Too Much Blarney – 4

Things must be getting frustrating for Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) chief executive Donal Blaney: this “provocative” and “opinionated” fellow has still not allowed his blog to be subjected to public scrutiny since the weekend, and even the amateur football punditry on his Twitter feed has (thankfully) dried up. But he has challenged the Guardian over its article about him and the YBF, which I mentioned previously.

Why Blaney should make such a challenge is not clear: there was little in the article that stood out as even remotely contentious, and his Twitter comments, such as “Seriously, was that it?” and “Still stunned at how lame Guardian pieces are” hardly suggest the onset of litigation. But there could be a more straightforward reason.

And that is the possibility that the Guardian article may not have been a one off. So will there be a follow up? I don’t know, but one strong possibility is that Blaney doesn’t know either. And it would do him no harm at all if any investigation were to be shut down: no news is good news in this case.

What might the Guardian – or any other interested media organisation – want to investigate? Well, the YBF itself may be brought into focus. And there are a number of well known individuals involved here, not least the YBF “President”, none other than occasional Euro-Tory and guest on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) Dan, Dan the Oratory Man.

But there is more interest within the YBF’s “Advisory Board”: here are folks like Matthew “Gromit” Elliott of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (the organisation that demands transparency in all places except its own back yard – still no sign of those pesky accounts), evergreen flat earth economist Patrick Minford (now of Cardiff Business School), and Andrew Griffith.

Andrew who? Ah, but Griffith is finance director of BSkyB, so here we have a Murdoch connection. Added to this are the TPA, a body that exists to demonise Government, and the prophets of a long outdated view of economics.

So what are they all up to? I’ll consider that next.