Tuesday 18 June 2013





Seen Elsewhere








Andrew Pierce on Ed Balls…
“Porky Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls sweet-talked guests at a fund-raising dinner by saying if he wasn’t a politician, he would be a chef. That’s not surprising, since he was accused of cooking the Treasury books when he was Gordon Brown’s boot boy.”




TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013

Coulson in Court

Careful now…
June 18, 2013 at 5:50 pm  





BBC

BBC iD

18 June 2013 Last updated at 15:19

Andy Coulson appears in court on perjury charge

Andy CoulsonReporting restrictions on Mr Coulson's court appearance have been lifted
The prime minister's former director of communications, Andy Coulson, has appeared in court charged with perjury.
The 45-year-old appeared in private at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Thursday, where he made no plea or declaration and was granted bail.
A contempt of court order was granted at the hearing banning media coverage.
The order was challenged by a number of media organisations and following legal submissions was lifted on Tuesday by Sheriff John McCormack.
Mr Coulson was represented at last week's hearing by the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, Richard Keen QC.
Communications director
Mr Coulson had been detained at his London home in May last year and then driven more than 400 miles to Glasgow by officers from the former Strathclyde Police.
He was held at Govan police station, where he was questioned and later charged.
Mr Coulson became editor of the now defunct News of the World newspaper in 2003, before he resigned in 2007.
He also served as Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications before resigning in January 2011.
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Reds in the Bed


Shirkers of the world unite. This weekend a vanguard of beret-wearing commie-sympathisers will be meeting in London to discuss, wait for it,“Ideas for Freedom: Marxist ideas to turn the tide”. Kicking off with a “radical East London walking tour”, the revolutionaries will of course be discussing how Karl Marx can help them fight cuts. Class war fighting comrades already signed up include a host of trade unionists from Unison, the RMT and PCS. They will be joined by Maria Exall, TUC activist and civil partner of Shadow Cabinet member Angela Eagle, so it’s good to know the Marxists have an in to Team Red Ed. Buy your ticket for a capitalism-busting £33…
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June 18, 2013 at 1:09 pm  Comments (145)

Dial M For Mercer


Despite their self-confessed devoted readership of the blog, it turns out Patrick Mercer’s “office” aren’t fans. Guido’s brief chat with a familiarly bad-tempered voice answering Mercer’s phone this lunchtime didn’t go too well. Guido politely asked if Patrick would be repaying the money he has declared from Alistair Andrews Communications, to which came the curt reply:
“You’re certainly not going to get an answer from me. I think it’s best if we end this conversation now. Goodbye.”
Goodbye indeed…
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June 18, 2013 at 12:29 pm  Comments (27)

WATCH: Future Indy Editor’s Awkward TV Debut

Amol Rajan the unfortunate man holding the mic on Channel 5′s Wright Stuff a few years back. In fairness he was a good sport about it:
“Camera 4, the one that gets right up in your face – my face – caught my swivelling around to Wright in bafflement, shamelessly revealing myself to be the kipper that had been proverbially “done”. What the camera could not detect, but which posterity should nevertheless record, is the sound of the gallery staff – the director, producers, editors, autocue bunnies – screaming in my ear: “Get the bloody mic away from him, Amol! Move the mic away!” And, for reasons I still cannot fathom, I declined this request, so that the microphone sat just below Eric’s lips as he ventilated his final enquiries: “You know, like a bit of man-on-man action? Do you fancy a bum?”"
How far he has come…
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June 18, 2013 at 11:52 am  Comments (24)


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GRAPH: Tories Will Lose If They Ditch Dave

Two weeks ago Dave’s key defence against Tory plotters, his relative popularity compared to the party, was wobbling. Today Peter Kellner has some figures that will have Downing Street breathing a collective sigh of relief. Ed is less popular than Labour, somehow Clegg is less popular than the LibDems, though Cameron is again preferred to his party. Kellner says this is the graph that shows the Tories will lose in 2015 if they ditch Dave…
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June 18, 2013 at 10:00 am  Comments (120)

Mercer Declares £2,000 Payment From Fake Sting Company


Alistair Andrews Communications was the fictitious company created by the Telegraph and Panorama to string disgraced Tory MP Patrick Mercer. Its non-existent offices in Sydney and London and less-than-convincing website somehow duped Mercer, whose suspicions failed to be raised.

Deliciously, Mercer has just declared a £2,000 payment from Alistair Andrews Communications in his Register of Members Interests. Apparently he did two days’ “consultancy” work for them back in May. The fake name, fake Old Queen Street address and fake job all on official record. £2,000: the price to sting a corrupt MP…
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June 18, 2013 at 8:23 am  Comments (125)

MONDAY, JUNE 17, 2013

Rennard Scandal: Former Clegg SpAd Bridget Harris Speaks Out

10 years ago when Bridget Harris was working at the Welsh Assembly, Lord Rennard, then Liberal Democrat chief executive made a series of unwanted advances towards her which she described as “furtive, obtrusive and upsetting”. 
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June 17, 2013 at 6:15 pm  Comments (172)

Craig Told Put Family Before Cameron


Craig Oliver, the Prime Minister’s embattled Director of Communications, has been told by his friends to put his family before his job, lest his marriage go the way of other Downing Street denizens. Craig is married to the BBC News presenter Joanna Gosling, with whom he has three children.The unrelenting 24/7 pressure of his Downing Street job spinning for the PM is, Craig himself admits, “a lot of stress”…
Ironically David Cameron pledged in opposition “to make the UK the most family-friendly country in Europe” yet has seen the marriages of his former press secretary Gabby Bertin as well as that of his “gatekeeper” Kate Fall break up. Kate is the chillaxing PM’s hardworking deputy chief of staff. It looks like Osborne will need to find money in the budget to hire more staff to lighten the workload if Downing Street is to really be a family-friendly workplace.
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June 17, 2013 at 5:16 pm  

Posted by Britannia Radio at 20:28