Over at that new daily must-read The Three Line Whip, Iain Martin has news of a letter that puts Wendy Alexander in a very difficult position. Alexander wrote to Paul Green, who as a tax exile is not entitled to make political contributions, to thank him for donating to her campaign. Wendy, sister of Douglas and protégé of Gordon, is now hanging onto her job by a thread.
This evening, Peter Hain has announced that his campaign failed to register a £5,000 donation from Jon Mendelsohn, the chief fundraiser who was told by Peter Watt of how Abrahams was donating money back in the autumn. It is also been reported that it was Gordon Brown’s campaign manager, Chris Leslie, who put the Harman campaign in touch with Janet Kidd, one of the people who was donating money to Labour on Abraham’s behalf.
Yates of the Yard is back. So runs the delicious rumour now the Old Bill has been dragged into the donations scandal: Yates won’t run the investigation but he has been appointed the overseeing officer. And Yates has a dossier of all the donors ready. He knows this situation backwards. To help his team on their way, Coffee House would like to do its duty for Queen and country and report the gossip around Westminster this evening. 1) The theory that Abrahams was not the “real” donor is popular amongst those who suspect this was Israeli money being funnelled through him by fans of Blair’s position on Iraq (remember, the first
I was bicycling to work along the south side of Hyde Park, admiring the last of the autumn colours, when, glancing to my left, I saw an enormous Ferris wheel. I know I am strictly a fair-weather cyclist and this week has been a rain-filled one, but this huge machine has sprung up near Hyde Park Corner without anyone — all right, me — knowing anything about it. Who put it up? When will it start working? How long is it there for?
Martin Bright has a typically excellent column in the New Statesman about this whole fundraising scandal. Here’s the key graf: “Claims that no one but Watt knew what was going on are already unravelling. As the story broke, one former Labour fundraiser told me: “It just doesn’t wash. You make it your business to know your high-value donors in the same way a detective gets to know his suspects. It is inconceivable that people didn’t know who David Abrahams was.” And so it proved to be over the hours that followed: Baroness Jay knew enough to warn Hilary Benn not to touch the money from an Abrahams intermediary; Tony Blair’s
How well is school literacy doing under Labour? The international PIRLS study shows England has plunged from 3rd to 19th in the league tables between 2001 and 2006 – a staggering dropped exceeded only by Morocco and Romania. This is how well we’re preparing for globalisation. Doubling the education budget has not, after all, worked.
An interesting but worthless column from Jackie Ashley. “It won’t be easy for Gordon Brown to dig himself out of the hole he has fallen into in recent weeks. But a broad back, an ability to say sorry, a coolness under fire and an unwillingness to dump on colleagues would certainly help.” Worthless, I say, because Brown enjoys precisely none of these qualities. Ashley’s remedy for Gordon Brown’s problems would, um, seem to be that he cease to be Gordon Brown. [Hat tip: James Forsyth]
Cricket Housekeeping: 1. Since this post making the case that Shane Warne is, indisputably, a greater cricketer than Muttiah Muralitharan it’s only fair to note that Murali had the chance to show that he can win matches in Australia as well as Sri Lanka. Granted, the tests were played at Brisbane and Hobart rather than Sydney but still: four wickets at 100 apiece is not an impressive return. 2. England are now preparing – in their usual slapdash* style – for a series in Sri Lanka. Having wisely decided to leave the best English batsman at home (that would be Mark Ramprakash, who, though 38, has enjoyed a Bradmanesque flowering
Mercy me. Mark Halperin makes a lateish run for Most Incriminating Column of the Year with this entry, published in today’s New York Times in which he laments how terrible it is that the media have confused campaign froth with the stuff that might actually indicate whether or not a politician is capable of performing the duties custom and the constitution assigns to the President of the United States of America. Halperin, formerly Political Director at ABC News, argues that: Our political and media culture reflects and drives an obsession with who is going to win, rather than who should win. For most of my time covering presidential elections, I
This is the sort of thing that reminds me why I enjoy The Economist‘s under-appreciated sense of humour: George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both deeply religious, referring frequently to God’s guiding hand. Both are idealists rather than pragmatists, and skilled at folksy populism. Both have replaced dozens of competent officials with like-minded conservatives. And both are now considered, by a large slice of their countrymen, to be bungling and dangerous. The difference is that it has taken Mr Ahmadinejad just two years in power to achieve the unpopularity Mr Bush has gained after six. Then again, James Fallows had a point when he wrote, in 1991(!) about: The other
Kieran Healy wants to know how Newsweek can think a line can be fine and blurry: Growing Up Giuliani: Rudy Giuliani was raised to understand that fine, blurry line between saint and sinner. The making of his moral code. I want to know how the line between saint and sinner can be fine or blurry. Then again, Giuliani doesn’t enjoy even a residual, ingrained Calvinism does he?
