Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Comment is Free but the Little Red Book's £7.99!

I've just seen THIS article about the Little Red Book on the Guardian's Comment is Free site. It's by Justin McKeating who has his own BLOG called Chicken Yoghurt. Probably best not ask about how he came up with that! In the article, Justin says...

Strangely though, for a book being co-edited by a former Conservative parliamentary candidate (Dale), it seems to concentrate on what have been traditionally viewed as very Tory types of sleaze. But then, if there's an emphasis on New Labour's venality and (if we're honest, only occasional) priapism, the list is only reflecting what's made the headlines with such wearying regularity these last nine long years. It's to be wondered, however, if the book wouldn't be a more varied and interesting read - and more representative of this government's failings - if the editors broadened their choice of targets away from a potentially dull rundown of who enjoyed who's cash/secretary. It depends on what one means by sleaze, but this writer, being an unreconstructed humanitarian and unworldly in the ways of pushing newspaper and book buyers' buttons, would liked to have seen more of New Labour's contempt for human life (its genesis either by design or via administrative ambivalence perceived as vindictiveness) on the list.

It's a fair point. But as he says, when does a scandal become sleaze? I've decided, for instance, that the Charles Clarke issue is a scandal but I don't think you could call it sleazy, so that won't be in the book. I agree that we could have expanded it to become The Big Book of Labour Failures - maybe that'll come in time - but the prime issue here is to get the book out as quickly as possible.

So far we have 93 pices signed up, but people keep suggesting new items I hadn't thought of, so it will well over 100 in the end. If you'd like to pre-order the book, you can do so HERE.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Iain, what sort of royalties do the writers get?

Paul Linford said...

Iain - I would be interested in your response to Justin's points about Iraq and WMD. Surely you aren't intending to leave it out of the book as he suggests? Taking the country to war on a false prospectus has to be the number one scandal perpetrated by this or any government in the last 50 years.

Anonymous said...

the first one in you list concerns Mohammed Sarwar.
Cleared of all charges in court.
Are you just repeating some allegations to make up the numbers?

Politaholic said...

The flotation of Qinetiq (the defence research service) which gave Carlyle a huge windfall must count as sleaze/a scandal. Carlyle paid £42 million for a 31% share of Qinetiq in 2002 which after flotation was worth £351 million (an increase of around 840%). Isn't the Qinetiq privatisation the sort of thing that the Serious Fraud Office ought to be investigating? (The same could be said of much of the PFI programme: it isn't just incompetence which leads to such poor value for public money). Of course, it was the Tories that started all this, wasn't it?