Ashes to ashes

It seems I am not the only "political" blogger to be diversifying into cricket coverage in the wake of England's Ashes flop. The Lib Dems' Jonathan Calder has an excellent post about how the lack of state games is affecting our chances, while Tory blogger Richard Bailey also has some very illuminating thoughts on the matter.

Meanwhile Phil McIntosh, who has no particular political affiliations to my knowledge, has set up an excellent new blog dedicated to the Ashes series entitled Middle and Off.

Perhaps the only vaguely amusing thing to have come out of England's trials and tribulations thus far is that Monty Panesar's failure to be picked for either the Brisbane or Adelaide debacles has apparently boosted his chances of winning the absurd Sports Personality of the Year contest on Sunday.

If the award lives up to its name, the winner will surely be Darren Clarke, who did indeed show plenty of personality in overcoming his wife's death to help Europe win the Ryder Cup. But if it were about sporting achievement - which it never really has been - it should surely be between Joe Calzaghe, Beth Tweddle and Zara Phillips.

The mark of the Beast

In a comment on the previous post, "Guardian Reader" questions the choice of Dennis Skinner as one of my least favourite MPs, saying: "I don't understand why you consider Dennis Skinner to be part of a deeply unpleasant Derbyshire old [Labour] mafia."

"I agree that he is not the national treasure that he seems to have become, and I worry that his lack of engagement in his constituency is akin to Tony Benn's similar disregard of Chesterfield - notably lost to the Liberal Democrats once he left. (Will Bolsover suffer the same fate?)

"However, when you consider the Derbyshire Labour MPs, I can't think of a single one who could be considered old Labour or mafia. That's not to say they're all Blairites, by the way.

"If you mean the councillors in North Derbyshire, you might have a point; but to be fair to Dennis he only criticises Labour within the party, not in public - which is more than can be said about MPs such as Charles Clarke!"

Well, the answer to the question why I consider Skinner to be part of a "deeply unpleasant Derbyshire Old Labour mafia" relates to an old story dating back to a General Election campaign in the 1970s which deserves to be retold in full.

A group of Labour activists were out canvassing for Skinner on a bleak estate outside Clay Cross when the following doorstep exchange took place.

Canvasser: "Own this 'ouse, do yer?"
Voter: "No, it's rented."
Canvasser: "Council 'ouse, is it?"
Voter: "Yes, that's right."
Canvasser: "Wanna keep yer council 'ouse?"
Voter: "Well, yes, 'course I do."
Canvasser: "Well then fookin' vote Labour."

I doubt if the said canvasser was actually Skinner himself, or even his equally obstreperous brother David, a former road-ganger who was later awarded a job by Labour-run Derbyshire County Council as cultural attache to Japan. But it was on such Old Labour thuggery that his political career was built.

There are probably plenty of other Labour MPs of whom the same could be said. But unlike Skinner, none of them have managed to fool the public into thinking they are some nice, cuddly old socialist.

Top 5 and Bottom 5 MPs

Iain Dale has been having some fun over the last couple of days asking visitors to his blog to name their Top 5 and Bottom 5 MPs, so at the risk of shamelessly plagiarising a great idea, here are mine.




Top 5

Kenneth Clarke. Last of the true Tory heavyweights but a politician who always put country before party.

Jim Cousins. Labour MP of high principles who I have always found to be a reliable barometer of backbench opinion.

Yvette Cooper. Should have been in the Cabinet years ago, and probably would have been if she hadn't married Ed Balls.

Chris Huhne. It is cerebral Chris rather than flashy Clegg who the Lib Dems should turn to post-Ming.

George Galloway. Gets in solely for telling that conceited git Paxman where to get off on election night.

Bottom 5

Martin Salter. Labour MP who clearly doesn't know the meaning of the word fraternity, given his behaviour towards Jane Griffths.

Andrew George. Ditto - one of the idiots who thought the Lib Dems would do better without CK. Yeah, right.

Sarah Teather. Sees herself as a big player, but seen by practically everyone outside her party as a joke.

Marion Roe. Tory nonentity whose sole contribution to Parliamentary life has been to ban journalists from the Terrace.

Dennis Skinner. Now seen as a "national treasure" but in reality part of a deeply unpleasant Derbyshire Old Labour mafia.

All other opinions/nominations welcome, of course.

My podcast on The PodLounge

My weekly Podcast on the this is network of regional websites has now been going for nearly a year. This is something of an achievement in itself given that many mainstream media podcasts have been launched in a blaze of publicity during that time and failed to stay the course.

So I'm particularly pleased that podcast aggregator The PodLounge has decided to make it one of the three featured podcasts on its homepage this week.

They've done a short interview with me about the podcast, which was originally launched last December as a pilot project for introducing podcasting onto the this is sites, an initiative which I oversaw and which now includes around 20 different podcasts from various regional newspapers across the country.

The full list of episodes can be found HERE. The most recent, No 46, previewed this week's Trident announcement. Next week's may well feature something on the Pre Budget Report and what it means for Gordon Brown's chances of reaching No 10.

Trident: Our moral authority at stake

Tony Blair will announce later today that a new generation of Trident nuclear submarines is to be built, while also promising to reduce the number of warheads by around a fifth. Given that the Tories and also to a certain extent the Lib Dems are also committed to us retaining the so-called "deterrent," there is no chance of him not ultimately getting his way on this.

But like Charles Clarke, I am sceptical. Here's a bit of what I wrote in my weekend column in the Derby Evening Telegraph.

"Earlier this year, North Korea shocked world opinion by testing a nuclear weapon underground, and Iran is known to want to follow suit. What moral authority do we have in seeking to dissuade them from that potentially catastrophic course if we are planning to spend £20bn on ensuring we remain a member of the nuclear club?"

More of this in my Week in Politics Podcast, a text version of which is available HERE.

The hypocrisy of Tony Blair

I don't agree with everything that Matthew Parris writes. Earlier this year he wrote a spectacularly bitchy column about "the indefinably ghastly Chris Huhne" which I still haven't forgiven him for. But his piece this weekend on Tony Blair's gushing tribute to the late BBC radio man Nick Clarke was right on the money.

Here's an extract:

"Yesterday I telephoned a BBC press officer. Did Mr Blair ever accord Nick Clarke an interview on The World at One, I asked? A tight-lipped “we think not”, was the reply. She did not say why but we both knew. The aim was to punish Nick for his polite insistence on getting answers by starving his programme of senior interviewees.

So spare us the “Nick”, would you, Prime Minister? Spare us the “best elements” stuff. Your old mate whom, now he’s breathed his last, you call “Nick” was the man whose career your people tried persistently to undermine; the man whose programme I have myself heard Alastair Campbell mocking during his matey chats with the Westminster press corps."

It wasn't only distinguished broadcasters like Clarke who were subjected to this freezing out treatment, either. It operated at all levels of the Lobby and no-one was exempt from it.

On one occasion, a former editor of mine was told that his newspaper could have an interview with the Prime Minister, so long as it was not carried out by me. Thankfully, he refused to be subjected to such blackmail.

Hat tip for graphic: Comment Central.