Thursday 29 March 2007

The Miliband Dynasty

I don't know if you do but I get a bit confused by the proliferation of Milibands (Not to mention Balls) in the Labour gulag. I thought this might help to tie them down:


Samuel Miliband

Born in Warsaw and joined the invading Soviet Army in the Polish-Sovet war 1919-21
son was


Ralphe Miliband (Adolphe) = Marion Kozack

Marxist Historian born in Brussels, friend of Michael foot and editor of the Socialist register.
sons are:

David Miliband MP (South Shields)
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural affairs
and
Ed Miliband MP (Doncaster North)
Former speachwriter to Hariet Harman and Cabinet Office PPS




Wednesday 28 March 2007

Lib Dems

Indeed, the Orange Book LDs are definitly in for a charm offensive, personally I think a coalition would be dredfull, and Law's remark to Osborne when he walked into his office "but I am not a conservative" would seem to set the tone, but until that comes we will continue to try and be nice to the LDs in committee - you never know when they might be needed.

Tuesday 27 March 2007

Stalin? Moi?


Brown (Andrew) and the Nuclear Question

Given Gordon Brown's new conversion to green issues, could we expect an anouncement on Nuclear energy? I imagine that is what the nuclear industry is thinking hense the apointment of Gordon's Brother Andrew to work as a PR guru at EDF!
"Andrew’s first-hand newsroom experience and business acumen will be a tremendous asset to our department and our business.” I bet!

Monday 19 March 2007

Osborne and Cohen meet at last

Rod Selkerk the Chairman of the British Venture Capital Association had the pleasure last week of having both George Osborne and Sir Ronald Cohen for dinner at Clariges!

Given the mavarick labour attacks on venture capatalists recently his opening remarks are unremarkable plee for help:
"George, we are grateful to you for the support you have expressed for the industry in recent days and look forward to hearing more from you later. In particular we will be interested to hear about your plans to deliver the economic stability on which the financial services industry depends."

However what is more interesting is what Osborne had to say in return. The Telegraph has the cheeky Osborne starting his talk by noting that the room was chockablock with "lying, cheating parasites'', and then, after an agonising pause, added, "but really, it's good you have invited so many MPs''.

My sources tell me however that while looking at Sir Ronald Cohen (a founder member of the BVCA) he went on to talk about labour fundraising and the remarkable proportion that came from within the room! Looks to me like an implicit bargain - Look you want my help - well it comes with a price!

Monday 5 March 2007

Friday 2 March 2007

George Osborne's emails


There seems to a bit of a problem with emails over in the Shadow Treasury team. Despite sitting at adjacent desks an email between Osborne's Rohan Silva, Rupert Harrison and Matt Hancock has made it onto the C4 news. How could it happen? Well my guess is the Parliamentry email system, did the happless Hancock, Harrison or Silva pick the wrong the wrong name from the adress book and send it to the enemy? If so having had a look at the names in the adress book and using some lateral thinking I have narrowed the ememy down to either the office of Gerrry Sutcliffe MP or Meg Mun MP. This seems to be a bit of a habit in the Osborne team (having inadvertntly leeked the Tory's Crossrail plans last year) but keep it up - I thought the email was quite a sensible appraisal of the spending commitment war.




From: HANCOCK, MatthewSent: 25 February 2007 09:45:35


To: OSBORNE, George; Rohan Silva; HANCOCK, Matthew; HARRISON, Rupert; SILVA, RohanSubject:

Re: Labour in opposition - controlling spending commitments

I've seen that Tory document, and we were even more ruthless than they are at finding anything that could be taken as a spending commitment.At least we do have a system of sorts - which we are improving. The key is that it didn't fly much as a subject because Brown was seen to be in control of spending. They will always be able to put together a dodgy dossier of "commitments" - which will include all sorts of things like housing. And I doubt they will stop including it in their briefing to broadcasters when George is on. We need to be in a position to rebut.M



Stop the Iran War or Stop the mad US Presidential wanabe


General Wesley Clark has been busy, launching a Stop the Iran war website and a plethora of other self promotional sites - looks to me like the 2004 Presidential hopeful might be about to get back on his horse.

However - is this neo-dove not the same General who bombed the Chinese Embasy in Belgrade, attempted to bomb the CNN office, ordered the British Gen Mike Jackson to engage the Russians on Pristina airport and is even rumoured to have ordered a nuclear strike. Perhaps an Iran war is just not big enough for this erracible gent? Stop the Iran war and start WWIII?
http://www.stopiranwar.com

Thursday 1 March 2007

Bob Spink MP - The King of EDMs


With the cost of Parliamentary Questions being raised again by Jack Straw again today, I thought it would be good to look at their evil twin brother - Early day Motions. I am particularly impressed by Bob Spink MP's proliferation record a quick look at the database shows he signed every one of the first 102 put down this parliament, sponsored a ludicrus 247 and signed 581, so what was wrong with EDM 103 - COSTS OF POLICING ENTERTAINMENT AREAS?