Monday's prospects
- 26 Nov 07, 11:12 AM
Dan Kelly is today's programme editor - here is his early email to the production team. What do you think we should cover?
Good Morning.
Northern Rock
Plenty around today. Northern Rock has chosen the Virgin Group as its preferred buyer. Virgin's offer - which has been backed by the Treasury - includes an immediate repayment of Β£11bn of the Β£25bn the bank owes the Bank of England. Private Equity businessmen have already expressed "shock" at what they regard as a very generous deal for Branson. So how fair is this deal for the taxpayer?
Brown
Gordon Brown has just given a speech outlining his plans to "intensify compulsion in the benefits system." New briefings are promised on welfare reform today. Is this just a reannouncement of existing policy to grab a quick headline, or something more interesting?
Labour donor
How could a jobbing builder and secretary in Newcastle contribute nearly Β£400,000 to Labour Party funds? Because it was "given" to them by a publicity shy property developer, that's how. This was clearly an unusual practice and potentially against the law, but is it even more serious than that? Did anybody in the Labour Party know about this unusual arrangement?
Middle East peace
The Annapolis conference begins tomorrow, there are talks at the White House today. Peter Marshall is there for us.
Oxford debate
There's a freedom of speech debate at the Oxford Union tonight. and have been invited. Large protests are expected before the meeting. There's clearly a discussion that can be had over this, but rather than the usual suspects do you have some original suggestions for guests?
Other ideas, treatments, guests, other stories?
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Are the democratically elected Hamas representatives in Annapolis?
Of course not, because they're 'terrorists', unlike the illegal occupiers of Palestine.
Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
Namaste -ed
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- General Omar N. Bradley
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BROWN'S REFORMS
This is surely the stuff of dystopic fantasy given a) the low birth rate and differential fertility b) the high heritability of cognitive ability and c) New Labour's distorted understanding of Michael Young's concept of 'meritocracy' which is just divisively reinforcing dysgenic assortive mating through partitioning the population via education, education, education?
Sadly, this is what happens when politicans and their advisors are unable to see the longer term consequences of their actions and are driven more by ideology than evidence (assuming, that is, that they ARE benevolent representatives of their electorate and are NOT pursuing a destructive, Marxist/Lysenkoist agenda).
OXFORD DEBATE.
/blogs/newsnight/2007/11/fridays_prospects_1.html
PS. It's Irving not Irvine.
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For guests, try Richard Lynn and Chris Brand.
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What a naive man David Abrahams is, perhaps this is a result of being so solitary. Doesn't he realise that the money he donated via other names, is only half the amount required to buy a peerage? He should have gone through the official Nu Labour Lord (who shall remain unnamed), but maybe he begrudged the nominal ten percent commission!
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