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Pickles Moves Against Local Authority Lobbying |
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Anna Minton
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 Anna Minton, 10th August 2010
Councils are to curtail their use of lobbyists, following changes in the rules announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
All bodies that receive funding from the Department for Communities have been ordered to sever their contracts with lobbying firms.
Pickles said “taxpayer-funded lobbying and propaganda on the rates weakens our democracy” and his statement announced that “the practice of local authorities hiring lobbyists to press-gang Government into pet funding projects” is to stop.
The new rules take the form of an amended statutory Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, which is intended to stop campaigns being run from public funds.
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Sagit Yehoshua tries to censor Powerbase - Again |
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David Miller - Unspun
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By David Miller 7 August 2010
Renewed attempts to remove censor the website Powerbase are being made by terrorism researcher Sagit Yehoshua.
A few weeks ago our website Powerbase (or rather its predecessor Spinprofiles) was temporarily removed from the internet after a complaint by neoconservative think tanks operative Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens.
At the time we noted that Meleagrou-Hitchens attempt to have the entire page on him removed from our website was not the first. Back in February this year, Sagit Yehoshua complained to 1 & 1 Internet with which we had registered the domain name, that the page on her was defamatory. 1&1 refused to tell us the precise text that was alleged to be defamatory and insisted that the whole page be removed. At the time we did so, hoping to get clarity from the company.
It was not forthcoming, although the issue appeared to hinge on the question of ‘personal’ information; 1 & 1 told us that ‘Ms Sagit Yehoshua has expressly stated in a phone call to us that they do not want their personal information placed on the website.’ Now however we have reinstated that page, leading to further, ongoing, attempts to have the material removed. This time Yehoshua has targeted our ISP
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Hope for Sunshine on your Holidays |
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Anna Minton
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 27 July 2010
As parliament prepares to go into recess, here’s a quick update on our parliamentary work in the new parliament.
An Early Day Motion, on the urgent need for an effective statutory register of lobbyists, tabled by Kelvin Hopkins MP, has 46 signatures, including 20 Labour and 15 Liberal Democrat. However, only two Conservatives have signed up so far.
Following the news that Mark Harper, the Conservative Minister responsible for developing plans for a register, is to meet lobbying industry representatives but has failed to respond to our requests for a meeting we have teamed up with campaign group 38 Degrees who are galvanising their 140,000 members to press Harper to meet with us.
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On Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Comment Is Free piece |
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David Miller - Unspun
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David Miller 13 July 2010 (as posted on Comment is Free)
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens thinks our website PowerBase (formerly Spinprofiles) should offer a right of reply. We agree. In fact it has always been our policy, which is why we offered him a right of reply before his Guardian piece demanding one. He declined to answer our email.
Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that his profile should not appear on our website Powerbase, because he did not want to feature on a site which in the past ‘published’ the work of racist academic Kevin MacDonald.
Meleagrou-Hitchens well knows that - to our regret - one of our researchers did quote MacDonald on one of our sister sites – as opposed to ‘publishing’ anything by MacDonald. The quote was removed as soon as the mistake was spotted and an apology made. The person involved is no longer a contributor to our wiki projects. Note also that our project is a wiki with literally hundreds of registered users, many of them volunteers.
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Guardian comment piece on SpinProfiles' removal from the internet |
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David Miller - Unspun
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 David Miller 6th July 2010
Comment piece published in today’s Guardian about the removal of SpinProfiles from the internet:
When the anger of a prominent young thinktanker causes one of the world's largest web-hosting companies to shut down a site that monitors lobbying and transparency, it is time to start asking questions about online free speech and censorship.
Last week, as Hugh Muir reported in the Guardian diary, the website SpinProfiles was taken down by the domain name registrar, 1 & 1 Internet, following a complaint from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, son of journalist Christopher.
