Trying very hard and failing badly

On Monday evening the money had been gifted to friends to do with as they saw fit and only accompanied by a 'suggestion' that the Labour Party might make a suitable destination. While openly giving charitably to other worth causes such as academic institutions the nation's Chicken-Shit of the Year award winner (by default) David Abrahams preferred not to make political donations in his own name in order to protect his privacy.

Confused? I was.

Mr Chicken-Shit is a property developer in the north-east which I now want desperately to believe is a euphemism for Slum Lord.

In the meantime Mr Chicken-Shit has been forced to clarify. The money was um, to be given to the Labour Party and that's why it was passed to friends and employees. His ruse was rumbled by the spouse of one of the 'donors' who obviously had only ever been given an early draft of the Hymn Sheet. Oops.

Mr Chicken-Shit is now aggrieved, not just because his privacy has been invaded but because the nasty media types coming at him from both right and left have made him 'feel like a criminal' which when you think about it Mr Bleating Chicken-Shit is precisely what you are for your tawdry little attempt to subvert Electoral Law and don't bother attempting to have it otherwise, for only someone who has spent the past decade with his head up his own arse could be unaware of the 'wrongness' in what you were attempting to do.

So which is it Mr Chicken-Shit? Crime or world-class Head Up My Own Arse Yoga?

While Mr Chicken-Shit stands head and shoulders above the rest of the field in his own class a special mention is deserved by Diane Hayter. Her championship quality obfuscations surely qualify her for something. The sack perhaps? Fat chance. You can't get her, she's part of the union and on the NEC to boot.

Diane went to barricades on Monday evening to shore things up when the news spilled over the parapets that these donations had not only been offered but accepted by the party. Diane wants you and me to believe that the only person who knew about the donations, knew and understood the source of them, was a young chap you've possibly not heard of called Peter Watts, but who happens to have been until very recently (that is to say until he resigned over this business) the General Secretary of the Labour Party.

Peter led himself to the chopping block and brought the axe down on his own neck. In his valedictory address from the scaffold to the nation he confessed to having accepted the donations in ignorance of the fact that they were made in breach of electoral law - though he had played a major part in assisting the party through the Cash for Honours debacle which is in fact Party Funding for a Specific Purpose. Party donations via a third party are illegal. Peter held positions involving legal and financial compliance before promotion to Gen-Sec.

The party clearly hopes that by this act of self-sacrifice the matter might be brought to a neat conclusion and its wish might yet be fulfilled. The party is relying on us being stupid or complaisant or both.

Diane Haytter's name does not appear in the paper at all this morning. The story itself is buried inside and the Tories are staying clear miles clear of it for fear of bringing their own funding arrangements under the spotlight.

Come the revolution only names will change.