UK Age

Bumped into Maria Fyfe at the party conference. No, not the LibDem conference.

Don't think, on balance, she's likely to defect. My encounter was at the Labour conference in Dundee the week previously.

You must remember Maria Fyfe. She was MP for Glasgow Maryhill - in the days when that great city's seats were named after community locations instead of points on a compass.

I remember her in particular for her efforts to secure greater representation for women in the Scottish Parliament - which is why, of course, our chance meeting came back to me subsequently.

Maria was one of a Labour group including Johann Lamont, Margaret Curran and many others who advocated a 50/50 approach in the prelude to the establishment of the devolved Parliament.

By which they meant the members of the new Parliament should be gender balanced: half of them women, half of them men.

As I recall, the campaign attempted firstly to prescribe this by legislation. When that failed, they proceeded via internal party action, including a concordat between Labour and the Liberal Democrats that these two parties - signatories to the Convention - would seek as far as possible to achieve gender balance.

I recall interviewing Maria at the old BBC Scotland HQ in Queen Margaret Drive. I was giving her the customary hard time.

Wasn't this political manipulation? Shouldn't women get there on merit? Wasn't there a risk that women, thus favoured, would be seen as second rank MSPs?

Maria listened and answered politely, as was her wont. Then, displaying a moment's exasperation, she paused and sighed: "Look, Brian, this really matters. Have you got any better ideas?"

As I recorded in a book about the advent of devolution (second edition, still available from all....), the interview with the MP from Maryhill ended rather soon afterwards.

This brief encounter - and the one in Dundee - came back to me as I perused the stushie in Airdrie over the attempted imposition of an all-women shortlist in selecting an individual to replace John Reid MP as Labour candidate for Airdrie and Shotts (plus, of course, those all-important surrounding villages.)

One can readily understand the anger in Airdrie. White Lanarkshire males are so under-represented in Scottish Labour politics.

However, perhaps this is also about a power clash.

In Lanarkshire, it seems, they dislike the notion of politics being run by a potent, centralised clique. (Or, more accurately, by someone else's potent centralised clique; by London's PCC.)

Ach, I shouldn't mock. There are serious points to be made on both sides of the argument here.

I well recall the comparable disputes at the advent of devolution - and, as is often the case, they all had salience.

Justice was not solely in one corner.

There were those who said that women's representation was so pitifully low that it had to be boosted by artificial intervention.

They argued - further and with some force - that it was vital to attempt this task when there was a clean slate, before incumbency and inertia froze the females out.

There were those who disliked using party machinery, still less the law, for this purpose.

They argued that parliaments and parties must rather address why they were unable to recruit women in winnable seats.

There were those who said: leave well alone. Party machines play too big a role in the selection of candidates as it is. Leave it to local choice. Leave it, ultimately, to the voters.

This particular row, of course, is about a Westminster seat, not Holyrood. But the core elements of the argument can be set out exactly as above.

Enough, Brian, enough.

As Maria Fyfe will undoubtedly remind me when next we meet, this really matters.

Perhaps understandably, Tavish Scott started a little nervously.

It was, after all, his first speech to a full-blooded conference since assuming the leadership of the Scottish LibDems.

But he built it up strongly and finished with every evidence of a substantial conflagration in his innards.

They liked it, of course, and delegates were full of praise later.

However, it is now standard to describe leaders's speeches as featuring the finest oratory since Cato was a Senator.

So we may discount the more glowing reports.

Seriously, though, delegates here in Perth warmed to the address. They liked the funnies.

They liked the virulent - notably virulent - attacks on the party's rivals.

And they liked the sense of history - a theme at this conference.

Why, they even presented themselves with a cake to mark the 21st birthday of the Liberal Democrats.

Still in historical mood, I was intrigued by Mr Scott's references to "what we would do in government".

He used that phrase - or comparable formulations - at various points in his speech.

Primarily, I suppose, it was a reference to a possible hung Parliament at Westminster after the next UK General Election. I

Indeed, Mr Scott talked explicitly of Vince Cable entering Downing Street. Number 11, that is.

However, this theme could just as easily translate to the situation post the next Holyrood elections.

With Labour again? With the SNP?

There are, as noted earlier, one or two tiny obstacles in the path of that latter prospect.

