TPA – High Speed But No Progress

There is, out there in cyberspace, a small area where a heated debate is raging. Sadly for those producing most of the heat, not very many others have noticed. Welcome to the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) and their increasingly shrill campaign against High Speed Rail.

As I mentioned recently, the TPA have failed to address three key points in their attack on the High Speed 2 (HS2) project: more network capacity for freight traffic, the fatuous use of the Eurostar service as a comparator, and their inability to assess HS2 in its entirety. There is at least one further issue that the TPA has ignored, and I will consider that later.

In the meantime, TPA non-job holder Charlotte Linacre has put together a “holding” post in the TPA’s “Campaign” strand. That strand has the strapline “Fighting For Taxpayers’ Interests”, which is routinely fraudulent, as the TPA do not speak for 99.9% of them: they are the ultimate in unelected busybodies.

In the sights of Ms Linacre is Greengauge21, which the TPA calls a “taxpayer funded lobby group”. A word in your shell-like, Charlotte: the TPA is a lobby group, and would be much more credible if it were as transparent about its funding as Greengauge21.

Ms Linacre asserts that there has been “a lot of support” for the TPA “campaign”, but manages to cite just one MP, whose constituency is on the proposed HS2 route, and a local paper. She cites the TPA’s “rail expert” Chris Stokes, and the HS2 Action Alliance (HS2AA) pundit Bruce Weston separately, but Stokes’ copy is hosted by HS2AA: they are effectively one and the same.

So much for the apparently wide coalition fighting for taxpayers’ interests, and their less than comprehensive coverage of the issues. Moreover, as I noted earlier, there is yet another issue that the TPA have not addressed, and that mainly concerns the town of Northampton.

I’ll post on that later.

Annie Gets Her Gun

The way that many on the right in the USA are moving to oppose democracy in Egypt has been demonstrated at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by the increasingly scary Ann Coulter, author of such riveting tomes as “If Liberals Had Any Brains, They’d Be Conservatives”.

Coulter, who is all in favour of democracy in the USA, Europe, and even Iran, clearly does not believe that this particular US export should be shipped to Egypt. In her Q&A session at CPAC, she does not tell her audience that Egyptians are unworthy of such benefits, but her answers on the subject are unequivocal.

When asked why elections were desirable in Iran, but not in Egypt, Coulter answered “You don’t go around disturbing countries where you have a loyal ally”. So whatever Hosni Mubarak was up to is OK by Our Annie.

Moreover, when asked about journalists and dissidents that had been jailed in Egypt, Coulter replied “I think there should be more jailed journalists”, a remark that brought her thunderous applause.

So there you have it – democracy is fine, except where there are friendly despots, in which case the locals can go hang. It will surprise no-one that Coulter can be seen regularly on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

[The comments start just before the two minute mark on the video]

The Lifeless Hefferlump

Who remembers decimalisation? I can still recall what was called “D-Day”, 40 years ago in February 1971, when new coins began to circulate and far too many businesses used the changeover as cover for a raft of often swingeing price rises. At the time, inflation was starting to take off: it was a problem for the rest of the decade and well into the 80s.

That inflation meant that the old, pre-decimal coinage, with 240 old pennies making up a pound, weighed more heavily in the pocket. You only have to compare a “new” penny and its “old” equivalent to see that. Moreover, figuring it all out in base 10 was that much more straightforward than working in base 12 (pence in a shilling) and then base 20 (shillings in a pound).

But this mere practicality counts for nothing with the Maily Telegraph’s thundering pundit Simon “Enoch was right” Heffer. For the Hefferlump, decimalisation was nothing less than “mindless aggression”, and such is his distress in recalling the occasion that he tells us “it is an event that still dries my throat and threatens to stop my heart”.

There then follows a substantial homage to Phil Space, as Heffer rambles on about the wonders of numismatics: those who designed coins, their designs, and of course all those Kings and Queens that any self respecting Telegraph hack knows are the kind of knowledge that will serve us all well in life.

Must try harder

Finally, with a flourish no doubt meant to show that his intellectual grasp is undimmed forty years after the event, Heffer tells that “Children of my generation were taught at the age of five or six how to work out how many twopenny-ha’penny bars of chocolate one could buy for £1 5s 10d (134, of course) and it didn’t do us any harm”.

