The reshuffle shuffle

In the first week of any new job there is always a lot to sort out, which could perhaps explain the new deputy leader of the Labour party’s lack of blogging. Harriet Harman’s last blog entry begins: “The polls for Labour’s deputy leadership election close in one hour.”

With the other big announcement of the week being Brown’s first cabinet, the BBC’s Nick Robinson could be heard on any number of bullets declaring it the biggest post-war cabinet shake-up. He even analysed the two cabinets in figures.

But Robinson’s view of such an upheaval has been dismissed as hyperbole in many quarters. Burning Our Money starts by highlighting the consistencies between the two cabinets at the Treasury, in health, children, schools, families and works and pensions. He then concludes: “You know, I was going to go through the whole lot, but I'm now so depressed I think I'll have a large shot of absinthe.

“Never in the history of Big Government has so much blood been spilled on so many ministerial carpets for so few benefits.”

Fountain has dissected the new cabinet in terms of what each member did before they went into politics. The list basically consists of public sector workers, trades unionists, layers and charity workers with a few hacks thrown in the mix. The selection has been criticised for lacking anyone from the private sector, outside the lawyers and journalists, and for not representing a cross-section of the population.

Bill Jones sees the reshuffle as representative of Brown’s new Government in eight symbols: continuity with Blair; women; education; sooth feelings in NHS; Iraq; rewarding loyalists; youthful energy; and what he describes as ‘all talents’. He concludes: “All in all a clever and well planned reshuffle, contrasting favourably with Blair's chaotic efforts.”

For Tom Clougherty at the Adam Institute the most striking aspect of the cabinet reshuffle wasn’t the personnel, but the reorganisation of Government departments. The Department for Trade and Industry (DTI – often called the Deterrent to Trade and Industry), has been renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform. Watch this space for blogging wags to come up for an alternative for the DBERR acronym.

In a week of new jobs, I would like to take this opportunity to say farewell to my fellow blog reviewer, Adam Haigh, who has decided to dedicate more time to his new job at Bloomberg. Best of luck.

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.

Rushdie and Manning

In the Queen’s honours list, Reactionary Snob noted: “If you listened very carefully you could actually hear Blair pulling out the pin of the hand grenade last week... this was going to cause a shitstorm, and a shitstorm it has caused.”

He was of course highlighting the decision to honour Salman Rushdie. Reactionary Snob goes on to discuss take apart Pakistan’s religious affairs minister’s condemnation of the honour in language too graphic to be repeated here, though still worth a look.

Over at Times Online, Daniel Finkelstein called the decision to knight Rushdie was a “bold and correct one” and has sent a petition off to the Number 10 Downing Street website. He said: “I think it is important that we show that we are not prepared to be cowed by this sort of threat.”

The petition will be put up as soon as it is accepted and reads: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to accept our congratulations for recommending to the Queen that Salman Rushdie receive a knighthood.”

Iain Dale’s reaction to the furore was entitled “Salman Rushdie Does Not Deserve a Knighthood But He Must Keep It” and concluded with a bold statement: “Perhaps our response should be to cut off all our millions of pounds of aid to Pakistan until this minister is sacked from the Pakistani government.”

Another controversial figure made blog discussion boards this week. Bernard Manning, who wrote in his own obituary he was pleased we was not going to the same place as “the po-faced, politically-correct brigade”, died on Monday.

Obsolete wrote: “On hearing of the sad news, the Pakistani parliament immediately adjourned the session and called for a motion on declaring an official day of mourning, which was passed unanimously. The Pakistan religious affairs minister, Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, was one of the first to eulogise about Manning's demise:

‘He may have been politically incorrect, but at least he didn't BLASPHEME like that bastard Rushdie. I call for any suicide bombers who might have thought of targeting Manning's funeral to instead hold their laughter.’”

David Milliband launched Defra’s Carbon Calculator this week, with a short movie explaining how it was done. He also honestly provided us with his results: “My individual footprint (for personal not ministerial energy, electrical appliances and transport) came out at a respectable 3 tonnes, though when the rest of the family were included we were a bit above average thanks to a couple of long haul flights.”

Unfortunately, Defra seem to have underestimated the amount of interest in carbon calculation as too many people tried to use it and the server crashed. I wonder if it can calculate just how much energy was wasted by PCs trying to access the site.

Alun Davies AM has been recruiting Welsh politicians for the annual Parliamentary Shield – a football match played between political representatives of the Home Nations, sponsored by McDonalds. Check out Blamerbell’s fantasy Welsh team here.

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.

Arms dealing, grammar schools and pink day-glo pigs' abortions

After an exclusive in the Guardian followed up by some BBC exposure, the BAE curruption scandal is back in the spotlight.

The payments given to a Saudi prince, which were in the full knowledge of the Ministry of defence, contravened anti-corruption legislation brought in by the current administration. The flouting of such laws angered many in the blogosphere.

Tim Worstall said: “It’s said that the definition of a diplomat is someone sent abroad to lie for his country. We do not accept said diplomat lying to us here. As with this story: I care not that foreigners have grubbed for bribes, I care not that we have offered them to foreigners. I care a very great deal that having changed the law, those in power continued to do so.”

Meanwhile, Craig Murray, the former Ambassador to Uzbekistan who hit the headlines when he denounced the Uzbek’s poor record on human rights, was equally dismayed.

He said: “Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 team came from Saudi Arabia. In response we keep invading other countries by mistake.

“The so-called Attorney-General ordered the Serious Fraud Office to stop the investigation into BAE's massive bribery payments to Saudi Arabia because of ‘national security’. By this, he meant that the Saudis might stop giving us ‘intelligence’ from their torture chambers if we persisted.”

While Tom Griffin reflects on the parallels with Thatcher’s Government who relied on defence exports to such an extent Britain was forced to support some particularly shadey regimes.

He said: “The fallout from this expansion, in the shape of the Arms-to-Iraq affair, helped to bring down the last Conservative government, so you might have expected a Labour government to try and wean Britain from this dependency.

“Instead, it has blocked the SFO's [Serious Fraud Office] investigation into the Al-Yamamah deal. In the wake of the latest reports, there will be renewed calls for that investigation to be re-opened.”

It was not plain sailing for David Cameron this week after the fallout from another grammar school row. Nick Robinson announced the end of the Tory leader’s honeymoon period.

While Conservative Party Reptile said: “I think it would have been better if David Willetts had kept his grammar school ideas firmly under wraps. This could yet prove to be one of the biggest mistakes in DC's leadership.”

Over in West Lancashire, occasional-New Statesman blogger David Sudworth said: “The Conservatives have to be careful or this will turn into another Europe, an issue which made sure they came completely unelectable from 1992 onwards.

“David Cameron must regain a tight grip of his party because if there's one thing voters hate, it’s the political chattering classes indulging in protracted bouts of navel-gazing and infighting, something the national Tories have mastered down to a fine art in recent years.”

The new Olympic logo has been giving the blogging community a bit of light relief this week. It has been described as “pink day-glo pig's abortion”, “the logo for the Annual Rabbit Shagging Championships” and the Fun House logo.

There have also been comparisons made to Lisa Simpson performing an illicit act. For anyone who lacks the imagination to envisage what this may look like, Theo Spark has made a couple of helpful gif files.

This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.