Wednesday, Mar 24, 2004
Blair's lonely trek to the desert
Tony Blair's visit to Libyan leader Muammer Gadaffi might not be best timed. Just as co-operation to defeat terror is more necessary than ever, he is set to offend the man with more responsibility for such matters than any other, Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan Police commissioner.
Stevens is on close terms with the family of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, murdered by a shot from the Libyan embassy in 1984. "I see them often," he recently told Observer.
The 20th anniversary of her killing is on April 17 and Stevens recently told journalists that bringing the culprit to book was a vital part of rapprochement with Libya. Blair has ploughed on regardless. "This was a cold-blooded murder and it needs to be solved," Stevens said. "Justice must be done."
Blair, desperate for any positive outcome of the invasion of Iraq, obviously disagrees.
Club cultureInvestment clubs are alive and well in the provinces. The strangest-looking group at the 2004 Proshare Investment Club Awards, hosted by information provider Digital Look on Tuesday night, were the Fenland Bogtrotters from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.
They turned up at the gala dinner in the City to receive the most unusual club prize wearing their flat caps. Thankfully they left the rest of their uniform - agricultural-strength wellies - at home.
These are no country bumpkins, however. Over the past year while the market was in freefall, their portfolio turned in a respectable 42 per cent. Mind you, they have a long way to go compared with the overall winners of the evening, the Doomsday Investment Club, whose members are retired and current staff from the Scottish and Oceanic Air Traffic Control Centre at Prestwick in Scotland. They were flying high with a portfolio that showed a magnificent 605 per cent return over the year. Maybe they should be allowed to run the National Air Traffic Service.
Yorkshire BallsHas Ed Balls already started campaigning for the rock-solid Labour seat of Normanton, conveniently located next to the West Yorkshire constituency of his wife, Yvette Cooper?
The chancellor's economic adviser - or spare brain, as he is frequently called - put the accent on Yorkshire when sitting at Gordon Brown's left hand at the Treasury select committee yesterday.
Not only did the suave Balls just happen to pull out Yorkshire and Humberside figures from the Budget book when giving regional breakdowns, but his impressive knowledge of local motorways was on display.
When Brown was asked about transport spending in Yorkshire, he was happy to let Balls wow the committee with references to Ferry Bridge and stretches of the M1 and the A1.
But just to show that Balls really is a man of many talents, Brown quipped: "You'd get this kind of detailed response on any region of the UK."
Lords not kosherBlatant discrimination in the House of Lords. The upper house hosts an Arab-Jewish Forum meeting tonight but while halal food is on the menu, kosher is not. "We do not have a kosher kitchen," explains a Lords spokesman. Some two-thirds of the guests are Jewish but the office of MP Clive Soley, the group's chairman, says none has complained about the catering arrangements.
Several Muslim lords will only eat halal but Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, is the sole peer who insists on kosher.
Deedes & son
Lord "Dear Bill" Deedes had a sense of deja vu yesterday as he saw his son Jeremy make a comeback at The Daily Telegraph. Deedes himself retired in the 1980s before being dragged back to the publication as a columnist. Yesterday he watched Jeremy return four months after his send-off at the Saville Club and address the troops. "The Deedes don't retire easy," Jeremy told the editorial floor.
Bush TelegraphTalking of the Telegraph, Observer notes the pukkah voice of Middle England's opposition to the bastardisation of English, as reported by a recent Plain English Campaign Survey.
John Lister, campaign spokesman, "pinpointed 'to be honest' as the phrase that most wrankled with him", says a report in The Daily Telegraph.
At the end of the day, Observer is more rankled by spelling mistakes than cliches.
Rerouted
How will London cope now its new bendy buses have been withdrawn from service after four caught fire in 18 months? Observer has a solution: bring back the old open-backed double-decker Routemasters, only four of which have been lost to fire in 40 years. Whoops - we almost forgot. They have been banned by the European Union on safety and access grounds.
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