Back we go to Ealing Southall and the case of the defection that wasn’t, and a frankly startling allegation…

Tory claim on defection ‘a lie’

LABOUR COUNCILLOR ZAHIDA A-NOORI, today wrote to Labour’s Regional Director Ken Clark to emphasise that the Tory stories concerning her were false.

Cllr A-Noori’s letter reads:

Dear Mr Clark

Re: False Allegations of resignation

Once again, I am compelled to write to you about false allegations being made about my membership of the Labour Party. Yesterday, in an agreed statement, I said that I joined the Labour Party to serve my community. This remains the case today and will remain the case in the future.

To be absolutely and categorically clear: I have no intention of resigning my membership of the Labour Party. I will not be joining the Conservative Party.

As you know, I was a council colleague of Councillor Gurcharan Singh. A number of members who supported Gurcharan signed blank pieces of paper in advance of the shortlisting interview last week.

I was assured that this would be for a write-in campaign should Gurcharan fail in his interview.

At no point did I give permission for the blank paper to be used as a resignation note. Any suggestion that is the case is a completely false and outrageous misuse of my signature and I am deeply distressed that this has happened.

I hope that this now closes the matter. We have a by-election to win and that’s what I want to focus on.

Yours sincerely,
Cllr Zahida Abbas Noori

If you’ll recall, Iain Dale has made a couple of quite specific statements of ‘fact’…

1. Last night Cllr Noori did indeed agree with her five councillor colleagues that she would be joining them.

2. A statement was agreed with her, which I have, but I won’t post unless she’d like me to.

In addition to providing this quote from Tory HQ…

“Cllr Noori did agree twice on Monday night to leave the Labour Party to join the Conservatives in order to support Tony Lit’s energetic and dynamic campaign. It appears that the Labour party has now bullied her into changing her mind. However this is exactly the kind of strongarm Labour tactics which has driven five of their other Councillors away from the divided Labour party.”

I wonder, will Dale now stick to his guns, in which case he and Tory Central must be asserting that Cllr Noori was spoken to, in person and face to face - about her alleged plan to defect to the Tories, or will this latest statement from her now prompt a retraction and apology?

And if one accepts Cllr Noori’s account, what does that then say about the conduct of the Tory’s much heralded new acquisition, Cllr Gurcharan Singh?

The Groan have got the skinny on the Beeb’s plans for its autumn schedules…

BBC1 has secured a series of interviews with former prime minister Tony Blair in which he will look back over the major events of his 10-years in office.

In what the BBC has billed as a “number of open and candid” interviews, Mr Blair will talk about his experiences in Number 10 as well as the “challenges of governing a democracy”.

The series, which will be made by independent production company Juniper, will be made along the lines of previous series such as The Major Years and The Thatcher Years, and will see Mr Blair and other political players reflect on his time in office.

All of which, one suspects, will be of considerably less interest to most people than this item from later in the same article:

Four classic fairy tales, made popular by The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Perrault, will be given a modern take by Cutting It writer Debbie Horsfield.

Denise Van Outen stars in The Empress’s New Clothes…

Dale’s having another hissy fit - shall we have a look through the round window..?

BBC Bans Emily Maitliss Spectator Column

I’ve never seen Matthew D’Ancona fulminate before, but I suspect he might self combust when he appears on my 18 Doughty Street show tonight at 10pm. Why? Because the BBC have stopped Newsnight presenter Emily Maitliss from writing for The Spectator. Her diary last week provoked the ire of BBC head honcho Helen Boaden, who overrulled Head of News Peter Horrocks and told Maitliss she could in future keep her thoughts to herself. It seems the BBC are still in the post Hutton paranoia era.

Paranoia about what, exactly? (as usual, Iain’s spitting out accusations without citing sources properly and linking to the material he claims to be a bone of contention)

Fortunately, your humble scribe has no such problems, and here (in full) is the diary entry by Maitlis, which Dale claims provoked the ‘ire’ of Helen Boaden…

Diary

Emily Maitlis

Washington

High tea with George Bush in the Oval Office. Polite but tough questioning on my book. He tells me how much he’s enjoyed reading it. Next stop, the wonderfully counter-counter-cultural bowling alley with Dick Cheney, flanked by Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History. They tell me how much they’ve enjoyed my book.

