| Author | Message | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:28 pm Post subject: Lord Levy-Architect of Sleaze & Corruption. |
| Labour donor points finger at Blair aide as NEC meets
By Simon Freeman
A Labour backer whose Lords nomination was blocked in the "cash for peerages" affair today said that he made a loan to the party on the specific advice of Tony Blair's chief fundraiser.
Chai Patel said that Lord Levy, appointed as fundraiser by the Prime Minister in 1994 and handed a peerage in 1997, told him that the party would prefer a loan to a donation.
Dr Patel, whose nomination has been rejected by the Lords Appointments Committee, said that it was only later that he discovered the request was because commercial loans do not have to be disclosed.
Dr Patel's account mirrors that of Sir Gulam Noon, the "curry king", whose nomination to the Lords has been blocked after it was discovered that a loan he made to Labour had not been disclosed.
Sir Gulam said today that he has now asked for his name to be withdrawn from the list of nominations for working peers.
The focus on Lord Levy has added to the pressure on the Prime Minister and members of his inner circle as Labour's governing National Executive - which was also kept in the dark about the loans - prepared for what is expected to be an animated discussion over the affair.
Jack Dromey, the Labour treasurer who fuelled the controversy by revealing that he learned of the loans only from newspaper reports, is expected to present the findings of his initial investigation to the committee.
Dr Patel, founder of the Priory clinics, said that Lord Levy contacted him following the 2005 general election saying that Labour needed money to cover its campaign costs.
He told the BBC: "At that meeting I agreed to a donation - £1.5 million. A few days later he phoned me to tell me that I could now donate the money as a loan rather than as a donation.
"I was told that would be the preferred way to do it. And the reasons that have now been articulated... are that a loan is not disclosable."
Dr Patel added: "You can see from today’s papers that actually if you donate money or loan money, when it comes out it brings a whole degree of innuendo, scrutiny, some suggestions that there may be other reasons and other motives for giving money. It is always attractive if you want to give not always to have that necessarily disclosed."
He said he was upset by the suggestion of a link between loans and peerages. He said people had ignored his record of public service.
He added: "I feel very hurt. Where I have arrived is somewhere I wanted to be, which is to serve in public life. I see the second chamber as a legislative chamber, as a very serious place to be an unelected legislature.
"I believe I could have made a difference. I happen to voluntarily contribute some of the money I have towards a party I believe in.
"Instead of having any acknowledgement for that, I have been dragged down into a two-dimensional person where I’ve somehow got money and I want to buy myself a bauble. That doesn’t seem like a fair way to be treated."
Labour published last night a list of 11 other supporters who bankrolled the party’s election campaign with loans totalling almost £14 million. Among those named are a businessman who won more than £1 billion of government contracts and a venture capitalist whose company is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
The Conservatives have said that they are not prepared to reveal the identities of the wealthy supporters who lent them money to fight the election "under any circumstances".
Jonathan Marland, the party treasurer, said last night that he saw no reason to follow Labour’s example. "Labour are in a very big hole, of course. We are not in the same hole," he told BBC Two’s Newsnight.
"They are embroiled in a serious mess relating to promises they have given to people who have lent them money. We are not in this mess because we are not in power. We don’t have patronage to give and we are not in the same position."
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, has announced plans to bolt an amendment onto a Bill going through Parliament to close the secret loans loophole.
Sir Hayden Phillips, a former Permanent Secretary, is to lead an inquiry which could lead to a radical overhauling of political financing in an attempt to end the controversy. In the most controversial measure, taxpayers could be asked to foot the bill for party political campaigns.
Lord Soley, former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said that whatever the outcome, the row had been hugely damaging.
"It has damaged our Prime Minister, it has damaged the party, it has damaged the Government and it is very damaging to the political process." | |  | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:46 pm Post subject: |
|
BBC NEWS.
Lord Levy: Labour's fundraiser
Lord Levy says he and the prime
minister are "like brothers".
The Commons public administration committee is to ask chief Labour fundraiser Lord Levy to answer questions on his role in arranging unpublicised loans of millions of pounds from businessmen nominated for peerages.
Born in rundown Hackney, east London, to immigrant parents of modest means, Lord Levy now lives in a mansion in Totteridge, north London, complete with swimming pool and tennis courts.
