A former Westminster official has resigned after footage emerged appearing to show her discuss “taking down” pro-Palestinian MPs.
According to Independent Maria Strizzolo, who is a former chief of staff to Conservative MP Robert Halfon, was recorded talking to Israeli embassy official Shai Masot.
The footage, obtained by Al Jazeera, shows Mr. Masot say: “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you would take down?” In response, Ms Strizzolo appears to laugh, before responding: “Well you know, if you look hard enough, I’m sure there is something that they’re trying to hide.”
Ms. Strizzolo has reportedly now resigned from her post at the Skills Funding Agency.
Israel’s ambassador to the UK Mark Regev has apologized for Mr. Masot’s comments, describing them as “unacceptable”.
Labour has demanded an investigation to probe alleged Israeli “interference” in British politics.
During the conversation between the pair, which took place at the Aubaine restaurant near the Israeli embassy in Kensington, Mr. Masot also described Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as “an idiot”.
Ms. Strizzolo told the Mail on Sunday that her conversation with Mr. Masot was “tongue-in-cheek and gossipy”, adding: “Any suggestion that I … could exert the type of influence you are suggesting is risible.”
She said she knew Mr. Masot “purely socially and as a friend. He is not someone with whom I have ever worked or had any political dealings beyond chatting about politics, as millions of people do, in a social context.”
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned amid claims relating to the phone hacking scandal.
In a statement to announce his departure, Sir Paul said:
“I’ve taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level and in particular, with relation to Mr Neil Wallis who as you know was arrested as part of Operation Weeting last week.”
Sir Paul had been criticised after Mr Wallis, a former deputy editor of the News Of The World, was hired by the Met in a public relations role. He said:
“In 2009 the Met entered into a contractual arrangement with Neil Wallis, terminating in 2010. I played no role in the letting or management of that contract.”
He also emphasised he had no reason to suspect Mr Wallis had any knowledge of phone hacking:
“I have heard suggestions that we must have suspected the alleged involvement of Mr Wallis in phone hacking. Let me say unequivocally that I did not and had no reason to have done so. I do not occupy a position in the world of journalism; I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging; nor of its apparent reach into senior levels”
He also denied there had been any wrongdoing relating to his use of the Champney’s health farm for whom Mr Wallis had been working in a PR role:
“There has been no impropriety and I am extremely happy with what I did and the reasons for it – to do everything possible to return to running the Met full time,significantly ahead of medical, family and friends’ advice. The attempt to represent this in a negative way is both cynical and disappointing.”
Sir Paul had also faced criticism over the original investigation into phone hacking.
His resignation came just hours after it emerged former News International Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks had been arrested in connection with phone hacking.
The Mayor of London Boris Johnson told Sky News he had accepted his resignation with “great sadness and reluctance” and said there was “no question about his personal integrity.”
Mr Johnson said Sir Paul had not wanted to be a distraction for the force in the run up to next year’s Olympic games.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee said he was “very shocked” at the Commissioner’s resignation.
Mr Vaz told Sky News Sir Paul would still appear in front of the committee on Tuesday as scheduled.
Sir Paul said it had been an “enormous privilege” to lead the Met.
Super-dons: A C Grayling is determined to meet Britain's demand for higher education
Richard Godwin
Arriving at AC Grayling’s home is unavoidably like turning up for an Oxbridge tutorial. The professor answers the door, one hand cupping his phone to his ear, one hand restraining his mongrel.
“Don’t worry, she’s very nice. Misty, stop that!” The 18th-century hairdo is accessorised with fleece and tie. He gestures me into a handsome room, landscaped with books – A Short History of Atheism, a slim volume on the Oxford Tutorial, plus various works by AC Grayling catch the eye.
I hope he doesn’t ask me about Aristotle, I’m thinking – but today, it is the professor who faces inquisition.
The philosophy don and soon-to-be president of the British Humanist Association has caused a storm by announcing he plans to leave his post at Birkbeck to set up an elite private university.
The New College of the Humanities will open in London in September 2012 with an X-Men style line-up of academics, including Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and Christopher Ricks. Based in Bloomsbury, it will charge students £18,000 a year for courses in philosophy, history and literature (and combinations thereof), plus law and economics.
The headlines proclaimed a new rival to Oxbridge. Commentators including Mayor Boris Johnson cheered the enterprise, which will exist outside the state sector, funded by £10million of private investment. Reaction from students and fellow academics has ranged from cynical to hopping mad.