Sadly, the number of those bars this amount of money would buy is 124, not 134: for the latter number, you would have to pay £1 7s 11d. Poor Hefferlump, he can’t even get his pre-decimal sums right – perhaps he’d be better advised writing about something useful, like getting a life.

Not OK For This TV Show

As the Guardian’s Nick Davies put it in his excellent book Flat Earth News, “dog doesn’t eat dog”. So it has been no surprise to see much of the Fourth Estate turning a blind eye to Phonehackgate. And, even though the Desmond press has “gone rogue” and effectively ejected itself from the overview of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), their latest mishap has not been widely reported.

Fortunately, the Guardian has once again picked up the story: the re-launch of Channel 5, which takes place tomorrow, is to have an early evening programme spun off from Richard “Dirty” Desmond’s relentlessly downmarket OK! Magazine. And pencilled in for co-presenter was the ubiquitous Denise van Outen. Until, that is, she was treated to a morning with Dirty Des.

Part of the Empire that did not Strike Back

Last Thursday, van Outen accompanied Desmond on a tour of his empire. There was less than a total meeting of minds: the encounter “did not go well”. Such was the reaction of his new presenter to the Desmond charisma that by the following morning, van Outen had decided not to accept the gig. Fortunately, she had not signed a contract, and was therefore able to walk away from the job.

Benchmark of Excellence, anyone?

One can only imagine why van Outen, who had reportedly been “looking forward to doing the show up until that point”, went from a state of enthusiasm to one of rejection in such a short time. But this development will surprise no-one.

[UPDATE: Today (Monday 14 February) the Express is running a suitably shameless advertorial as one of its top stories titled "Channel 5: Kate And Matt's Fun Factor On OK! TV". Sad to say, there was no room for Dirty Des' finest to even mention Denise van Outen, so I'm more than happy to mention her right here. And, of course, we know that the appearance of this plug in the Express is mere coincidence, as Desmond does not interfere in his papers' editorial policy. He said so in court. On oath]

Another Open Letter To Simon Hoggart

Dear Simon,

I was disappointed to see that your Saturday Guardian column has made the mistake of taking a Daily Mail article as fact. The account of what happened to the Spacey family on their journey from Coventry to London recently has been published by the Mail, as have various characterisations which I would expect any Guardian writer to avoid.

As someone who has clocked up tens of thousands of miles with Virgin Trains (VT), I have encountered many of the company’s Train Managers, yet cannot recall any who fit the clumsy “bully” caricature. Nor, even on the occasions when I have made adverse comment on their service, has the organisation been other than correct and proper in its response.

In any case, the National Rail Conditions Of Carriage [.pdf] is quite specific about tickets that specify a particular train: boarding a different train means that the full standard fare is due. This covers all train operators on the National Rail network – not just VT.

A Virgin Pendolino train hurries through Tamworth

In fact, VT were a late convert to this idea, still offering a full range of tickets on board years after GNER, the operator much loved by many of your fellow hacks because of their restaurant car offering, had adopted a rigid “full standard fare only” policy for on-train purchase.

Also, you fall into the “Richard Branson personally deals with everything at Virgin Trains” trap: Branson has no operational involvement with Virgin Rail Group, so the idea that he appointed any of the staff involved in this incident is fatuous.

The Spaceys failed to present a valid ticket for the journey they made, and declined to pay for one, so the demand that they do so is understandable. The account presented by BBC Radio 5 Live shows that they knew they were boarding an earlier train, thus contradicting the Mail article’s assertion that they did so by mistake.

Added to all this will no doubt be statements from the police officer and PCSO who met the train at Euston, together with the VT staff involved, along with CCTV footage from the train. That VT are not yielding to the Spaceys should tell you something about the evidence they have to hand.

I do hope you can manage a more accurate portrayal of the UK’s train operators in the future.

Best,

Tim Fenton

Egypt And (No) Democracy

Barack Obama and George W Bush could agree on one thing: the concept of democracy is universal. This, they both asserted, was the inspiration for any country, anywhere in the world. But some in the USA are beginning to wonder.

Maybe this hesitation is because of what happened in Gaza: the US wanted elections, so elections there were, and Hamas got elected. This was not the result the US wanted, and emphatically not first choice for the Israelis. Now, with free and fair elections promised for Egypt, some are seeing dark forces, so dark that the concept of democracy should be put on hold.

