Quite the most inexplicable thing about that Commons vote against a strike in Syria was that it flew in the face of quite specific advice from the former prime minister Mr Tony. That MPs felt they had the right to ignore his entreaties just shows how much the rot has set in. For all that, there are people who still value his view on things, and thus we find the sage of the age scheduled to impart those wisdoms to the less truculent sorts he will find at the World Travel & Tourism Council shindig in Seoul next week. It will, says the WTTC, be "fascinating to hear his first-hand experience of the economic and social contribution" of the travel industry. And it will. And so it should. Fascination of the Mr Tony kind hardly ever comes cheap.
The weekend, meanwhile, allowed time to reflect on Scotland Yard's apparent reluctance to come clean about whether or not its officers had the late Bernie Grant MP under surveillance. You will recall that his widow Sharon Grant, stung in to action by Guardian revelations about past undercover operations, has asked for info under the Freedom of Information Act. The Yard is considering availing itself of a legal exemption. A figure with much knowledge of how things work at Scotland Yard considers the Met's position. "If there was improper surveillance of Bernie while he was a sitting MP then that is a matter of major importance and heads would have to roll," says our confidant. Potentially much worse than the illicit recording of Sadiq Khan MP, who was bugged while talking to a constituent. "That was the recording of a conversation with a terrorist suspect who just happened to be talking to an MP in the confines of a prison. Ongoing intelligence-gathering in respect of an elected member would need to have been authorised at the very highest level in the Met and would almost certainly have been shared with the security services." No wonder there is head scratching about what to do.
There has also been time to reflect on the fissures that affect the Greens, particularly in Brighton where its representatives control the municipality. This has been onerous for them of late, with much division caused by conflicting views about such issues as how to deal with a strike by refuse collectors. Councillors took a hard line, and were cast as venal hard hearts. Activists sympathetic to the protesting staff hung their heads in shame. But life must go on, and that was why a decision was apparently reached to bring in relationship counsellors to address the situation whereby Green had set face against Green. The local Argus, which enjoys a ringside seat, notes: "Some insiders have labelled the groups 'watermelons', for those on the left, and 'mangoes' for those with more centrist views." Well, they did promise to be different.
Great men predominate today, for there is a sighting of Lord Archer. Our hero gives the benefit to the County Magazine, which covers fashion, holidays and posh people at charity balls in the west country. "I can still do the west country accent," he tells interviewer Emma Dance. And then he does, perhaps not terribly well. "I suspect it's not something he does very often," the journo says. He's far too busy, pleasuring himself by checking reader ratings of his books on the internet. "He shows me some reader ratings on the tablet sitting beside him," writes Dance. "One of them has a 4.7 out of 5. 'It's the highest I have ever had,' he says, a note of pride edging into his voice." Humble, self-effacing as ever. At least he didn't wave a royalty cheque.
Finally, TV mourns a pioneer, for there was no equal to the late Sir David Frost when it came to maintaining pole position in a perilous profession. Consider the programmes he fronted – The Frost Report, Frost over The World, The Frost Interviews, The Nixon/Frost interviews, Breakfast with Frost. Spot the common factor? Frost's name in lights. His long-time BBC editor Barney Jones once told a Coventry Conversations audience at that town's university that the master insisted on this so he could not be sacked without the programme going down too. Ever the strategist; always the smartest guy in the room.
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