Hazel Blears Facebook Invite

There are likely to be two important vacancies opening at the top of the Labour Party quite soon - and the Deputy Leadership is also going to be contested. When Hazel agreed to be my facebook friend (or was it the other way around?), I decided to give her a friendly hand in her quest for the Deputy Leadership tiara. She's a great friend to have as she keeps in regular touch. Here's an invite attached to her latest missive.

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Time and Place Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: 1st Floor Lecture Theatre, Queen Annes Business Centre,
Street: 28 Broadway, SW1H 9JX
City/Town: London

Description
Hazel Blears MP will be giving a lecture to SERA members, as part of our Deputy Leadership Lecture series.

This is a great opportunity to hear from the candidates (Note 1) and express your views to them on the importance of environmental policy (Note 2), and what you think are the key issues for the third term Labour government and the next 10 years. Do they support personal carbon quotas? How would they solve the energy gap? Are they in favour of building new nuclear power stations? How will they ensure implementation across the board of a positive environmental strategy? (Note 3) This is your opportunity to explore these areas and any others of your choosing with all (Note 4) those wishing to be a part of leading our party.

GUESTS ARE ALLOWED TO BRING FRIENDS TO THIS EVENT!

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Note 1 - candidates plural? (bit misleading)
Note 2 - this makes me want to go
Note 3 - I wonder whether they would just send an email in advance outlining their basic position so we can prepare our questions.
Note 4 - All?I doubt that we can expect Brown, Meacher, McDonnell, Benn, Blears, Cruddas, Hain, Harman & Johnson to be in attendance?

Interestingly, I am slated to be London on this evening, although I am supposed to be playing chess for one of the oldest clubs in the capital... I think I'll play chess.

How MPs Can Help The Environment

As the anti road-pricing petition heads towards 2 million signatures and Labour Transport Minister Douglas Alexander is saying inaction is not an option (Note - that was official policy when Prescott was in charge of transport) I thought it was a good time to ask what are our MPs doing personally about these issues?

The MPs 2005/6 travel expense lists has just come out (I’ve still to set a date for my interview with a lady friend of mine in Prague who was an au pair to a high-spending MP) which is always of interest. Dizzy makes a good point that MPs should car-share more to ease congestion, help the environment and save taxpayers’ money. This could be a cross-party initiative. I decided to do some off-the-cuff pair ups. First of all I thought of Rob Wilson and Martin Salter who are the two MPs for Reading could share cars. Tony Blair and William Hague are also in adjoining seats – by sharing cars they could make a great contribution. Can you suggest any other groups of MPs who could carshare?

Labour Cock Up No 324325

Date: 25/01/2007

Dear Mr Prague Tory

Booking Ref : QZQ1CG

Increase to Air Passenger Duty(APD)

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, recently announced an increase in Air Passenger Duty (APD) on all flights leaving from UK airports. As a result tax on short-haul flights departing from the UK will rise from £5 to £10 per person (or local currency equivalent). This means for domestic flights passengers will be forced to pay £20 in tax on a return flight.

This tax increase will apply to all passengers traveling on or after 1st February 2007.

As you have booked to travel on or after 1st February 2007 and booked before 9th December 2006, we are contacting you to advise that regrettably we need to collect the additional tax from you. This tax will be debited from the card that was provided at the time of booking which will save you time, as you will not have to make the payment yourself.

Bookings that were made on or after 9th December 2006 already include the increased tax, and there is nothing further to pay.

bmibaby strongly believe that the increase in APD places an unfair burden on air travellers and the extra money collected by the Government should be reinvested into the environmental initiatives that it was created to fund.

Unfortunately this situation is beyond our control and we have no choice but to implement the tax increase. bmibaby therefore apologise for the need to recover the additional tax.

Important note: bmibaby are committed to offering long term low fares and in order to continue doing this we are unfortunately unable to absorb the additional tax that the Government have imposed on all of us.

Please note in order to travel this additional tax must be paid or it will result in you not being allowed to board your flight. Click here to view the terms and conditions. We appreciate your support at this time and acknowledge that this news will not be received favourably by you and has definitely not been supported by bmibaby. It is with great regret that we have to send this email to you.

bmibaby were one of the airlines that campaigned heavily against the rise in tax and are reluctant in having to contact you to ask for the additional tax.

Thank you for your understanding and we hope you enjoy your flight with bmibaby.

Yours sincerely,

Crawford Rix

bmibaby Managing Director
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This hit my junk mail, so I imagine many people will pitch up at the airport expecting to fly, but not having paid the amount in full. Chaos will result. More here

PS I'll stop the YC poll when somebody hits 50 votes.

Not All FDs Know What They Are Talking About

Accountancy Age reports in a very recent survey that just

85% of finance directors believe the government is using green issues as another avenue through which to increase taxes on business and that revenue raised will not go towards green issues

One irate respondent commented

Once again industry is being hammered because of the government's inability to deal with the worldwide issue. The costs to industry are staggering to comply with current legislation

A spokesman for the Treasury said

Funds raised from green taxes would not go solely towards environmental causes, but a consolidated fund

thus proving that 15% of FDs don't know what they are talking about. Note - Tory Shadow Greg Barker needs to step up his game and sharp. I don't know what he's playing at, but I am most unimpressed with his (lack of) progress at Environment.