Industry | 2010.03.09
Hugh Muir's diary
Let asylum seekers eat cake, or soup. Or pie. Just ensure they eat something
• There will be no whitewash in the White House, said Tricky Dicky Nixon; and since then we have learned to take official denials at face value. So when ministers say – despite detailed claims to the contrary – that there are no women on hunger strike at the pleasure palace that is the Yarl\'s Wood detention centre (prop: Labour event sponsors Serco), all our concerns are immediately put to rest. And when we learn that the ministerial board on deaths in custody is meeting on Thursday, and just happens to have on the agenda the whys and wherefores of force feeding of hunger strikers, one sees how ministers can be plagued by sorry coincidence or aided by good fortune.
• The fight to save the digital radio station 6 Music gathers pace, with 79,000 having signed up to the Facebook protest and with the backlash growing, this is perilous territory for the bigwigs at the BBC. So it may not have been the wisest thing for staff at BBC Coventry and Warwickshire to interrogate Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, during her visit to the area last week. Who knows what she expected to talk about, but when the microphones were on, she got spiky questions about the leaks and the BBC cuts strategy. Bennett (pictured) coped, and one can only admire the chutzpah of her questioners. But later, as she talked to students at Coventry university, her press minder was overheard having a chat with the local station; just as The Thick of It\'s abrasive spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, can sometimes be overheard "chatting" forcefully to his minister. For all concerned, a trying day.
• Ed Vaizey, the Conservative culture spokesman, is one of those now keen to keep 6 Music alive, though last week he seemed untroubled about the prospect of the station closing. But then things move so quickly in the field that one is lucky to be able to keep track by way of the weekly email jointly dispatched by Ed and Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary. The latest tells us about the digital industries, music licencing, the Baftas and the lottery. But look, if you will, for mention of last week\'s pivotal report by the Conservative-led culture select committee : the one that talks about phone hacking by News International and the shenanigans that happened when Andy Coulson, now David Cameron\'s spin doctor, ran the News of the World. If you can find anything, let us know.
• So John Cryer, the former MP, will be Labour\'s man in Leyton and Wanstead, the seat vacated by the expenses-shamed Harry Cohen. But there will be repercussions. For in the final stages, the race was a run-off between Cryer and Terry Paul, a black activist. Paul lost by 36 votes. And many minority activists are wondering how this could be, because among those eliminated in the previous round was Ahmed Shazad , chair of the campaign Black Asian Minority Ethnic Labour. He had a pretty respectable 80 votes. But what has raised hackles is that on his elimination from the contest, no second preferences found their way to the other remaining minority candidate. It was Shazad or nothing for all but seven of his supporters; an indication, no doubt, of his unique talent. But for the champion of minority candidates, it hardly looks good.
• Finally, further proof that the police are just as bothered when it comes to technology crime. Scotland Yard\'s Public Order Unit launched its very own Twitter site, but it didn\'t last for long. It was cloned.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]ugh-muir-diary-bbc-budget-cuts
