Private Eye 1232
WHO is the wise soul who advised Lord
Mandelson to part-privatise the Post Office?
Step forward businessman Richard Hooper, whose report recommending a partial
sale, delivered just before Christmas, wasn't the first job he has done for the
government. Hooper was deputy chairman of the Of com regulatory board from
2002-05 - but, rather more disastrously, he was also a non-executive director of
the fiasco that was UK eUniversities Worldwide (see Eyes passim).
UkeU was a drive to launch an international online university service based on
British universities. But it flopped spectacularly in 2004 when only 900
students registered instead of the 5,000 it had hoped to recruit, and taxpayers
were left with a £50m bill.
When a select committee of MPs examined the flop, it concluded that the main
reasons for failure were a "distinct lack of marketing" and mistakes with the
technology. The MPs also complained loudly that "bonuses paid to senior staff
were wholly unacceptable and morally indefensible". They argued: "The
non-executive directors who approved these bonuses through the remuneration
committee cannot escape criticism." Hooper was one of the non-execs who approved
the indefensible bonuses.
No wonder references to Hooper's role at UkeU seem to be few and far between
these days in government circles.
ONLINE snooping firm Phorm is an "interesting and innovative business",
communications minister Lord Carter told the business and enterprise committee
last week. But there's mounting opposition to the use of "deep packet
inspection" technology to target adverts based on users' web-browsing habits
(Eyes passim).
Phorm's American equivalent, a company called NebuAd, was the subject of a probe
by the US Congress and has now been abandoned. The inquiry found that - like BT
with Phorm communications firms had tested the technology on web users without
telling them. Facing accusations of illegal wire-tapping, NebuAd's customers
lost their enthusiasm for the project.
At a House of Lords discussion last week, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee said
Phorm's technology was equivalent to "opening a person's mail" and called for an
end to web snooping. But the government's response has so far been so feeble
that in February the EU threatened to take "formal action if the UK authorities
do not provide a satisfactory response" to protect citizens' privacy.
THE NEWS that Conservative frontbencher Mark Lancaster has parted company with
the mother of his four-month-old daughter, Amanda Evans, may have disappointed
his constituents in North East Milton Keynes, coming as it does so soon after
his separation from his wife in 2007.
But the details of the split, splashed all over the Mirror and the Daily Mail
complete with copious photographs and quotes from "friends of Miss Evans" on how
she was "heartbroken and bitter" after moving out of their "£750,000 family
home", shocked no one more than her colleagues at the News of the World.
Prior to going on maternity leave last October, hackette Evans specialised in
such tales as "Dubai romper's wife-swap bride", "Brat trick Gabby puts 3 girls
in club" and "Rat Andy kicks out stolen lover". The failure of "Love rat Tory
boots out blonde lover and their tiny tot" to appear as a Screws exclusive has
not gone down well in Wapping.
CALLED TO ORDURE
POLITICIANS lecture the rest of us about cutting back while they themselves
continue to set up money-burning bodies with abandon. The latest blithe
extravagance is a decision to create seven all-Labour regional select committees
- all-Labour because no one else is prepared to join such pointless talking
shops.
MPs also voted to pay the bloke who runs the new Commons allowances committee
(purpose: to stop unjustified waste). Previous counterparts of this post have
gone unpaid for years. But now it is deemed essential to bung the chairman an
extra £14,000 a year. Credit crunch, what credit crunch?
Labour whips were out in force for both decisions, despite a convention that
party politics be kept out of committee-forming discussions. Whips love new
committees because committees mean freebies and freebies mean having leverage
over venal backbenchers. Whips, you see, get to decide who sits on select
committees. "Do what we tell you, Jones, and we'll make sure you sit on that
shiny new committee - the one with the free trips to the regions, smart hotels,
slap-up dinners, minibars, etc." "Don't mind if! do."
The new regional select committees, which will cost around £10m over the course
of a parliament, are fiercely opposed by the Tories and Lib Deems who reckon MPs
already have far too many select committees to man. The existing ones are often
so badly attended they struggle to be quorate.
Nominally, Harriet Harman - or, more likely, Labour chief whip Nick Brown - has
insisted on the seven committees being set up to scrutinise the public money
spent by regional development associations. Such spending is already monitored,
however, by departmental select committees.
Shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan called the seven new bodies "a job creation
How DOES Capita plan to improve its transport performance, which suffered such a setback when it lost the £60m-a-year London congestion charge contract in 2007?
Government transport contracts are important to Crapita. It also has a £22m contract running computers for the DVLA and several consultancy contracts with the Department for Transport.
Luckily, then, this month Capita is hiring Sir David Rowlands, until last year permanent secretary at the Department for Transport.
THE Olympic Delivery Authority has announced a shortlist of five contractors who will bid for the ludicrously overpriced £1bn athletes village.
One of the five, Ardmore Construction, has on its board one Steven "Shagger" Norris, who also happens to be on the board of the London Development Authority ... which has a fiduciary responsibility for the cost of the Games.
Triathlons all round!
"That was no lady, that was my research assistant/diary secretary/ constituency
organiser"
scheme for Labour members" who( "go off on jollies". However, there shortage of
qualified personnel t convention has had to be broken: the will include
parliamentary private MPs who are ministerial aides and s government. There is
therefore possibility of ministers being dragged before: these committees to be
quizzed b: gofers. Don't expect the question tricky!
Government supporters said could always step aside from a session pleading
conflict But the Lib Dems' David that the north-east region committee will have
five members (all Labour, naturally) of whom four are ministerial aides. If they
duck out owing to a conflict the committee will be do\\
When it came to paying the cha allowances committee, Commons d Chris Bryant
tried to glide over saying he hoped it would be agreed further ado". So it would
have been MP Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) , of others not protested. Mackinlay
some 160 MPs are now on some for top-up on their basic parliamentary wage has to
stop at some stage," despairingly. Bryant looked indignant
Hugo Swire (Con, E Devon) was side of the angels, saying the proposal was badly
timed, at the very least, given tabloid press accusations that MPs had
"noses in the trough" David Heath said that "the intention behind the allowances
committee is to reduce costs to the House, so it is a little odd that the very
first action is to add another salary to those costs" Some, he said, "might see
that as ironic".
No, mate. They might just see greed by a gang of increasingly desperate Labour
donkeys filling their nosebags, they still can.
'Gavel Basher'
HIGH PRINCIPALS
LIVERPOOL
University is planning to abandon the study of politics, communication,
philosophy and statistics, saying the four departments' research isn't up to
scratch.
All four departments, which scored less than four stars in the recent national
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), are be for closure by the university's
senate to pull in the top level of research f
The announcement is a nightmare students, especially first years, who academic
staff will soon start looking elsewhere, leaving them with a tiny department in
which to finish their Meanwhile lecturers say that dump department because of
its research: the quality of teaching and the imp( strength of the university of
offering of key subjects.
A further five departments - civil engineering cancer studies, dentistry,
American sociology - are also facing reviews research output. The senate voted
Ii withdraw the closure plans put for\' managers and decide on them later
Shadow skills secretary David' the closure of these "well-respected on the
government's funding settlement that universities such as Liverpool' forced to
close departments becaus, longer have the money". But had VI homework? Liverpool
was actually in the latest RAE and got a whoppi rise in its grant allocation
from the Education Funding Council (Hefce
From Private Eye 1232/7
MAN IN THE EYE
SIR PAUL JUDGE
Is THERE a more energetic couple in the land than Sir Paul and Lady Judge? She,
as Eye readers will know, is the Eva Peron lookalike who runs the UK Atomic
Energy Authority while somehow managing to hold down about 30 other jobs and
directorships. Her multi-millionaire husband, not to be outdone, has now set
himself the modest challenge of cleaning up British politics.
Sir Paul's new party, the Jury Team, intends to put up a full slate of
candidates for the Euro-election in June and next year's general election. It
has no specific policies and no manifesto: all he asks of his prospective
politicians, who will be selected by mobile-phone vote, is that "they support
our principles of good governance - democracy, accountability and transparency".
Financial integrity is at the heart of it.
"Every week now we see more tales of sleaze emanating from the corridors of
power," Judge wrote in the Daily Express last week. "In 2009 alone we have seen
the cash for legislation scandal in the Lords and Jacqui Smith claiming expenses
that many feel she should not have been receiving. Both of these follow in the
murky footsteps trodden last year by the Wintertons, Derek Conway and others.
