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.

Blair plays with words over English Parliament

In a speech to regional newspaper bosses earlier this week, Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the issue of an English Parliament in terms which some of those present quite understandably interpreted as giving support to the idea. He said that if people in England were asked if they wanted a Parliament like Scotland's they would overwhelmingly agree, adding: "I think to then take it a step further and say, 'Actually we want to bust up the UK'... no, I don't think people want to bust up the UK."

This has since been reported in the Yorkshire Post and followed up by Gareth Young on the CEP newsblog and Iain Dale both of whom justifiably take the PM at his word.

Unfortunately, the transcripts of the daily Downing Street briefings tell a rather different story. Blair's spokesman was specifically asked on the day of the speech whether he supported an English Parliament, and this is what he said:

Asked what the Prime Minister thought of the idea for a devolved parliament for England, the PMOS said that the comments running on the wires from the Newspaper Society event today would cover what the Prime Minister had said including why he values the Union, and he believes that the Union as a whole operates better together as a unit; his argument was that the momentum of history is towards better co-operation and in terms of Regional Assemblies, we have set out our position on that. Asked if the Government believed that there should be an English Parliament, the PMOS said no.

In other words, not for the first time, Mr Blair has been facing both ways at once, allowing an audience of English newspaper editors to think he was receptive to the idea of a Parliament while allowing Tom Kelly to piss all over it once they were safely on the train home.

What he seems to be saying is that the majority of voters in England who say they want their own Parliament are basically wrong - an interesting definition of democracy from our beloved leader.

Other recent interesting bloggage on the English Parliament issue from:

Iain Dale - 68pc want English Parliament but Cameron doesn't
Dizzy Thinks - Is the Union finished?
Little Man in a Toque - One Helluva Beating, and
Skipper - Labour's devolution strategy in danger of unravelling.

Press Gazette: Yep, something's up.

Two days on from my mischievous post about the future of journalism trade mag Press Gazette comes confirmation from its website that fresh talks are indeed now under way to save the business.

My assertion that PG staff were still hard at work despite having been made redundant last week was initially met by the retort that they had just gone in on Tuesday to clear their desks and collect their p45s. But it seems to be taking them a while to do it, as the phones continue to be manned this morning.

An anonymous poster - they do have their uses occasionally - points out that the story posted last Friday night saying that the editorial team had been all made redundant has been taken down, and speculates that MD Simon Read and sales director Paul Beard may be involved in a new set-up.

The printed mag, which had a circulation of under 5,000, is clearly dead, but there is mounting speculation within the industry is that PG will indeed be relaunched as a web-only product.

Victim impact statements: credit where credit's due

Regular readers of this blog may be surprised to know that I think New Labour has done some good things in its nine and a half years in power - the minimum wage, devolution to Scotland and Wales, the restoration of London-wide governance, for instance. The problem is that most of the good things were done in the first couple of years and since then the Government's radicalism has been in short supply.

An exception, though, has to be made for the introduction of Victim Impact Statements, allowing those affected by crime to address judges prior to convicted offenders being sentenced.

I defy anyone not to be moved by the statement from Adele Eastman, fiancee of 31-year-old lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price, who was stabbed to death outside his home in North London. The scum who killed him were duly caged for life with minimum sentences of 17 and 21 years respectively.

Well done Tony. For once, you have managed to make good your oft-made pledge to "put the victim at the heart of the criminal justice system."

BlogGems

An occasional series dedicated to bringing choice quotes from the blogosphere to a slightly wider audience.
No 3.

"A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't. A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does."

From "How Men and Women Differ," on The Bailey Blog.

Press Gazette to ride again?

The journalists' trade mag Press Gazette closed last Friday to general lamentation within the industry, but my sources tell me that despite officially having been made redundant, its dedicated team of scribes are still at their desks and hard at work. Whatever can it mean?

Update: Martin Stabe has the answer in the comments. Meanwhile, I can't beat this analysis of why the mag folded. It was basically cannibalised by its own website, which highlights a dilemma currently facing dead-tree publishers everywhere.

The trashing of Michael Grade

Okay, so no-one thinks the BBC is going to be doing cartwheels over the news that its chairman, Michael Grade, has defected to ITV, but the corporation's treatment of the story this morning has been a disgrace. Sheila Fogarty's two-way with Jeff Randall on Five Live - "I suppose the question to Michael Grade today is why he has accepted this million-pound job offer from ITV" - was fairly typical of the tone of the coverage.

Well, excuse me, but why is it considered such a crime in big media circles for someone to defect to a rival for a much higher salary? Especially, in this case, when you take into account Grade's historical and family connections with ITV.

The truth of the matter is that Michael Grade has earned himself a permanent place in the history of the BBC on account of two actions he took when he was the corporation's Director of Television in the mid-1980s.

The first of these was to start a weekly soap-opera, something that had never been done on the BBC before. It was called EastEnders and, whether you love it or loathe it, without it the BBC would probably now be reduced to the status of America's tiny National Broadcasting Service.

The second of Grade's great achievements was arguably even more far-reaching. In July 1985, he took the unprecedented decision to clear 17 hours of programming time for a pop-concert, realising before anyone else at the BBC that Live Aid was something that was going to be bigger than all of them.

His reward for that was to be overlooked for the Director-Generalship in 1987 and then sacked by John Birt. He owes nothing to the BBC, and has every right to fill his boots in what will certainly be his last TV job without carping from his former employers.

Mind you, the BBC is not alone in this. A year or so back, Heston Blumenthal decided he'd had enough of being the Guardian's Saturday food writer - fairly understandable when you consider that his restaurant has been awarded three Michelin stars and other media opportunities were opening up for him.

Last week, the Graun responded with this unbelievably bitchy review of Blumenthal's book "In Search of Perfection," followed a day later by this equally vitriolic piece on the TV programme of the same name. Get over it, Mr Rusbridger.

Update: The Guardian displayed its open-mindedness by featuring this post in its Best of the Web listing on Comment is Free earlier today, although it's been taken down now. Meanwhile journalism blogger Static Squid voices his agreement.

Can the Tories become the caring party?

Following David Cameron's attempts last week to persuade people that it is the Tories who really care about the poor, I return to the Political Cross Dressing theme in my latest Podcast which is now live. A text version is also available on the companion blog HERE.

"If the Tories take their argument about relative poverty through to its logical conclusion, they will be able to ask some pretty hard questions of Labour come the next election....I have posed the question before in this column whether Mr Cameron’s Tories might end up to the left of Labour, and the week’s events have again highlighted that possibility."

More developments on Political Opinions

The excellent new political blog aggregator Political Opinions continues to add new features. As well as allowing users to create their own homepages featuring their favourite blogs, this is now also available in RSS feed form.

It means I can now introduce a "Best of the Blogosphere" feature onto this blog which will list the five most recent posts from what I currently consider to be the Top 10 political blogs in the UK, namely:

Conservative Home, The Daily, Dizzy Thinks, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale's Diary, Labour Watch, Liberal England, Political Betting, Skipper, and The UK Daily Pundit.