Paris

Croque monsieur for 70 at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy. Nico tells me he’s only just put down my book. I tell him how much I’m enjoying his presidency. We part amicably.

Afghanistan

To the Tora Bora caves for mint tea with Bin Laden, author of 9/11, then off kite-flying with his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. They tell me they take issue with my thesis but have greatly enjoyed my book.

London

I, Emily, awake from terrifying yet exhilarating dream in which I have become Andrew Roberts, the historian. Realise with much sadness that no global leader has ever complimented me on my book. Recall with yet more dismay that I have never actually written one. Put on washing: economy, coloureds, max spin, 60 degrees. Then hastily pick up names dropped carelessly around bedroom in my sleep. Minus a few which I kick under the chair for later use. Piers Morgan has sent me an email advising Beroccas, a pint of milk and a few prayers before we meet for lunch.

Life as a newsreader would not be complete without the wonderful world of award ceremonies. I’m not talking Cannes, Bafta, Venice anything that obvious. No, I mean the Oscars of the Heating and Ventilation World, the Pride of Plumbing, the Celebration of Steel. Believe me, the list goes on. Protocol dictates that you host the awards with a friendly hello and brief introduction. But sometimes your mind goes blank. I have just hours to go and nothing to kick off the evening. In panic I call up Andrea Catherwood and Katie Derham and seek help. The TV girls are united. You need autocue mishaps, they say. And shower me with their cast-offs. ‘Have you done the one where you say, “That’s all from the one o’clock news, I’ll be back with the main news just before sex”?’ Katie asks. ‘What about, “And now for the weather, frequent rain and a lot more drivel to come”?’ Andrea offers up. Ah, to have such friends. We have shared on-air maternity wear, baby clothes, career highs and lows. But to lend another your own cock-ups? Greater love hath no man.

Excited call from the Newsnight producer. I have made it, she informs me, on to The Noticeboard. Oh hallowed wall. This is where all our press mentions, our newspaper clippings are proudly displayed. The investigative reporting that has helped fell governments; the devastating discoveries, the piercing interviews. Was my recent forensic questioning of Hamas picked up by the Independent? Could the New Statesman have warmed to my discussion of motoring and embarked on a three-part series in my name? My reverie is quickly shattered when Lucy tells me. ‘You’re in heat magazine. As Parky’s pin-up. I stuck it on the board anyway.’ I am flattered. (Michael, truly I am.) But why oh why couldn’t it have been for the London Review of Books?

Milo, aged two, has developed a fixation with Spartacus, introduced to him by his nanny. I’m delighted, in a pushy Notting Hill-mother way, although struggling to recall who Spartacus was. Mark, his father, is not impressed. Spartacus, he reminds me, was the Roman initiator of the Slaves’ Revolt, fomenter of the Uprising. But he is possibly reading more into the situation than it warrants when he tells me he believes this is our long-suffering nanny’s way of asking for a pay rise and that she is about to leave us. I begin a frenzied scouring of our Greco-Roman glossary in panic. But the situation miraculously resolves itself. Spartacus, it turns out, is actually a cartoon superhero called Sportacus who Saves the Planet. His best friend is Stephanie. She has Barbie-pink hair and Barbie-pink shoes and the kind of dress that makes Zandra Rhodes look like a home secretary. On Thursday Milo announces he no longer dreams of being Spart/Sportacus. He wants to be Stephanie instead. Mark, his father, is not impressed.

I am presenting News 24 from outside Parliament as Tony Blair quits the stage and Gordon Brown shuffles in. It is momentous, it is emotional, but more than anything, it is wet. It reminds me of a day, exactly ten years ago, when I witnessed and reported on another handover of power — as Hong Kong was returned to China. Then, as now, the driving rain seemed to compound the very Britishness of the occasion. We never knew if Chris Patten was crying, or if a carefully positioned raindrop merely lent the shot more poignancy. At home, Milo is watching. ‘Why is Teddy Bear leaving?’ He asks Mark. ‘Mummy just said Teddy Bear was leaving Sedgefield.’ Why he gets the name of a remote Durham constituency right I will never fully understand.