But Michael Abraham Levy, now 61, has never forgotten his working-class Jewish roots or lifelong commitment to the Labour Party.
Educated at Fleetwood primary school, where he was head boy, and Hackney Downs grammar school, he went on to become an accountant.
But he made his money as an impresario in the 1960s and 1970s, managing singers including Alvin Stardust and Chris Rea, and as the founder of Magnet Records who gave the public Bad Manners.
Having sold the company to Warner Bros for £10m, he met Tony Blair at an Israeli diplomatic dinner in 1994, the year he became Labour leader.
The two soon became tennis partners, and Mr Blair made him a life peer - Baron Levy of Mill Hill - after Labour's landslide election victory in 1997.
Lord Levy has told David Osler, the author of Labour Party plc: New Labour as a Party of Business, he and Mr Blair, are "like brothers".
In 2000, the prime minister made Lord Levy his personal envoy to the Middle East, with an office inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The same year, the multi-millionaire came under fire when it was revealed he had only paid £5,000 in tax during the financial year 1998-99 - equivalent to that paid on a salary of £21,000.
Lord Levy told BBC News: "Over the years I have paid many millions of tax. And, if you average it, each year it comes to many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
'Lord Cashpoint'
"In that particular year, I was giving my time to the Labour Party and the voluntary sector, and I just lived off of capital."
Lord Levy also hit the headlines as the Labour Party's chief fundraiser - or, as the press dubbed him, "Lord Cashpoint".
Many of those he tapped for money were not Labour supporters and they were often highly controversial.
It was Lord Levy who secured the £1m donation to Labour from Formula One millionaire Bernie Ecclestone.
The money was repaid by the party to avoid accusations that it had been used to "buy" policies.
He will invite people to his home and maybe invite them to play tennis on his private tennis court and say, 'Well, Tony might just turn up'
Labour Party plc New Labour as a Party of Business author David Osler
Dr Henry Drucker, whose company Oxford Philanthropic was brought in by the Labour Party to advise on gaining large corporate donations, told the Guardian about a meeting at Lord Levy's mansion.
Apologising for not offering him a cup of coffee, Lord Levy had said: "I'm afraid you'll have to do without as none of the servants are about, and I don't know how to work the machine myself," Dr Drucker told the Guardian.
But potential donors received more lavish hospitality.
Mr Osler told BBC News how Lord Levy used "charm and schmooze" to secure donations.
"Lord Levy is famously a very good host. He will invite people round for dinner.
"He will invite people to his home and maybe invite them to play tennis on his private tennis court and say, 'Well, Tony might just turn up'.
"Tony does turn up, they play a round of tennis, Tony leaves.
"Twenty minutes later, he will be sweet-talking them into making a donation, and many people are only too happy to cough up."
Not all visitors to his home are as amenable, though. In 2003, Lord Levy was hit over the head with a shovel and handcuffed by burglars who escaped with cash and jewellery.
Jewish charities
Currently president of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Lord Levy has said he will stop fundraising for Labour when Tony Blair goes.
He now thinks political parties should be funded by the state.
The peer has also worked for Jewish charities, consolidating several into Jewish Care.
He and his wife Gilda have a son, Daniel, who used to work for former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin, and a daughter.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4816692.stm
Published: 2006/03/17 20:39:28 GMT
© BBC MMVI | | | | DanielDives | | Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject: |
| Dear K,
Q: Lord Levy says he and the prime minister are "like brothers".
R: Well, well, well ... 'brothers' ...
In the Judean world that's a little bit more than one might assume @ 1st sight ...
Why doesn't some perverted psycho, a modern-day Jack 'The Straw' Ripper heed his demons' call and do what he's chosen to do ...? | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:30 pm Post subject: |
| | DanielDives wrote: |
Q: Lord Levy says he and the prime minister are "like brothers".
R: Well, well, well ... 'brothers' ... |
Blair has always relied on a little personal army of men who aren't part of the democratic process to conduct the business of running the country. Why would Blair have used individuals with whom his relationships are apparently personal, to carry out the business of running the country when he could have selected any one of the many of his own politcal colour who were elected to work within the political process?