SpinProfiles, run by sister organisation Spinwatch, aims to stitch together publicly available information to provide a detailed picture of who's who in the shadowy world of lobbying. It features close to ten thousand profiles of think tanks, lobbying organisations and those associated with them.
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Queen's Speech fails to include register lobbyists |
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Tamasin Cave
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26th May 2010
This weeks’s Queen’s Speech made no mention of the Coalition Agreement’s pledge to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists. While the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency welcomes the commitment to a register, we are very concerned that the failure to include it in the Queen’s Speech will lead to delays in bringing forward the necessary legislation.We will be maintaining pressure on the government to bring forward detailed plans for a statutory register and will be continuing the campaign at a grassroots level.ALT will be publishing its own detailed statement on what an effective statutory register needs to include. |
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David Miller - Unspun
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24 May 2010 David Miller
 The Duchess of York’s willingness to offer access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew for £500,000 is the latest in a long line of “cash for access” scandals that has undermined our trust in politics and those who supposedly represent our interests.
The true scandal remains that we still do not routinely have access to information on who is meeting / lobbying government ministers, officials and even junior Royals dispatched on our behalf.
The Coalition Government has now promised to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists but as yet no detail has emerged. An effective lobbying register should include financial disclosure.
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Where has all the money gone? |
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David Miller - Unspun
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11 May 2010
An unpublished letter to the Guardian on where all the money has gone:
Each time I turn on the BBC I hear that difficult decisions have to be made, by whoever is elected. This comes down to: Do we want to give all our money to pay for the bankers this year or would we rather wait a bit? In all this debate no one has asked the obvious questions of how much wealth there is in the country, and who is best able to pay.
The focus groups which we conduct, light up when such issues are raised, but heaven forbid that politicians should be asked about such indelicate topics. The total UK wealth is £ 9 thousand billion, the top 20% own between 5 and 6 thousand billion of this, nearly all in property and pensions.*
Remember in a single year the denizens of the city paid themselves £21 billion in bonus payments and now we know where these went. The deficit is a mere £150 billion or thereabouts. But instead of discussing who could pay without missing it too much, public debate is constrained to issues like vat rises, which would hurt the poorest, who have no wealth, only debts.
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Tory PPC in spat with Spinwatch |
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Election Spin Blog
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26th April 2010 The Spinwatch campaign targeting parliamentary candidates with links to lobbying has got under the skin of George Eustice, Conservative PPC
for Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall. Eustice, Cameron’s former press secretary, worked until recently for lobbying and PR consultancy Portland PR.
He writes on his blog how he heard there was to be an online lobbying campaign against him, initiated by “a girl called Tamasin Cave, a political
activist who writes regularly for Lib Dem blogs”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tamasin, a Spinwatch director - who is nearly 40 should
that be of interest to anyone – is in regular touch with bloggers from Left Foot Forward to Guido Fawkes.
Attempting to tie the Spinwatch campaign to Lib Dem activism is, well, the kind of obfuscatory tactic one would expect from a professional lobbyist.
And it’s clearly sticking. When Spinwatch recently spoke to the Falmouth Packet, a local paper covering Camborne, the reporter asked whether we were linked to the Lib Dems.
No, the simple truth is this campaign has focused on the Tories because they have the largest number of PPCs who are professional lobbyists. We believe this is the reason why the Conservatives remain alone among the main parties in refusing to sign up to a statutory register of lobbyists.
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Tory manifesto fails to back lobbyists register |
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Tamasin Cave
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13th April 2010 Tory pledges to clean up lobbying are woefully inadequate, transparency campaigners claimed today. Despite the rhetoric, David Cameron’s promise to clean up the political system is not backed up with meaningful action.Although both the other main parties have signed up to a statutory register of lobbyists, the Conservatives remain committed to self regulation. Instead their manifesto pledges that ex-Ministers will be banned from lobbying government for two years after leaving office. That is welcome but in reality it will only immediately affect Labour if the Tories win the election.
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