At the forefront of those seeing dark forces, as I noted the other day, has been the increasingly wayward Glenn Beck, “star” of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). Beck reiterated his misgivings on Bill O’Reilly’s show last Friday, but Bill-O was not convinced. Problem is, many on the US right side with Beck on this one, and not O’Reilly.

This was underlined by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, whose show aired just after O’Reilly’s, and whose line-up would have been decided rather earlier. In a montage of conservative talking heads, it is remarkable just how many of them are on the same message, which is that Egypt is somehow not ready for democracy.

As Maddow put it, maybe some on the US right are against democracy for Egypt because they instinctively have to be on the opposite side to Obama. But it is disturbing that those who talk up democracy would rather it not apply in countries where the result of that democracy might not be “the right one”.

Express Too Fast With Own Language

The thought occurred recently that I may be too hard on Richard “Dirty” Desmond and his shrinking retinue of hacks at the Express titles. But that thought did not remain for long, being banished completely in the wake of an article bearing today’s date and the by-line of one Tracey Boles.

The piece is titled “Inflation Leaps Hits British Families”. Er, hello? Maybe “Inflation Leaps Hit British Families”, or even “Inflation Leap Hits British Families”. This is plain bad English, but then, when you send almost all your sub-editors down the road, there are consequences.

And, as the man said, there’s more: we are then told “Now families face soaring bills because of record food prices, higher transport and energy costs”. Higher transport what? And, if the answer is “prices”, then the sentence is wrongly constructed. Yes, I saw the missing comma after “Now”, but there is worse elsewhere in the article.

After all, there is a more glaring punctuation howler in “And it could get worse before it gets better warn economists”. There is also an occasional missing word, as in “Energy bills are now £65 higher than last year – up nearly twice the rate of inflation”.

And, just to complete the sorry story, comes this finely crafted sentence: “And orange and apple juice could soon be luxuries, a report by The Grocer magazine warned because of bad harvests”.

So a report in The Grocer warned of something, because of bad harvests. Correct punctuation, or inserting those last four words directly after “luxuries”, would have solved that problem.

The standard of English displayed in this article is disgracefully bad. It now appears that, in addition to advertorials, old stories recycled from other papers, and reheated press releases from lobby groups, the Express is not even capable of producing coherent grammar in its copy.

It’s not only cheap and nasty – it’s also not good enough.

Us And Them – Again

Votes for prisoners – yes, this is an issue that has serious mileage in it. Not for any kind of principled debate, you understand, but as a way for politicians to do a bit of serious self publicity and rabble rousing. Because the target is Europe, and as any fule kno, Europe is an alien force that does Very Bad Things to us.

Or at least one would have thought, after reading through the why-oh-why copy that the assembled hackery has been churning out of late. Typical is this article from the obedient nodding donkeys of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre: small wonder that the Express confused the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with the European Union (EU), when the Mail, the source of much of its recycled material, deliberately lumps the two together as “Europe”.

The Mail piece trowels on the idea that the ECHR is full of those nasty foreigners passing judgment on poor defenceless Brits, while managing not to mention that we are represented there too, and our judges also pass judgment on matters concerning countries where they do not reside. It’s the same with the EU: the fact that this is a club of which we are a member does not enter: that approach gets in the way of pretending that “Europe” is forever agin us.

Moreover, it would get in the way of attention seeking punters and politicians. The Mail has found one of the most adept self publicists, Tory MP Priti Patel, who starts her rant with the obligatory “this is a shameful attempt by Europe ...”, continues with “most British people already distrust European institutions trying to meddle in their lives”, and rounds off with telling how the ECHR is “posturing and trying to bully Britain”.

When you’re through with the hyperbolic denunciations, Priti, just think on: people who distrust European institutions do so because of the barrage of misinformation from folks like you, and your pals in the Fourth Estate. If anyone is posturing and trying to bully the other side, you are, and therefore the one who is being shameless is you.

Maybe, just maybe, the assembled hacks and rent-a-quote punters and politicians could tone it down a little and allow the public to be properly informed, and have their own grown up debate on the matter – without the Paul Dacres and Priti Patels of this world telling them how they ought to think.

But that might mean the public make their own minds up, and for some, that would never do.

Why Not Let Egyptians Decide?

Hardly had the news of Hosni Mubarak’s long overdue departure been relayed than the pundits were off and running. What of the role of other players in the Middle East? What about the USA? What about Israel? What about the Muslim Brotherhood?

