Quality | 2009.12.14
Hugh Muir's diary
What do they want? Justice! Who do they want it for? Well, Conrad Black for a start
• The news is good – no, great – for all who campaign for the wronged and for justice. Today Conrad Black will have another go at overturning his fraud conviction in the US. His lawyers appear before the supreme court to argue prosecutorial misconduct. Fingers crossed. Jeffrey Skilling , the former boss of Enron, will also challenge his own conviction for so-called "honest services fraud". And the trusty sword of truth is just as sharp here, for we learn that our friend Ashley Mote , the former MEP for South East England who was disgraced and jailed for nine months for benefit fraud, has had his case accepted for examination by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. There is, regrettably, a long way to go before exoneration. Indeed it may never come; the court of appeal rejected his bid in 2007. But that was then. The man who apparently sought a BNP endorsement when cruelly dumped by Ukip and who sat with the far-righters in the now defunct Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group, needs to know we support him. We do, don\'t we?
• More from the badlands of the European parliament, and a conversation overheard in a lift in Brussels. "How are you enjoying your new group?" asks a friendly type of one of David Cameron\'s allies in the Conservatives and Reformists faction. "Half of them are mad," replies the MEP ruefully. "And that\'s just the Tories."
• With Copenhagen under way, the question must be asked: what is it about Labour and motoring analogies? Last week, as we said, it was Paul Richards , the former adviser to Hazel Blears, erroneously advising the party not to take its foot "off the brake" on NHS reform. (And Paul, your retort about the Guardian and typos did you no credit.) Then it was Ed Miliband warning that we "need to have our foot on the gas all the time" to tame carbon emissions. Is Top Gear now the source for Labour policy?
• Yes, the truth will out, as it has with George Bush. For we now know – courtesy of disclosures at the Iraq inquiry and an early-day motion tabled by Dai Davies MP – that before the war Bush addressed the United Nations about US intentions and UN resolutions – armed with the wrong speech. Left high and dry, he ad-libbed the whole thing. We attacked Iraq, but it could so easily have been Ethiopia. It was that close.
• Thought for the day concerns HM Prison Albany on the Isle of Wight, where pastoral types complain that in the run-up to Christmas, with so many sex offenders serving their sentences, they have been cautioned against references to the baby Jesus. Those so advised think the caution a little silly and have apparently resolved to ignore it. Even if we are, as Richard Littlejohn suggests, going to hell in a handcart, we are not there yet.
• A feisty mob these health administrators. Baroness Young, who has left the Care Quality Commission has been accused by the Mail on Sunday of having been beastly to the staff. And Niall Dickson has left the building at the King\'s Fund (off to run the General Medical Council). But it wasn\'t easy jumping ship. Oh, the memories, he told his leaving party. There was the visit of Prince Charles, who chairs the King\'s Fund and discovered the force of the jet from the taps in the charity\'s bathrooms. It\'s "just like Mr Bean", he told Dickson, who didn\'t quite understand. As they descended the main staircase to a waiting audience, the heir to the throne re-enacted Mr Bean\'s soaked trousers sketch to general amazement. The Goons, Bean, Norman Wisdom. Charlie can apparently do them all. [See footnote]
• Yes, memories, memories. And who was the secretary of state (presumably health, but not necessarily) whose office called ahead of a visit to the King\'s Fund to warn the assembled pointyheads that the minister "doesn\'t do policy"? That one will have to wait for Dickson\'s memoir. But in the meantime, they had better not cross him.
• This footnote was added on 8 December 2009 to clarify that the chairman of the King\'s Fund is Sir Cyril Chantler; Prince Charles is its president. This point is also made clear in the Diary of 9 December 2009.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/08/hugh-muirs-diary