This cannot continue."
He should know: only last December a court case brought by his ex-wife, Anne
Judge, revealed his own murky footsteps. When they divorced, in 2001, she
accepted that £14m should be deducted from the £29.6m estate, of which she was
entitled to 38 percent, so he could fulfill a "moral obligation" to cover the
losses of a charity which had invested in a failed business on his
recommendation. In fact, without telling her, he used £600,000 of it to pay the
charity's debt to the Inland Revenue but kept the rest.
Although the appeal judges ruled that in law she wasn't now entitled to the
extra cash, they admitted to being "troubled" by his conduct. "He was presented
to the court as a successful and eminent businessman," said Lord Justice
Collins. "But I remain disturbed about the way in which he used the charity to
fund his own enterprises while simultaneously taking advantage of gift aid,
especially when coupled by the relativity with which he seemed to approach the
concept of moral obligation." The outcome of the case, Collins said, was an
"undeserved windfall" for Sir Paul.
Who better to champion the cause of accountability and transparency? Though he
omits to mention it, this is the same Paul Judge who, as
director-general of the Conservative Party in 1993, received a letter from the
administrators of Asil Nadir's failed Polly Peck empire, asking him to return
some of the £440,000 donated to the Tories "at Asil Nadir's behest without his
ever having properly obtained proper authority from the board of directors ...
In the light of these facts I would urge you to return the donations to Polly
Peck so that the creditors can at least obtain some small measure of
compensation."
Judge replied that since the donations had been "legitimately received in good
faith and with no knowledge of any irregularities" the party saw no reason to
return them - even though the Tories had always promised to hand the money back
if it could be shown that Nadir had obtained it improperly.
Later that year Judge sued the Guardian for accusing him of obstructiveness in
his dealings with the Polly Peck administrators. At the libel trial, in January
1995, the Guardian's counsel cited evidence from Nadir's trustees in bankruptcy
which confirmed that Paul Judge and Conservative Central Office had been guilty
of "substantial prevarication". The jury decided that the Guardian report was
justified, leaving Judge with egg all over his face and a bill of more than
£300,000 in costs.
Soon afterwards, during Neil Hamilton's libel action against the Guardian, Judge
sent a confidential memo to party chairman Jeremy Hanley listing 21 Tory MPs who
had accepted money from the lobbyist Ian Greer. "It is clear that the Guardian
could generate considerable 'sleaze' by portraying these payments to the
fighting funds [of! candidates as being designed to buy influence when they were
re-elected," he wrote. "Despite our not being involved directly, this issue does
have the potential to embarrass the party." A year later John Major gave him a
knighthood for services rendered.
Now, brandishing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play,
Judge vows that his "entirely non-partisan" Jury Team will slay the dragon. "The
arrogance of our political class puts Britain and its democratic heritage to
shame. All of the major parties are guilty." He assured Andrew Marr last week
that he no longer has any connection with the Conservative Party.
But when did his conversion to non-partisanship occur? The Electoral
Commission's register of political donations lists several gifts from Sir Paul
to the Tories in the last few years - £4,000 in 2003, £13,000 in 2004, £]0,000
in 2005. His most recent cheque to Conservative Central Office, a generous
£6,000, was paid on, er, 10 October 2008.
BRUSSELS SPROUTS
WHILE happy to waste EU taxpayers' money to boost its megalomaniac building
plans, the European commission has avoided the usual regulatory demands that go
with them.
Thanks to an EU directive, the commission is exempt from all direct and indirect
taxation, with the result that, unlike anybody else in Belgium, EU institutions
need not pay any property, regional or local taxes.
Now, with plans to build a vast complex of glass towers in the centre of
Brussels to create "the second most important diplomatic centre in the world",
the commission can also avoid putting any contracts out to tender - a fact
criticised by the court of auditors but allowed by the commission under its own
regulations. Instead the commission uses "negotiated procedures" (aka
backhanders ).
Such procedures were used in the construction of the hideously expensive Brussels
Berlaymont building (known as "Berlaymonster"). It took 13 years to complete and
was recently renovated with a further €1bn or so of taxpayers , money
- but is still not large enough, it seems, to house the growing number of
Eurocrats. The new project is expected to take a further 15 years to complete.