Typical of the genre is this piece in the Maily Telegraph: what about the transition to democracy? What about the military? Er, hello? Someone is missing the point. Egypt is a sovereign nation, and in any case, the continued interference by the supposedly civilised West is part of the problem: that is what propped up Mubarak for so long.

Yes, Egypt is a key part of the Middle East, and the region has the potential for further instability and conflict. But that is no excuse for other countries to keep meddling in Egypt's affairs, effectively making that country a proxy, and allowing the practising of power struggles at a distance.

The Founding Fathers of the USA did not sit down to write the Constitution while looking over their shoulders to the French, whose naval power had tipped the balance in their favour during the conflict with the British. Neither should the Egyptians have to worry what Washington will think.

The future of Egypt should be decided by the country’s own citizens. End of.

Beck Barking On

As I posted a few days ago, it was time for Hosni Mubarak to go, and to the relief of most Egyptian citizens, most of whom would rather he had gone earlier, he has now bowed to the inevitable.

Into the void, hopefully only for an interim period, has come the Egyptian military. But what of the future? For many, this will be the source of much debate, but to one commentator, there is no doubt that the uprising centred on Cairo is the start of something much more sinister and threatening.

Yes, the word has come from the increasingly wayward Glenn Beck, “star” of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse): what is happening in Egypt is the beginning of a “New World Order”, brought about by an alliance of Communists and Islamic Fundamentalists.

From this alliance will – according to Beck – come the spread of an Islamic caliphate covering much of the Middle East. It will be frightening, because, well, it will be Islamic, and that means frightening where Beck is concerned.

And if you don’t like the great man’s judgment, then you can, as he puts it, “go to hell”. Only on Fox.

TPA – Speak Up!

If you have not heard of Tolley’s Tax Guides, you are not alone: as the managing director of a limited company with accounts to prepare and VAT return ready to send, I’ve never needed recourse to them. But they are a Very Important Thing for the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), because their size enables chief non-job holder Matthew Sinclair to churn out another meaningless “research note”.

The “report”, The length of Tolley’s individual tax guides [.pdf], is aimed at telling gullible hacks with copy deadlines and space to fill that the UK’s tax system is too complex. It tells that “the length of ... Tolley’s tax guide ... is often cited to show how much more complex the system has become”. Needless to say, this quote is not backed up with an independent cite.

There are even graphs showing the growing size of the various guides over time. But the way in which the TPA wants you to know that these guides are so long is the length of time that the world’s fastest speaker would take to read them aloud. Er, hello? I never declaimed the contents of the last HMRC Employer Bulletin to anyone who would listen, so I’ve clearly missed a trick.

Perhaps Tolley’s Tax Guides have replaced Shakespeare as set texts for secondary school English classes. Maybe this is how real companies do their tax returns. Or maybe the TPA is making another meaningless comparison just to get their dubiously argued copy in the papers.

Express Out Of The EU

Much hot air has been generated in the last few days over the issue of votes for convicted prisoners, and in the Commons yesterday evening, MPs voted to reject any idea that those prisoners should have the vote, despite a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

As the wheels have been turning at Westminster, the Fourth Estate has also been pondering the votes-for-prisoners question. The conclusion reached depends more or less on the political stance of the paper in question. But thus far, the press has been able to differentiate between the ECHR, set up in 1950 by the Council of Europe, and what is now the EU.

Not any more: the flagship of the Desmond press, the Daily Express, has today reported on the vote under the thundering headline “Britain And The EU: This Must Be The End”. And, to underline the confusion, the article tells of “The moment of defiance, after decades of submitting to EU institutions”.

Just to make sure its readers got the message, there was also “EUROPE was given a stark warning of ... Britain’s fury with EU interference”. So it’s clear that the headline was not some kind of aberration: standards at the Express have fallen so far that the hacks there cannot tell the difference between EU and ECHR.

Not a good selling point for Macer Hall, the Express hack whose name appears on the article.

Del Boy And The Shale Sale

Not satisfied with merely passing judgment on someone else whom he considers to be “less bright” than himself, Maily Telegraph blogger James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole yesterday demonstrated that he has miraculously solved the UK’s energy needs.

Actually, he hasn’t solved anything. Del Boy started his latest sneerfest by misrepresenting a speech by the Prince of Wales (in the style of his favourite media outlet Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse)), then moved on to sing the praises of shale gas, the benefits of which he has taken on trust without stopping to ponder the vested interest that is promoting them.