In a TV interview tonight, Barack Obama takes one of his harshest shots yet at Hillary Clinton. “I think the fact of the matter is that Senator Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn’t work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it,” Obama said, and added, referring to his relationship with his wife, Michelle, “There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in her and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle, if there were issues,” Obama told “Nightline” co-anchor Terry
The Oxford Union’s decision to invite David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak confuses the right to free speech with a duty to offer people a platform. Nick Griffin is, within the bounds of the law, free to sound off in his usual obnoxious way. But that freedom doesn’t oblige anyone to ask Griffin to come and speak to them. Equally, artists were free to draw the Muhammad cartoons but newspapers weren’t obliged to reprint them. When it comes to Irving the question ,as Deborah Lipstadt points out–via Clive, is not about intelligence but knowledge. Those listening to him won’t be able to hold him to account for his views, as they
The Observer has a very readable piece on the opaque nature of the European Parliament this week. One fact in it is truly shocking, even to someone fairly sceptical about the whole affair. This year, the European Union spent £14,400,400 investigating how to reduce the parliament’s administrative costs. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.
Barack Obama got the question about who he would invite to his ideal dinner party from a newspaper in New Hampshire. The guest list of Jesus, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln was revealing about how he sees himself. First, it is noticeable that Obama doesn’t pick a Democrat. Second, no figure from the civil rights movement is included. Finally, the mention of Jesus is typical of Obama’s comfort with talking about faith. Who would be on Coffee Housers’ list? Hat tip: The Politico
Q. I am a fan of The Archers but my listening pleasure always dips whenever one of the villagers makes the offer of ‘a coffee’ to another Ambridge resident. I feel the producers of the soap are failing to serve their loyal audience as it deserves, and are also missing an audio trick, in that they persistently omit any information about the nature of the beverage provided even though we live in a very caffeine-conscious age. For example, I would expect the Grundys to be a Nescafé family and the Aldridges users of cafetières, but there is never the happy sound of beans being ground in Jennifer’s Aga kitchen, and
For the past five years or so, my best friends and I have been getting together for a Christmas lunch. Because I’m a food critic — or was, until recently — they have always left it to me to make the booking on the understanding that I’ll be able to secure a better table than they would. More often than not, this assumption proved to be correct and we have enjoyed memorable meals at some of the country’s finest restaurants. Now that I no longer have a restaurant column, this year is shaping up to be very different. I had forgotten just how hard it is for a mere ‘civilian’
My partner has bought a wood. Seriously, he has. He simply came home one day and said, ‘I have something to tell you.’ Oh good, I thought, he’s leaving me. Now at last I can get on with my life. ‘I’ve bought a wood,’ he said. My partner likes the outdoor life and camping. He’ll often go off for a few days, big rucksack and frying-pan bouncing off his back. I tried camping with him once but ended up sitting in the car for two days with the heater on, crying and wishing I was in John Lewis. I guess I am more the indoorsy type. He has, it turns
Soon we will live on Mars. There is no doubt about that. Space is the great adventure of this millennium. It’s growing more rapidly as a place of business than China or India. It just needs its Damien Hirst. One peerless and fearless luminary who can make us all realise how much we need a piece of it: someone who can take command of the heavens and sell them to us. We are already in a golden age of planetary science. Since the Apollo moon landings nearly 40 years ago there have been missions to every planet and most of the interesting moons in the solar system. All of these
Last Saturday I was sitting at the kitchen table ready to go out for the evening, when I heard at the tail end of a radio news bulletin that the English poet Vernon Scannell had died. The name rang a bell. I went to the bookshelf and, yes, there was Vernon Scannell’s Collected Poems 1950–1993, bought several years ago in a charity shop and not looked at since. I hadn’t heard of Vernon Scannell before I came across his book of poems by chance, or of the publisher. I was intrigued by the paperback’s unpretentious design. On the back cover a poetry critic admitted to liking the poems enough to