Libdemologist Home Truth: "It isn't as if we do any work!"

Katherine Bergin's Whip in today's Sun told a few good tales. Including one about two Lib Dem staffers considering their future roles under the famous fire starter Nick Clegg.

"It doesn't matter what job we get, it's all about the title. It isn't as if we get paid proper money or do any work."

Similar to Manchester's Lib Dem councillors, though they do pocket £15,000 for their "efforts". Still, how much better to be Group Leader for the Tories than to be one of Simon Ashley's whipping boys?

That's The Way To Do It: Health and Safety Soames

Old hat I know. But he is SUCH a clot, isn't he? This dear reader is the new model Conservative Party at large.

Selfish fat headed Old Etonians being selfishly fat headed.

Greening Our Roads: More Hare-Brained Schemes

Wouldn't you just know it? In response to the hare-brained Tories trying to lumber everyone in Greater Manchester with an extra layer of cost and tax i.e. elected mayors to stop a much misunderstood tax - which can be avoided by using public transport or driving off peak - we get the old "sell the airport" nonsense.

Covered by LOL under the even handed headline: Blogsclusive: Carbon Gargling Billionaire "Sell Me the Airport" (and Cook the Planet, and the Goose).

It ain't going to happen. If the Golden Goose killing idea could be countenanced at all it would be better to sell the thing in ten or twenty years, paying off any transport improvement debt and pocketing £5 to £10 Bn in change.

Transport Fund: Harebrained Undercover Conservatives

The Manchester Evening News reports on a 9,000-strong petition being handed in to Bury Town Hall - for an elected mayor.

This is it seems a hare-brained Trojan Horse, to be re-run in other Boroughs such as Bolton.

Lumbering town after town with elected mayors on the single-issue of stopping congestion charging.

Stopping public transport and environmental improvements. To look at the other side of the coin.

What a way to carry on! Leading light Geoffrey Berg (52) of Prestwich has never even driven a car according to this report from Oldham, but - seen here left with Stuart Chapman and Steve Evans at Bury - he is keeping party political affiliation close to his chest.

He is in fact a former Tory councillor in Bury. Beaten there he tried his luck in Manchester City Centre in 2004. Now he isIn 2006-7 he appeared to be back as a candidate in the Besses seat of Bury South. Tories in Bury and in Bolton say they are utterly against Berg's elected mayor idea. Even if they agree on the question of congestion charges.

Indeed Bury is already one of three authorities - the others being Trafford and Stockport - who have declared against the Local Transport Fund. We really do need to re-brand any charging scheme. Bury and Trafford already have tram services. Stockport don't stand to gain one in the near future. A better excuse.

Meanwhile, shouldn't pundits and campaigners be honour bound to declare any party affiliations? How many times do we see or hear partisan commenters on TV and radio who have not managed to even thinly disguise their bias.

Hat tip: David Ottewell.

Greg Proops: Telling It Like It is About Libdemologists?

The rebranded TV channel Dave has become an extremely popular viewing choice in the Love household. Relatively recent Top Gearing and extraordinarily fascinating for 12 and 15 year olds minty Whose Line Is It Anyway? retreads.

Tonight Greg Proops was supposed to do the "Hoedown" game about a conservative politician but came up with:

But I am such a waffler
And a total prat
So at the next election
I'll vote Liberal Democrat

That was a 1996 episode. He is an American. How can he have been quite so au fait? Perhaps this was the last straw for Faraz Bhatti? Who I was surprised to hear being praised, albeit very faintly, this very evening. At an Irish Music Night benefit for the Children of Kolkotta (how cosmopolitan).

Incidentally, I must report with some alarm that the latest household digi box arrival had the same "secret code" as Grant 1234 Shapps.

We changed it immediately it was plugged in. As the idea of someone impersonating us and then impersonating one of Sajjad Karim and Faraz Bhatti's closest former Lib Dem associates to big up the Conservatives during a by-election was and is anathema ...

Kenyan General Election: ODM's Joseph Nyaga is Spot On

Kenya's Orange Democratic Movement General Secretary Joseph Nyaga made my point about the tribal sectarianism angle being a media construct for me beautifully: "It's colonial anthropology" he told the BBC, going on to explain that people across the whole nation and of all backgrounds who had voted for change were pissed off that they had not got that change.

The incumbent may have achieved 25% of the popular vote in five of the eight districts. A sine qua non of the electoral rubric. And he did win back his own seat, unlike more than half of his ministerial cronies. But in fact he only actually won two of the eight districts outright.

All kinds of strange results are possible on a constituency by constituency basis versus the summary of them, as we know from our own democracy. Even without the sort of serious gerrymander we ourselves had only recently in for example "Slash City" aka Derry*.

But how on earth could he have come out top in the individual vote? The third requirement of the rubric.

* CONUNDRUM: How can a three ward multi seat system with a total of 28 seats deliver a 4-3 council majority from a 3-6 electorate minority?

