Dear Mr Robinson

I have just tried to pass comment on Nick Robinson's latest blog entry but have been told I'm not allowed to post comments. Is this the same BBC that rang me on the very morning that Charles Kennedy resigned looking for a supportive comment? Is this the same BBC that I have spoken in support of in the press and in conference debates?

Obviously I want to know why the BBC or possibly Nick Robinson is not prepared to let my comments be posted to this part of their operation. I can happily post elsewhere and often do.

I have just sent the following email of complaint to the BBC.

I have just attempted to post a comment on Nick Robinson's blog on the BBC news site. I was attempting to point out to other readers and Nick himself that his throw away linking the words Michael Brown, Lib Dem donataion and police investigation could be misconstrued in light of the general flow of the blog entry.

As a Liberal Democrat candidate from May 2005 and a fellow blogger of Mr Robinson I find it very disconcerting that I got a message that I was not allowed to post comments to Mr Robinson's blog.

I would like to know why I have been denied the access to pass comment to and correct Mr Robinson which other people clearly have. Especially in light of my personal knowledge of the field in which Mr Robinson is your editor.

Now previously I have posted to Mr Robinson's blog with a link to my blog. I wonder if Mr Robinson is becoming vary of all bloggers following his incendiary remarks about bloggers last week. Nick if you wish to comment you can do so freely on this site.

UPDATE: Word is coming through from a few friends and fellow Liberal Democrats that they are experiencing similar difficulties in countering some of the insinuation on that blog entry by Mr Robinson. Is this censorship of a particular political view point by the political editor of the BBC?

The Unusual Suspects

What the cops never figured out, and what I know now, was that these men would never break, never lie down, never bend over for anybody. Anybody.

quote from Verbal in the Usual Suspects (1995)

Well Scotland Yard are widening their circle of questioning regarding the cash for peerages investication. Soon they will be calling on Number 10 to ask the Prime Minster, aka Anthony Charles Lynton Blair aka Friend of George, a few questions. It is the first time a serving Prime Minister will be interviewed by police in a corruption case. Tony is probably hoping the men in blue don't follow the same way of taking him in for question as Lord Levy aka Lord Cashpoint, Labour's chief fundraiser earlier this week.

Other key figures in the Labour party are also facing questioning as the net broadens in this investigation. So far 48 people have been questioned 13 under caution but John Yates, an assistant deputy commissioner at Scotland Yard has said that so far the majority of these have been Conservatives.

It looks like we know what stories are going to occupy the press while Parliament is in recess this summer.

Home Office Not Fit to Deliver Passports

Oh dear another bad new s day for the Home Office and their computerisation. This time is is the online application of passports that they are unable to deliver. 5000 people are still awaiting for their passports which are still being processed out of a mere 18,000 applications.

The system was only begun on 18 May and was withdrawn on 20 June with the promise that all applications would be delivered within three week. So we have 5,000 still waiting 5 weeks after the system was shut down which suggests that a sizeable number of the other 13,000 also fell outside the anticipated turnaround times for processing.

This system is being run by the same organisation that will have control of the government's ID card scheme. If they are having problems processing a mere 18,000 how on earth are they going to cope with the government's big brotheresque dream of compulsory ID cards? The answer is simple they can't and they won't.

But at least the Home Office are continuing to live up to the Home Secretary's appraisal of them shortly after he took office that they are no fit for purpose.

Home Office Not Fit to Deliver ID Cards

Well as Charles Clarke has already told us his department is not fit for purpose it appears from leaks that they are messing up Ton'y Blair's ID card agenda very well.

As many people pointed out before implimentation not a single large scale government computer system has been fully operation by the time scheduled. IN the leaked e-mails David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce said it was "a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end-date rather than reality". The government's timetable and the structure of the massive IT project means "we are setting ourselves up to fail."

And Peter Smith, the acting commercial director of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) at the Home Office, which is responsible for the ID card scheme, said he had no argument with those conclusions but also in an even more damaging email to Labour revealed his staff were planning for the possibility ministers will scrap the ID card plan altogether. Because of that, he told Mr Foord that the Home Office was making sure contracts for projects linked to the ID card scheme were being designed to survive if the bigger scheme is dropped.

So with Tony Blair being the big advocate for ID cards is the heir apparent Gordon Brown less in favour? Therefore as a result is he liable to scrap the costly and irrelevant project once he takes over at a date, largely expected to be, before the implimentation date of the government's 'voluntary' ID card scheme?

