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Prospects for Friday, 27 June, 2008

Ian Lacey | 10:37 UK time, Friday, 27 June 2008

Morning all. It's Friday, which would ordinarily mean much activity in the Newsnight Review corner. But I've just been over and there are two very looking relaxed producers and no one else - because the programme's off air tonight (something to do with some sort of music event in Somerset). But Newsnight itself is definitely on tonight and here's the current thinking from tonight's producer Shaminder Nahal. Do add your thoughts below.

"Hello.

henleytory203100.jpgHumiliation in Henley on the anniversary of Brown's first year as Prime Minister. Labour lost its deposit there - is it in any state to fight the next election effectively? The party finances are in a mess - it is up to £24m in the red, with some reports saying donors are reluctant to give, thanks to Brown's collapse in the polls and a series of police investigations into party funding. So where does Labour go from here?

Robert Mugabe is the only candidate in Zimbabwe's presidential election run-off today. After all the violence and intimidation, what will happen today?

Cheap chicken. Tesco share-holders are to vote on a resolution proposed by the TV chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, which demands better welfare standards for intensively-reared chickens. Interested?

Other things:

-Obama and Clinton campaign together for the first time.
-Verdict expected in the McCartney case in Belfast.
-23 people have been killed in Anbar province in Iraq. Tomorrow the province will pass into Iraqi security control.
-Bill Gates retires from daily operations at Microsoft. (watch Paul Mason's previous report - 'How Bill Gates changed our world'.)

Yours, Shaminder"

Over to you then...

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    On Mugabe I am interested in who he is directing his argument via speeches to. Personally I have reached the conclusion it is himself and this is some sort of self-justification process.

    If that's true then he probably isn't handling any concerns within his own cadre.

    If Mugabe dies tomorrow they are in big trouble if they can't retain the security apparatus they need. That control will probably grow as it sounds as though disaffection is growing within Zanu-PF. If they decide to take the money and run his position changes very quickly.

    Glad we got some feedback on the Abrahams inquiry. The Labour finances look to be indeed in a dire state. I wonder how they are doing on the activist front as well. When the Tories slid into unelectability it was partially because the demographics meant "the blue rinse brigade" were no longer there. After 10p and 42 Days and of course Iraq I wonder who is going to be pounding the streets?

    On Clinton is she still hanging on to the notion of a 10m dollar refund? Bizarre. I think Obama would be crazy to take her on as the Veep. Go Barak!

  • Comment number 2.

    PARTY POLITICS: SELL SOUL - BUY VOTES.

    The problem for political parties is that the abject worthlessness of their soul, sold as they ply their devious trade, can never balance out the cost of votes purchased through spin, advertising, bribery etc. The resultant obscene New Labour debt has been 'amassed' through obscene practices, deemed proper - even laudable, by those lost in the bizarre mind-set of party politics.
    If we focus the debate on 'how much' and 'whence' we fail to see the more fundamental question of, simply, 'why?'
    Why is all this money needed? Is the competence of a party defined in: 'By their expenditure shall ye know them'? If I buy a house and car (and wife) that I can't afford, at the 'cost' of a debt I can't manage, am I not a prize prat who gets no respect from anyone?
    QED.


  • Comment number 3.

    this june is the worst drop for the dow since 1930....

    7D

  • Comment number 4.

    #3 bookhimdano

    I SO didn't want to know that as I am still clinging perhaps irrationally to the idea that I might work again!

    But its an important point.

  • Comment number 5.

    Just wanted to say what a good programme I thought Thursday's edition was. Personally, I'd have put the Pentangle piece in the Friday Review, with all the big political stories out there, but then, I'm a politics anorak. Well done to all involved.

    Re #4. So you're not gagging about not working? See Thurday's thread.

  • Comment number 6.

    I'm looking forward to tonight's show - especially a good rummage through Labour's losing of their deposit at Henley. Is Micheal Crick going to investigate Labour MEP Michael Cashman? You know, the bloke who put his boyfriend on the payroll to the tune of £30,000 pa? Or how about the Ed Balls/Yvette Cooper scandal? No? Just an 11-year old Tory scandal, eh?

  • Comment number 7.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 8.

    NEWSNIGHT - I LOVE YOU

    Did you REQUEST the presence of the 'Junior Children's Minister' or did 'they' wonderfully fail to realise how pathetic that sobriquet is when you are talking meltdown of the party? Could it be that they have heard my cry of 'Spoil Party Games' and in true New Labour misunderstanding, created the post of JCM to counteract my subversion? make it so.

  • Comment number 9.

    Please could someone tell me what was wrong with the post I submitted over four hours ago?

    Thank you :-)

  • Comment number 10.

    POST OFF (Steve)

    Jaded Jean has posted voluminously on one problem: If you put certain symbols in your offering it disappears into cyberspace.

    I wrote B and Q the usual way, and ping! it was gone without trace.

    Good luck.

  • Comment number 11.

    SIN BIN STEVE

    Oops - my mistake. You are in the bin, whence none return Steve. Did you mention royalty or human functionality?

  • Comment number 12.

    Just a few months ago, Hillary Clinton said that Barack Obama was not fit to be Commander-in -Chief of the US armed forces. Now she's endorsing him for President which entails just that responsibility. Was she lying then or is she selling America out now? And what for? Money. Her campaign fund owes 22 million dollars to creditors 12 million of which is owed to Hillary Clinton private individual. Will Obama pay her debt off? If he does, will that be buying her support? If he doesn't, will she simply sit out the campaign? Her best bet if for Obama to lose big so that she can try again in 2012

    I don't see much difference between the elections in Zimbabwe and the elections over the Lisbon treaty. In both cases a tyrannical dictatorship tried to impose its will and lost. In Zimbabwe that was in March and now it has run roughshod over the process to negate the popular will. That is precisely what the EU is trying to do with Ireland's no vote. Two peas in a pod. The only difference? The EU is on its usual high horse pontificating while the hypocrites who run it see no similarity.

  • Comment number 13.

    THE ENEMY WITHIN

    MarcusAureliusII (#12) Good points, but I guess the demographic her trainers have her pitching to know it will never pick up on such nuances?

    Democracy only works as imagined where a population is relatively homogeneous. Sadly there are all too many busing themselves engineering precisely the opposite so they can more readiy conspire to achieve their own self-interested objectives

    Isn't it time one of the NN teams blew the whistle?

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