Delingpole and his pals at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (the latter being a repository of denialism that declines to disclose the source of its funding) have taken a publicity flier from an energy company and declared shale gas to be The Solution To Our Energy Needs. But – and with this kind of advocacy, there just has to be a but – shale gas is not without its downsides.

The gas is extracted by hydraulic fracturing of the shale: this process releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. It has been estimated that, over a 20 year timescale, shale gas is at best significantly dirtier than coal or oil, and at worst substantially dirtier. It is also possible that, over a 100 year timescale (methane is less harmful over longer time periods), shale gas is still dirtier than coal or oil.

And the author of the article that Del Boy is so enthusiastically referencing is not even a scientist: Dallas Parker of Mayer Brown is a lawyer: you can see his profile right HERE. What will his pal Christopher Booker say?

Yes, Del Boy is championing a flier written by a lawyer, at the same time as he is vigorously questioning the presence of the RSPB and WWF at meetings inside the Palace of Westminster.

And thus far, just one company has opted to explore the potential of shale gas in the UK. Any reserves may only be viable if energy prices continue to rise: as for Delingpole’s assertion that “Shale gas is little short of miraculous: cheap, abundant and available right on our doorstep”, forget it.

Just like the original Del Boy, James Delingpole may believe the tripe he is spouting, but anyone else would do well to treat this sneering, vain and preposterous charlatan with the contempt he so richly deserves.

Sending A Message

All the signs point to a continuing fall in public support for Young Dave, Corporal Clegg and their new and improved two headed donkey: at the end of January, a poll by Angus Reid – that’s the folks who were predicting a Tory majority at the last General Election – had Labour eleven points ahead. And the Lib Dems had fallen to just 11%.

But there is no Parliamentary election any time soon, so how can the electorate show their displeasure at the upcoming round of cuts? Ah well. One round of elections in England runs to a fixed timetable, and these are fast approaching. Local elections will happen on May 5 and, given that many cuts are being made to local authority services – like those subsidised bus routes I mentioned recently – it’s entirely appropriate to use the occasion to send Cameron a message.

Who will be voting? Well, not all of the country will hold elections – London has to wait until next year. Also, metropolitan districts in Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands, plus West and South Yorkshire have only a third of council seats up for grabs – as do some unitary authorities.

However, many unitary and second tier authorities have every seat up for re-election, and for this part of the country, that includes Cheshire East (which includes Crewe), Cheshire West and Chester, plus Stoke on Trent.

The first two are, at present, overwhelmingly Tory, so the largest party of Government has the most to lose. Also, in Crewe’s St John’s ward, it will be interesting to see if the two Lib Dems can hold their seats: these last came up for election in 2009, when Labour was deeply unpopular nationally.

You can see a summary of the districts voting, and whether the number of seats is a third or “all up”, HERE. There are also “all up” local elections in Northern Ireland on May 5, but Scotland and Wales do not vote until next year.

Given their strong position across local Government right now, Tory losses are inevitable. It is the scale of those losses that will send Cameron that message.

TPA – A Shortage Of Development

Local Government has to get involved in all manner of issues concerning the towns and cities over which it enjoys authority, and one of the more pressing is the delivery of “vision” projects, bringing together disparate interests to benefit the community, the best known being renewal and redevelopment of retail and commercial centres.

Here in Crewe, this also means helping to deliver the Gateway scheme, the updating of the rail station on its current site, to which Network Rail (NR) has now committed. To help push things along, Cheshire East Council recently acquired the now abandoned Royal Mail site on Weston Road, which is slated to become the main concourse for the revamped station, together with a new multi storey car park.

The Royal Mail has left the building

There will be the potential for short term use of the site by, well, anyone interested, but the objective is to ensure that this key “building block” is in place as the push to revitalise the station and then the town centre gets going. To councillors of all stripes, and the train operators, it makes good sense. But not to the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, if a posting made on their site yesterday is typical.

Over in the North East, Newcastle City Council are also involved in pushing forward a retail and commercial renewal, in the Pilgrim Street area of the city. The idea – which is hoped will rival the renewal of Birmingham City Centre – has been on the go for almost a decade now. Much planning and consultation work has already been done by the council.