London Mayoralty: Ken's Backing, Boris "Not Bovvered"

The above is the list of "related stories" the Guardian Unlimited's subs or computers found to go with a story disclosing Ken Livingstone's surprise support from muslim community leaders.

Have the Guardian really been ignoring Ken for almost three years? Silly Bullingdon Boy Boris "isn't bovvered" as his grand daddy and his great grand daddy too were muslims and he doesn't give a flying fork. Apologies to Chris Tarrant.

David Ottewell: Faraz Bhatti Had a Christmas Secret

David Ottewell has switched off comments but reveals that Faraz Bhatti booked the room for announcing his treachery almost two weeks ahead of doing the deed. Unusually competent and organised for this erstwhile Lib Dem, New Tory.

Would be interesting to know how many seasonal Lib Dem meetings and functions Faraz and his scheming father may have attended over the holidays? And also more about the re-selection/de-selection drama surrounding my good friend and possibly Faraz's neighbour (? not in declaration of interests he wasn't) the Rev Dr Cllr John Grant Esq. Was Faraz calling for him to be saved or ditched?

David also has John Leech continuing his cancer smokescreen in his shame at his Christie Hospital Hoax by drawing attention (weeks ago it was actually, 18 December) but displaying his ignorance of health statistics and economics by expecting instant cure to chronic problems and his deep-seated misery by not acknowledging improvements and achievements.

If he is not actually saying a Hospital is threatened with closure, or failing to apologise for his bewildering decision to frighten cancer patients with this bogus story, he is guaranteed to be running down the NHS with pathetic slogans and scares every week or two.

Kenyan General Election: Sectarian Letter is Behind Times

Amidst a lot of coverage of the Iowa primaries and analysis of the republican side of things that you won't find here Iain has published a very sectarian and suspect account of the troubles in Kenya. That's not a criticism of Iain for reproducing it. But two points of caution:

* There are perhaps 10 numerically significant tribes in Kenya and probably 40 in all. This simplifies that to just the two, those of the Cheaters and the Cheetahs.
* The lag in this being written and distributed means that old anecdotes may appear to be current.

Odinga's Luo are in fact the third largest tribe and fairly evenly matched in size with those in second to fifth. The fourth, Kalenjin is home to most internationally famous Kenyans of the last 30 years - 90% of the distance runners battling with Paula Radcliffe and Brendan Foster belong to this 10% segment. These four tribes comprise 50% of the population versus just 22% in Kikuyu.

Over-simplified sectarianism is - as usual - the prism through which the world media tends to analyse the troubles. Reminiscent of a much overplayed Sunni-Shia split for Iraq. The real dichotomies are old vs young, rich vs poor, corrupt vs clean, and politically right vs left. There is a bit of religious sectarianism overlaid on the communities too.

Mwai K happens to be in the hegemony and the first of every single one of these pairs, Raina O is nominally in the second (relatively) of all but the rich-poor one. My athlete and friend Tarus is a member of the Kalenjin.

Very much in opposition to Mwai and the hegemony himself, terrified at what is going on, anxious for friends and family - including athlete friends who don't normally travel to Europe for a couple of months at least, and reporting that Mwai's vigilantes have guns and ammunition whereas the poor have knives and sticks, and matches of course.

So there may be a bit of the old "civilised" gun murders vs chilling butchery, mostly reflecting the wealth or otherwise of the criminals and hotheads who are carrying out the killings rather than any essential good versus evil.

But let us try to resist the media rush to make this primarily sectarian. At that rate the President is in a minority of just 22%. And let us also accept that such accounts are already several days out of date and have now been superceded by relative calm. Hopefully these troubles have not reached the tipping point where they will persist.

BBC News 24: Spinning the Iowa Primary like a Top

This time yesterday BBC News 24 were correctly stating that BO was ahead with the real question whether JE or HC would edge second place. Today they are calling the 38:30:30:2 outcome a "surprise". You think they'd take the credit?

Seems to me that whatever the history of Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in past elections all bets should be off this time. Here we have a woman, a black american and a kind of socialist making the running for the Democrats, and therefore for the whole contest. At least two don't have any real funding issues. And a year out with such a mould breaking crew contesting the nomination, and no incumbents in the field, the history of primaries is near irrelvant.

As far as it goes though Mark Pack at LDV explains the Iowa form book here and New Hampshire here.

Michael Moore was calling for Gore to join in but slightly backing Edwards on Wednesday and conveying the fact that TWICE AS MANY "democrats" turned out to caucus as "republicans" (239,000 vs 115,000), and now seeming to be backing Obama on Thursday.

Parbury is of course a long time BO-ite but it must be said that as a prima ballerina his pliés leave something to be desired.

Manchester City Council: Yes, We Now Have a "Tory"!