And so, finally, to a charity do for Breast Cancer Haven that I am hosting with Rory Bremner. During drinks beforehand I spy Andrew Roberts. I blush and tell him how much I am enjoying his book.

Emily Maitlis is a BBC newsreader and a contributing editor of The Spectator.

You know, I read it two or three times and about the only faintly objectionable thing I can see in it is that its shite…

No, to be fair, I can see that Bin Laden gag at the top (and if any of Dale’s regulars are looking in, there is no book, just so know) might not go down a storm in some quarters - unfortunately for Dale those quarters would consist entirely of the same people who’re likely to be feverish scribbling green ink notes of complaint to the Beeb having been entirely taken in by Dale’s histronics.

But the article is still shite.

For fucks sake, so he’s got Matthew D’Ancona on the couch at Fox News Lite tonight (ooh no missus, don’t), he could just fucking say so without trying on such a desperate and blatantly obvious shill for viewers - is that stat porn really that bad at 18DS?

Did I mention that Maitlis’s diary column is shite?

But it is still one rule for some and a different rule for others. Why is Andrew Marr’s diary in the Telegraph more acceptable than an Emily Maitliss column in The Speccie?

Let me take a few wild guesses…

1. Andy Marr doesn’t do straight news broadcasting/presenting on a BBC contract these days (he’s a freelancer) - unlike Maitlis - so he creates no significant credibility issues for the Beeb if his Torygraph column’s a bit on the shite side. Maitlis’s column is, on the other hand, shite.

2. Andy Marr’s column - so far as one can tell from his latest missive - is played out pretty straight but with a somewhat conversational tone. Maitlis appears to channelling the bastard offspring of Billy Liar and the 3AM girls while writing her column - which is shite.

3. Marr doesn’t seem intent on making a complete arse of himself. Maitlis is doing little else but make an arse of herself by writing shite…

Oh, and her column… it’s shite, you know… especially the Spartacus/Sportacus ‘gag’ which is a pretty fucking weak method of admitting you watch Nick Jr while desperately to pretend you’re an intellectual.

I am so very glad I don’t have to watch what I say like everyone at the BBC seems to have to.

It doesn’t seem to me that the Beeb’s problem with Maitlis comes down to them expecting her watch what she says so much as the Beeb maybe worrying that any credibility she might have as a news presenter is going to disappear rapidly down the shitter if she keeps on knocking out great steaming piles of vacuous shite like that last diary column.

Look I’m not kidding - read it again… it’s shite.

But then that’s not really the kind of angle that speaks well of Matty D’Ancona’s stewardship of the Speccie - ‘Beeb pulls newsreader out of Spectator because her column is shite’ ain’t really the kind of headline that’s going to bump up the stat porn at 18DS much, which seems to be quite the most plausible explanation of Dale’s efforts to cry wolf.

It does seem off that Boaden should intervene to overrule Horrocks. He will not have been pleased. Ever ready with a quotable phrase, D’Ancona has called it the Vicky Pollard School of Managenment - yes but, no but.

Fuck me - we live in a country where you can’t shift for spotty faced youths imitating characters from Little fucking Britain and yet Dale still manages an effort that’s much more Stephen Pollard than Vicky Pollard.

So far as I can see, if takes the Vicky Pollard school of management to spare the Speccies reader the mind-numbing experience of Maitlis’s Jade Goody school of Dairy Journalism then that seems a pretty fair exchange in my book.

That said, it might be worth tuning in tonight to see D’Ancona fulminate, if only to see if anyone asks him the sixty four thousand dollar question…

Matthew. This column by Emily Maitlis… you actually paid her to write that shite?

