December 2010 Archives

One of the over-riding grumbles from Parliament last week was that if Vince Cable was a Tory, he'd have been kicked out by now.

Probably true - but that perhaps says more about this current crop of Tory ministers than it says about Cable, a man who seems to be the Pied Piper of the left-leaning element of his party in a way no other is.

Can any Tory minister currently lay claim to have such a role with a faction of the Conservative Party? And even if they did, would any faction of the Tories really want to rock the boat when things, through blue-tinted glasses, appear to be going so well?

The expenses scandal, it isn't. But the Daily Telegraph's clever ploy of sending in journalists to pose as constituents certainly tells us a lot about politicians in general.

And we've learnt that Saint Vince Cable is human. Prone to boasting a bit, he's now looking a bit silly. But reports of the death of his political career are surely greatly exaggerated.

Today's coverage of Cable hanging on to his job as business secretary - but losing the right to decide whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation can take full control of BSkyB - contains several phrases which come up time and again: Lame duck, less powerful as a result, weaker and so on.

In November 2003, a 12-year-old girl called Amy Houston died after being hit by a car driven by a failed asylum seeker called Aso Mohammed Ibrahim.

Ibrahim ran away from the scene, in Blackburn, leaving Amy to die under the vehicle. Since that dreadful night, it appears the powers that be have conspired against Amy's father, Paul Houston, in his quest for justice.

First off, there was the sentence Ibrahim received. Ibrahim, who was disqualified from driving, was given a four-month jail term for driving without insurance and while disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.

It was a sentence which angered many, and Paul embarked on a campaign for 'Amy's Law' which sought tougher sentences for those who drove while disqualified - the theory being that you're disqualified for a reason so if you drive and hurt or kill someone, you've done so in the knowledge you weren't fit to drive. It was a campaign the newspaper in Blackburn which I worked for at the time got behind. I got to know Paul well during that time.