Electoral arithmetic, party motivations, the small matter of an independence referendum - plus the fact that some key figures in the LibDems, notably at Westminster, would strive mightily to avoid any deal with the Nationalists, whatever the temptations.

PS: Is it not about time we had video replays to assist our referees in football?

I wasn't at Fir Park yesterday (I was here, in Perth) - but from all accounts United should have had a penalty.

In the resultant stramash (author, Arthur Montford), the Well ran up the park - or trudged through the mud - and scored a jammy winner.

I did manage to catch the rugby on the telly yesterday - and video refereeing was used to good effect. (Well, bad, actually in that it confirmed an Irish try - but you get the point.)

In football, one duff decision can determine a game, a league, an entire season.

Yet we leave it to a single guy - and force him to decide without any technological back-up whatsoever.

As ever, football is stuck in the previous century.

In all the casting around for a new strategic direction in Afghanistan, the country's presidential elections, due this August, represent the elephant in the room. Within the Obama administration, the internal debate rages about whether Afghan president Hamid Karzai is worthy of continued American support.

If the US and its Nato allies go with 'Plan A', they run the risk of widespread Taleban disruption of voting, leading to a turn out so poor that the election may be invalidated or a hardening of ethnic divisions within the country. If they delay the elections either for security reasons or because they are looking for a better candidate to back than Mr Karzai, there are obvious risks too.

Some, like Conservative MP Adam Holloway, favour backing an Afghan political process that would delay elections while a national unity government was formed to include Taleban and other hardline opponents of Mr Karzai. Talks between Afghan political factions were held in Dubai in December towards this end. Elections, their argument goes, might then go ahead in 2010 throughout the country, embracing all political forces. Under this process a timetable would also be set for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

While the Obama administration might be open to new approaches, it's not yet clear it would back a process that both allowed the Taleban a share of power and - theoretically at least - set the course for the removal of foreign forces. It is apparent though from the president's recent pronouncements and those of his officials that their prime objective is denying Afghanistan as a sanctuary to international terrorism. Bold talk of 'freedom and democracy' features less now than it did with the Bush White House, and instead the US defence secretary talks about more realistic goals that might be achieved in a 3-5 year timescale.

What is apparent then is that all kinds of options are being opened up by Washington: to carry on with Plan A; to postpone elections and empower the Karzai government to rule with 'strong man' emergency powers; to postpone while dumping Karzai in favour of a national unity government. The permutations are bewildering. What is clear though is that the calendar logic of troop rotations and the elections may well force Washington to show its hand before a fully formed political strategy (along the lines of the Dubai dialogue among Afghan exile groups) is in place.

GAZA - We were out filming at the scene of some of the recent fighting today, in a place called Atufah, a neighbourhood east of Gaza City where the town meets the surrounding farmers' fields.

Whereas we are used to struggling to reconcile the different versions given by Israelis and Palestinians, today it was an inconsistency within the local narrative that gave me pause for thought.

People in Atufah had a very hard time during January's Israeli incursion. We met many locals and all told us they had fled when Israeli tanks appeared on Tel el Rais, a hill overlooking their homes.

Adil al Jidba's story was particularly harrowing. He had fled to a relative's home three kilometres away, but after they arrived in that supposed place of sanctuary, he told us three of his children had been killed by Israeli shells.

When people say they fled Atufah, I believe them because it must have been a very dangerous place to be. Many of the building showed the scars of Israeli fire. Some were completely destroyed. I examined fragments of ordnance or rounds that hadn't gone off: tanks shells, 120mm mortar rounds, and heavy machine bullets.

I even saw signs of the now notorious white phosphorous smoke rounds. The Israeli army reportedly told its soldiers not to take any chances with their own security, and that appears to have been their approach in Atufah.

The problem I have with the local narrative is this. When we asked whether Palestinian fighters had been shooting at the Israelis from their neighbourhood they all said no. But how could they know that, if they hadn't been there? They had fled.

Some people, like Mr al-Jidba and a few others we spoke to, also asserted the right of "mujahdeen" to confront the Israelis in order to prevent them taking any more Palestinian land. Many overseas, I suspect, would sympathise with the right of the Palestinians to resist that invasion. It's just that from everything we heard today, nobody was resisting from Atufah.