Above is the brand new poster boy for Conservatism in the City of Manchester. Faraz Bhatti. On page 19 of today's South Manchester Reporter FB stars in a Lib Dem press release story about some park floodlighting. But alas on page 5 he was already to be seen shaking Dave-id "What Have I Done?" Cameron's hand as FB follows his friend Sajjad Karim MEP across from Lib Dems to the Tories.

Neither Faraz nor Sajjad have been made particularly welcome by the regulars at Conservative Home. And I think we can now look forward to a campaign of personal villification from his erstwhile leader Simple Simon Ashley who begins thusly:

"He seems upset that I don't consider him the most important person in the world*. He has shafted his ward colleagues and shafted the party."

Most of all of course, though this is of no concern to Simon who leads a Lib Dem group whose politics are too slight to even be noticed, Faraz has stolen nearly three and a half more years supping at the council trough from the people of Whalley Range. They re-elected him last May despite his renowned workrate, his renowned political idealism, and his renowned personal qualities and those of his famous dad, another Lib Dem candidate. He would have had not the slightest chance of winning the seat as a Conservative.

This is a tremendous gift to Manchester Labour and one which will keep giving until 2011 when Faraz's term ends.

* That's Simon Ashley of course!

Flashback: Jailbird Michael Brown Upset by "Dishonesty"?

Fairly hilarious discovery in the archives. In reading round the Lord Khalid Hameed of Hampstead (right) elevation; and the absolute coincidence of interesting donations to the Lib Dems either side of the peerage; I am reminded of the Lib Dems other star donor and jailbird Michael Brown.

Michael Brown is of course a convicted fraudster felon. His businesses apparently had no business in the UK when they donated very generously. This fundamental eligibility criterion nuance eluded the Lib Dems "due diligence", probably because at £2.4 million the contribution was so trivial.

Now looks like it might not even have been the company's own money to dispense, but hey ho, mistakes do happen. Good to see the Electoral Commission giving them the benefit of the doubt as they did the Tories over their Houses of Parliament dining scam scheme. Presumably Abrahams and Watt will just give the EC their best winning grins and walk free.

But anyway ...as a liberal Brown wasn't even the itsy bitsyest bit alarmed at the stream of revelations around alcoholism, bisexuality and unfit-for-publicationism afflicting Charles Kennedy, Simon Hughes, and Mark Oaten respectively.

Here's the Times (back in January 2006):

The shambles has also thrown a harsh light on possible splits among Lib Dems with important donors threatening to withdraw their support. Paul Marshall, a City millionaire who has been a big backer of the party, is understood to be ready to stop if Hughes wins. Several other leading backers are said to believe that Hughes, most left-wing of the three leadership candidates, is not fit to lead the party.

Michael Brown, who has given the party more than £2m, has also indicated he will stop funding regardless of who wins the leadership.

Yes, that's right. Brown was among those bugged by the dishonesty of the party he'd just chucked £2.4M at!

One insider close to the leading donors said: “It’s not the homosexuality (or the struggles with alcohol) — it’s the dishonesty. People like Simon, but some of the big backers are disappointed by this revelation.”

I can imagine how very disappointing indeed this fibbery - so familiar to political opponents - would be to a fine upstanding individual like Michael Brown. But the Times continued ...

The Lib Dems face a further blow with some Muslim members threatening to leave because of Hughes’s bisexuality.

The paper then goes on to list some high profile examples of this phenomenon. But where on earth are they going to head if they want to make an issue of a party's liberalism around sexuality? Not to Labour, that's for sure.

Chris Huhne MP: Will Need to Get Calling 999 ... Again

New Lib DemCross bench peer = generous Lib Dem donor. Not declared to appointments commission. Tut tut. Man who nominated him "forgot" he had done so or that he'd even heard of him when asked by the Times. And nominator continues lobbying activity though a parliamentarian. Breaking party rules. And all good sense.

A generous flourish of my hat to Mr Paul Staines.

UPDATE: It is Lord Khalid Hameed of Hampstead. Elevated February 2007 (the date on the first update link is wrong).

The Lib Dem Treasurer and fellow Lord was not the person who first suggested Hameed. But he was the first supporting signatory. Lot of smoke and mirrors over whether LDs knew he (Hameed) was a donor or closely related to donor companies. The largest single donation came after his peerage. Cross bencher.

UPDATE 2: OK, OK, OK. As I said above this guy is a "cross bencher". But I'll change the original text too.

Blogging Has Been Light: Now We Hope Back in Business

Blogging has been light over the holidays. Now we are back at the House of Love bulletins should increase.

A certain amount of catching up may even be accomplished.

Our dog sitter Elly Tarus Kiptarbei has some particular perspectives on the situation in Kenya. His family home is little more than 10 kilometres from the infamous church in Elodoret.

And on our travels we have found ourselves discussing inter alia some of the contortions of "democracy" that passed muster in these Isles even a couple of decades ago. Contributing to thousands of deaths.