Gawker’s Nick Denton says…

“…at some point you have a choice: do you want to be the cute, unprofitable, ultimately doomed niche publication, or do you want to create something that’s viable and lasting?”

Multi-millionaire green investor and part-time Chairman of the Environment Select Committee Tim Yeo is advocating massive increases in green spending again in today’s Guardian. On the one hand it will do his business interests a world of good, but  just make sure it is kept well away from his backyard. At the same time as calling for more wind-farms Yeo is fighting one being built in his constituency because it would ruin the view. Think there is a word for people like that….

A Comres poll for Newsround has shown just how sound the latest generation of 18-24 year olds are. They overwhelmingly accept the need for spending cuts and would much rather slash the state than have their already burdened wallets hit by more taxation. Like a graduate tax.

Come on Balls, if the kids can get it, so can you.

Further to Guido’s expose this morning of the hypocritical millionaire Shadow Cabinet members, there are a couple more to add to the list. Lowly front-bencher Emily Thornberry, owns a £2 million-plus pile in Islington, and with her husband, Christopher Nugee QC, has an extensive property empire.

Guido rather stupidly forgot teetotal, vegetarian and fourth generation Labour MP, Hilary James Wedgwood Benn. Heir to the family money and owner of a million pound Chiswick house, the ultimate champagne socialist is high up in the ranks of Shadow Cabinet wealth. Somehow Guido doubts this lot are very worried about losing their Child Benefit…

If you’ve never heard of Babar Ahmad a quick glance at why he is being detained while awaiting extradition to the US gives you a pretty good idea about the sort of man the Americans think he is:

“BABAR AHMAD, a resident of the United Kingdom, provided, and conspired to provide, material support and resources to persons engaged in acts of terrorism in Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. Specifically, AHMAD provided, through the creation and use of various internet websites, email communication, and other means, expert advice and assistance, communications equipment, military items, currency, monetary instruments, financial services and personnel designed to recruit and assist the Chechen Mujahideen and the Taliban, and raise funds for violent jihad in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other places.”

Ahmad came to prominence when it was revealed his meetings with his old friend Sadiq Khan were bugged by the spooks. The first time the new Shadow Justice Secretary went to visit Ahmad was as a friend in 2004 and he went again in 2005 “as his MP”. As one fellow MP commented at the time “I’ve never gone to visit a constituent in prison for whatever reason, ever.”

Around the same time the story about Khan’s relationship with Ahmad broke in 2008, a page mysteriously disappeared from Khan’s website. A cached version of what he wrote in June 2006 is still available though. Crucially it stated “I have known Babar Ahmad for over fifteen years. We both grew up in Tooting.” Given Khan was 36 at the time it puts him meeting Ahmad in his early twenties. But that isn’t what he told the House…

Khan’s links to Ahmad  go far beyond the professional and his campaign to have Ahmad freed went beyond his role as his local MP. On the 12th July 2006 a month after writing on his website that he had known Ahmad for 15 years, Khan told a House of Commons debate on the UK-US extradition treaty “Babar Ahmad is of a similar age to me and, like me, he was born and raised in Tooting. I have known him on and off for the past 12 or 13 years.” That would have him meeting Ahmad in his mid twenties…

Fast forward to 2008 and the bugging story breaks. Khan is under fire and the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman is put in an awkward spot where he quite clearly does not defend him. But it was the added detail that Guido finds most interesting:

“Asked if the Prime Minister was happy that a Minister of the Crown had close ties, all be it professional, with people connected to the 9/11 attacks and organisations that some believed should be banned, the PMS replied that Mr Khan was a Whip, and therefore part of the Government. In this case he was acting as a constituency MP in relation to, as we understood it, somebody he had known since childhood.”

“Since childhood” is a new one, a direct contradiction of what Khan had said previously and something that is seconded by someone who might just know the truth – Sara Ahmad, Babar’s little sister who said in 2008 “Sadiq Khan has been a friend of Babar’s since they were boys and a wonderful supporter since his arrest.” Another direct contradiction to what Khan told the House. What is it about his relationship with Babar Ahmad that make him so sketchy with the details, resulting in three different versions of events.   How long has Sadiq Khan known Babar Ahmad? Did Sadiq lie on his website, to the House, or was it to the former Prime Minister?  More importantly, why?

Guido has noticed a few Shadow Cabinet members using the phrase “Cabinet of Millionaires”, a charge usually made by trots selling papers. Red Ed clearly calculates this will harm the government in an era of cuts. Over the weekend he said it didn’t matter if millionaires were given child benefit because “there aren’t that many millionaires in this country”. Well there seems to be disproportionate amount in his top team.

There are quite a few millionaires around the Shadow Cabinet table, some inherited their money, some made their money. If the politics of envy is back we should look at the net worth of those making the charge. Guido is estimating net worth based on pension assets, property and other known assets.

Millionaire Ed Miliband inherited a share of a multi-million pound property from his Marxist father, some nifty footwork by him and his brother David allowed them to avoid paying six-figure inheritance taxes. Combining marital assets and his inheritance from his father Ralph, Ed himself is comfortably a millionaire.

Millionaress Harriet Harman, privately educated at St Paul’s girls school (Osborne went to St Paul’s boys school) is, given her eighteen year parliamentary career, set to get at least a half a million pounds from her pension pot. Along with her husband’s salary and pension, things are looking comfortable with one house in Herne Hill and a country pile in Suffolk. Putting the trade unionist and the toff well into the millionaire’s class…

Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper trousered a joint household income of some £300,000 per year for their five years or so in goverment positions. Ed trousered nigh on £100,000 in 2005 for writing a few pamphlets for Gordon Brown’s now struck-off dubious charity known as the Smith Institute. With the couple’s triple-house-flipping, generous expenses claims, on top of their ministerial salaries and taking into account their gold-plated ministerial pension pots, they will comfortably have a net worth that puts the power couple in the millionaire’s bracket by now. Though they are however down to a meagre two homes…

But it’s not just the big names at the forefront, Baroness Scotland spent many years at the top of the Bar and the ennobled QC’s bank balance would reflect that. The millionairess will have had no problem paying her five-thousand pound fine for employing an illegal immigrant as a maid…

Baldemort himself, Liam Byrne, benefitted handsomely from his time as an investment banker at Rothchilds. He certainly won’t have left their employ without having trousered enough to put him in the millionaire bracket before counting his six-figure government salary…

Oh and let’s not forget Shaun Woodward whose property empire includes a castle. He even has his own butler.

Can co-conspirators crowd-source evidence of other millionaire members of Red Ed’s new generation?

With the appeals dismissed, all the wriggle room shut down, finally the trial dates have been set for the piggies:

Former minister and Labour MP Elliot Morley, November 22; Labour MP David Chaytor, December 6; Lord Hanningfield, December 13; sitting Labour MP Eric Illsley, January 10; Lord Taylor, January 17; former Labour MP Jim Devine, February 2.

All deny charges of false accounting. The trials will take place at Southwark Crown Court in London

It seems somewhat surreal that sitting Labour MP Eric Illsley has the cheek to pretend he will be able to properly represent his constituents while fighting to keep himself out of jail. Guido has waited for this moment for a very a long time.

He might even find the time to go watch…