However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

“A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe.

The three members – two men and a woman – of the Italian terrorist group Il Silvestre were stopped just a few miles from their target with their explosive device primed and ready to go.

Italians Costantino Ragusa and Silvia Guerini, together with Italian-Swiss Luca Bernasconi, were arrested and jailed after a search of their vehicle revealed the bomb.

Guerini and Constantino – the 33-year-old leader of Il Silvestre – already have convictions for eco-terrorism offences and have served jail terms. 

The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons.

Swiss police said today that their car was halted on the night of April 15 at Langnau en-route to the technology centre at Rueschlikon, near Zurich. 

The site is due to be opened next year and already has some of the most complex and advanced computer equipment in the world installed in it.

‘A large quantity of explosives was found,’ said a police spokesman.”

The report continues:

“The IBM facility that the Il Silvestre group was targeting is still under construction.  When finished, it will contain the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe for nano-and-bio-technological research, with the probability of billions of pounds in profit for IBM.

Investigators are quizzing the suspects on whether the planned attack is part of a new co-ordinated wave of terror against such facilities on the continent.

Swiss media reported that the intended bombing was planned to coincide with a secret meeting of European anarchists on April 16 and 17 in the Swiss town of Winterthur.

Some newspapers speculated it was being planned to bring attention to the imprisonment of Il Silvestre member Marco Camenisch, currently in jail for the murder of a Swiss border guard.  Guerini and Constantino were in jail with him in 2006 and joined in a hunger strike.

Il Silvestre was spawned in the Tuscan countryside and is now considered to be one of the rising terror groups in Europe with a rigid cell structure, access to explosives and a membership that has no qualms about killing to achieve its goals.

It is considered as one of the successor groups to the lethal Red Brigades that scorched Italy in 70’s and 80’s.”

This is a timely reminder that – as I have repeatedly argued – the focus of counter-terrorist work must not just be on al Qaeda inspired groups.  There is a need to think outside the box and be aware of a much wider range of potential threats.

There are now seventeen Labour majority Councils, eleven Conservative majority Councils, two Liberal Democrat majority Councils and two with no overall control (and in one of these Labour has the largest number of seats).

The Conservatives have been humiliated by losing outright to Labour in Ealing, Enfield, and Harrow.

Labour won Islington outright from the Liberal Democrats.

And the Liberal Democrats’ poor performance was reflected in their outright loss to the Tories in Richmond-upon-Thames and their failure to defeat Labour in Haringey (where Labour’s majority has increased from one to eleven).

Labour won majority control in the following Councils where there had previously been no overall control with various varieties of Tory/LibDem administrations: Brent, Camden, Hounslow and Southwark, and in Waltham Forest which had had a Labour-led minority administration.

Labour also eliminated the British National Party in Barking and Dagenham.

Labour’s three elected Mayors were re-elected: Jules Pipe in Hackney (who will now presumably become Chair of London Councils); Steve Bullock in Lewisham (who will now a majority again on the Council); and Robin Wales in Newham.

All in all, an excellent set of results for Labour – another reason why Mayor Boris Johnson will not run for re-election in 2012.

The sick thought was that had he been killed the election in the Buckingham constituency would have been void and would have had to be re-run.  This would have meant that John Bercow would definitely not have been returned to Parliament in time for the first session of the House of Commons on 18th May when the first business will be the election of the Speaker.

I have no idea if the procedural textbooks would have provided a solution allowing Speaker Bercow to be reelected in absentia.  However, I am sure those many Conservative MPs who seem to have an abiding hatred of Speaker Bercow would have not been able to resist the temptation to elect an alternative.

Now they’ll have to wait and see who it is that the electors of Buckingham return tonight.

Nicky Davison, 19, was convicted of three separate charges of possessing records useful in committing or preparing acts of terrorism.  Along with his father, he was part of a group called the Aryan Strike Force, which plotted to overthrow the government.  His father, Ian Davison, has already admitted preparing for acts of terrorism and producing a chemical weapon, the deadly poison ricin, one of the world’s most dangerous substances.

Apparently, their plan was to fight against “the Zionist Occupied Government” in the belief that the state had been taken over by Jews.

The decision by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to publish the report and its supporting information should have been a very positive display of openness and transparency by the MPS and a demonstration of how much has changed in policing in the last thirty years.

The report itself contains some devastating findings and demonstrates the mindset of the investigation at the time.  For example, the demonstration in which Blair Peach was involved is described as

” an extremely violent, volatile and a ugly situation where there was serious disturbance by what can be classed as a ‘rebellious crowd’.
The legal definition ‘unlawful assembly’ is justified and the
events should be viewed with that kind of atmosphere
prevailing. Without condoning the death I refer to Archibold,
38th Edition, paragraph 2528 “In case of riot or rebellious
assembly the officers endeavouring to disperse the riot are
justified in killing them at common law if the riot cannot
otherwise be suppressed”.”

The investigation report found that: 

“Whilst it can reasonably be concluded that a police officer struck the fatal blow, and that that officer came from carrier U.11, I am sure that it will be agreed that the present situation is far from satisfactory and disturbing.”

It went on:

“The attitude and untruthfulness of some of the officers involved is a contributory factor.

“It is understandable that because of the events of the day officers were confused, or made mistakes, but one would expect better recall of events by trained police officers.

“However, there are cases where the evidence shows that certain officers have clearly not told the truth.”

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, however, in his statement today only felt able to say:

“As a police officer with over thirty four years service reading and being briefed on the investigation reports leaves me feeling deeply uncomfortable. Thirty one years later we have still been unable to provide the family and friends of Blair Peach with definitive answers regarding the terrible circumstances of his death. That is a matter of deep regret.”

This falls a long way short of acknowledging the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police Service for what happened.

Clearly, “sorry” remains a very difficult word for a Commissioner to utter.

A pity.

The Observer has revealed today that in a seemingly concerted initiative leaflets have been circulated by the Conservative Party in Andrew Rosindell’s constituency of Romford saying that immigration has caused a population control and that EU treaty obligations on free movement of labour would somehow be over-ridden by a Tory Government.

At the same time, Loanna Morrison, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has endorsed the BNP writing on Conservativehome:  “Britain is full, declares Nick Griffin at every opportunity, and he is right.”

Officially, of course, the Tory Party denies that either reflects official Party policy and can distance the Party from such free-lance comments by “junior” politicians.  In reality, the comments come from an official candidate selected to be a Conservative MP and the other comes with the imprint of a sitting Conservative MP.

I expect we will get more of this.

In practice, this is not just a matter for the House of Commons.  The Parliamentary Estate is a single entity and there is currently no way in which a passholder can be prevented from entering both ends of the building; it follows therefore that as currently constituted both Houses have to agree to deny passes to particular categories of person.

The original decision to give MEPs passes was intended to facilitate communication between UK MEPs and the UK Parliament and, when the issue was brought to the Lords today, the unanimous view expressed was that this interchange was valuable and important.

There are some 12,000 passholders with access to the Parliamentary Estate – the occasional access by MEPs has not produced any visible problems.

Summing up Lord Brabazon of Tara said:

“The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I think I can honestly say that I have heard enough. [Laughter] Seldom have I heard such unanimous opposition by noble Lords on all sides and of all political complexions to a House Committee report. I can say that the committee should indeed reconsider this matter, taking into account what has been said today, and we will therefore do just that. Perhaps I may say that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is absolutely correct to refer this matter back to the House Committee, so I recommend that the House should agree with his amendment.

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.”

What was left unsaid was: why give Nick Griffin and his sidekick another opportunity to claim martyrdom?