The BBC have replied to Prezza over his demand to the BBC that

the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s [sic] should now be referred to on air as “a group with close links to the Conservative Party” or some similar on-air clarification.

The BBC’s Helen Boaden has now written back to reject Prezza’s demand:

I do not think it would be accurate or fair to describe it on air, as you suggest, as ‘a group with close links to the Conservative Party.’

Prezza is Twittering that this means “we’ve had some real success”.  How?

Chinese culture venerates the wisdom of the aged, that must be why they made John Prescott a Professor of Climate Change at a Xiamen University.  It surely can’t be for his grasp of thermo-dynamics or theoretical climatology.  All the honours and flattery have secured his services as a Sino-apologist, a role in which he follows in the footsteps of Ted Heath, who combined his latter years of sulking with making excuses for the Chinese, greatly enriching himself in the process.

Guido has no idea what the terms of his honourary position are, so far he has only declared copious hospitality from the Chinese regime.  This has seemingly secured his trademark one-sided campaigning belligerence on their behalf in return.  You would have thought China’s blocking of a deal in Copenhagen would have soured Professor Prezza the climate change campaigner’s relationship with the Chinese.  Not a bit, he even wrote a letter to the Guardian loyally pointing out that the Copenhagen Conference failing  was all America’s fault, despite NGOs and EU negotiators squarely blaming China.  Guido will bet that a letter to the Guardian has never before been reported favourably in the Chinese People’s Daily…

This morning a British citizen was executed by the Chinese.  David Miliband had led an international campaign to get the sentence commuted, even Gordon Brown pleaded for clemency.  So did John Prescott use his campaigning skills and contacts at the highest level of the Chinese regime to intervene? 

No, not a tweet was heard from him…

UPDATE : Prezza managed to mess up a Chinese wedding. Have a laugh watching the wedding video here.  At least he didn’t grope a bridesmaid…

John Prescott says of Harriet Harman

“I think the deputy leadership role is for going out and campaigning…I suppose, if I was being honest about it, I think too much of the emphasis has been on female rights, which I have supported all my life, and we’re not getting other messages across. Most of it is about the equality issue. It is very important, but it is not our biggest campaigning issue, whatever they say about it.”

Professor Prezza is very excitedly Twittering about the government’s announcement that they plan to do some pump priming  on the home building front.  John Healey announced today that 47 councils will share in  a grant of £127 million to build what amounts to about 30 homes per council.

They will be completed by 2011.  So Prezza is, in a sense, wrong when he tweets that you won’t get this from a Tory government.  He is also wrong in the wider sense, after all in’t it under the Tories that the most council homes have been built?  Harold Macmillan promised to build 300,000 a year and ended up building a million.  A building programme unmatched by Labour. In fact Labour this year are actually knocking down 3,000 homes.

Professor Prezza needs to study a bit more history…

Today Guido learnt that the Minister for Work and Pensions, Rosie Winterton, claimed close to the maximum allowance for second homes – including soundproofing her bedroom. The MP, John Prescott’s former mistress, claimed for the work in February 2007, before the fees office reduced the payment to £3,800 after refusing to pay for the use of acoustic felt and wool slabs.

The full claim was for ‘soundproofing of bedroom wall and redecoration to bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, staircase’.  What is she was so keen on us not hearing about?

In an email tonight to Conservative Party supporters Dave hails

Dan Hannan’s brilliant response to Gordon Brown in the European Parliament. It was so effective and shows the growing power of the internet over TV.

Meanwhile Sir Michael White is getting a lashing from his own readers on the Guardian website for, well, just not getting it.  Douglas Carswell MP is taking the opportunity on his blog to remind Sir Michael that he recently mocked Carswell for saying YouTube was  going to be politically important.  On the other hand Guido has to give full credit to John Prescott, who clearly does get it:

I must say I find the internet sensation caused by Dan Hannan’s speech to the European Parliament remarkable. Normally, an obscure Eurosceptic Tory MEP would not get any coverage for a rant against the Prime Minister in the mainstream media. And it proved to be the case. None of the networks or the newspapers originally covered it. But once he uploaded it onto YouTube it took off. Firstly it got up to 30,000 hits after being promoted by Guido Fawkes on his website. Then it exploded in the US once it was put on the Drudge Report site. The mainstream media were then forced to cover it and it has now been seen by more than a million people. I think this is a perfect example of the power shift away from the mainstream media to the internet. Instead of having to get past the editorial filter of journalists and editors, people are starting to set the news agenda and the hacks are having to catch up.

All the left-wing think-tanks and pressure groups have been having seminars and meetings on how to harness the internet “after Obama”.  Maybe they should have looked to Ron Paul instead, he had a clear libertarian political message that he articulated via the internet.  The internet insurgency shook up the Republican party during the U.S. primaries when Ron Paul, then a little known anti-War Republican running for President, shocked the U.S. political establishment by raising over $4 million online – in one day.  It was not for nothing that his campaign song was “Google Ron Paul”.

Hannan’s first choice for U.S. president was the libertarian Republican, not really surprising considering Hannan and Carswell are two of the most libertarian leaning Conservative politicians.  If you read their book “The Plan“, you will see they both get the internet and the effect it will have on politics.  Right now some 1 1/4 million people have “Googled Dan Hannan”…

Anyway, I wonder if he mentions in his book about the time when I was called by security to the front of the department’s building to deal with a tramp. I turned up to discover security refusing to let in a man dressed in a thick overcoat, scarf, gloves and a wooly Russian cap that covered his face and ears. I turned round to security and had to tell them:

“That’s no tramp, that’s my junior minister – Chris Mullin.”