‘BUILT ON BRAN FLAKES… BELIEVE ME, ANY SUCCESS HAS TO BE BUILT ON THE RIGHT FOUNDATIONS. THIS IS WHY I LIKE TO START MY DAY WITH A DELICIOUS BOWL OF KELLOGG’S BRAN FLAKES PACKED FULL OF FIBRE. GOOD, HEARTY STUFF. I LOVE IT. AND IF IT WORKS FOR ME… IT COULD CERTAINLY WORK FOR YOU!’
– Chris Hoy, Triple Gold Medallist – Beijing 2008, on the back of a box of Kellogg’s Bran Flakes

Perhaps the most depressing incident in Channel 4’s otherwise predictable Dispatches investigation of breakfast cereals was a small boy saying he’d choose Kellogg’s Bran Flakes because, ‘they’re good for cycling.’

But what a reasonable conclusion to come to given that the Olympian Chris Hoy is so glowing in his endorsement. Chris Hoy is not just an Olympic hero, World and Commonwealth Champion, he’s a Knight Bachelor, Member of the Order of the British Empire, BBC Sports Personality of the Year Winner (UK and Scotland), recipient of a couple of honorary degrees and much more.

There is nothing wrong with Sir Chris Hoy making money from his celebrity, but his irresponsibly selling out to Kellogg’s Bran Flakes should leave us all …continues here.

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Despite mass protests, peaking with thirty protestors entering the BBC Television Centre, the BBC today celebrates a record audience for Question Time with BNP leader Nick Griffin.

I haven’t watched Question Time in years and didn’t bother this time, as the show itself was of little consequence. Predictably the panel did all they could to condemn and distance themselves from Griffin, who today casts himself as the hero who survived a lynch mob.

The BNP entered the Question Time bear pit with nothing to lose. Their support remains small and is most likely to be made up of hardened supporters who are not at all bothered by the party’s racism. One in five Britons describe themselves as racist anyway, a substantial group to which the BNP can market itself.

The BBC’s Question Time forum has been flooded with support for Nick Griffin and the BNP is beginning to win coverage for its views on mainstream issues, like the postal strike.

This massive publicity boost will only help the BNP win support from people who feel disconnected from mainstream politics; people who lack the skills and education to take advantage of the opportunities contemporary Britain offers; people who are instinctively conservative; people who believe in an imagined 1950s style golden age when Britain was white, entirely heterosexual and women were happy as homemakers; people who are ready to believe fascism’s myths and are open its simplistic solutions.

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‘It looks like the leadership have deleated (sic) my post. So much for democracy and freedom of speech. However, This is to reafirm (sic) my leadership challenge in 2010. There is too much infighting within the group…’
– Cllr. Ken Dobson (Lib Dem, City Centre)

Liberal Democrat councillor for Manchester City Centre, Ken Dobson, has repeatedly claimed that posts to his blog have been deleted by ‘the leadership’ in the wake of his announcing his intention to stand for leader of Manchester Liberal Democrats… but ‘the leadership’ was too slow and for a short time Ken Dobson’s campaign posts are out of their reach, safe in Google’s cache.

Dobson’s decision to stand as a unity candidate, immediately sparked a civil war.

Said Ken Dobson: ‘The leadership have deleted my blogg (sic) for a second time. I must be very embarassing (sic) for them. No doubt they will control this blogg (sic) too. But this type of thing is nothing new within the leadership. Gone are the days when members could speak out agaianst (sic) things they thought were wrong and unfair. What about local party members who are being excluded from meetings because they speak up or their face doesn’t fit ? What about the back benchers who don’t get a say or are just brushed aside but then are used as workers delivering leafets (sic) for the leadership ? Then there is all the petty infighting and threats. Members being threatened with their council seat if they speak their mind. They must be running scared. This will all change when I become leader of the group in 2010. Please support me in my campaign to unite the the (sic) party.’

I had the misfortunate of meeting Ken Dobson shortly before the Commonwealth Games came to Manchester and found him to be an excellent example of why the Liberal Democrats are bad for the city. He still lives next to Manchester Velodrome, in the shadow of the City of Manchester Stadium. At that time he saw regeneration, and the Commonwealth Games in particular, as an imposition: ‘it’s not creating jobs for people round here.’