Is it Time to Call SNP's Bluff?

Brain Monteith MSP, former of the Conservative Party, raises just that interesting question in today's Edinburgh Evening News.

He looks at the relative strength of the pro-independnce vote in Scotland over the recent pass it looks unlikely that any referendum in the near future would be successful. The SNP would say that every vote for them, the SSP and the Greens is a vote for independence but as Monteith mentions there are many reasons why people vote for one of these parties and the reason may not always be independence. Some people vote SNP tactically to get or keep Labour out. Some people who vote Green do so for environmental reasons and are not aware that they are for an independent Scotland, this is bourne out by Green supporters I have meet while canvassing.

So Monteith proposes that the Unionist parties Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats calls Alex Salmond's bluff and call a referendum. There can even been three options and a transferrable vote. He suggest the following options.

1. Independent Scotland
2. Home rule within the UK
3. Abolish Scottish Parliament and return to UK wide rule only

If the referendum is lost where would the SNP go, their cheif plank of existance would be removed from beneath their feet, and he muses would their leading lights seek to find their home in another party for the good of constituents.

Even if the referendum did come down on the side of independence as Monteith points out Ireland didn't come out too bad, admittedly it took them about 50 years to become the Celtic Dragon we now know. But Scotland would be starting from a higher comparitive skill and industrial base than Ireland had in 1922.

It is a interesting and intriging proposal. Why should the SNP the only ones to think of calling a referendum on Independence? If a no vote were to scupper plans for the SNP and their strength would not this benefit the other parties? Typical of Monteith's new found freedom outside the Conservative Party that he should think outside the box.

I wonder what hs take is on the West Lothian Question?

Is George Foulkes Future in Lib Dem Hands?

That is the question that is posed by The Hearld this morning. The Labour peer and former Hearts chairman is top of the Labour list for the Lothian region, a position that no MSP has thus far been elected to Holyrood. The reason being that in 1999 they secured 8 of the 9 FPTP seat and in 2003 that dropped but only to 6 when David McLetchie won Edinburgh Pentlands for the Tories and Mike Pringle won Edinburgh South for the Lib Dems.

So while the Herald does mention that the SSP leader Colin Fox in vulnerable due to recent showing by his party this one slip off the list is not enough in itself to elect Foulkes. He will be relying on Labour colleagues losing some of the vulnerable seats around the region. The thing is that Foulkes has already said that he will be fighting for his colleagues in the seats vulnerable to a Lib Dem capture next May.

Elsewhere in list news how my Lib Dem colleague, friend and fellow blogger Alex Cole-Hamilton can stand against Gordon Brown in last May's election almost doubling our vote and be considered an unknown by the Scotsman is beyond me.

Should He Stay or Should He Go?

The media circus is round on John Prescott again and Prezza is doing his best impression of US General George Armstrong Custer. His relief from colleagues seems far away and not going to reach Mr Prescott's personal Little Big Horn any time soon.

His denial that he is going to resign following the latest allegations over what he did or didn't say with Dome owner Philip Anschutz over 7 different converstaions is just the latest in a long line of instances that cast doubts over his suitablitiy for his current role.

He is obviously a flustered man as his appearance on the Today programme this morning shows. Another sad sign that Prescott may be facing his onwn last sign came at the end of the John Humphries interview. The BBC were bold enough to proach the subject which has been circulating around the blogosphere that Prescott has had more affairs. A simple no would have put the matter to rest. After referring to Iain Dale's appearance on Newsnight and telling that these romours about other affairs appeared online Prescott then said:

There's no truth in much of the stories that are made in the papers...

Now his muddling over technology didn't hide the fact that Prezza is au fait enough to separate the press from the internet and bloggers. Dispite how he tried to look like a technophobe, there is clear demarkation in his comments. However, his answer only addresses one area, but make to denial on eight separate occasions to the allegation.

In desparation he asks Humphries if this is going to be edited. It wasn't and the transcript is fully available on the BBC Website. They obviously feel it is an important enough event to make this publically accessable for scrutiny to cover their own backs maybe following the Jonathan Ross interview, but also to show the public the extent to which the Deputy Prime Minister is in a corner.

I hope his friends are advising John Prescott to make a exit through the kitchen door, because we all know the fate that befell George Armstrong Custer in Montana in 1876.