Most members of Blair's own party have turned a blind eye to his deliberate efforts to keep any real political power out of the hands of people chosen by the electorate to run the country......as long as they keep their jobs. I'm wondering how much we are likely to hear from those rats now they begin to realise their disease ridden ship is finally sinking. Perhaps we'll have to wait until the ship actually goes down and they have to start striking out for the shore. The tones of the different screams of S.O.S will be a blast! 
'Lord' Levy's Diary makes interesting reading. Tony Blair's personal envoy, no less! Check out what this unelected creature has been getting up to - or rather, where he's been getting up to it, in the name of the British Government for years!
Freedom of Information: Lord Levy's Diary for 1999-2004
Lord Levy's meetings and overseas trips as Tony Blair's special envoy on the Middle East since 1997
Released 16 February 2005:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/foi_lordlevysdiary99-04,0.pdf | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject: |
| 'Lord' Levy......consigliere....I like it! I note The Daily Mail (via link) also whining about Iraqi civilians being murdered by US troops - has Paul Dacre had a lobotomy? 
How to cash in on New Labour
It was the Prime Minister's consigliere Lord Levy who told the dozen multimillionaires who bankrolled New Labour in election year that the "preferred way" was to lend the money, not donate it.
His lordship was desperate to keep the £14million slush fund under tight wraps. Today, it's easy to see why Lord Levy and Tony Blair wanted absolute secrecy.
For, shameful though it is, the "peerages for loans" scandal is the tip of the iceberg.
After all, what's a gong to businessmen like Rod Aldridge, whose company Capita has already snapped up Whitehall contracts worth £2.6billion - one of them signed just weeks after he made his £1million "loan".
Then there is Sir Christopher Evans - another £1million lender - who stands to make vast profits from bio-technology which, you will recall, the Prime Minister eulogises at every possible opportunity.
And of course Evans's chum Lord Sainsbury is not only in charge of bio-tech policy as Minister for Science but is himself a £2million lender and a £13.5million donor. How very cosy.
And what about Derek Tullett (a £400,000 lender) who has considerable gambling interests - at a time when New Labour appears hell-bent on unleashing a gaming binge on the nation.
Doesn't it stink. And what else might crawl out as more stones are lifted?
No wonder Labour's National Executive, humiliatingly kept in the dark by Mr Blair, yesterday tried to regain control over the party's tainted finances - and the PM's bruiser Charles Clarke publicly rubbished Jack Dromey, the party treasurer who first blew the whistle on the whole shebang.
True, of course, that the Tories have also taken loans from business backers. But they have been in opposition since 1997 and even when in power there were never any of these contracts for cash allegations.
No, the Blair/Levy loans scandal marks a demeaning new low in political life and makes a mockery of the self-regulation with which our politicians so complacently police their own activities.
The body that should bring them to book, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, is powerless because its remit precludes investigations into specific allegations.
It will be left to Scotland Yard to investigate whether the law relating to the sale of peerages has been breached.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is at the Dispatch Box today knowing his Budget statement threatens to be overshadowed by sleaze. A Chancellor of such Calvinistic rectitude, he must be repelled by what is going on. Isn't it time he said so?
And what of Mr Blair himself? This is a Prime Minister who - from the moment he took a £1million "bung" from Bernie Ecclestone nine years ago - has steadily debased the conduct of public life, tarnished his high office and humiliated his own party.
In this column last week we described Blair as the Richard Nixon of British politics. This week, like Tricky Dicky, Blair is still hanging on.
Can he survive? Possibly. Does he deserve to? Emphatically not.
Source:The Daily Mail | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:34 pm Post subject: |
| ARAB NEWS
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Saturday 1st April, 2006
How the Gibe of 'Anti-Semitism' Is Used to Stifle Legitimate Debate
Neil Berry,
Arab News
The other week David Aaronovitch unburdened himself on the subject of Christian anti-Semitism and got caught up in a journalistic fiasco. It all began when the sometime Guardian columnist who now writes for the London Times, offered his thoughts in the Jewish Chronicle on the recent quarrel between the General Synod of the Church of England and the Chief Rabbi over the synod's decision to disinvest in Caterpillar, the US company that manufactures Israeli bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes. Exercised about the whole business of Christians attacking Jews, Aaronovitch had taken particular exception to a "clumsy" Guardian article by Canon Paul Oestreicher that accused Jewish leaders of attempting to use moral blackmail against critics of Israel. Oestreicher wanted to "nail the lie that to attack Zionism as currently practiced is to be anti-Semitic".