Birkbeck student union president Sean Rillo Raczka said: “I’m disgusted that Professor Grayling has started a private college charging £18,000 a year while professing that he believes in free education. Not only is his so-called ‘college’ dubious in itself but it will cater to rich students willing to pay exorbitant fees for a celebrity education, excluding ordinary people.”
Writing in the Guardian, Professor Terry Eagleton called the scheme “disgustingly elitist” and the 14 dons (who each have shares in the institution) “money-grabbing”, warning that if an American-style system of private liberal arts colleges takes root in Britain, it could relegate state-funded universities to second-tier status.
Despite his benign appearance, sipping tea and nuzzling Misty, Anthony Clifford Grayling, 62, is not shy of a fight. For years, he was content to pop up on current affairs programmes pouring a gentle, rationalist perspective on the day’s news from the toby jug of his head.
This year, however, he had the brass balls to publish The Good Book: A Secularist’s Bible, which he still claims is an improvement on the original, despite one of the most toothsome literary savagings in recent memory (“The Good Book is unreadable, not merely just because it is boring but because it is nauseating”, said the Standard’s David Sexton).
If it is disconcerting to be attacked by former associates now, he doesn’t seem too dismayed. The rules of the game, he says, have changed.
He is angry at successive governments’ reduction in funding for universities and has been gestating the idea for a new institution since tuition fees were introduced in 1998. The problems are most acute in the humanities, where the teaching budget has been eliminated altogether (hence the need for most universities to charge £9,000).
Grayling is adamant that in an ideal world, he would not be doing this – but as a rationalist, he realises we do not live in an ideal world. So “the choice is, you can either scream and yell and complain about what’s happening – and what’s happening is terrible. Or you can do something about it.”
He claims that he is not setting up the NCH outside the public system to compete with Oxbridge. That’s “press hyperbole”. But there is excess demand at the top end of the education “market”, and he does not believe we should continue to lose bright pupils to foreign universities, which are more than willing to court their minds and money. He is not looking for profit, though he admires the American system where students pay the “true cost” of a degree – and the NCH will turn a profit.
So what will it look like? The campus will be in Bedford Square, with teaching rooms and libraries shared with the University of London (UCL). There will be around 1,000 undergraduates when it hits full capacity, with candidates applying outside the Ucas system (only those confident of three As need get in touch).
NCH students will graduate with an extra diploma to take into account their extra classes in logic, scientific literacy and applied ethics, plus financial literacy (implemented after consultation with businesses). Students are promised 12 teaching hours per week, including one-on-one tutorials.
It should be stressed that the 14 telegenic X-Dons will not be giving those tutorials – instead, they will be more like visiting lecturers (and handsomely paid for it, Dawkins has admitted).
Most of the teaching will be done by new recruits, who will be offered 25 per cent more than the market rate, plus – and this is quite a promise – liberation from administration. “We’re saying to them: you’ve got to be dedicated teachers, and you’ve got to be dedicated to your work – and we pay you a premium.”
Grayling is irritated at claims that this is an institution for the rich. “Of course we want to be elite in the sense that you want your airline pilot to have been taught at an elite institution – elite but not exclusive, that’s the point.” To this end, in the first year, 20 per cent of places will be subsidised – with one third of those students (so, 6.66 per cent) being educated for free. The aim is to have 30 per cent of places subsidised in later years.
For all that, he admits that “it’s, er, not unlikely that, er, a substantial proportion of pupils will come from that kind of background,” he says – meaning from public schools. Grayling himself has two grown-up children from his first marriage, plus a stepson and daughter from his current marriage to the novelist Katie Hickman: they school at Marlborough and Queensgate respectively. The NCH fee “seems like a lot of money from one point of view, but if you’re really committed, you’d do anything to provide your kids with a good start”. Provided you have the means. “Well, you make the means.”
For all his rheumy-eyed evangelism, there are a couple of worries. He tells me that students will graduate with University of London International degrees, but the university has said that there is “no formal agreement concerning academic matters”. He also says that NCH students will be able to take out loans in the normal manner, which contradicts what the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tells me: loans are a form of government subsidy, after all, and NCH exists outside the state system. “Oh! Does that mean they’ve changed the game again?” Grayling says when I mention this. Does that mean it will be even less affordable for poor students?
I am also puzzled as to the name: he admits that the Warden of New College, Oxford has emailed him wondering why he chose that. You could have called yourself Bloomsbury College, I say. “Yes, but then you think of Virginia Woolf looking mournful. No, we think New College of the Humanities works pretty well, has the right kind of resonance.”
