Balls Should Quit After SATS U-Turn

Switching the SATS marking from EDS back to the government's quango has blown Ed Balls' excuses right out of the water. He should be taught a lesson and quit. 

The schools secretary watched the fiasco unfold, defending himself saying he was 'accountable' but not 'responsible'. 

That set a very dangerous precedent. Arguing accountability not responsibility gave him the weak defence that this wasn't a resigning matter.

Now the government's National Assessment Agency is to take control of the re-marking of disputed SATs papers from ETS Europe. This means they've admitted responsibility for the mess. That quango is a government agency and comes right under Balls. 

The five-year contract to ETS was written by National Assessment Agency, which is part of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which is part of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is a successor to the Department for Education and Skills which is the responsibility of Ed Balls.

The Secretary of State must have signed off the original £156m contract and authorised the switching back. So he is responsible. If he didn't, then who's running the country?

This is just the latest in a whole series of government cock-ups over big IT projects awarded to their pals in the IT industry. It's costing the country billions of pounds and countless suffering to people. 

Ministers have found a neat little device to hide behind, saying they know nothing and it's all down to their own quangos. It happened at the Rural Payments Agency and with tax credit problem.

The NHS's £12.7billion IT programme is turning into the biggest financial disaster on the planet and no-one in government is admitting responsibility. 

These get-out clauses used by ministers for big IT projects are a scandal. Ministers are accountable and responsible. And if they don't like that or they preside over a cock-up, they should quit the job.

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Labour's Summer Of Discontent

Going on a summer holiday just isn't going to happen for Brown and his New Labour Party. They will be taking their work with them, preparing to do battle as the old squares up to the new.

Top of the reading list is the matter of that letter to the cabinet, reported in today's Daily Telegraph and reported here  by the Orange Party yesterday. 

After Blair changed the Party rule book to make it well nigh impossible to oust him, the letter to cabinet is only device available to prise out Brown. 

That is, unless he decides to do the honourable thing and resign on the grounds of ill-health. And it really has to be sorted before the end of September and the Labour Party Conference. 

But the fight is actually over ownership of the Labour Party. 

One the one hand, New Labour trying somehow to cling on to power. 

On the other, true Labour, never happy with way the Party was highjacked back in the 90s but, until now, quite content with the power it brought. 

They make very uneasy bedfellows. And there may be two very different 'letters' flying around! 

Janet Daly has a excellent piece in today's Telegraph with the spotlight on the Blairite New Labour camp strategy and their plan to stave off a general election until the spring. 

For true Labour, there's former minister, Michael Meacher, in today's Guardian. Meacher, thrown out by Blair, is in the McDonnell camp and to put it politely, no friend of New Labour. He's joined by Gordon Prentice who is actually calling on Brown to resign so there can be a leadership election.  

And, as so often has happened in the past, the referee is John Prescott. Speaking on TV yesterday he didn't really support Brown. But he did tell Labour MPs one thing: give the guy a break and let him have his holiday. 

But a holiday is just for a couple of weeks - not for the full parliamentary recess.

So in the meantime, it's the battle of the beaches - Dave and Sam looking drop-dead gorgeous, but more Provence than Padstow. Gordon and Sarah? Well, Sarah looks nice.

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Fat Is Still A Political Issue

Some of our food is full of crap. That's why the nation's getting fat. That's why heart disease and diabetes are so high. Disgusting but telling us nothing we didn't know already.

Tonight's Channel 4 Dispatches 'Sandwiches Unwrapped' will show sandwiches are too high in salt, fat and unmentionables.

Obesity is one of those issues the government likes to make a fuss of every now and again. Health secretary, Alan Johnson, is making a big thing about it at the moment.

But if the government was really committed to improving our health and tackling obesity, it would take urgent action on the root cause - a disgusting stealth fat called trans-fat. Give food manufacturers an ultimatum to stop peddling it and ban it outright.

This artificially produced chemical, comes under a few disguises like hydrogenated vegetable oil and is hidden in a lot of our food.

Trans-fats are used because they're cheap. They bulk-up products and give processed foods a longer shelf-life. They are used for frying and baking and turn up in all sorts of processed foods and ready-made mixes.

For years they've been singled out as not just causing obesity but cancer, diabetes liver dysfunction, infertility - you name it, these nasties are responsible.

The Ban Trans Fat campaign is a model of US consumer-led politics. Not afraid to take on the big boys, it's leading the way in the States.

New York City recently banned trans-fats from foods. So has Philadelphia and Seattle. And now Arnie is set to terminate the trannies. California has become the first US state to ban restaurants and food retailers from using trans-fats.

Governor Schwarzenegger said the new laws, are a "strong step toward creating a healthier future".