So when that council recently acquired Higham House, an office and retail block, as part of the Pilgrim Street project, after concluding that the business case for purchase was sound (rents would easily cover interest payments, for instance), that might have been understood to be part of the overall plan to revitalise central Newcastle.

Not a bit of it: the TPA has denounced the purchase as “Property Speculation”. Their piece does not manage even one mention of the Pilgrim Street redevelopment, and confuses the transaction with job losses at the council, as if not proceeding with the purchase would have any effect on the authority’s employment levels. There is also a routine smear of the Chief Executive, because his pay level does not enjoy the TPA’s approval.

And, for good measure, the article is ascribed to the “grassroots” strand, but as any fule kno, the TPA doesn’t have grassroots support – it’s an Astroturf lobby group that preaches transparency while refusing to do so itself. And its agenda clearly includes prioritising knocking copy over bothering to do some research.

Del’s Considerably Cleverer Than You

Still telling the world that the body of established science is wrong, that it is “monstrously corrupt”, and that “the game’s over” is Maily Telegraph blogger James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, in a post published yesterday. And the first reason advanced as to why Delingpole is right, and those in the scientific community that disagree with him are wrong, is that they are “not bright enough to get it”.

That’s right: the head of the Royal Society, Paul Nurse, who so distressed Delingpole recently, is “not bright enough”. James Delingpole, who took English Literature at Oxford – yet cannot, as I noted recently, deploy a competent sub-set of the language in his writings – is in the uniquely privileged position of being able to denounce a Nobel Laureate as “not bright enough”.

And what event proves the point? Here we have to return to the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU), and one exchange between Phil Jones and Michael Mann. Delingpole knows the meaning of this exchange, because, well, he hasn’t asked either Jones or Mann, but he just knows.

What he also knows is that the knowledge he now possesses means that the “peer review” process in climate science is corrupt, a tool of vested interests. Moreover, Delingpole asserts that the debate over global warming is “a political one not a scientific one”. Sad to say, the missing comma does not turn Delingpole into Keynes, and nor does his statement stand the most basic of analysis.

One of the clearest indicators of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is that from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. This was primarily the work of one Charles Keeling, and the upward trend is known as the “Keeling Curve”. Keeling was honoured by both Al Gore (then Vice President) and George W Bush (then President).

Charles Keeling was a registered Republican.

One And A Half Million? Loose Change ...

As commentators in the UK get excited over the amounts of money donated to the Tory Party from the financial services sector – eleven million notes last year, making this revenue stream just over half the total – we could get a sense of proportion by looking at the numbers involved in campaigning Stateside.

As RollCall notes, Rep. Michelle Bachman from Minnesota, self-styled House talking head of the “tea party” movement, raised a whopping 13 million Dollars just for her own Congress campaign. Also, one and a half million of this has been queried by the Federal Election Commission (FEC): the Bachmann campaign must provide more information, especially where individuals have donated 200 Dollars or more.

And even Bachmann’s fund raising efforts pale into insignificance when put alongside those for the California Gubernatorial race: Meg Whitman, who had hoped to succeed Arnie as Governor, lost that race even though her campaign spent a colossal 160 million Dollars on it.

Whitman’s campaign easily beat the previous record of 109 million Dollars expended by Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign for the New York mayoralty. But even these sums are dwarfed by the 2008 Presidential Election cycle.

The total for the Presidential Election alone was estimated at 1.6 billion Dollars, with the entire cycle – including House and Senate campaigns – coming in at 5.3 billion.

So for the Tories to be raking in 22 million quid in a year puts them firmly in the class of enthusiastic amateurs, when compared with their contemporaries in the USA.

Well, He Would Say That, Wouldn’t He?

A comment that may dispirit many, but may also be proved wrong in time, came from PR guru Max Clifford during yesterday evening’s C4 Dispatches, Tabloids’ Dirty Secrets (available on 4OD HERE). Clifford believed that the full extent of Phonehackgate may never be known, that too many powerful interests would prevent a full investigation.

I don’t go with that: given that the Guardian, mainly via the efforts of Nick Davies and his editor Alan Rusbridger, has been almost alone in pursuing the affair, it would not have even got this far if Clifford’s assertion were true. The parallel that came to mind was with another case where there was a belief that the well connected and powerful could do as they please, and get away with it, that unfolded almost half a century ago.