At around this point, the doorbell rings and I nip to the loo. I count no fewer than nine canisters of hairspray on the “his” side of the sink (Pantene’s Ice Hold would appear to be the favourite). I am still processing this information when I return, to be greeted by Misty. The photographer has arrived: “Misty likes having her photo taken but everyone will say on Twitter that we have the same hair,” Grayling observes.
Tempting though it is to dwell on this (were some of the products Misty’s?), I broach the personalities of some of the academics involved.
“The answer to the question you’re about to ask is a higher education institution exists to teach how to think, not what to think. So the fact that there are a bunch of atheists involved in this doesn’t mean anything.”
Actually, I was going to say that they’re all quite publicity-seeking. He seems rather taken aback. “Ooh is that really so? Well, I don’t know about that so much. Are they? Richard Dawkins gets noticed a lot because of his firm views about things who else?”
Niall Ferguson, who constantly complains that he has been shunned by British academia for his pro-empire worldview?
“Yes, Niall Ferguson yes. He could conceivably be described as fitting the description you mentioned. And Richard Dawkins is perceived as fitting the description ”
And you yourself did commit the not entirely self-effacing act of rewriting the Bible. He mutters that the timing of the university announcement, with The Good Book fresh in mind, is “a nuisance” and even speculates about the coincidence of both of these long-gestated projects coming into the world at the same time: “It does make you think maybe the disposition of the stars has something to do with it.” That’s not very rational, AC!
But still, about that rather astonishing book. He considers the charge of arrogance “a bit surprising” as he feels himself to be “a very modest character. Not, er, aspiring to be a deity or anything like that. But a lot of the criticisms if I allude to Teucer firing his arrows behind the shield of Ajax, you might grasp what I mean.” I don’t. “I mean, the Good Book is made out of Aristotle and Pliny, Seneca and Confucius and all these great people, and I’ve just brought together their insights. So when they criticise it, they’re criticising them, not me.”
But you rewrote them all – and you didn’t credit them!
“Yeah, it was great fun. Terrific!” He giggles. “You think it’s an act of hubris.” He explains that Shakespeare never quoted his sources, so why should he? “And when were Aristotle and Cicero last in the Top 10 of the Sunday Times bestseller list? Now there’s something.” A clever way to make money off someone else’s ideas, I suppose – a charge levelled at him by former UCL colleagues, who claim he has copied their courses for the NCH.
We move on to God, the belief in whom he equates to a belief in fairies, which strikes me as weirdly childish. It leads him to offer the observation that “people who do not unthinkingly adopt the religion of their culture, which 99 per cent of people do, are under a special duty to think harder about ethical questions”. I wonder if, as part of that one per cent of the elect, it was his philosophy that animated him into action. This seems to please him.
“If you’re in a position to make use of the resources you’ve got, like a reputation or money, I think you should. You can’t fiddle while Rome burns.”
As for those who decry him (a protest is planned at his appearance at Foyles today), he would like to remind them that he is on their side.
“There’s a lot of anger around – about the fees, about the constraints,” he says, giving Misty one last stroke. “There is also anger of a different kind, that there a fees at all. I’m angry about that. We wouldn’t be doing this if there were proper resources for universities. It’s an unhappy environment. What we must hope is that really good intentions somehow get us through it.”
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has encouraged people to undergo a day of fasting to help them gain a better understanding of their ”Muslim neighbour”.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has encouraged people to undergo a day of fasting to help them gain a better understanding of Islam Photo: REUTERS
Speaking during a visit to the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre he said Muslims in the capital were ”challenging traditional stereotypes” to show they wanted to be part of the mainstream.
Mr Johnson’s visit coincided with the holy period of Ramadan in which participating Muslims fast from dawn until sunset.
“Whether it’s in theatre, comedy, sports, music or politics, Muslims are challenging the traditional stereotypes and showing that they are, and want to be, a part of the mainstream community,” he said.
”That’s why I urge people, particularly during Ramadan, to find out more about Islam, increase your understanding and learning, even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbour and break your fast at the local mosque. I would be very surprised if you didn’t find that you share more in common than you thought.
”Muslims are at the heart of every aspect of society. Their contribution is something that all Londoners benefit from. Muslim police officers, doctors, scientists and teachers are an essential part of the fabric of London.
”Islamic finance is contributing to the economy by changing the way Londoners invest, save, borrow and spend. There are valuable lessons that people of all backgrounds can learn from Islam such as the importance of community spirit, family ties, compassion and helping those less fortunate, all of which lie at the heart of the teachings of Ramadan.”