Over here the picture's not so healthy. Denmark and Switzerland have banned them. Countries where people only eat a fresh, healthy Mediterranean diet don't need to bother so much. In the UK, some supermarkets have banned them from own label foods.

But the government's main response to trans-fats is to do nothing much. A review here, a voluntary code there.

So it's left to us to turn into the food police. To hunt down the ingredient in tiny print on the packaging and take pot-luck with the rest of our food.

A review by the New England Journal of Medicine reckons there's a strong link between trans-fats and coronary heart disease and getting rid could prevent one fifth of heart attacks each year.

The British Medical Association and new government-funded research are warning that a quarter of all children in the UK will be obese by 2020.

The government response? As well as spending millions of pounds on posters and pointless campaigns, from September, parents will be given an obesity report for all 4-11 year olds. That will make us all feel so much better - and as guilty as hell.

So why doesn't the government just cut the crap, ban these trans-fats and cut out the crap. If Arnie can do it, why can't we?

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Dave's Bike Found Shock, Exclusive

New Labour's sad old Sunday Mirror has found Cameron's bike and retuned it to its grateful owner. If you believe that you might as well give up on newspapers and life. 

Cameron's bike was 'nicked' while he popped into a local shop. And there just happens to be lots of mobile phone footage of Cameron when he came out. 

The Mirror said it had used the contacts of "local community elder" Ernest Theophile, to find the bike.

But Theophile is described by the newspaper as "a staunch Labour voter who runs a social business with the help of wayward teenagers to stop them falling into a life of crime". He's come up against Cameron in the past for riding the wrong way down a one-way street.

The Mirror and the pap have been following Cameron around for ages - and Johnson for that matter - trying to get pics of them going though red lights, up a wrong way street and helmet-less. 

Earlier this year, the Mirror snapped Cameron (or was it Johnson?) on his bike ignoring red lights and going the wrong way up a one-way street.

But this latest wheeze back-fired for the Mirror. What we actually got was a picture of a fit and cool looking Cameron in a very fetching pair of shorts, popping into his local Tesco after a hard days work to get the family something for tea. 

Thanks to the 'missing bike' Cameron just rocketed though the popularity stakes. With the cunning plan in tatters, the Mirror had no choice but to give him his bike back. 

The Mirror is going through hard times because no-one wants to read a New Labour propaganda rag, so here's some free advice from an old hack. 

Next time don't nick the bike - just let the tyres down! 

Then you get a picture of hot and flustered Cameron all a-huffin' and a-puffin' trying to pump up the tyres and lots of nice headlines about his policies falling flat.

Picture: Sunday Mirror

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End Of A Spanking Good Yarn

Not since the trials of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s has the Old Bailey seen a show quite like this. It had everything. Celebrity, sex, intrigue, surprising twists and turns and important issues of press censorship and morals. 

No royals this time but everything else, including hidden cameras, MI5 and the new Miss Whiplash. The Greatest Show On Earth, from Formula One boss, Max Mosley and the News of the World, didn't disappoint.

This case, while not libel but a privacy case, centred on Mosley, son of 1930s fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, and his sadomasochistic sex sessions. The News of the World had said Mosley had taken part in a "sick Nazi orgy". Mosley said there was nothing 'nazi' about it.

Apparently Mosley had been at it for years but not the Nazi uniform bit and we were given all the details. There were some disappointments though. 

A woman secretly filmed the sex session with Mosley with a camera hidden in her bra. True to form she was known only as the mysterious 'Woman E'. Why couldn't she be called Madame X? Maybe that name's already taken. 

And she couldn't come to court because of her "emotional and mental state". But there's a happy ending. She's now made a full recovery and the family-friendly Daily Mail has a few photos of her and there's an interview on Sky News and one today with her husband, James Bondage, in the Sunday Times. The newspaper calls him 'Paul' (not his real name).

What did emerge was that she's the wife of an MI5 officer. MI5, whose offices are in that big Soviet style building on the Thames close to the, er, basement flat where 'it' all happened. What on earth is MI5 doing mixed up in all this? Spooky. Is he really called James Bondage? Maybe that's just normal behaviour after an all-boy's public school and Cambridge?

Madame X (or Woman E, or even Michelle) said: "I can only apologise for what has happened but it is not going to take back all the damage that has been done." Presumably she didn't mean to Mosley's bottom.

The whole show was conducted by Mr Justice Eady, who has a track record, according to Private Eye, of protecting, in the English libel courts, a certain rich and powerful Saudi, from books about him that are only published in the US. 

That's why big English libel and privacy cases are so good. You can't make it up.

In the end it was down to the dastardly EU and their cunning human rights laws wot did it for the NoW. That, and maybe the fact that Mosley's dad was a member of the English aristocracy who don't like their dirty washing hung out in public. 

