With a lead article in The Times today relating tales of Lord Ashcroft as Blofeld (and even being given a white toy cat, apparently) I could hardly resist getting out the Photoshop for the inevitable pic….
Lord Ashcroft revels in his notoriety and safe seat at the top table
Be that as it may…. there are dark forces present this eve, as I read the political blogs.
Guido Fawkes blogs with evidence with two interesting posts: The Market Hates Labour
providing a clear graph that when Labour rises in the polls the pound drops and the pound rises when the Tories rise in the polls. Guido also provides a snazzy graph to show how Lord Ashcroft’s attendances in the Lords cost the taxpayer NOTHING whereas Lord Paul’s attendances have cost us a WHOPPING £281,263 in expenses
Boris… in a very well written piece, complete with a bit of Latin… suggestio falsi and suppressio veri prefers the sanguine, cold, objective fact of Betfair to the turbulent polls on the premise that when people invest money, they think carefully (apart from, presumably, those who invested their money with Madoff) and the Betfair odds have not moved. The money is firmly with a Conservative majority. Others, to be fair, made this point at the weekend, but not with such style and elan.
Boris ends with the clarion call… “Do we really want another five years of the holepunch-hurling horror of Gordon Brown’s management style? Do we want the Downing Street switchboard to be endlessly jammed with people bleating to some “bullying helpline”? Is this any way to run a country? And that is just froth compared to the real charges against Labour.
If Gordon Brown is on course to win the election, then Elvis Presley is on course to win The X Factor and Shergar to win the Grand National.”
Peter Hoskin in The Spectator writes…
Labour’s pursuit of Ashcroft could backfire
The Business Secretary has since come out snarling, saying to Sky News this morning:
“All these years he’s been dodging what he should have paid in tax in full … instead he’s chosen to give all the money to the Conservative party. Perhaps they’d like to pay it back now?”This is a dangerous route for Labour to go down, on many levels. Not only (as Guido points out) is Mandelson not really the best poster boy for clean politics, but it risks drawing more attention to Labour’s own non-dom donors, and suggests that Brown & Co. aren’t just “getting on with the job” of government. With the election only weeks away, maybe they should create the impression that they’ve got better things to do.”
But it is not all politics with the political bloggers. Yesterday, I publicised Old Holborn’s campaign to free Nick Hogan, the first publican to be imprisoned for failing to pay fines for Smoking offences at his pub. Interestingly, Old Holborn and Anna Raccoon are looking into the legal position as to whether it is lawful to jail a bankrupt who is in no position to pay his fine
Old Holborn reports today… “In less than 36 hours, you have donated more than £5,238 to support Nick Hogan after he was jailed for 6 months for non payment of fines. Anna and I are currently investigating whether it is indeed lawful to jail a registered bankrupt as his ability to pay the fines is zero…….Various other organisations are becoming involved and support has been overwhelming. Donations have arrived from the four corners of the world, left wing, right wing and independent bloggers are carrying the news far and wide.”
If you wish to contribute or just read about this extraordinary case... please go here.
I’ve no intention of voting Labour but neither do I take my orders from the market.
Like John Lilburne, I am a free-born Englishman.
So there.
Labour’s attitude to Lord Ashcroft reminds one of stones and greenhouses!
On my blog I also did a little piece on the Hogan case but did not take up the bankruptcy/lack of money point. The problem, as always, is that media reports never give one the absolutely full picture. However, as I see it, the law is that (a) imprisonment for non-payment of fines/costs has to be a last resort; (b) the court committing the person to prison must be able to demonstrate that either (i) all other methods of enforcement have been tried or (ii) at least considered but rejected for sound reasons. It is also necessary for the court to find either wilful default or “culpable neglect.” I was not sure from the media reports what the finding of the magistrates’ court was.
Another angle to this is that sometimes offenders can lose their livelihood because of a conviction. Has that happened here? Again, from the reports, it did not seem to me to be clear whether Mr Hogan had lost his personal licence because of the conviction. Where this happens then it is obvious that the person’s income would fall and, I submit, that is a factor which should be considered when setting the fine in the first place. Perhaps, at the time of imposing the fine, it was not clear whether Mr Hogan would lose his licence. However, if subsequently he did then the fine could have been varied by the court so as to bring it within his new means but the problem here is that the costs cannot be remitted and the costs were massive. In fact, I am at a loss to see why they were as high as they were. After all, this was a local council prosecution brought in the local magistrates’ court. [I think that a subsequent appeal probably added to Mr Hogan’s overall costs].
It will be interesting to see the ultimate outcome. Good campaign in my opinion.
After what’s happened since early 2008, I’m amazed anyone thinks what the markets think is a good barometer for judging what’s best for the country.
I’m also reminded of an old Steve Bell “If…” cartoon from 1992, depicting a snarling City trader warning the British voters that “If you so much as THINK of voting Labour on Thursday, I’ll press this button on my computer [button marked “OFFSHORE”] and send all EVERYTHING offshore. And then I’ll shoot this innocent dog!”