It is no surprise to those of us that know Manchester Liberal Democrats that this civil war has broken out. Their style of pavement politics has created a disparate coalition of nimbys and other conservatives, who have little in common with each other or the national party. They have deliberately avoided producing a positive alternative vision for Manchester for fear of offering Labour something to criticise and because any attempt to unite behind a common set of values would pull the party apart.

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Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail has a well deserved reputation for employing toxic commentators and so it’s no surprise that the tabloid’s take on Stephen Gateley’s death should prove so offensive.

It’s only surprising that similar rows haven’t erupted sooner. Last week the Mail on Sunday (of which Dacre is editor-in-chief) offered some specific criticisms of BNP pronouncements: here Anton Vowl offers examples of Daily Mail columnists whose opinions coincide with those very same British Nazi party views. We should expect no more from Paul Dacre, who is at once a moral crusader and pornographer.

Columnist Jan Moir was merely towing the editorial line when she suggested that Stephen Gately’s ‘strange, lonely and troubling death’ was connected to his lifestyle. Her piece is all the more bizarre for recording that Stephen Gately died from acute pulmonary oedema – a natural death brought on in this case by a previously undiagnosed heart condition – and then going on to connect this with smoking cannabis. In a subsequent statement Jan Moir describes attempts to label her homophobic as ‘mischievous’ while continuing her attempts to link Gately’s lifestyle, including the cannabis, to his death.

Perhaps we should be generous and accept that the exertion of a good night out – which would appear to contradict Jan Moir’s claim that this was a ‘lonely’ death – was a trigger. But the trigger could just have easily have been an otherwise healthy gym workout.

The real aim of the Daily Mail is to push an idealised 1950s lifestyle onto us all; a Britain imagined as white and heterosexual with women happy as homemakers and everyone in a loving nuclear family. That this never existed is of little concern to Paul Dacre and bigoted columnists like Jan Moir. That many of us reject this ideal as racist, misogynistic and homophobic is greatly offensive to them.

Meanwhile, Jan Moir’s column is illustrated with a photo of her heavily made-up face, which appears bloated, perhaps as the result of a life of restaurant reviewing. Obesity really is a lifestyle disease and has a long list of often fatal symptoms. One would hate to see Jan Moir collapse after boxing, the victim of a genuinely unhealthy lifestyle.

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‘I hope this isn’t a political gimmick’ – Chris Grayling, Shadow Home Secretary
‘We feel very queasy about his decision… to serve under Tory colours’ – Daily Mail

Coming so soon after his comments on The Wire, Chris Grayling, who did much to spoil yesterday’s announcement that General Sir Richard Dannatt is a Tory, is quickly establishing himself as the most gaffe prone member of the shadow cabinet.

But it says something when, writing under the headline ‘Mistaken manoeuvre’, the Daily Mail admits to reaching for the sick bucket.

The former head of the army may have been an effective soldier in his day, but the old warhorse is not cut out for politics. His attacks on the government had been looking increasingly party political for some time and there were claims that Labour was looking to smear Dannatt in return.

Now that General Sir Richard Dannatt has come out as a Tory stooge, there is no need to smear him.

As even the Daily Mail agrees, the army should be above party politics. If General Sir Richard Dannatt wanted to play with the big boys, he should have come clean as soon as he had made his decision. Instead, duplicitous and cowardly, General Sir Richard Dannatt has been negotiating a plumb job in a future Conservative administration while presenting himself as an honest old soldier standing up for his troops.

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What a con More4’s When Boris Met Dave turned out to be.

Billed as a docudrama, examining David Cameron’s relationship with Boris Johnson from their days at Eton and Oxford, it was actually as an example of Channel 4 at its very worst. A series of very boring talking heads, many of whom admitted to not knowing David Cameron at Oxford (or anywhere else); it was quickly established the pair had no relationship at Eton. While Dave Cameron had a fairly low profile at Oxford, Boris Johnson has always been a larger than life character. Many of the talking heads didn’t know Boris either, but they knew of him.

With a lack of anything interesting to say, co-producer and co-writer Toby Young was forced to create some poorly acted cringing skits in an attempt to liven things up. We had Dave Cameron playing air-guitar on a tennis racquet while listing to Sade. Toby admits he knew Cameron only slightly and knew little of the Bullingdon Club.

Toby Young was also one of the main talking heads. You have to wonder how he got this gig.

