Via Norfolk Blogger comes the news that Tony Benn’s granddaughter Emily has been selected by Labour to be their parliamentary candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham.

As I’ve noted before, my dad’s second cousin is married to Hilary Benn’s second cousin, so I guess I should add the latest political Benn to the diagram:

You’ll be relieved to hear that I, at least, have no plans to become a Labour MP.

So the Saatchi and Saatchi agency has been recruited to look after Labour’s advertising for the general election. Whenever that might be. <cough>

Here’s their pitch:

What the BBC story doesn’t tell you*, is that they were previously turned down by the Liberal Democrats after this proposal:

For some reason, the Tories – despite the success of Labour Isn’t Working in 1979 – also turned them down. Can’t imagine why:

*because (let’s be clear for legal purposes) I’ve made it up

Stumbled across this story about the local elections in Wealden, the district where I grew up.

Now, all parties, including my own, have trouble finding candidates in some areas, but, even knowing how sparse Wealden is for Labour (they have no seats on the district and only five at county level), their number of candidates really surprised me.

Conservatives: 51
Liberal Democrats: 36
Independents: 15
Greens: 12
Labour 2:
UKIP: 1

Two candidates? For over 50 seats? Crikey: this is the party running the country.

Not a BBC Three spinoff from Doctor Who, but Bearwood Corporate Services, the medium of choice through which Lord Ashcroft funded various target seat campaigns for the Conservatives in the general election.

The Electoral Commission’s latest news release details donations and loans reported in the third quarter of 2006, but also include a list of donations that should have been declared earlier but weren’t. Sat on the naughty step with £207k of late donations are the Labour Party, followed by the Tories on £168k. (The LibDems were late with £23k, for which certain local parties deserve a metaphorical clip round the ear.)

Of particular interest are donations made before the 2005 general election. If that seems a long time ago, it’s because it was. The only LibDem donation to fall into this category was a transfer between councillors in Cannock Chase and their local party. The Tories, however, managed to fail to declare on time a number of Lord Ashcroft’s generous pre-election donations: £5,000 to the Harlow Association, donated in January 2005; £5,000 to Brighton Kemptown; £2,145 to the Hastings & Rye Association.

What may amuse LibDem and Labour bloggers is the constituency which received the largest previously-undeclared pre-election boost from Bearwood Corporate Services. Anyone want to hazard a guess? Yes, it’s the £7,993 donation to North Norfolk Conservative Association – and I think we all know who was the candidate there. Now I have no intention of casting aspersions on Iain, of course – PPERA reporting is not the parliamentary candidate’s responsibility – but I couldn’t help a wry smile at the coincidence. (And lest anyone forget, despite Ashcroft’s cash Norman Lamb romped home in North Norfolk, increasing his majority.)

That said, this donation nevertheless is trumped by larger previously unreported donations in Reading East, Wirral West and from the notorious Midlands Industrial Council to the Tory campaign in Shrewsbury & Atcham, among others.

All the main parties need to do better to ensure compliance with the PPERA, but some have further to go than others.

John Hutton has today been promoting the government’s new pensions package, a follow-up to Lord Turner’s report earlier this year, which will increase the state pension age from 65 to 68.

The retirment age was set at a time when life expectancies were much lower than they are now. The idea that once you hit 65 you’ve “done your bit”, “paid your stamp” and are entitled to thirty years of leisure at the state’s expense is a nonsense. The system simply wasn’t designed to cope with today’s longevity, and just as we expect young people to work if they can, it’s reasonable to expect 65-year-olds to stay at work for a few more years if they’re still spritely. The alternative is for a generation whch has spent decades keeping taxes relatively low to then force high taxes on their children in order to give themselves a comfortable retirement – although in practice, because of the long lead time for this change, the baby boomers will benefit from the current state pension age anyway.

So John Hutton is entitled to a quote:

“As unpopular as it may be to talk about working longer – the simple fact is that if we aren’t prepared to increase the state pension age, we will simply pass an ever greater and frankly unsustainable burden on to our children and grandchildren.”