Not disputing that he was right in principle, Aaronovitch sought to belittle Oestreicher's case by describing it as "so old its beard touches the ground" (as if a familiar argument is by definition feeble). Still, Oestreicher's offensiveness paled, it seemed, beside that of a certain Neil Berry. Identified by Aaronovitch as the treasurer of Christian CND, the aforementioned was alleged to have written articles peddling an "updated, more zingy" form of anti-Semitism. The trouble was that the Christian in question had written no such articles and was outraged to discover that Aaronovitch had him down as the author of material that, he self-protectively agreed, was clearly anti-Semitic. Aaronovitch was obliged to post a Times Online apology to the affronted treasurer acknowledging that he had confused him with another Neil Berry whose published opinions "bordered on being anti-Semitic".
The other Neil Berry happened to be me and I am bound to say that I resent Aaronovitch's anti-Semitic slur - just as I resent the panic-stricken manner in which my Christian namesake accepted its validity. Having evidently undertaken a glancing trawl of Internet blogs, he not only misidentified me but offered an insultingly sketchy account of two pieces I had written, one a contribution to the London-based paper, The Muslim Weekly, which compared the financial backing that David Cameron, leader of the Tory party, had been receiving with that received by Blair; the other a discussion of attitudes to the Iraq war taken by Jewish columnists that appeared in Arab News. But what exactly did I say that was deemed so heinous?
My piece on Cameron and Blair contained the suggestion that "if Tony Blair emerged out of nowhere, it was in no small measure because he found a remarkable sponsor in the person of his tennis partner, Lord Levy". Aaronovitch found the suggestion so far-fetched that he dismissed it as "utter twaddle". But his brusque rebuttal was to prove ill timed, since it soon emerged (from the coverage of the "loans for honors" scandal) that long before Blair became prime minister in 1997, Levy was instrumental in collecting vast sums of money for the Labour Party. David Osler, author of the useful book, Labour Party PLC: New Labour as the Party of Business (2002), reveals that the funds furnished by Levy enabled Blair to run the "biggest opposition leader's office in history, employing 20 full time staff on appreciable salaries". The central role played by the entrepreneur nicknamed "Lord Cashpoint" in sustaining Labour's finances, and indeed in enabling Blair to develop a party within the party, has now become common knowledge.
The article went on to question the wider political implications of the Labour Party being bankrolled by Jews who may also be Zionists at a time of heightened sensitivities among Muslims and others about Zionist influence on Anglo-American foreign policy. In the case of Lord Levy, a Zionist with a home in Tel Aviv who raised funds for the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and whose son worked for Israel's minister of justice, the implications seem only too plain. For scarcely had Blair become prime minister than he demonstrated his gratitude to him by making Levy a Lord and appointing him as his special envoy to the Middle East, with a room of his own in the Foreign Office. Little was made of any of this by Britain's phlegmatic media, but it is not hard to appreciate the cynicism with which Levy's appointment was greeted in the Arab world - an Arab world which Blair had seemed anxious to assure of his good faith, proclaiming his desire to see a just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. What, one would like to ask, stopped Britain's purportedly even-handed prime minister from appointing a figure of unimpeachable bipartisan credentials as his envoy, or from arranging for Britain to be represented by both a British Jew and a British Palestinian? What exactly was the rationale for giving the job to an unelected businessman whose pedigree as a diplomat was nonexistent and whose allegiance to the Jewish state might well have been felt to compromise his judgment?
That the appointment of Levy was less than sensitive is underlined by the reaction to him of the Lebanese government who thought he had come to them to champion not the British but the Israeli viewpoint. A diplomatic brouhaha ensued which necessitated the issuing of a placatory statement by the British ambassador.
