Author Archives: Will Howells

Tuesday sees the culmination of the latest US presidential election. With three days until polling day, Something for the Weekend returns for a one-off video – yes, I did say a video.

The sound you can hear at the beginning is hail – much better to be inside spouting a load of old nonsense for you than being pelted with ice. So make yourself a cup of tea and watch away…

Watch the featured videos in full:

As my roast cooks away in the oven, there’s just time for a quick Something for the Weekend. OK, I’ll probably do this blog post and then start cooking, but it sounded better the other way. Anyway, enough culinary procrastination. Let’s see what this week’s mélange has for us.

Boris wants your lack of expertise

Boris Johnson’s stock is falling, but you can help him out by submitting your design for the new Routemaster bus. This, you’ll remember, is Boris’s popular but expensive and largely pointless project to turn the clock back to the imaginary golden age of the 1950s.

Through the meduim of an exciting-looking website, Mayor Boris invites you to submit your “fun ideas for a future bus design”. In case you’re worried that you know nothing about the subject, the site is ready to reassure you: “No expertise required!”

Good fun though a competition sounds, with a top prize of £25,000 (of taxpayers’ money?), I can’t help wondering if actually getting someone with some expertise might have been a better long-term plan.

In case any of you are thinking of entering, I should warn you that you’ll be up against some stiff competition from yours truly:

I’m afraid Tfl can’t return your drawings.

Meanwhile, in the London Assembly…

Apologies to readers everywhere else, but it’s not time to leave London just yet.

Hampstead and Kilburn PPC Ed Fordham went along this week to see Assembly members put questions on crime and policing to Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse. With the issue of the estates strategy – and the closure of Hampstead police station – on the agenda, Ed was shocked to see his Assembly Member Brian Coleman (he of the bling and the expenses) leave the room when this was discussed.

As a picture paints a thousand words, Ed captured the moment by photographing Mr Coleman’s empty chair. You can see the photos and read more on his blog.

In the news

The White House has apologised for inadvertently briefing the press that Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is a political “amateur”, “hated by many” and “one of the most controversial leaders” of a country “known for governmental corruption and vice”.

Afternoon. Welcome to this week’s collection of odds and sods from the twin worlds of Politics and Not-Politics. Just step this way…

If you see Doug, tell him

Labour MP Doug Henderson wants your views – if you’re one of his constituents in Newcastle North.

His household survey is a mix of leading questions (“Should tougher penalties be imposed on those who deal in drugs, blighting our communities and inflicting misery on individuals?”) and absent proofreading (I know, I can talk).

The pièce de resistance, though, is question 6, which I present for your delectation:

Meanwhile, in Tyne Bridge…

Doug’s local Labour colleague David Clelland, the MP for Tyne Bridge, also takes an unorthodox approach to dealing with his constituents’ voting intentions.

In a textbook example of the drawbacks of the safe seats producted by the first-past-the-post electoral system, 23-year MP Mr Clelland responded to criticism from a constituent thus:

I accept your offer not to vote for me again [...] I do not want your vote so you can stick [it] wherever best pleases you.

The constituent in question, IT salesman Gary Scott (who was around four years old when David Clelland became an MP), had written a letter to Mr Clelland complaining that he was supporting an out-of-touch and authoritarian government.

You can read the full exchange on Paul Walter’s blog.

Book him, Dannie

Wales’s culture minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas took a leaf out of Terry Wogan’s book this week when he announced the wrong winner of the Wales Book of the Year award – before announcing the correct winner, 84-year-old writer and poet Dannie Abse, for his memoir The Presence.

Another gong for Vince

While we’re on the subject of awards, congratulations to our Shadow Chancellor and Deputy Leader Vince Cable who was recognised again this week for his sterling work.

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Something for the Weekend. Allons-y…

There’ll be bluebirds over…

Tory MEP Den Dover has been back in the news again amid claims that he bought two BMWs using parliamentary expenses. He’d already been accused of channelling public money into a company run by his wife and daughter. Fellow Conservative MEP Giles Chichester has also been accused of paying hundreds of thousands of pounds of expenses to a family business.

Most important in this, of course, is that we get more of Den Dover in the news and the chance to hear his great name over and over again.

In the news

Following on from last week’s news about top secret documents being left on a train, annoying minister Hazel Blears has had a computer containing “restricted government information” stolen from her constituency office.

A United airline flight from Salt Lake City to Denver was cancelled after the pilot was left too upset to fly by an argument about his hat.

It’s been an exciting week in the Westminster Village, with MPs pulled this way and that (it was the annual Commons-Lords tug of war) and a shocking House of Commons resignation (Andrea Simmons has stood down after fifty-six years as chair of the Palace of Westminster Parking Regulations Committee). Oh, and Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis (a man from the Paddy Ashdown school of BEING ABLE TO KILL YOU WITH ONE FINGER) has announced he’s going to fight a by-election in his own seat on the issue of 42-day detention without charge. So welcome to Something for the Weekend’s 42-Day Seaside Special.

The answer to the ultimate question of pre-charge detention

Members of Parliament voted this week to give police the right to lock up terrorist suspects for up to six weeks. There was a distinct smell of pork barrel politics in the air as the nine Democratic Unionist Party MPs voted with Government – turning a potential loss by nine votes in a majority of nine for Gordon Brown. The DUP insisted they voted on principle, but it’s not entirely clear which principle.

Despite the excitement of a power cut in this bit of south London earlier on, this week’s Something for the Weekend is here. Right here. Just carry on reading from here.

We’re all going on a summer weekend of enforced Britishness

Labour Minister Liam Byrne put his foot in it with the Scots this week, being forced to backtrack before he’d even made the speech he was promoting.

He had floated the idea of turning the August Bank Holiday into the festival of Britishness Fife MP Gordon Brown’s been so keen on – and what could be more Labour than attempting to …

The Crewe and Nantwich by-election has been and gone but there are still stories to tell. And here they are (thanks again to Tim Harkchild), with assorted other bumpf in your mostly-weekly Something for the Weekend.

The by-election’s been and gone
But thoughts of it still linger
A dog behind a letterbox
Has anyone seen my finger?

Saying different things in different places

The Chancellor borrowed £2.7 billion on behalf of the UK as he attempted to convince the people of Crewe and Nantwich to vote Labour. While in London the Government was denying that this was a “by-election bribe”, the party’s own leaflets in Crewe …