Carter-Ruck are back, back, BACK!

Less than a week after trying to ban any reporting of a parliamentary question about their client Trafigura's poisoning of 30,000 Ivorians, they've written to every MP and peer claiming that as the matter is 'sub judice', MPs can't have a debate about the affair!

Er… does that mean that nobody - MP or not - can talk about any matter that's moving through the courts? Can our elected representatives not choose to discuss whatever's important to this country? Not according to Carter-Ruck.

Luckily, the Speaker's pretty clear:

"It is not sub judice under the house's rules ... There is no question of our own proceedings being in any way inhibited."

Which is élite-speak for 'go fuck yourselves'.

What I don't quite get is why Trafigura think this is good for their company? Perhaps as esssentially very bad men engaged in a filthy business, public opinion doesn't matter, but they aren't making any friends - and the Tory MPs who'll (unfortunately) be in government soon take affronts to Parliamentary authority very seriously indeed.

Valete, Ted Kennedy

So Ted Kennedy is dead. His life, as summarised in this obituary, is a classic lesson in the complexity of mankind. Monstrous son of a monstrous Nazi-supporting bootlegger, brother to two assassination victims, he juggled a cruel and selfish private life, leading to the death of a young woman, amongst other things, but he was also a principled liberal leader who reached out from a position of the utmost privilege to the poorest and most oppressed in his country.

Seymour Hersh's Camelot is a no-holds-barred examination of the Kennedy dynasty, well worth reading, but the Kennedy mystique is as golden as it is appalling. JFK started the Vietnam war, but RFK would have ended it, had he not been shot dead. It was RFK who took on the Mafia, despite the fact that his brother's election (opposed by Nixon) in 1960 was achieved through widespread vote-rigging and corruption. Edward Kennedy would have been one of the best presidents had he won the nomination in 1980 - but his alcohol, sex and drug-fuelled private life put paid to that, and nice Jimmy Carter went on to lose to that evil hack Reagan.

So Ted Kennedy - proof that bad/good co-exist in us all…

Don't worry - there's already at least one of the next Kennedy generation in power: Patrick is a state senator in Rhode Island, and Caroline ran for New York, unsuccessfully. Arnie's wife is a Kennedy too!