Earlier in the day Mr Johnson got into a spot of bother after calling a radio DJ ”a great big blubbering jelly of indecision”.
He was being interviewed by Nick Ferrari on London radio station LBC 97.3 over the ongoing row over who runs the Met. One of his deputies had told theGuardian newspaper that the Conservatives in the capital now had their ”hands on the tiller” of Britain’s biggest force.
The mayor insisted the quotes had been over-hyped but following repeated questioning from Mr Ferrari about whether he had ”admonished” the deputy in question Mr Johnson blurted out his remark.
Mr Johnson had earlier told the programme: ”Sir Paul Stephenson, as everybody knows is in full operational control of the Met and has been ever since his appointment and does a first class job.”
Source www.telegraph.co.uk, 04 Sep 2009
Also read… Boris Johnson calls for a day of fasting to ‘help understand Muslims’, Daily Mail, 04 September 2009
Boris Johnson was once the editor of the prestigious conservative political magazine, The Spectator
HIDDEN NATION
In this regular feature, James Willsher explores unreported pockets of international London.
City Hall. Invitation to a reception for London’s Turkish community, hosted by the Mayor, Boris Johnson. Himself with Turkish ancestry, an Ottoman minister for a great-grandfather. We queue for bags and briefcases to be searched at the ground floor check-in desk. The women are large, big-haired, heavily made-up, or younger, slender, with straightened dark hair. The men are uniformly in suits, some lads with ornately cultivated stubble. We make our way to the elevators, up to a large, semi-circular, well-lit reception space with a stunning view of a London winter evening through a curved wall of huge glass panels. A handful of local councillors I recognise from east London, no one else. I go out to the balcony for that view. There’s a familiar, towering, overweight man already out there, who I know from previous such civic events. The director of an umbrella organisation for Turkish community groups, he helped organise tonight. We exchange a few words. Then back into the room.
An obvious outsider, I am soon approached by a friendly-looking trio, an Azerbaijani newspaper editor, a director of a community centre, and a tall, chiselled Iranian man, who informs me he is in fact an ethnic Azerbaijani. Apparently Turkey and Azerbaijan share culture and (nearly) a language. We all say what an honour it is to be invited here. The Mayor is 25 minutes late, we note, according to the strict schedule on our handsomely-printed invitations. The room is full, there must be 300 people here. Then, a spike of excitement amid the bustle: the blonde emerges from a side door, surrounded by functionaries. He makes slow progress through a thicket of hands outstretched for shaking. He glides infinitesimally to a lectern by the central panel of the curved glass wall.
Instant hush. He thanks us all for coming, apologises for being late. Of course, he says, he is a descendant of a Turkish immigrant, who came to this country from…er, um, Turkey. This elicits the first of several eruptions of warm laughter from the room. Little digital cameras and phones thrust before him, journalists and preservers for posterity indistinguishable. He tells the room that it is important to meet London’s people, and in particular the Turkish community, which contributes so much to London’s economy and society. He says that his grandfather would be very proud to know that one day his descendant would become Mayor of this great city, London.
The jovial atmosphere Boris effortlessly propagates is growing while he speaks, from a breathy quiet to a murmur. A few more detonations of laughter and, after a brief speech of barely five minutes, he hands over to a Tory councillor from Enfield. A few questions from the thronged reporters are answered in moments, with forthright waves of the hand. While the councillor loudly declaims and rankles with party political swipes – the room audibly growls at these – the cloud of functionaries around the Mayor buzzes into action, he is departing. Realisation is infectious – the Great Man is leaving us so soon. The murmur becomes a waterfall of concern, confusion, question, complaint. The overweight man’s turn to speak. He struggles against now thunderous eddies of debate concerning the unexpected sudden exit. The assembled descend upon a waiting buffet before he can finish. It is over.
The reporters are packing away their cameras, notebooks. They’ve got what they need, are polishing off plates of food, ready to leave. The crowd has thinned by more than half. I move to the organiser and commiserate with him on squaring up to a tough crowd. He smiles, but with a sadness. I say goodbye to those I ate and drank with, and make for the lifts.
Ankara’s man in London explains why his country’s place is at the heart of Europe and how after all that talk of Turkish roots Boris still hasn’t found time to meet him
Did you know Boris Johnson’s great grandfather was a liberal Turkish journalist called Ali Kemal alive during the dying days of the Ottoman empire? Well of course you did. London’s new Tory mayor banged on about his roots a fair bit during this year’s election campaign.
