Training | 2010.04.19
Stephen Bates' diary
It\'s incredibly easy, this standing for parliament thing. Especially if you don\'t really pay the help
• With the sort of crusading zeal that tends to seize columnists with space to fill, Suzanne Moore, late of this parish as well as half the publications of Fleet Street, boldly announced in the Mail on Sunday last weekend that she is planning to stand as an Independent in her local constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. A doctor writes: "Is this an outbreak of what we specialists call Esther Rantzen Attention-Seeking Deficit Syndrome?" No matter: Moore is so annoyed with politicians that she hopes to supplant Diane Abbott to show just how cross she is with the whole rotten system. Standing is incredibly easy, she\'s found. "What I do have," she trills, "is offers of help and lots of talk about leaflets." Clearly that\'s not enough, though, which may be why she\'s advertised on the House of Commons website for someone called an organised campaign manager: "Experience and good admin a must ... accommodation a possibility." Closing date today (Tues) so hurry. Pessimistically, she reckons the job will only last for the next "intense" month. Just one drawback: "Salary: small." What, even on a Mail on Sunday columnist\'s remuneration?
• The imbroglio so aptly referred to by my colleague Hugh Muir – who is at present enjoying a well-earned holiday – as l\'affaire Tooting gets stranger by the day. New readers start here. Susan John-Richards, a former Conservative who is now standing as an Independent in the south London constituency, has found that her personal website, susanrichards.com surprisingly links inquirers to that of her Tory rival, Mark Clarke. Weirdly, so does susanrichards.org and susanjohnrichards.net. The matter has been referred to the Electoral Commission. Meanwhile, Clarke denies all knowledge. Nothing to do with him, couldn\'t stop it if he tried. Whoever could have done something so dastardly? Step forward, one Matthew Richardson, who set up the sites last week. Who he? A close friend of Clarke\'s and colleague on the Young Britons\' Foundation, the rightwing group which the Guardian recently found sending young Tories to practice their shooting skills on US ranges. At least it looks like they\'re close: a charming photograph posted on the Conservativehome site shows them snoozing on each other\'s shoulders aboard a train on the way home from a hard day\'s leafleting in Ealing.
• Good to report that the cockles of an old Tory\'s heart have been warmed by a spontaneous gesture from Peter Mandelson. Norman Tebbit emails in to say how thrilled he is that the trade secretary has approved the inclusion of a polecat in a set of postage stamps depicting endangered wildlife. "Overwhelmed by the news of my wonderful new 1st class stamp ... Mandelson must have approved the design before it was submitted to the Queen," he says, with forgiveable solipcism. No hard feelings, then, about Michael Foot\'s famous 70s epithet for Tebbit as a "semi-housetrained polecat." Tebbit said in an uncharacteristically churlish blog for the Telegraph when Foot died that the insult had demeaned his abuser while boosting his own career. What prompted Foot\'s outburst has long been disputed, but Tebbit was happy enough to incorporate a polecat in his coat of arms when he was ennobled by a grateful nation.
• Broken Britain: an occasional series. Graham Rumsey (pictured) of Southborough, Kent, the Tory councillor recently released from jail after serving concurrent sentences for failing to pay council tax and allowing his dog to attack two teenagers, has announced to the Kent and Sussex Courier that he has no intention of resigning his seat. He\'s going to appeal and sue, and the local Conservative group is backing him. Party of law and order, eh?
• That\'s enough Tories. Rejoice, rejoice for former personal trainer Duncan Culley, who\'s told Wales on Sunday that he\'s in the running for the allegedly £70,000-a-year job of minding Alice, the world\'s largest rabbit: 3ft long and 40 pounds. "I think I\'ve got what it takes," he told the paper. "I\'m normal-enough looking, and I don\'t think I would steal the focus away from the rabbit at all."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/14/guardian-diary-conservatives
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