Oh, btw - the image at the top is courtesy of Tim Ireland - so no nicking it without his permission…

Simon Heffer in today’s Torygraph…

We need to stop this, and to stop flagellating ourselves about drinking, because if not our attitude to the place of alcohol in our society is going to become downright silly.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am well aware of the following things. First, greater prosperity has left young people in particular with more disposable income than ever before, and for reasons of fashion they often choose to spend it on drink.

Second, being young, they behave appallingly having had some drink (though we have all seen older people do that, too).

Third, many from deprived backgrounds choose to spend an unhealthy proportion of their welfare benefits on drink, which causes them to beat their wives and children and to be incapable of productive work: disgusting activities, but ones that, short of totalitarian intervention by the social services, are unlikely to be stopped by sticking 7p on a pint of beer.

Fourth, we have many more casualties of drink in this country now than 25 years ago, a period in which consumption of alcohol has doubled. I do not find any of these things acceptable or even tolerable, and I am sure they are damaging society and incurring a huge cost to the taxpayer.

However, we need to put them in some perspective.

And the old cunt’s idea of perspective…

Something, obviously, must be done: but it needs to be targeted.

Licensees who sell drink to under-18s should be prosecuted, and they and their premises banned from selling alcohol indefinitely. If this hits some big supermarkets as well, so be it.

Pass one new law, which is to make punishable by a prison term the resale or trafficking of alcohol to minors.

Enforce the public order laws rigorously, with heavy fines and community orders - such as cleaning up the mess in town centres on a Friday and Saturday night - for those drunk in public.

Limit the opening hours of public houses. Refuse licences for off-sales to businesses in areas of high crime and disorder.

Make it easier for employers to sack staff who are ill or incapable through drink.

Above all, consider the issue of food stamps rather than cash to welfare claimants to prevent them from spending disproportionate amounts of taxpayers’ money on drink.

That’ll be a no to ‘compassionate conservatism’ then, Simon?

This, from the Groan’s ‘Backbencher column’ -

WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

What on earth are Conservative campaigners in Ealing Southall up to?First Tory byelection manager Grant Shapps appeared to post a message on Libblog LibDem Voice in the guise of a downbeat Lib Dem who was losing hope (this strategy, the Backbencher understands, is known as “astroturfing” in webspeak). Then Grant explains to Iain Dale that someone hacked into his YouTube account (the password was 1234) and was impersonating him. Now people calling themselves “Pete Burton” and “sadboy” - appropriate, the Backbencher feels - have been posting similarly defeatist comments. Both share an IP address with a Tory councillor in Sutton, Tim Crowley. The Lib Dems suspect, understandably, that the three are in some way related. Sadboys. Get off the blogs. Get some leaflets printed. Talk to some constituents.

And if you’re going to do subterfuge, have some ambition.

Led me to this:

There has been a series of three comments in the last few days on Lib Dem Voice under the username “timcrowley” (see this thread and this thread). They have all been from the same IP address, all give the same email address and it’s clear that the comments are either from Sutton Conservative Councillor Tim Crowley himself (or from someone pretending to be him, or from someone who has discovered his password is 1234 etc etc). That’s because of content in the comments such as:

When the voters of Sutton see how the Ruling Lib Dem cllrs are voting through retrospective allowance payments we will see how the electorate react.

Not surprisingly, he doesn’t really like the Liberal Democrats, but the comments have had some content rather than just being abuse or hectoring. All ok so far … so how dashed unlucky for him that the same IP address was then used to post a comment on the thread about Terry Sutton:

Why no comments on this disaster news. Have we still got our heads in the sand?

Note that use of the little word “our” as if it was a comment from a Liberal Democrat supporter. Moreover, it appeared in the name of sadboy (a new one on this site) and gave an email address with the name Pete Burton in it (another new one to this site).

Could Sadboy / Pete Burton by any chance by Tim Crowley in (not very good) disguise? I’m open to explanations, especially as it would really be very, very daft to be caught faking a comment as a Liberal Democrat just after the Grant Shapps affair broke now, wouldn’t it? If there is an innocent explanation, do let me know and I’ll be happy to amend the story.
There is something quite apt in the use of ’sadboy’ for a sockpuppet nickname.