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When Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling claimed that parts of Britain looked like scenes from The Wire, many people rushed to condemn him (especially as he appeared to have not seen very much of the popular TV show). The Manchester Evening News’ David Ottewell reports he enters the Tory conference unrepentant.

For those unfamiliar, a key storyline includes politicians stealing from charities that they have themselves established. When caught they protest that they are the victims of a vicious hate campaign and that the accusations are politically motivated.

Chris Graying is a member of the Atlantic Bridge’s advisory board. It is most unlikely that he would he would ever steal from that organisation. He has no need to as it appears to have been established for the benefit of senior Conservatives such as himself.

We all know what The Wire’s Senator Clay Davis would say about that: ‘Shee-ee-ee-it!’ If only Clay had thought of making himself the beneficiary of his charities, he’d have saved himself some bother.
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It seems the closest the Atlantic Bridge has ever come to educating the public is hosting the launch of a book by William Hague in New York.

Officially an education and research scheme, or ‘think tank,’ hosting events like this is essential if the Atlantic Bridge is to retain its charitable status both here in the UK and in the USA.

Yet even here, the charity sails close to the wind. In the US persons, ‘in a position to exercise substantial influence over the affairs of the organization,’ may not benefit from its activities. Let’s hope that William Hague’s position on the Atlantic Bridge advisory board doesn’t upset the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS), too much. Or maybe it was the British taxpayer who subsidised this one.
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The Sunday Times scoop of this pre-Tory Conference weekend is that David Cameron has dinner with party donors. He’s going to eat his way to £5m, with shadow chancellor George Osborne and shadow foreign secretary William Hague looking to raise similar amounts between them.

But so what? Charity-style dinners are likely to remain a constant fixture of senior politicians’ diaries for as long as political parties need to raise money. What matters is whether diners get more than a well presented meal and a handshake.

To find out the Sunday Times deployed a team of four — Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Marie Woolf, Harry Byford and Dominic Tobin — to find out what really goes on. It turns out that donors get, ‘five minutes from David about what they [the Tories] want to do. And then it’s any questions. The donors are treated like an intelligent fan club.’

Goodness.

Meanwhile, ‘Boy George’ and ‘Wee Willy’ are busy advising the Atlantic Bridge, a charity currently being investigated by the Charities Commission, which appears to be set up as a Tory Travel Club. Sadly, the Sunday Times is too busy to cover that one.

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‘When events occur in America, expenses are paid by the Atlantic Bridge Inc (US), run by Scott Syfert. If a British citizen wishes to attend an event in the US… the UK charity will accept the donations on behalf of Atlantic Bridge Inc.’
– Atlantic Bridge submission to Charity Commission

It seems that if you are lucky enough to qualify for an Atlantic Bridge jolly – that is to say you’re a top Tory who needs to get chummy with an American Conservative – your donation to the Atlantic Bridge (UK) will qualify you to have your expenses paid by Atlantic Bridge, Inc (US).

As a higher rate taxpayer, a £1,000 trip to see comedian James Hirsen in LA, for example, would be covered by a £600 donation. The remaining £400 would then be claimed from British taxpayers. It sounds like an invitation to take part in well planned, systematic corruption.

You might think that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs would have something to say about that. The good news is that they do and their strict limits on what a charity may give a donor mean that a £1,000 trip to the USA could never be legitimate.

One does wonder who qualifies to have their US travel expenses paid in return for donations. It sounds like such a good deal and yet nobody has admitted taking them up on the offer.

Of course a clever Tory could get someone else to make the donation on their behalf. Lucky Stephen Hammond, Conservative MP for Wimbledon, has declared trips to the USA funded by the Atlantic Bridge and so must be very important. There’s nothing to say he made a donation to qualify for his jolly.

Other Conservative MPs appear less fortunate. They have instead declared USA travel and accommodation to have been ‘met by Dr Liam Fox’s office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London.’

Dr Liam Fox chairs the Atlantic Bridge (UK), Michael Lewis is an Atlantic Bridge donor and yet declarations like this make no mention of the Atlantic Bridge. The Tory MPs involved appear to be too junior to receive the charity’s support.

Conservative MPs who have declared USA travel and accommodation to have been ‘met by Dr Liam Fox’s office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London,’ include Mark Harper of Forest of Dean; John Penrose of Weston-Super-Mare; Brooks Newmark of Braintree; and Philip Dunne of Ludlow.
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