The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson argues that the Australian system “cuts out the party’s rank and file and contributes to elitism”.

I think that’s complete tosh but still…

Canadians have an interest in such matters.

Former finance minister, Paul Martin, conspired to oust the then Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. He succeeded and then went on to lose the subsequent general election. The parallels with Broon are uncanny.

Anyway…

Here in the UK, Labour

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My old friend Jon knows a thing or two about leaders having observed Broon at close quarters for a couple of years as his PPS.

For myself, I think we make way too much of leaders. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.

Yet so often we are dazzled by them. Or, worse still, we lionise them.

It seems to me that if they turn

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I approve.

This welcome gesture will boost sales of his Journey.

I imagine lots of people, me included, would have gagged at adding to Blair’s millions and would never have countenanced buying the book. Now they can, with a clear conscience.

Whether it will be worth the money is quite another matter.

I recall Sir Christopher Meyer, appointed by Blair to be British Ambassador in Washington, being vilified for publishing his kiss and tell DC Confidential.

Baron Prescott fumed about his memoirs being “tittle tattle”. Jack Straw blew a gasket, condemning Meyer

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The UK census is an invaluable time series going back over 210 years. Ad hoc surveys and alternative data sources cannot begin to substitute. I’ve blogged about this before.

And now the Canadian Federal Government, also Conservative, is about to abandon a key element of their five yearly census, the so-called “long form” which must be completed by a randomly selected 20% of all Canadian households.

In today’s Globe and Mail,

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And now this empowering annual event may go. The victim of a change to the PLP’s Standing Orders.

This is very bad news indeed.

When Labour is in Opposition who serves on the Shadow Cabinet is a matter for the PLP. When in Government, the Leader decides.

As a result, we had 13 years of nodding donkeys in the Cabinet (with a few honourable exceptions).

Margaret Beckett has drawn up proposals on behalf on a “working group” which will be voted on by the PLP next month.

Some of the proposals, if

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And what on earth is he going to say tomorrow at the “community meeting” in Birmingham?

That he is better here, talking to the Party faithful, rather than back home in Pakistan?

His son, Bilawal Bhutto, the latest in the dynastic line and being groomed for the succession, has been told to stay away.

This is progress, of sorts.

The sight of Bilawal, yelling about a Read more...

I am up before an Adjudicator from the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service.

I am refusing to pay a £60 fine for parking in a bay with no parking meter – just the plinth on which it once stood.

In long correspondence with the parking commissars, I am told it is my responsibility to find a meter.

I explain there are no meters in the street where I parked nor in any of the adjacent streets. Residents’ parking only.

This cuts no ice with the enforcers.

How far afield am I expected to roam in the search for a meter?

Silence.

Why wasn’t the

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Santander is a bank on steroids, expanding everywhere.

When the deal goes through it will have 1,643 branches compared with HSBC’s 1,369.

Most people knew very little about Santander until fairly recently when it kicked open the saloon door. It bought Abbey and absorbed it. It swallowed Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley

It got me thinking. What would be the public reaction if the biggest high street bank in the UK were, say,

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We hear of the worst floods in 80 years. Walls of water sweeping away houses, roads and bridges.

The BBC is reporting a staggering 2.5 million people are affected.

Only a few days ago, there was yet another tragedy. An Airbus, flying into the capital from Karachi, is enveloped in monsoon rains and crashes into a wooded hillside near Islamabad killing over 150 people.

As if this isn't enough, the country is being accused of incubating terrorism.

Pakistanis are understandably angry and upset at how

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Yet this is John Prescott’s own assessment of himself.  On Iraq, the big man had no influence.

The former Deputy Prime Minister was simply the loyal lieutenant doing his master’s bidding.

Despite telling the Chilcott Inquiry that he found much of the intelligence on Iraq “tittle tattle” Prescott rallied support for the war within a supine Cabinet.

Of course, there was never any danger that I would be in the same room as the sofa, never mind sitting on it.

But along with so many others

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