In Summer 1961, at a party held on the Cliveden estate of Lord Astor, Minister for War John Profumo met, and subsequently had a brief affair with, a call-girl by the name of Christine Keeler, who had also been seeing a Soviet diplomat. The rumours circulated throughout the following year, but the Fourth Estate was less inclined in those days to disturb the privacy of those at the top of the tree.

Eventually, the story made the papers, and Profumo made a statement to the Commons, denying impropriety over his relationship with Keeler. Three months later he was back, confessing that he had misled the House, and he resigned as an MP. But that was only the start of it.

The “Profumo Affair” revealed the often murky world of the well connected and powerful: seedy landlord Peter Rachman, osteopath Stephen Ward (who introduced Profumo to Keeler), and Keeler’s friend Mandy Rice-Davies were players in the affair, as was Lord Astor. The Macmillan Government was rocked by the revelation – and many were dismayed at Profumo’s lack of candour. It is widely believed that the affair cost the Tories the 1964 General Election.

Other factors were at play here: this was one of the stories on which the then new satirical magazine Private Eye cut its teeth, there was a less reverential attitude towards authority figures, and an increasingly probing tone from broadcast media. That could happen again: today we have all manner of communications available without having to make do with the mainstream of the Fourth Estate.

And that is why I believe that Max Clifford is wrong: once the door is prised open, and the world outside can see the all too cosy convocation of politicians, the Murdoch press, and the Metropolitan Police, it will become so much easier for the whole rotten edifice to come crashing down.

Express – The Double Dinosaur

As Peter Hill says goodbye to the Daily Express, with the paper’s circulation languishing below 650,000, it is hard to believe that, in the great days of Max Aitken, that circulation peaked at around four million. And it is equally hard to believe that, in those days, reporters went out and got their own stories, rather than copy them off the PA wire or lift them from the previous day’s editions of rival papers.

First on Monday ...

Because the Express is now, it seems, reduced to repeating stories just to fill the paper: yesterday, under the by-line of Emily Fox, came the story of Anna Ford’s “Dinosaur” criticism of David Dimbleby’s alleged new deal at the BBC. There is also a critical comment about the Beeb’s John Simpson.

... then again today

And today comes a remarkably similar story, this time under the by-line of Tom Morgan, once again about Anna Ford, with the same “Dinosaur” criticism of Dimbleby Major, and a mention of John Simpson. Thus the spiritual home of Phil Space.

At least there isn’t a plug for Channel 5 in the articles.

TPA – High Speed Flap

Our old friends at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) are today working themselves up into a terrible flap over the rebuttals to their “report” on proposals for a high speed rail network from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, known as High Speed 2 (HS2).

The report by former BR man Chris Stokes was, in fact, a reworking of his article from last October’s Modern Railways magazine, with some added material intended to counter assertions from pro-HS2 group Greengauge 21. The publicly available copy of the original article is hosted by the so-called HS2 Action Alliance.

Since the TPA article appeared last week, I’ve posted two observations on it (HERE and HERE), but more importantly, Greengauge 21 have replied once more, and the Department for Transport (DfT) have found adversely on the TPA’s suggestions.

This last has clearly distressed the TPA, because it suggests that the DfT has made up its mind and the TPA is therefore being ignored. And the TPA doesn’t like being ignored. But they themselves are ignoring key factors in their desire to rubbish HS2.

Firstly, there is still no mention of freight from the TPA. If the package of improvements that they are championing is implemented, the capacity of the West Coast Main Line (WCML) to accommodate even the existing freight paths would be lost – but there is a demand for more of those paths. Freight is profitable, and an area where competition between providers works – one might have thought that the TPA would be all in favour of this, yet they appear blind to it.

Secondly, the use of demand forecasts for rail traffic between London, Paris and Brussels to suggest that HS2 is overestimating demand for a new line is a non sequitur. The demand forecasts for HS2 are based on historic data and do not assume particularly high growth rates, especially given increased demand for rail travel over the past ten years.

Thirdly, HS2 is an incremental project: the first phase, from London to Birmingham, will be followed by later phases with lines on to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, the latter two destinations allowing some relief of both the Midland Main Line (MML) and East Coast Main Line (ECML), and yet more capacity for the freight traffic that the TPA doesn’t want to discuss. But the TPA is focusing only on London to Birmingham.

Moreover, as I noted previously, having a former BR manager on board does not make the TPA uniquely authoritative – it merely means that one former BR manager does not agree with the proposal for HS2.