The judge ruled the Nazi uniform bit didn't stand up in court and so the paper had breached his privacy, according to these EU driven laws. Mosley, already damaged, was awarded more damages. 

So it's all right for an elected official to get up to all sorts of hanky spanky panky as long as everyone first takes off their uniforms. 

And it's all right to report it all on the BBC 6 o'clock news before the kids go to bed. At least we now know that S&M isn't some High Street store selling cheap clothes.

Many moons ago, this reporter filed a story for the News of the World about a top Tory's links to a neo-Nazi,  para-military organisation called Column 88. Despite the hard evidence, NoW lawyers refused to clear it. Then a photo of this guy turned up wearing a Nazi chamber pot style helmet, standing in front of a swastika. Bingo! Off we went. The NoW never learns does it.

Picture: The Bleacher Report

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Time For A True Labour Fightback?

People are sick and tired of dead man walking Brown "just getting on with the job". Voters can't wait two years for a general election, so bring it on. But a revitalised Party has to first shake free of the New Labour shackles.

Jack Straw, while publicly backing Brown, is already positioning himself as the caretaker prime minister and telling back-benchers to cool it. He doesn't want a general election yet. He's part of the New Labour elite and will try to cling on to power.

But with Brown gone, a general election will have to happen. And then what?

Cameron and Salmond both know their rapid rise has come on the back of the dying days of the New Labour project.

Salmond's victory speech at Glasgow East was even directed at what he rightly called the "London Labour". 

So Cameron's Conservatives will sweep to power at westminster. But only with English seats. Scotland will be there for the taking by the SNP. 

Already Oborne is reporting talks between the SNP and Conservatives to draw lines of demarcation.

It could work. But there is a third way. 

It's called the Labour Party. If only the back bench MPs had the guts to try to throw out the New Labour gang who hijacked the Party back in the 90s. But after eleven years, they've forgotten how to fight. 

With a back-bench coup, New Labour would crawl away and turn into the Social Democrats (which is what they are anyway) and sink into oblivion.

With true Labour, the SNP would have a real fight on its hands in Scotland. Glasgow East could easily revert to its Labour roots. 

Cameron would possibly still win - he has numbers on his side. But there would also be a strong SNP, a big group of true Labour MPs and a handful of LibDems but only if Clegg is ditched. 

So what are you waiting for, true Labour MPs?  Get that letter of no-confidence in the leadership signed by as many MPs as you can muster and sent off to the cabinet. After all, you've certainly got nothing to lose.

You only need one cabinet minister, with his roots in the working class and trade union movement, to break ranks and Brown and his New Labour ministers are out. 

Such a general election would be a good fight. And the country would rather have that, than a fight with a corpse.

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Not Everyone's In Love With Obama

The tightly controlled stage-managed Obama love-in rolled into town with the usual media suspects positively drooling over 'The Chosen One'. Yesterday we had to suffer the Independent front page. A huge messianic photo of Obama in Berlin with his adorning flock of activists and fervent followers. Today it was just his eyes.

Get real people. He was just in it for the photocall for the folks back home. Playing out to a pre-determined media grid, not seen in politics since the heyday of Blair and New Labour. 

Ordinary Americans are not so sure about this man. Sure, he can talk the talk. He's a good-looking guy (maybe a little too thin) but underneath the hype and spin there are many more questions than answers. What they're saying is - there's something not quite right about Obama.

Has he been manufactured to appear as all things and to appeal to all people? Are his speeches deliberately put together to mean anything, any which way you choose? 

Is he just an advertising man's dream, a PR composite? Is he, as the McCain camp are pushing, just too good to be true? 

The massive security team and media managers around Obama during the Middle East and European tour is unprecedented and part paid for by the US taxpayers. Yet this is just a presidential hopeful not the President nor even the official candidate. A hopeful who called it for himself in the US primaries as the Democrat candidate and has yet to be formally and officially adopted by his party. 

A hopeful who refuses to allow any European journalists in the press corps. A hopeful whose Berlin speech said nothing but got coast to coast media coverage in the States. A hopeful who allows just enough time for a photocall and chat with Brown and Cameron - after all, Berlin was job done - but also a big one with the familiar face of Blair, already doing the rounds back in the US. 

Der Spiegel got the Obama/Berlin take right. A presidential hopeful who is more interested in being a world superstar than talking about the ailing economy back home. We had one like that here. He was called Tony Blair.

In the race for the White House, all the washing is hung out. Politics is a dirty and dangerous business. That's expected when you are voting for the most powerful person on the planet. 