Could there be a future Lord Levy among David Cameron's entourage? Much of the rest of my piece addressed the implications of the lavish Jewish financial support now being enjoyed by David Cameron. Already Cameron is much indebted to Jewish backers: Among them, the casino magnate, Lord Steinberg, the media mogul, Michael Green, the chief executive of the Next chain, Simon Wolfson (who is advising him on economic matters), and the owner of the Jayroma clothing company, Andrew Feldman, the latter an Oxford friend of Cameron's who has reportedly become the "chief conduit" of current Tory funding. The precise attitudes toward Israel of all of Cameron's backers are unclear, though Michael Green for one is a zealous Zionist. What is striking is that while he has otherwise put off making manifesto commitments until various policy units have reported their findings, the newly appointed Tory leader lost no time in addressing the "Conservative Friends of Israel" and signaling that Israel's security rates among his top priorities.
I granted that to question whether Cameron's patrons might have an agenda that encompasses not just benefiting their own business empires but also the furtherance of specifically Jewish, if not Zionist, objectives was to run the risk of being condemned as a blatant anti-Semite. I added that the possibility could not be discounted that the businessmen supporting Cameron were entirely innocent of ulterior motives. What, I wondered, though, would have been the media reaction if Cameron's Tory Party were in receipt of Muslim largesse? Or if it were Muslims who bulked large in his immediate political circle rather than, as is actually the case, Jews, such as Oliver Letwin, Simon Wolfson, Zac Goldsmith and the former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Michael Gove? Without question, any significant involvement with the Muslim community on Cameron's part would be regarded as a matter for legitimate public discussion; there would be no shortage of columnists querying the propriety of his conduct: Whether the candidate was sound on "terror" and whether the British people could safely entrust their fate to a candidate with such connections. So why is it that his involvement with Jewish patrons and acolytes who may nurse highly partisan feelings about Israel and the Middle East elicits no comment whatsoever?
If this has become an especial cause for concern it is because though the British Muslim population is now far bigger than Britain's Jewish population there is no proportionate reflection of Muslim attitudes and values in British public life. The perception among Muslims that the British political establishment favors Jews and disfavors Muslims is surely not one that ought to be allowed to take root in a country that wishes to encourage a spirit of national loyalty among its ethno-religious minorities.
Reviling me for being preoccupied with "the Jewishness of things", David Aaronovitch also disparaged an article I wrote on the high proportion of British Jewish columnists who promoted the invasion of Iraq and who treated those who challenged the case for war as if they were simpletons with no grasp of geopolitical realities. Aaronovitch himself figured prominently among them - as did the Observer columnist, Nick Cohen. Cohen made a name for himself as a scourge of New Labour and many were puzzled when he stepped forward as a champion of the war, writing like some closet US neoconservative. Admitting that his arguments had to be judged on their own terms, I wrote that it was hard to believe that Cohen's bellicosity, like that of other pro-war Jewish columnists, was wholly unconnected with a peculiarly Jewish anxiety about Israel's security. Cohen's subsequent habit of issuing regular warnings about the "Islamofascist" threat to Western democracies, together with his loudly trumpeted concern about the recrudescence of anti-Semitism, did nothing to lessen this suspicion. When, one day last summer, he boasted to readers of the London Evening Standard about meeting the great American neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, this suspicion hardened into a certainty. For if Wolfowitz has been one of the chief proponents of "regime-change" in Iraq, he also ranks as one of the world's leading Zionists.
Does all this mean that I am an exponent of what Aaronovitch weirdly dubbed an "updated, more zingy form of anti-Semitism"? My own belief is that I am raising issues that are crying out for public airing. Or have we now reached a point where it is impossible to discuss the political conduct and allegiances of Jews without being denounced as the worst sort of racist? The irony is that there is far more frank discussion of Jewish affairs in the Israeli media than in Britain or the United States. Robert Fisk has remarked that when Bill Clinton appointed several pro-Israeli American Jews as his Middle East peace envoys the Western media shrank from addressing the matter, yet a prominent Israeli paper was quick to discuss the import of the "mission of the four Jews". Similarly, it was the Jerusalem Post, not any British newspaper that animadverted on the Jewishness of Lord Levy and other key sponsors of New Labour. In a magisterial article in the current London Review of Books, the American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt describe how the Israel lobby in the US has successfully intimidated would be-critics of Israel and of the incestuous US/Israel relationship; the same, albeit to a lesser degree, has been true in Britain. Speaking to the moment, this groundbreaking polemic is provoking furious Internet debate. The truth is that the pressure to stay silent on the subject of Israel, its treatment of the Palestinians and its influence on Anglo-American foreign policy is becoming intolerable to growing numbers of people across the world.
