after an event like
this. But, even if it is true, it does not excuse his murder, everyone has
protection under the law and everyone deserves to have the murder of a loved on
fully and competently investigated.

(I apologise for the typos).

I hope that you'll agree that the tone of my response was very different to that which was reported.

I rang Lester Holloway up, I have known Lester for a number of years and I was very disappointed with how he had reported the exchange. It wasn't a friendly chat, it was also overheard by most of my colleagues at work.

I asked if he felt that it was fair and accurate reporting, Lester basically said that Blink has an agenda set by the 1990 Trust and that he had to write in support of that agenda. I gave him a very hard time over that and questioned his editorial integrity.

Reading Andrew's follow up in today's Standard it seems that Lester does indeed have integrity, according to the article he complained to his bosses. Shortly after he complained he lost his job.

I wonder if the conversation that I had with Lester triggered his complaint. Whether it was me or not I'm glad he is out of it, he is better than that.

Why no action from Livingstone?

Even before the ink was dry on Andrew Gilligan's article on Lee Jasper, Livingstone's machine jumped to his defence.

Once again the Mayor has fallen back on unfounded allegations of racism, it is his favoured weapon, in the press release he asks.

"Exactly what does Andrew Gilligan think is wrong with the giving African and Caribbean owned businesses advice and mentoring or supporting the parents, carers and families of African and African Caribbean pupils?"

I don't remember any criticism of giving money to black businesses or pupils, I think the criticism was giving public funds to defunct businesses owned by the Head of Diversity's friends and associates. The press release goes on to say:

"Once again, Andrew Gilligan has used the Evening Standard as a platform for
campaign targeting black and ethnic minority organisations."

And what does Livingstone define as this campaign? The fact that Gilligan said the Boris wasn't a racist and that the plan to give black and Asian taxi drivers more money than white taxi drivers was unfair.

Let's have a look at who has recently been branded a racist by Livingstone's allies. Well Boris got both barrels, as have I, now Andrew Gilligan and so did Trevor Phillips.

That's right, Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equalities Commission, former Chair of the Runnymead Trust, Black Labour politician, branded a racist by Livingstone.

Livingstone's failure even to call for an enquiry into Gilligan's allegations is very telling as is his willingness to describe everyone who disagrees with him a racist.

Livingstone advisor in possible funding scandal

Livingstone is cliquey, very cliquey. You can get away with that if your clique is honest, hard working and effective. Unfortunately the Livingstone clique is not. One of the people at the heart of the Livingstone machine is Lee Jasper, a powerful and influential advisor to the Mayor.

He is on big money, £100,000 or more a year, has no electoral mandate and does not have to fill in a register of members interests. Pity, it might be useful.

Andrew Gilligan has a major piece on the way that funding influenced by Mr Jasper has been distributed to organisations and companies that he is involved in or is close to. That in itself would be unacceptable, but it has also been alleged that the funds have not been appropriately spent .

Office expenses for an organisation with no offices, grants to companies which not longer exist, money for equipment that never materialised. If true, even true in parts, it is damning stuff and will reflect very badly on the Mayor.

Lee Jasper will need to answer some tough questions and do so quickly.

Boris' Christmas party

I'm just back from BJ's Christmas party at the Star Wars exhibition in County Hall, there were Jedi Knights, Storm Troopers, Darth Vader and the Evil Emperor (hoping for a third term?).

There were also quite a large number of London Conservatives and lots of mini mince pies. Boris said that he was proud to be running for Mayor of the greatest city in the world, then looking at the various spacecraft and aliens of the exhibition added "probably the greatest city in the universe, and if I've upset some city in a far off galaxy I'm sure I'll be sent there to apologise".

One theme that came out in this speech was his desire to unify London, both in terms of geography and community. Livingstone is a divisive Mayor who relies on divide and conquer for too often, if Boris is able to communicate his desire to work for zone 6 as much as zone 1, for all faiths and those of no faith, for black, white and everyone else he may well win with a huge majority. And rightly so.

Party funding

I am sick to death of Labour's attitude to public money. Remember the way that Labour MPs in marginal seats abused their postage allowance by blanket bombing their constituencies with mail? I do!

So Labour brought in the communications allowance, the punishment for a breach of the rules was receipt of more public funds. Did it work? No it didn't, Labour MPs are still abusing the system, we just have to pay more for the privilege.

Labour has now broken the law with regard to fundraising, Gordon's solution is increased public funding for political parties. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

Squeezing the general public because the Labour party can't stick to the law is disgusting. There should be marching in the streets. I don't think for a second that changing the law on party funding will stop Labour breaking it, it didn't last time.

How much kit have we lost?

There are a few points that we should have a think about.

We hear about the fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been far too many, we rarely hear about the wounded. What we don't hear about at all is the loss of major equipment. Challenger II, Warrior, Merlin helicopters, Apache helicopters etc. are all multi-million pound bits of kit.

I have it on good authority that we are losing these at a rate 5-6 times greater than planned. Even if this is an overestimate, the bill for replacing this equipment will be huge and I doubt that Labour will be too keen on spending the money. In fact I wouldn't be surprised it there are funding cuts as part of a fictitious "peace dividend" just when more money is needed.

I suspect that there are plenty of Labour politicians hoping to kick this issue into the long grass and hope that the next Conservative government will deal with it.

There are a number of questions which should be asked in the Commons to give us an idea of the effect that these conflicts are having on us. What key equipment have we lost? What are the plans to replace them? What is the timescale for their replacement?

And on the human side: We know that the retention rate has collapsed but what has been the change in the divorce rate in the armed forces over the last ten years?

I suspect that there would be a lot of squirming on the Labour benches.

Good news from Sudan, but it's not enough

It's great to hear that Gillian Gibbons is to be released, her arrest and conviction formed a terrible overreaction to a simple and innocent mistake.

We shouldn't allow this act by the Sudanese government to blind us to the horror which is still going on in that country. I was amazed and disappointed by the reaction to Iran's release of the sailors and marines, a number of people took this a proof that Ahmadinejad's regime wasn't that bad after all.

Darfur is still an open sore and we need to keep our focus on Sudan until it is resolved.

BNP, Nazis, Oxford, free speech and me

I didn't comment on the Oxford Union free speech debate and the arguments that went with it at the time, I was more interested in DC's CBI speech and the Labour party's illegal fundraising. That said I was genuinely torn, I hate the BNP and everything they stand for but I am a passionate defender of free speech.

So where do I stand on this issue?

I would not have invited either Griffin or Irving to speak if I were the Chairman of the Union, I'm not, they did. Banning them from speaking, as many protesters demanded, would be a deeply dangerous thing to do. We have laws which cover incitement and if they broke them they should rightly be arrested and prosecuted, but banning them just because you don't like what they say is a totalitarian act.

I have come under some stick over this very issue because of some comments made by others on this blog. I have been tempted to delete the comments then I ask myself how I would feel if my opinions were deleted from a left wing blog just because I am a Conservative or how left wingers would feel if I deleted their views.

You cannot beat fascists by being fascist. Peter Hitchin has a very interesting take on this in the Mail.