The cartoon of muslim Obama and his black power wife in the New Yorker was justified by the magazine as satire. But the US doesn't do satire. That cartoon was designed to call his bluff and to bring the very issues of race and religion which Obama himself plays up to, out into the open. He even subtly played his race card in his Berlin speech. 

Now, the lack of any substance in both domestic and foreign policies, is beginning to show him up. 

So far he could afford to be a one ticket presidential hopeful - a promise to pull out of Iraq - but even that's just a vague timetable. Afghanistan, mentioned in Berlin, was left wide open to interpretation. Back home there are unresolved issues surrounding his funding, an alleged forged birth certificate and his links with dubious Chicago politicians. 

That funding has been spun as grassroots internet donations but there are strong rumours circulating in the US that the cash is actually coming from powerful sources in Saudi Arabia. 

It was just such a dogged investigation which 'followed the money' once before in a presidential funding scam called Watergate.

Obama can talk the talk but now he's gonna have to walk the walk.

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Listen To The People Brown And Go!

Voters in the Labour stronghold of Glasgow East have delivered a devastating and heartfelt message to Brown and his Westminster cronies. Just go. Brown and his New Labour elite should put their money where their mouth is and call a snap general election.

Fat chance. The Labour Party doesn't have enough money to fight an election and this is the New Labour gang who are just all mouth.

Glasgow East wasn't just snatched from Labour. The swing was a huge 22.54% to the SNP. But this wasn't a defeat for Labour or a victory for the SNP. This was a clear vote of no confidence in Brown and New Labour.

Glasgow East is true Labour territory and it always will be. It is Brown and the gang who are despised in Glasgow East not the Party, just as in the rest of the country.

Cameron is right to urge Brown to call a general election. Mason, the SNP's winning candidate, is right when he summed up the situation: "This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake; it is off the Richter scale. It is an epic win and the tremors will be felt all the way to Downing Street."

But instead Brown has fallen back on the only pathetic excuse he ever comes up with to "get on with the job" of dealing with the economy.

He told the BBC, the government had to "listen and hear people's concerns" over rising food and energy costs.

"I'm getting on with the job. My task is getting on with the job. It's exactly what people want me to do."

Oh no it isn't. If he would actually listen and hear people's concerns then he would go and take his arrogant ministers with him.

It has taken the people of Glasgow East to tell him that. It should now be ringing round the corridors at Warwick where Brown meets union leaders and party faithful for the National Policy Forum.

Brown's plea to fill the Party coffers will come at a price. And that price should be Brown and New Labour's scalp.

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Gordon Gets The Glaswegian Kiss

With the Labour Party in disarray in Scotland, riddled with sleaze allegations, the people of Glasgow East have sent a clear message to Westminster. Brown is now down and out in Glasgow East.

They are fed up with Brown and his cronies who have no place in the hearts and minds of the people of this area. 

This is much more than a disastrous result for New Labour. It should mark the end for Brown. Glasgow East was a solid Labour stronghold where the Party runs in the blood of the people. Even with a lack-lustre candidate from the SNP in John Mason, Labour couldn't pull it off. 

The SNP majority was 365, an incredible 22.54% swing against Labour on a turnout of 42.25%. In 2005, Labour recorded a majority of 13,507 over the SNP on a turnout of 48%. This SNP victory and Labour's utter humiliation will go down in political history.

New Labour's recent attempts to spin evidence of a Brown bounce has evaporated. If you can't win in Glasgow East, with no Conservative or LibDem opposition to speak of, you can't win anywhere. 

And it's also a well-deserved and stunning victory for Alex Salmond who played his charisma card by fielding a boring SNP candidate who wouldn't take the limelight away from him and the SNP movement. 

But, like the turn towards the Conservatives in England, this was more a vote by people fed-up with Brown and New Labour rather than a vote for the other parties. 

The brutal fact is that Brown once again bottled it. He had a golden opportunity to pull a rabbit out of the hat ahead of the by-election. Back-bench true Labour MPs like Cruddas and McDonnell were showing him the way and shouting it from the newspapers. 

Just one big popular policy announcement would have done it. A cabinet reshuffle to clear out the dead wood would have done it. A clear announcement over troop withdrawal from Iraq, while not directly relevant to voters in Glasgow East, would have galvanised the Party and kick-started the campaign. But nothing happened. 

In the end, the arrogance of the New Labour Westminster elite was their downfall. They may have hijacked the Labour Party but they cannot highjack the people of Glasgow East.

Now a humiliated Brown will be forced to go cap in hand to the unions at the National Policy Forum to plead for cash to keep the Party afloat. 

With the devastating result of Glasgow East still fresh in everyone's minds, the unions will drive a hard bargain, if indeed they want to continue to prop up Brown and his New Labour gang at all, ahead of September's Labour Party conference.

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