To MAKE sure the commission's exploits are not too open to public scrutiny,
Eurocrats recently proposed to "improve access to documents" by, er, keeping
them secret.
Swedish justice minister Beatrice Ask condemned the proposal to restrict public
access to entire categories of documents unless they appeared in a register. And
the proposal was also condemned by MEPs, who called for the commission to make
all its documents available on a central website. Er, but that would be the same
MEPs who have proposed a new version of the transparency law - to create an "EU
classified" category in which documents that would "harm the interests of the
European Union or member states" would be kept secret from the public for 30
years. Oh, and the same MEPs (excluding the liberal ALDE party) who have voted
to keep their own bloated expenses secret as well!
DOUBLE-DUTCH STANDARDS
BRITAIN'S Islamist right was suddenly converted to the virtues of peace, love
and understanding when the government decided to ban Dutch politician Geert
Wilders from Britain.
"Racism and religious hatred should not be allowed in a multicultural,
multi-faith British society," declared the Muslim Association of Britain last
month. Wilders "has been an open and relentless preacher of hate," agreed the
Muslim Council of Britain. "We extend our support and gratitude to the Home
Secretary, Jacqui Smith," added the British Muslim Forum. "The BMF, since its
creation, has been outspoken in its condemnation of extremism in all forms."
As all the above organisations have links to the Muslim Brotherhood and
Jamaat-e-Islami, two of the most reactionary organisations in the Muslim world,
this was an astonishing U-turn. But could it last?
Much can be said about Wilders and his anti-Muslim film Fitna (see "Letter from
The Hague", last Eye). But give the bouffant-haired bigot his due, he has never
agitated for mass murder. The same cannot be said of Hezbollah, whose leader
Hassan Nasrallah declared: "If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the
trouble of going after them worldwide."
Hezbollah's media relations officer is one Ibrahim Moussawi, who parroted his
boss's hatreds when he told the New Yorker that Jews were "a
lesion on the forehead of history. Moussawi was head of political programming
at Hezbollah's Al Manar TV station, which broadcast Diaspora, a drama in which
the Jews plan the Holocaust to make a gullible world feel sorry for them, as
well as killing children and drinking their blood.
Al Manar also originated the first 9/11 conspiracy theory: Israelis had advance
knowledge of the attacks; they secretly warned Jews in New York to stay away
from danger but let the atrocities go ahead to turn world opinion against
Muslims.
As David Toube, who investigates Islamist extremism, told the Eye: "Moussawi's
job is not to oppose what Israel does in the West Bank, but to incite hatred
against Jews."
The French and Spanish governments have banned Al Manar, but the Foreign Office
and Home Office were all set to welcome Moussawi to Britain after the School of
Oriental and Asian Studies invited him to teach a course on political Islam.
SOAS said in a press statement that as long as he does not indulge "in any
racist incitement" on the campus, then its academics can forget about his anti-semitism.
On this reasoning, SOAS should invite Nick Griffin and the leaders of Combat 18
to help explain what makes the white far right tick. As long as they did not
indulge "in any racist incitement" in the lecture hall, all would be fine.
When Jacqui Smith banned Wilders, foreign secretary David Miliband explained
that the government could not tolerate the presence of a maker of a "hate-filled
film designed to stir up religious and racial hatred". Despite the hate-filled
films of Hezbollah, Labour was, however, prepared to excuse Moussawi because he
was from Hezbollah's "political wing". It backed down and denied him a visa last
week only after pressure from the Obama administration. As an Obama staffer told
the New York Times, the US would like Britain to explain "the difference between
the political, social and military wings of Hezbollah because we don't see the
difference".
The government certainly faced no pressure from those who cheered the Wilders
ban. The Muslim Association of Britain, which declared that "racism and
religious hatred should not be allowed in a multicultural, multi-faith society",
made no protest. The Muslim Council of Britain offered no condemnation of
Smith's decision to admit Moussawi. And from the British Muslim Forum, which was
so "outspoken in its condemnation of extremism in all forms", came nothing but a
deafening silence.
'Ratbiter'