An open letter to Grant Shapps.

Grant:

About this ‘haxx0rs ate my YouTube password thing‘…

The thing is, I was discussing this on-line with a group of techs, last night - about a dozen of us with a combined experience in systems and network administration of a couple of hundred years or so - and the thing is… well, we just don’t buy your excuse.

Nothing personal, you understand. We just don’t.

What I mean here is that, on the face of it, the suggestion that a malicious political opponent might have guessed, or maybe even brute-force cracked, the password on your YouTube  account sounds plausible enough on paper, good enough, even, to give you the benefit of the doubt…

…but then you had to go and spoil things by asserting that the password on the account ‘1234′.

Sorry? ‘1234′? Nah, you’ve ruined it.

Don’t get wrong here. We haven’t just dismissed your story out of hand. We really did give it plenty of thought… but try as we might and with all those long years of experience of dealing with dumbass end users to draw on, none of us could recall a single occasion on which even the most moronic end users we’ve ever dealt with were idiotic enough to choose ‘1234′ as their account password.

Seriously Grant - and this is no mean achievement, by the way - you’ve actually managed to put up an excuse that simply too dumb to be believable, even by a group of techs with such extensive experience of the near inexhaustible capacity of end users to find new ways of doing complete dumb thing.

And trust me, here, we’re not short on dumb password horror stories, if fact we’ve seen pretty much everything that end users can throw at us; middle names, kids’ names, birthdays, names of their favourite pop star, actor/actress or sportsman/woman. To be honest, we actually had quite a good time swapping stories and bitching about users - it’s a techie thing. Like the one about the departmental manager who had to change his password every month - so he religiously used the name of current month. Or the one about the Senior IT manager who, as a joke, set the master password on a brand new IBM mini-computer to ‘TWAT’ no soon as he’d got it out the box and plugged in… only then to read the set-manual and discover that system took the first use master password enter and burned it permanently onto a chip as the system’s master password for life - sadly the purveyor of this particular gem of a story left the company before the system was replaced and sold on and, as a result, missed out the entertainment value of seeing the guy who set the password trying to explain it to the people buying the system.

You get the picture here? If its dumb and someone, especially an end user, can do it then, between us, we’ve seen it… and yet not one of us could recall a single instance in which anyone had ever voluntarily chosen to set an account password to ‘1234′, let alone leave such a dumb password unchanged for nine months.

Hopefully, by now, you’ll understand why your explanation of how your YouTube account has been met with widespread hoots of derision. If you’d have said that your password was something dumb but plausible, say ‘cameron,’ or ‘cchq’ for example, then you might have got off with the benefit of the doubt. You might have even got away with passing the buck on to an over-enthusiastic scutter in your constituency office and been more widely believed. But what you’re asking people to swallow here goes beyond dumb and sets a new low in the annals of end user stupidity and ID10T errors and its that that makes your ‘haxx0rz’ story just that bit too implausible to believe.

Not even a Tory MP could be dumb enough to use ‘1234′ as a password - could they?

Rachel North:

I burned my mother’s pan. I cooked chicken and bacon for a warm salad for my father and sister when we came back from hospital, and I forgot that I left the pan soaking on a high heat. I was sitting in the study, the one room in the house that is Dad’s not hers, listening to ‘Fix you’, whilst replying to anxious messages on behalf of my father, who is too distressed to cope with the phone calls and emails telling him that so many people are praying for him, for mum, for us. He has gone to be with my brother and his wife and his one-year old grandson; they were the last people to sit with Mum today, before visiting hours ended, and if he cannot be with her, he can be with the last people who sat at her side, and he can hear from them how she was, and look into my brother’s face when he tells how he is hopeful, he is calm, how Mum’s amazing grace defies the expectations of a severe stroke, day 2 .

Just read… and think.

Not much to say really, just marvel at the genius of Pete & Dud in…

One Leg Too Few

Teaching Ravens to Fly Underwater

In Heaven

And the great ‘Film Stars’