The Israelis maintain of course that they were taking fire from the area we filmed in. How else do you explain the amount of shooting they did at Atufah? The Palestinian answer would be that the shooting was unprovoked, malicious, and illustrates the inhumanity of the Israelis.

My own instinct is that while the Israelis may have used what their ministers readily term disproportionate fire aganst Palestinian fighters, the bullets were not all travelling in one direction.

The Conservative Party high command is so worried about some of David Cameron's Parliamentary candidates that they've started holding meetings every two weeks to monitor what they call a "watch-list" of those "have the potential to embarrass the Party".

This is revealed in the minutes - leaked to Newsnight (download them here (pdf)) - of a meeting of senior national officials - the party's deputy chairmen and vice chairmen - held on 28 October last year.

The minutes say:

"Care needs to be taken over the candidates that have the potential to embarrass the Party - there will now be a fortnightly meeting to assess the watch-list of candidates, and the reasons they are on the list needs to be taken into consideration."

And the document shows that a Conservative Central Office official has even been appointed to keep a close eye on what these potential trouble-makers get up to:

"The public output e.g. blogs, websites, press releases of candidates will [sic] now to be monitored by a new member of the CRD team," the minutes read. "Let JM or Stephen Gilbert know if there are any problems with candidates - de-selection should be the last option." [JM is probably John Maples MP, the Deputy Chairman in charge of candidates.]

The minutes make it clear, however, that Central Office thinks that local associations are often a bigger problem than individual candidates.
"But there is nothing to deal with the awkward associations - senior volunteers to help?"

And the party is taking measures to keep their potential candidates on message, even before they have been elected, according to the leaked report - by arranging for candidates to meet the Chief Whip at Westminster, Patrick McLoughlin:

"The Chief [Whip] is keen to meet with the candidates so they can get used to being line-managed by the Whips' Office."

Line managed? An interesting phrase.

The minutes show that despite David Cameron's slogan of 'Power to the People' - reiterated in spirit in his economy speech this week - when it comes to his own party organisation he is more centralist than ever, and that Central Office doesn't fully trust its candidates or local associations. In monitoring candidates and their output so closely, the Conservatives have clearly adopted many of the techniques honed by Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair for New Labour in the 1990s. These were designed to ensure that the new Labour MPs elected in 1997 were less troublesome than many of their predecessors.

What will also concern many candidates and grassroots activists is the suggestion in the minutes that extra resources may have to be pumped into constituencies which have candidates who are female or come from ethnic minorities. This seems designed to save the party from the potential that such seats might be lost in disproportionate numbers.
"Of 250 candidates, 70 are women and 10 are of an ethnic minorities [sic] - something extra needs to be done to ensure that these ones are not lost."

In response to a questions from Newsnight, a Conservative Party spokesman refused to identify the candidates with "the potential to embarrass the party".

But he said: "It is quite standard for political parties to monitor their candidates - it would be extraordinary if they did not."

Great drama today at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, as Alex Salmond and the minority SNP government tried to win approval for next years budget.

The Lib Dems and Labour made it clear they were against. The Tories were willing to support the measures, thanks to the SNP agreeing to fund an urban regeneration scheme. It boiled down to the two Green MSPs, who want £100m a year spent on free insulation for Scottish homes. They were offered just £22m for next year. Not enough, said the Greens around 4pm, they want another 50%. Their decision threatened the whole £33bn budget. Rarely can the Green Party have held such sway in British politics.

It's just the kind of horse-trading we will see in a hung parliament at Westminster one day.

As I write the SNP has just offered the Greens another eleven million. It was not enough. The budget has fallen.

Alastair Campbell says he was 'punctilious in my approach to the vetting process' when publishing his diary extracts about life in Downing Street.

But this punctiliousness about vetting doesn't seem to have involved complying with the wishes of the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell. He asked Campbell not to proceed with the book at all - that's according to the evidence O'Donnell gave to the Information Tribunal. This evidence has been most usefully transcribed by Sam Coates of the Times, he says for the benefit of 'FOI watchers and civil service nerds'.

This was part of the current hearing into the disclosure of cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.

