When a “Ladies & Gants [sic]” fabric stall from Pakistan goes in search of a British fashion icon for their hoardings, there can only ever be one winner. Step aside Beckham and Brosnan, Wazir Tailors of Islamabad proudly boast the image of Westminster style guru, errr, Danny Alexander.
This is nearly as good as the “Ken Livingstone Coffe Shop [sic]“ in India.
Photo via: Jonathan Boone
It appears that Treasury spinners may have told BBC producers that Danny Alexander would not debate with Ed Balls on Newsnight. With his department stewarding the economy back into recession, Alexander did not engage directly with the shadow chancellor late yesterday — despite being one of the most senior figures in the government with an annual salary of £134,565.
In bizarre scenes, Balls and Alexander were sat opposite each other but never exchanged blows, with the segment split into two seperate interviews with Kirsty Wark.
Danny: if you can’t stand the heat then get back to the Cairngorms National Park press office.
While pasties and pensioners took a hammering on 21 March, Danny Alexander handed himself a budget bribe — in the form of VAT relief for ski lifts in his Highlands constituency. This is the second year in a row that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has benefited from changes in the Finance Bill.
Buried away on page 74 of the Budget is the Treasury’s plan for cable-based transport systems, which will cut costs for the dozens of ski lifts in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.
“The Government will introduce a 5 per cent reduced rate of VAT for passenger transportation in cable-based transport systems carrying fewer than ten people.”
The tax break is clearly aimed specifically at ski lifts; cable vehicles which carry more than ten passengers are already exempt from paying VAT.
In last year’s budget, the Tories in charge felt they should “give Alexander something” to keep him quiet; so they managed to rescue the state subsidy for the Cairngorm Mountain Railway.
But with YouGov now predicting Beaker will lose his seat, it might take more than cut-price ski lift tickets to keep him in line until 2015.
George Osborne’s right-hand patsy Danny Alexander was heckled by his own delegate this afternoon as he accused Gordon Brown of “unsustainable spending”. Having begun his conference speech with a tribute to his grandfather Andrew Sturgess, however, he would surely be able to rely on a fulsome review from the nonagenarian, who joined the historic Liberal Party in the 1930s.
But after a mixed speech which had the press room collectively groaning at a terrible “it’s all Balls” quip at the shadow chancellor, the most Beaker’s grandad could muster was:
“I thought he was improving. I agreed with most of it. I’m not sure about the planning stuff but I’ll talk to him about that.”
With family like that who needs angry delegates?
Digging by Scrapbook shows the budget includes an eleventh-hour rescue of a state subsidy for railways. One of the key beneficiaries of this change is a 1,970 metre train track running up the northern slopes of Cairn Gorm in Scotland. The MP for the area just happens to be Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander — who also worked for the Cairngorm National Park before he was elected!
HMRC budget documentation outlines the intention to continue with the subsidy to railways “that do not hold a Public Service Obligation”. This includes Danny’s toy train.
Climate change levy exemption: certain forms of transport — The exemption from the climate change levy for taxable commodities used in certain forms of transport includes supplies of electricity for use in rail freight and in public passenger rail services that do not hold a Public Service Obligation (PSO).
As a Parliamentary research note makes clear, the entire project is up the Spey without a paddle. In keeping with these austere times the intention was to let the exemption expire as another unaffordable state subsidy.
But a last-minute change of heart has left civil servants scrambling to get the scheme re-approved by the European Commission.
These two parts of the exemption are an approved State aid. The current approval expires on 31 March 2011. The UK Government is seeking re-approval but cannot legally continue with these parts of the exemption beyond 1 April without European Commission re-approval. If re-approval is not received by 31 March 2011 the exemption will be suspended to the extent that it applies to rail freight and public passenger rail services that do not hold a PSO, with effect from 1 April 2011. If re-approval is received after 1 April 2011 the exemption will be reinstated (with retrospective effect from 1 April if the terms of the approval permit).
So why the volte face on this life-size Hornby set? Word in Horse Guards Road is Coalition dynamics dictated the Tory overlords should “give Alexander something” for his slavish loyalty.
After all, what’s the point of high office if you can’t help out your old employer?
Great spot from the eagle-eyed Amber Elliott over at Total Politics. In keeping with the “do as I say not as I do” attitude of senior ministers, Michael Gove is advertising for two speechwriters just two days after Francis Maude and Danny Alexander announced an extension to the civil service recruitment ban.
The move to hire two £42,000/annum spinners to “work closely with Ministers, advisors and senior officials” comes after Gove hired Conservative strategist James Frayne as the department’s Director of Communications and against a backdrop of 100,000 civil service job cuts.
The Department for Education were granted exemptions from the recruitment freeze on the basis that “no suitable candidates could be found internally”. With the administration of the Tories’ flagship free schools policy already outsourced to the secretive New Schools Network, run by the Education Secretary’s former special adviser Rachel Wolf, Scrapbook has to ask:
Does Michael Gove trust civil servants with anything?
Scrapbook was hoping for some fireworks from last night’s Question Time. But the “YouTube moment” was provided not, as we had suggested, by Kev Livingstone and Nadine Dorries but a literally squirming Danny Alexander.
Thanks to Left Foot Forward for grabbing this clip:
“That’s a mega blink!”
Harriet Harman’s oddly personal (but nonetheless amusing) attack on Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, whom she called a “ginger rodent”, has generated a minor storm for which she’s been forced to apologise.
Some commentators have been highlighting the hypocrisy of a life-long champion of equality mocking a man for a physical trait. Others like Mike Smithson have suggested that Labour might have lost the ginger vote (because we all know ginger people all vote in a block.) However not content to stand on the sidelines and chuckle the SNP rolled out comely redhead Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP to condemn the remark as “anti Scottish”:
“Scotland probably has the highest proportion of redheads in the world”
Perhaps the SNP would do well to heed the wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte:
Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake.
