Thursday, August 09, 2007

Since the Grant Shapps "1234 incident", I've noticed that Iain Dale has written a few posts on the subject of Labour and the interwebs. Today, taking the lead from Dizzy, he suggests that the Labour Party has been up to no good filming interviews in parliament without permission from the Serjeant at Arms and loading them up onto Google video.

In this case, you can almost hear the straws crackling under his grasp. 15 Labour MPs have filmed interviews in the same spot in Westminster Hall. Given that the filming of interviews is specifically allowed without need for permission in one part of Westminster Hall and given that one of the MPs filmed was the one who gave the answer linked above, I think it's safe to assume that permission wasn't require in this instance.

Scandalous, I'm sure you'll agree.

Still, to give him his due, he did update the post with a sort of acceptance that the videos probably weren't against the rules. What class.

PS: the reason why it was Iain's blog I commented on rather than Dizzy's was because of Iain's post title. Iain has something of a record when it comes to putting forward dodgy propositions in the shape of questions.

Update

I had mistakenly attributed a shred of decency to Iain when I suggested that he'd accepted that the videos were not against the rules. In the comments yesterday evening, he told me he'd done no such thing and that Dizzy was checking with the Serjeant at Arms. I have to admit that I wasn't sure whether Iain and Dizzy would be hugely forthcoming with the answer if it wasn't the one they wanted so I sent an email to the parliamentary authorities asking them to clarify the position regarding those videos.

This morning, I received an reply.
Dear Mr. Hamster,

Filming within Westminster Hall is permitted by the House authorities and was cleared by our office.
I wonder if that'll be enough for Iain?

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