THE NOBLE LORD AND HIS FEE PAYING FARCE

 

George Foulkes‏@GeorgeFoulkes

As we face further major cuts in Council schools might be worth checking where the SNP Cabinet send their children

Some time ago the Noble Baron Foulkes of Cumnock blocked me from receiving his Tweets...a badge of honour for me. I had pointed out to him that there was something slightly ironic about a Labour Aristocrat. He failed to see the amusing side of that.

Anyway, I'm obliged to Rosanna Cunningham for re-tweeting the above beauty and giving me the opportunity to see what I otherwise would have missed.

Irony doesn't appear to be a word in his Nobleness's dictionary, for not only is he a Peer of the Realm, but the daft old bugger himself went to a fee paying school in Herefordshire, to-wit the independent, fee paying The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire (Motto: Serve and Obey...well, the ultra loyalist took that to heart.)

Really, people who live in glass houses should try to remember not ever to throw stones. Otherwise we all laugh at them.

NO GRASP OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE, HUH?

I'd have brought you the scoffing tweet from the Noble Baron ffoukes, but much to my delight and indeed pride, his magnificence, the old duffer, has gone and blocked me on Twitter. Must be something I said about Labour aristocrats being ever so slightly oxymoronic. 

He's a snappy dresser is George. Look how his tie goes with his nose.

I believe that Scottish Labour's answer to Einstein, James Kelly, also had fun mocking the new crossing. He called it an SNP vanity project, and Elaine Murray said that the case for the bridge was overblown, was sucking up a great deal of money and had only been built so that the SNP had something they could show that they delivered.

Of course engineers had been saying for a long time that the bridge was doing far more work and carrying far more weight daily than had ever been envisaged when it was built in 1964.

Turns out that the engineers were right and the combined wisdom of his Baronness (as opposed to baroness), Mr Kelly, Ms Murray and Mr Hothersall, were wrong. I suspect that, had we had a Labour government when the first problems of the bridge came to light, we would now be looking at a very different picture for the economy of Edinburgh and Fife.

Je crois que M. Cameron vient d'appeler une menteuse notre Madame l'Ambassadrice !

Even if I hadn't been busy today on other affairs, I'd have avoided writing anything about the unfolding story of Nicolagate or Memogate. Not because it's not interesting, but because everyone else has been doing a brilliant job without me pitching in.

Obviously Stuart Campbell was on it immediately, quite rightly wondering, as a professional journalist himself, why not one person from the Telegraph, the Mail or the BBC actually bothered to check a single fact, before laying into the story with gusto. But many others have written about it too, including the Wee Ginger Dug, Tommy Ball and our own dear Niko.

Given that it was pretty controversial, and given that it involved a person at ambassadorial level from another European country, it should have seemed to be sensible for someone, somewhere to have phoned the office of the FM, the office of the Consul General, or maybe even the Embassy of la République française.

But, seemingly, it slipped their minds, or maybe they were just too busy frothing. 

Oh, for some scribblers who bothered to turn up for the second day of the journalism course when they did the fact checking module.

Some bright spark thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to get in touch with Willie Rennie, maybe because although he was not involved in any way, he was guaranteed to mutter something along the lines of SNP bad, Nicola bad, Bad Bad....? 

...Unless he has a cousin who works for the Telegraph...because, frankly I'm surprised that the Torygraph has ever heard of him.

Needless to say Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale and a shedload of Labour politicians jumped on the bandwagon and tweeted and tutted and told us so. 

So, throughout last night and today the facts seem to have been emerging.

A Guardian journalist (who had done the fact checking module), presumably with no particular love of the SNP, bu visceral hatred of the Telegraph, checked up with the Consul, who said it was rubbish. Ms Sturgeon had expressed no preference, he said. The Embassy also said it was rubbish. That didn't make any difference to Labour, with the honourable exception of Malcolm Chisholm, who dismissed it as rubbish. George ffoulkes was at fever pitch...although in fairness it was late last night and, well that was maybe less George and more l'eau de vie.

Nicola Sturgeon tweeted to the Telegraph (since no one had bothered to ask her), that she categorically denied it, and went on to point out that she would have denied it a good deal earlier had she only been asked.

Someone from the BBC managed to get round to asking Nicola as she prepared to speak at an anti nuclear weapons rally in Glasgow, what she had to say.

She said that:

a) she denied it;
b) the Consul denied it;
c) the Ambassador denied it;
d) the foreign office couldn't find any trace of the memo that had been leaked;
e) that there were rumours that the Scotland Office might have been involved. Strangely the Scotland Office blokey from Shetland, has mysteriously disappeared. I say strangely because he also met with the French Ambassador that day;
f) she has written asking for an official inquiry to be launched into the leak. (It was later reported that an inquiry has been set up, presumably no wrong doing will be found to have occurred.)

It appears that Mr Dugdale may not have
 been entirely happy with Kezia's response.

What I find incredible is that, long after all three participants in the meeting have denied that Ms Sturgeon said she would prefer David Cameron (over whom she could have no influence) to Ed Miliband (over whom she at least might), both Miliband and Cameron are proving that neither of them is a fit person to be prime minister by using the now discredited story, about which there is to be an official inquiry, as they go around electioneering.

For a start is this not putting the appearance of neutrality in the inquiry in jeopardy?

And secondly, it may be OK to call another party leader a liar, particularly when they have just shown you up at a televised hustings, but don't either of the two candidates to be prime minister of the union know that calling an Ambassador of a friendly country a liar, is getting pretty close to causing a diplomatic incident?

Attention Quai d'Orsay!