Author Archives: Mark Pack

A former city mayor has been jailed for nine months after being convicted of vote-rigging.

Labour’s Mohammed Choudhary, 49, former mayor of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, was jailed at King’s Lynn Crown Court.

Party candidate Maqbool Hussein, 52, was jailed for three months and Tariq Mahmood, 40, received a 15-month term.

All three from Peterborough, were convicted of forgery over a scheme to fabricate votes for the Peterborough city council election in June 2004. (BBC)

One question: is there something wrong with a system that takes four years for a relatively small case such as this to be resolved?

Labour minister Gerry Sutcliffe:

My comments do not accurately reflect my views.

This roughly translates as “oh bugger, people in the Labour Party are really cross with the comments I made”.

The Speaker, Labour MP Michael Martin, is being investigated over the use of Parliamentary expenses to pay for taxi trips for his wife.

Labour councillor Rob Dix (of South Tyneside council) has been suspended by the Labour Party after being arrested on suspicion of ‘racially aggravated disorder’ after an incident last week whilst he was driving a van that involved a traffic enforcement officer.

But one good piece of news for Labour, albeit in a potentially rather controversial legal ruling – an election petition from the Liberal Democrats in Leicester has been rejected and the election of three Labour candidates …

An update on the story of Labour Councillor David Murphy. Last week, Alex reported on this site about the growing controversy over Cllr Murphy’s long-term residence in South West Europe, despite remaining a councillor in Rochdale.

Now we hear that the Labour Party has taken action – withdrawing the whip from David Murphy. According to Labour’s statement:

The Labour Group on the council has withdrawn the whip from Councillor Murphy. This means he is no longer a Labour member representing Labour for Middleton. This follows a period of concern about the way Councillor Murphy failed to carry out his duties and responsibilities

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Today’s Times reports:

Powers to allow terrorist suspects to be detained without charge for 42 days are not needed and are unlikely to find favour with the judges who would have to approve them, the Director of Public Prosecutions said yesterday.

Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, who heads the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “In our experience, the 28-day limit works well.” He said that the CPS special counter-terrorism unit was enjoying a 92 per cent conviction rate compared with 77 per cent in other trials, and there was an increase in guilty pleas by terror suspects.

“We have had major, major cases that have

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Headline says it all really:

A RED-FACED councillor has had to apologise after calling for the legalisation of euthanasia to cut the number of children in care.

First this week it was sterilisation, now it’s killing children. ‘Nasty party’ anyone?

UPDATE: It looks as if Hugh Jackson has now had the Conservative whip withdrawn.

John Ward, the Conservative councillor who talked about mandatory sterilisation for parents who have more children than he thinks they should have, has resigned as a councillor.

“Acting swiftly to reduce carbon emissions across the world could be as economically imprudent as it would certainly be morally reprehensible.” Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester, 5 March 2008

Hat tip: Rupert’s Read

From the BBC:

Mr Conway was reprimanded by Commons authorities for paying his student son nearly £40,000 to be a researcher.

Scotland Yard said a “lack of systems” for accounting for MPs’ expenses meant it was ruling out an investigation…

The Metropolitan Police has said it could not investigate the affair because Westminster did not have a system to account for MPs’ expenses properly…

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “The public have the right to expect that their money is being properly accounted for.

“The Speaker’s review of expenses must provide the basis for fundamental changes to the

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