Author Archives: Mark Pack

Ian Oakley, the Conservative Watford candidate who was arrested by the police last week (and subsequently resigned as the Conservative candidate), has now been charged:

TORY hopeful Ian Oakley has been charged by police for his alleged involvement in a three-year hate vendetta.

The 31-year-old former Conservative parliamentary candidate, who quit the party this week, was charged by police in relation to five counts of criminal damage and two counts of harassment.

Latest news I hear is that following his resignation as Conservative candidate for Watford, Ian Oakley has now also resigned from the Conservative group on Hillingdon Council and will sit as an independent. All this follows the news at the weekend that he had been arrested by the police as part of investigations in to a long-running hate campaign at Liberal Democrat members in Watford.

(As before, if you comment on this please remember that he has been arrested, which is not the same as being convicted.)

Liberal Democrats in Watford have been on the receiving end of a harassment campaign since 2005 (indeed, it’s over a year since I blogged about a £5,000 reward being offered by the police).

Yesterday events took a dramatic turn as the Watford Observer reports:

Ian Oakley, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Watford , has been arrested in connection with a hate campaign directed at the town’s local Liberal Democrat group…

A police statement, released today (Saturday) said: “We can confirm a 31-year-old man from West Drayton was arrested on Friday, yesterday, in connection with a series of criminal damage and harassment

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Today’s Independent brings the news that:

Labour is to delay repaying its “cash for honours” loans for up to a decade as it attempts to plug a £16m black hole in its finances…

Accounts due to be published at the end of this month will show the party still has a net deficit of £16m and will need to slash spending this year – despite an existing programme of cuts meant to ensure Labour was living within its means.

The party has axed next year’s spring conference to save £250,000 and plans to cut retainers to firms such as the advertising giant

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Earlier this week the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, published her report into the near-collapse of Equitable and the resulting financial losses incurred by many of Equitable’s customers. Her conclusion is that the regulators made repeated mistakes over the years:

I have alerted Parliament to the injustice which I have found in this case resulted from serial maladministration on the part of the former Department of Trade and Industry, the Government Actuary’s Department and the Financial Services Authority.

As a result, people lost money unfairly and she therefore has called for them to be compensated. The Government isn’t obliged to implement this, …

LabourMatters has the details of the latest twist in Labour’s financial problems. Not having a group of activists and MPs together in one place where they can mutter their unhappiness with Gordon Brown is of course one other effect of cancellation…

Having been tagged in this meme, which so far has featured Ann Winteron, Henry VIII and helicopters, I fear my contribution is rather dull: it’s the £200,000 the United Kingdom Passport Agency had to spend to make its old computer system millenium compliant because of big problems with its new one (remember the huge passport delays of summer 1999?). And in the interests of keeping the internet neat and tidy, I won’t tag anyone else 🙂

The Daily Telegraph has the story:

Gordon Brown is under pressure to reveal whether Keith Vaz, the influential head of a Parliamentary Committee, has been offered a peerage or honour in return for backing the Government’s controversial counter-terrorism measures.

The Daily Telegraph has seen a private letter sent by chief whip Geoff Hoon to Mr Vaz expressing an expectation that his former ministerial colleague will be “appropriately rewarded” for backing the measure to hold terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

Mr Vaz is the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He was previously opposed to the plans

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Wendy Alexander has resigned as Labour’s leader in Scotland following a ruling that she broke the Scottish Parliament’s rules over declaring donations.

More on the BBC and PoliticsHome (which has her full statement).

From Pink News:

The leader of the Liberal Democrats has become the first party leader to comment on the decision of food manufacturer Heinz to withdraw an advert from TV because it depicted two men kissing.

Nick Clegg has written to the the Director of UK Corporate Affairs at Heinz expressing his disappointment at their decision and asking them to reconsider.

“The depiction of a same-sex kiss in this advert was innocent both in tone and content, and I am shocked that you decided to withdraw it,” he wrote.

“While I understand that some people in Britain today are uncomfortable with same-sex relationships,

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