clawsfour

Now look under the stone that is Lord Ashcroft's donations

18 months after the Electoral Commission called in the Metropolitan Police to investigate the donation made by David Abrahams to the Labour Party by proxy, the Crown Prosecution Service has delivered its judgement on the investigation. Unfortunately not on their own web-site but let's assume Sky have got it right. It is now - CPS Press Release.

They point out the rules have been broken - constituting a criminal offence - but that the people investigated, including Peter Watt who was forced to resign as Labour General Secretary over the issue, did exercise due diligence.

This issue revolved around the fact that David Abrahams - a permissible donor - gave money to other permissible donors, who then gave money to the Labour party. This was done by Abrahams to protect his identity - failed. There is no doubt that donors must make full disclosure of the fact that they are using third parties to make a donation. David Abrahams did not. However, it was his money. He was a legitimately allowed to make a donation. The people he gave the money to were legitimately able to make a donation.

So having spent an extraordinary amount of tax-payers money to discover that an offence has been committed for which no-one was to blame, perhaps the powers that be could now get on with the investigation into Lord Ashcroft who it is alleged is an impermissible donor using overseas money to find the Tory Party.

As the Daily Mirror first revealed, the Electoral Commission started an investigation into the peer last year.

It followed claims £4.76million had been transferred from the Central American tax haven of Belize to Lord Ashcroft's UK-based company Bearwood Corporate Services.

The firm is one of the biggest donors to the Tory party, giving £4.74million since 2003.

Electoral law says donations can only come from UK-based companies. Tory vice-chairman Lord Ashcroft, said to be worth more than £1billion, has used the money to bankroll Tory candidates in marginal seats.

And no doubt those who accused the thoroughly decent Peter Watt of acting criminally will now be queueing up to apologise. (update - statement form Peter Watt reported here)

Boris bigs up the economy

The London economy continues to show very interesting signs of what can only be described as credit crunch denial in certain important sectors. And it is worth stressing this and getting this across, particularly in view of the newspapers which are providing an unremitting diet of gloom. 
Some parts of our economy really are thriving and I single out obviously the theatres, the tourism sector, but across the board there are amazing pockets of resistance to the problem.

Boris Johnson

Conservative Mayor of London

Looks like Boris has been taking lessons from Ken Livingstone about how to be several paces out of step with his own party.

However it is encouraging, even from this unlikely source, to hear some positive messages about the economy. Governor of the Bank of England - take note.

Hat tip to Paul Waugh for the link.

If a picture tells a thousand words...

...then Politics Home ought to have the right picture with the right words.

Currently their graphs show that the majority of people in the UK are Pro-Life and in the States Pro-Choice. Of course it may be have been done deliberately to see if we were paying attention but one has to dig a bit further than the front page to find the statistics.

I like Politcs Home a lot as a one stop shop for bits and pieces of current information and links to current news so I'm really pelased that they are fallible too. It makes them more than just a robotic feed of other stories.

Custard's last stand

John Prescott has been on the receiving end of plain stupid stunts like today's by Plane Stupid and he's let the custard throwing pea-brain know what he thinks.

It's sort of summed up by one of the comments on Conservative Iain Dale's blog today which said, and I kid you not:

We throw rotten eggs and custard pies and purple flour. That is a measure of maturity

He who pays the piper...

..better make sure the piper knows what tunes to play.

I am not a huge fan of people who lead their company badly and get hugely rewarded.

Nor of footballers who get paid many thousands of pounds a week without showing the same commitment as their supporters who earn a tiny fraction of that wealth.

Nor of people who seek their fortune by suing the NHS, or other ambulance chasers who seek to bring American style litigation to the UK.

Nor of reality TV shows which exploit the vulnerable in the hope of reward.

But neither am I a fan of retrospective legislation to deal with our collective outrage about one man's pension scheme. When a Board of Directors appoints a person to do a job for a particular financial package they take a risk. It is there duty to assess and manage the risks of the whole company and sometimes they go spectacularly wrong.