Hostility toward Jews has been a monstrous historical phenomenon. Nor are signs wanting, particularly in France, that Jewish people are experiencing renewed persecution. But this should not distract attention from the fact that the politicking of British and American Jews has long had a profound bearing on Israel's relationship with the rest of the Middle East, if not on the whole world order. Nowadays, the gibe of anti-Semitism is too often used as a means of stifling open debate, of outlawing discussion of issues that are of the widest concern. Journalists in Britain and the US ought to be much less inhibited about addressing those issues. They might try following the example of their Israeli counterparts.
www.arabnews.com | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:50 am Post subject: |
| Blair under pressure to strip Levy of academy cash role
By Toby Helm, Liz Lightfoot and John Steele
(Filed: 15/04/2006)
Tony Blair was under pressure last night to strip his friend Lord Levy of his responsibility for Labour's flagship city academy programme as police investigating "cash for peerages" closed in on the Prime Minister's inner circle.
Labour MPs and union leaders gave warning that the arrest on Thursday of Des Smith, a former Government adviser who helped find sponsors for the academies, had thrown the entire programme - and Mr Blair's controversial plan for trust schools - into jeopardy.
In particular, questions were being raised about whether Lord Levy, who raised millions for Labour from wealthy businessmen who were later offered peerages, could remain at the head of the academy project.
Mr Smith, a head teacher, was released on bail on Thurday night after being detained under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.
He had told an undercover newspaper reporter, posing as an assistant to a potential donor to an academy, that businessmen who gave large sums were likely to be rewarded with honours, including peerages.
The possibility that police may ask for Mr Smith be granted immunity from prosecution, to encourage him to spill the beans about precisely how Labour's patronage system works, is causing growing alarm.
If such an application were made by the Crown Prosecution Service, the ultimate decision would lie with Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, a Cabinet member.
It is expected that Lord Levy, who is the president of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, will be interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives within the next four weeks. He is likely to be questioned under caution - rather than be placed under arrest - as part of the inquiry launched last month into whether parties have handed out honours in return for donations or loans.
The possibility that Mr Blair could be interviewed by police has not been discounted but no decision is imminent. If he were to be questioned, it is likely that it would be under caution.
Teaching unions said yesterday that the system of relying on wealthy businessmen to sponsor city academies must be reviewed.
Mick Brookes, the leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the latest revelations must put the whole academy programme in doubt.
"The notion of getting on board private finance is an attractive one, but this, I think, has thrown that notion into some question," he said.
Asked about the future of Lord Levy, he said it was "one of the questions" that would have to be addressed.
Labour MPs said the controversy over the way academies were funded would not only call into further question Lord Levy's future as a fund-raiser but also his position as the president of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.
Mr Smith stepped down from the trust after his conversation with the undercover reporter appeared in The Sunday Times in January.
Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "We welcome good links between schools and business.
"What we will continue to oppose is people being able to peddle in our education system their narrow beliefs and prejudices because they are prepared to put £2 million into a school. That is wrong and parents know it is wrong."
Many Labour MPs have long resented the academies, regarding them as a form of privatisation of the education system.
David Chaytor, a member of the Commons education select committee, said the latest developments had raised questions about the programme's accountability.
Other Labour MPs said that Mr Blair was now likely to face even more problems pushing his controversial Education Bill - which envisages the creation of self-governing trusts with businessmen involved on governing boards - through Parliament.
Margaret Morrissey, the spokesman for the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said she believed that the police investigation should go wider.
"If this head teacher did what he is accused of doing, then I doubt very much whether he took it upon himself to act alone, without instruction," she said.
Source | | | | DanielDives | | Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:54 am Post subject: |
| Dear K,
They should send Lord Levy to New Orleans and use Tony for target practising ... | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 5:03 am Post subject: |
| | I'm not a bad shot......can I have Tony? | | | | DanielDives | | Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:10 am Post subject: |
| Dear K,
Q: can I have Tony?
R: Be my guest. Here's my HK ... | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