O'Donnell's reluctance to sanction Campbell's book is very interesting. This issue - of the extent to which ministers, officials and special advisers are or are not authorised to write memoirs - has important implications for the handling of freedom of information requests, and I am sure we will be hearing more of it in this context.

O'Donnell told the Tribunal yesterday that a number of Cabinet ministers had asked him about the case and how it might change how the Cabinet operates. I wonder if any of them were also thinking about its potential impact on the writing of their memoirs.

The former Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Sir Tom McKillop resigned from the board of BP today to avoid the humiliation of a protest vote against his re-election at this month's annual meeting.
McKillop will leave at the 16 April annual meeting. He took the decision to resign the day after his public row with City minister Lord Myners over a £703,000-a-year pension for Sir Fred Goodwin escalated.
As McKillop announced he was resigning, Myners was being forced to answer a private notice question tabled by the Tories to insist there was "no discrepancy on matters of substance" between the two men's accounts of what and when he knew about Goodwin's pension.
The decision by McKillop and other members of the RBS board to sanction the payment to the former RBS chief executive will result in the RBS remuneration report being voted down at its annual meeting on Friday by the government body that holds a controlling stake in the bank.
McKillop is bearing the brunt of investor anger about the Goodwin pension and the near collapse of RBS. Leading institutional investors had been considering whether to register their feelings by abstaining or voting against his re-election to the BP board. BP insiders insisted there was no question of McKillop facing pressure to go from the company. But one source conceded that McKillop had in effect accused Myners. "That must put him in the firing line of the government now."
RBS has traditionally enjoyed close contacts with the oil industry.BP chief executive Tony Hayward indicated that the board had not pushed McKillop. He said: "Tom has provided wise counsel to me and the entire board. I am sorry he did not feel he could continue to serve with us. We will miss him."
McKillop said he felt it was "an appropriate step for me to take at this time".
BP is chaired by Peter Sutherland, who was a dominant figure on RBS's board until last month's boardroom clear out. Sutherland is planning to leave BP before next year's annual meeting.
Myners said yesterday the "critical factor" in the row was whether the RBS board had discretion about Goodwin's pension. In a letter to the Treasury select committee chairman, John McFall, he stressed the new RBS board was "conducting a serious and urgent legal investigation" into the validity of Goodwin's pension entitlement.

First action against 'feeder fund' that allegedly channelled billions to fraudulent financier's Ponzi scheme

A US hedge fund, Fairfield Greenwich, has been charged with fraud for pumping nearly $7bn (£4.85bn) of its clients' money into Bernard Madoff's corrupt investment empire with "total disregard" for any checks on the renegade financier's activities.

The action, by Massachusetts' securities regulator, is the first to be taken against any of the so-called "feeder funds" that channelled billions of dollars in the direction of Madoff, who was jailed last month.

It happened as federal marshals in Florida impounded Madoff's $7m yacht, Bull, at a mooring in Palm Beach. Television pictures showed officials clambering over the pristine 17-metre (55ft) vessel, searching its cabin and sticking up notices saying "US marshals – no trespassing".

The Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund caught up in the scandal is run by Walter Noel, a high-profile New York society figure whose glamorous family was once described by Vanity Fair magazine as "shoring up the virtues of a nearly extinct aristocracy".

Charges filed by Massachusetts' secretary of state, William Galvin, said 95% of the firm's $7.2bn Sentry fund was invested with Madoff, who admitted in court last month that he had barely done any genuine trading for nearly two decades.

Through a 1% commission fee, Fairfield earned $100m a year from pushing money in Madoff's direction.

Galvin's charges said: "They were blinded by the fees they were earning, did not engage in meaningful due diligence and turned a blind eye to any fact that would have burst their lucrative bubble."

Fairfield is accused of lying to its clients that it had detailed access to Madoff's accounts. Fairfield was typically given forged trading tickets by Madoff after a lag of three to five days. Instead of containing detailed prices, these provided weighted average prices from baskets of stocks.

The regulator said: "Fairfield's complete disregard of its fiduciary duties to its investors and its flagrant and recurring misrepresentations to its investors rises to the level of fraud."

During a probe by the securities and exchange commission (SEC) in 2005, Madoff even coached Fairfield executives in what to say to investigators in a phone call which began, according to a transcript, with Madoff saying: "Obviously, first of all, this conversation never took place."

The authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are widening the net as they probe Madoff. Britain's Serious Fraud Office is looking into accountants, lawyers and advisers to Madoff's British arm. In the US, the seizure of Madoff's yacht was the first stage in forfeiture proceedings intended to salvage money for victims.

Madoff's $11m Palm Beach mansion is expected to be seized next. The US department of justice recently published a list of further property to be impounded including four cars, three more boats, a Steinway piano, jewellery, silverware and houses.

Earlier this week, a court froze the assets of several relatives including Madoff's sons, Andrew and Mark, who deny all knowledge of their father's activities. A Connecticut town, Fairfield, has sued Madoff for $75m after losing millions of dollars from its employee pension scheme.

Victims of Madoff's $65bn Ponzi scheme range from charities and hedge funds to well-known names including Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon and the author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

In a statement, Fairfield Greenwich said it would vigorously contest the charges, which it described as "false and misleading". The fund said that it was hardly alone in failing to spot Madoff's fraud, pointing out that it was also overlooked by the SEC and hundreds of other investors.

Fairfield said the complaint was based on "nothing more than 20-20 hindsight that supposes that anyone familiar with Madoff's operations should have determined that it was a Ponzi scheme".

Security executive at EDF, owner of British Energy, investigated for conspiring to hack into Greenpeace France's computer system

A senior executive of the French state energy giant EDF, which now owns the main UK nuclear power operator British Energy, has been charged on suspicion of spying on the environmental group Greenpeace.

The case has sparked outrage among anti-nuclear campaigners in France whose secret services were behind the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior 24 years ago.

An EDF security executive, who previously worked as a police commander, is being investigated for conspiring to hack into Greenpeace France's computer system. Judges are investigating whether state-owned EDF, the world's biggest nuclear-reactor operator, hired a private detective agency run by a former member of the French secret services to illegally spy on environmentalists and infiltrate their ranks.

A computer expert at the agency, Kargus Consultants, has admitted hacking into the computer systems, but the head of the firm, who has also been charged, denies ordering the hacking, and says the computer expert went beyond orders, acting alone on his own initiative.

According to the French website Mediapart, which this week ran details of the investigation, EDF had a contract with Kargus to collect intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks and environmental activism and to infiltrate anti-nuclear campaigners.

The EDF executive has denied ordering the use of any illegal spying methods. Asked to confirm EDF's contract with Kargus, a spokeswoman for the company said only that Kargus "worked for EDF". The energy giant said it was a victim of the detective firm and has registered as a civil plaintiff in the case.

The investigation is centred on the 2006 hacking of a computer system used by Yannick Jadot, who was then Greenpeace campaigns director. EDF, which runs France's network of 58 electricity-producing nuclear reactors, has often been the target of Greenpeace campaigns. Greenpeace has speculated that the hacking incident could have been linked to their campaign to block EDF's construction of a vast, new generation nuclear reactor in Flamanville on the north coast.

In May 2006, the French government was outraged when Greenpeace and other campaigners published classified documents about the reactor.

Jadot, who left Greenpeace last year and is now running as Green candidate in the June European elections, told the Guardian: "I had no idea I was being spied on. That a state company could use an agency of ex-security service agents to spy on an environmental group is very shocking." He said he doubted that just one computer hacker was involved, acting alone.

Pascal Husting, director of Greenpeace France, said the case had echoes of "a dark era" in French history of countering anti-nuclear groups.

"Greenpeace is a non-violent environmental organisation. The fact that we are being treated like terrorists because we dare to question nuclear energy shows just how frightened the nuclear industry is of transparency and a democratic debate."

He added: "How will public opinion in Britain and the US – where EDF is expanding – react to a company using criminal spying methods against people who contradict them?"

The French environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said he was "staying calm" and that EDF also considered itself a victim in the case. But he added: "It's clear that if by extraordinary chance this is true, what type of country are we living in?"

Greanpeace UK said it was conducting a full security review to check IT systems and phones and computers used by key staff. "This is obviously because a key part of EDF's business strategy is selling nuclear technology to the UK. The company has a very great interest in the UK nuclear debate."

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