In the case of RBS is it Sir Fred that should lose his pension? Or maybe it should be the Remuneration Committee who should lose theirs. Or the Board of Directors. or the Regulator. or the Minister. Or maybe the bank managers and clerks who didn't do their jobs well enough to encourage profitable business. Or the cleaners for not making the banks attractive enough for people to want to step over the threshold.

It is clear that people just want a scapegoat to run out of town, and whilst that is entirely understandable, it also seems to me that it is the first step on a rocky road. I have a contract with my company. I have a single company pension which relies on that contract. I don't want someone to be able to come along in five years time and tear it up because the results we hoped for haven't been forthcoming. 

There are easy and sustainable contracts which can be put in place which relate to performance. The fact that didn't happen in the case of RBS is not the fault of the individual concerned. If he decided to donate a portion of his pension to charity, that's up to him. It's not up to anyone else to steal it.

Not the last post

So the Royal Mail is about to be sold off, and there is a big row in the Labour Party about it and the everyone is very cross.

Well only if they've not read the Bill, which is actually about ensuring a level playing field for Royal Mail; making sure its future in public ownership is secured; and protecting the universal postal service.

Royal Mail is to be enshrined in legislation as a publicly owned company.  No government would be able to change this status without further primary legislation in the future. That doesn't look like privations to me. 

The fact that the Bill will say Post Office Ltd. is to be owned by government in its entirety, and that no government would be able to change this status without further primary legislation, also doesn't seem to be the usual formula for privatisation.   

Now, of course, there has been a muddle over this for all the usual reasons - a hostile press, a lack of clarity from the government and the usual old labourites who can't wait to get back into opposition and are practising.

In addition to the non-privatisation, the unique selling point of the Royal Mail - letters collected and delivered anywhere in the UK for one affordable price - is to be written into the legislation. The primary duty of the regulator will be the maintenance of the universal service.

Attracting private investment in the publicly owned company and transferring the burden of the pension scheme to the taxpayer will also be a much needed boost for the Royal Mail. 

No doubt there will be some last minute deals to be done to make sure it all hangs together properly, but you sometimes wonder that a little more attention to how these proposals are communicated might not go amiss.

Storm in a coffee cup

Foul-mouthed journalists appear to have awarded Peter Mandelson a prize for the most gratuitous use of the word "fuck" in New York.

Waiting to give a TV interview in the Residence of the British Consul-General, Mandelaon asked "who the fuck is he?" of Howard Schultz within the earshot of dinner guests.

Shultz, seen by Mandelson to be running down the British economy rather than running his own company, is Chairman and Chief Executive of Starbucks.

None of this is any great surprise - for who has not walked into a Starbucks coffee shop and exclaimed, "Fuck me. How much?"

Who let the dogs out?

Conservative MP Christopher Chope is flying a kite for Cameron by testing reaction to his idea to scrap the minimum wage. 

Carried in today's Mirror this story is unsurprising given Chope's previous antipathy toward the minimum wage. 

Former minister Christopher Chope told the Commons yesterday that employers and employees should be allowed to "freely negotiate" their own pay.Mr Chope said that ditching the £5.73 an hour minimum rate would help struggling businesses survive and create more jobs. He told the Commons: "Before anyone accuses me of wanting to impose poverty wages, I'm talking about arrangements for freely consenting adults." 

A little more surprising is Tory Leader David Cameron allowing this particular free-market attack dog off the leash now.

Thou shall not join the BNP

Am I the only one to see the irony of the argument deployed by the person arguing against a ban on clergy joining the BNP.

I am sorry that I didn't catch her name or authority as I shook the sleepy dust from my eyes in disbelief at what I was hearing on the BBC Today programme.

There was the usual batting backwards and forwards of inconsequential debate by a bored jounalist in the 6.50 slot - a slot which makes 'Thought for the day' seems entertaining. The line which finally roused me from my slumber was provided by the person arguing against a ban. "Saying thou shall not will only make people want to do it more."

Looks like God and Moses really fucked up over the 10 commandments then.

A blog worth reading

Welcome to the blogosphere Alastair Campbell. Blimey, I wish he was sorting out Labour's message now. We certainly wouldn't have got into the British jobs for British workers mess.

Anyhow, he's just started. You can find him here. 

And here's his latest vlog.