But the centuries old ties between Turkey and the UK go much deeper than Johnson’s ancestry. Just ask Turkey’s ambassador to the UK, Mehmet Yiğit Alpogan: “Turkey’s membership of the European Union is one of the projects that the Turkish public opinion pay attention to and in that respect the support that Great Britain gives to Turkey is very much welcomed and appreciated.”
So has he actually met Johnson? “I am waiting for that appointment to happen,” says Alpogan, who seemed just a tiny bit disappointed a request to London’s mayor has yet to be taken up.
“I know that he is a very busy person and it will be my pleasure to be able to meet him, get together with him, and talk about many things including this past life.” A suitably diplomatic take on the whole matter.
But if he does feel let down Alpogan can perhaps take some heart from the UK government’s strong support of Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union. An attitude which contrasts sharply with the more reserved reaction of some of the other EU states such as France and Austria.
“Turkey’s place is in Europe,” says Alpogan. “There is no question about this.” And the current UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, agrees. In a Telegraph article last year he expressed his approval of Turkey’s accession, highlighting among others the pressing energy benefits: “Turkey is an increasingly important transit route for oil and natural gas, with 10 per cent of the world’s oil flowing through the Bosporus.”
The Foreign Secretary’s predecessor, Jack Straw, had gone even further and had equated membership as a means towards deflecting a “clash of civilisations”.
Boris Johnson, too, has spoken in favour of Turkey’s accession to the EU. “We would be crazy to reject Turkey,” wrote Boris Johnson in his book ‘The Dream of Rome’, “which is not only the former heartland of the Roman empire but also, I see, one of the leading suppliers of British fridges.”
Indeed the UK is the second largest export market for Turkey. For the UK investor also, Turkey is important.
Yet the question of Turkey’s EU membership is controversial. Polls indicate many citizens across Europe do not approve the move.
The situation is not helped by opposition from French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his alternative offers of a Mediterranean Union or a referendum over EU accession.
“If the Europeans say that European Union is a Christian club they are thereby making a discrimination,” says Alpogan. “They are committing a grave mistake. Of course Turkey wouldn’t have a place in such a European Union. But I don’t think that the European public opinion thinks this way … we hope that this understanding will continue to prevail and the European Union will be a place where the alliance of civilisations will be represented.”
One of the apparent reasons citizens of European states fear Turkish membership of the EU is the prospect of mass immigration.
The ambassador points, however, towards other countries in Europe whose migrants returned to their home countries sometime after joining the EU, such as the Spanish, Greeks and now the Polish.
“For a short while it might be true,” admits Alpogan. “But with the investment, economic activity and other developments that come with EU membership, soon these people would go back – at least that is what the history of the European Union shows us and that is how it is proven.”
Maybe, but that argument may fall on deaf ears in a Europe already brimming with debates over whether immigration has gone too far in this corner of the globe.
Yet there is one more twist to this whole accession debate. Who is to gain more from this membership, Europe or Turkey? A quick look at Turkey on the world’s map shows just why this nation of 80 million is considered so crucial. Yes it is about trade and access to energy but it is also about regional influence.
Turkey is the bridge between Europe and Asia.
And the ambassador is quick to highlight the “geo-strategic” and “geographical” benefits that lie in store for the European Union were Turkey to become a member.
Then there’s Turkey’s relationship with Central Asian, through a shared Turkic cultural and linguistic heritage with many of those countries, may potentially prove to be the most useful one for Europe in the future given the region being a major fuel reserve for the world.
But, of course, most European visitors to Turkey go there for one purpose – their holidays.
According to the ambassador two million British tourists head to Turkey each year and the figures are on the rise at the rate of 10-20 percent. “We have already 20,000 British families who have come and settled in Turkey or have a second home in Turkey,” says Alpogan. “Of course we are very glad to have them there and they are another strong link between the two countries.”
Indeed although he may not have found the time to meet with the Turkish ambassador, Boris Johnson, just a fortnight after winning the election for mayor in May, disappeared off to the south western coast of Turkey for a break with his family.
The trip did not go un-noticed by the local media, with the Turkish Daily News reporting that the London mayor’s ancestral ties with their country and Islam would “hopefully be beneficial for Turkey and certainly his choice of holiday destination can only be seen as advantageous for Turkish tourism.”
Perhaps. Although it may be that it has the reverse effect. Only time will tell.
A former Westminster official has resigned after footage emerged appearing to show her discuss “taking down” pro-Palestinian MPs.
