Are you siting comfortably ? Well the Defence Chiefs certainly are.

This entertaining exchange took place yesterday in the House of Commons- the evidently underemployed Dai Davies (Blaenau Gwent, Independent) Hansard asked the Secretary of State for Defence .. " how much his Department has spent on the purchase of new chairs for its main building in the last two years; what the unit cost was of each type of chair purchased; and what best value criteria were applied.

Up strode Kevan Jones (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; North Durham, Labour) and failed to tell him ..

In the last two years, the MOD has spent £17,687 on new chairs. I am withholding the unit costs of the individual items as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice commercial interests. The terms of the contract require the contractor, Modus Services Ltd., to seek to obtain best value for money in its purchasing.

The MOD haveType45 destroyers but no missiles, Aircraft carriers have been delayed, Tranche 3 of Typhoon is shortly to be cancelled, FRES is a dead duck, troops are desperately short of helicopters in Afghanistan, MOD housing is a costly decaying shambles, Chinook purchase is till a confusd and confusing miasma , Bowman radio , overweight, over budget ....

.... and the MOD HQ spent £740 per month on new chairs.

Glad to see we are getting our spending priorities right.


Nothing new here though the Daily Mail had a story - "

Fears of Government over-spending have been fuelled today as a row broke out - over the cost of new chairs billed to be the most comfortable seats in the world.

The Ministry of Defence bought 3,000 Aeron chairs, billed as the most comfortable seats in the world, as part of a £350 million refurbishment plan.

That was 5 years ago on 12 July 2004 and the Telegraph took the story up as well.

Thanksgiving. US Embassy in Kabul is bombed

A suicide car bomb has exploded about 200 yards (The Times says 60 m) outside the main entrance to the U.S. Embassy in an attack against a nearby American convoy. The latest in over 130 suicide bomb attacks this year.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayub Salangi says one person was killed and six wounded in the attack. The city's head of criminal investigations told reporters that four had died in the bombing and Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman of the health ministry, says the attack killed four people and wounded 18 others.

The U.S. Embassy was hosting a Thanksgiving Day footrace, and Americans and other Westerners were entering the embassy compound at the time of the explosion. Today is the last day of the visit by the United Nations security council delegation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai (shortly due for election) sharply criticised the international community effort in Afghanistan at a news conference with the secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

"We haven't accepted the international community so our lives would get worse," he said. "we accepted them so our lives would get better. We can accept some destruction – even some civilian casualties – if we have hope for the future of security and peace... but this fighting can't be the only way forever."

He has also criticized the detention of hundreds of suspects for years without trial at Bagram air base and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Suicide bomb attack on Italian troops on Saturday

The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on a team of Italian soldiers building a bridge in a town near Kabul on Saturday.

Three schoolchildren are among six civilians killed. An Italian soldier was killed and 11 people, including three other Italian troops, were injured in the attack west of Afghanistan's capital.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the scene of the attack, said the children had gathered around the engineers and soldiers as they often gave out sweets and chocolate.

Moshiri said the injured Italians had been working on a bridge "for four days consecutively when this suicide attack took place around 10 [0530 GMT] this morning".

"They were surrounded by local children who were curious about what was going on.

"It's also normal for soldiers or engineers or reconstruction workers to give out sweets and chocolates," she said.

TOTAL POLITICS ... Vanguards in the fight for FREEDOM ? A tangled web of political personae, patrician's PR co, opaque funding and er... dog shi

If you are an elected representative of Local Government a new magazine will have fluttered through your letter box recently it's called TOTAL POLITICS and it has a website . Tis part of the TOTAL POLITICS website which has undergone a dramatic and recent change.

They have a Team. They describe it as ,"a mixed bunch from across the political spectrum" ..you can say that again, Editor is Sarah McKinley who many may not recognise as the daughter of Mr McKinley the Labour MP and the man who gave the murdered Dr Kelly such a nasty grilling when he appeared before the House of Commons Committe shortly before his violent, untimely, unexpected and (for the Government) very convenient death.

Their Editorial Board covers a large church, Iain Dale, blogiste, wannabe Conservative MP and it appears "Publisher" of Total Politics, plus Paddy Pantsdown , Hi Pooh Bah at one time of Bosnia and long term MI6 agent, and joined by felloe Liberal and leadership contender Chris Huhne . The spooky Ian Denis McShane of shifting nationality, name and alliances. The night time caller of David Davis (ex MP) , would be litigant of Andy Burnham the lissome ex Home Office lawyer, doe eyed scarf adjusting Shami Chakrabarti all appeared on the previous website as major names behind this project (whose funding seems somewhat unclear - well totally opaque) .

Guto Hari former BBC correspondent who just joined Fleishman-Hillard Inc., one of the world's biiggest PR agencies whose junior staff member staff Paul Borge quietly registered David Davis's website and rather rapidly switched it to DD when unmasked by blogiste (unmentioned by the incurious press / TV) but roundly criticised by the teenage hooligans who "comment" on Guido's website.

Which many considered odd because Fleishman-Hillard's , Regional Director Kevin Bell, ( ex M. Thatcher groupie and who helped Zoe Aylward on with her T shirt in DD's failed and futile leadership campaign - DD got 32.4% of the straight vote against Cameron) spoke at the conference organised by Intellect , ID Cards: Towards Procurement and Implementation a one-day conference held in London on June 6, 2005 - the Title of his talk was "Achieving public acceptance". THEN he was talking about ID cards ...now it must be David Davis who he is trying to make publicly acceptable.

Norsould we forget New Media Intelligence who worked for DD on the leadership campaign ...where does all the money come from ? They also feature Iain Dale on their client list ....Westminster Conservatives and the Westminster Council Conservative Group.

It must of course be remembered that David Davis voted for the 2nd Reading of the Governments Identituy Card Bill on 20th December 2004 before they all went away for Christmas 20.12.2004 . Along with the Conservative frotn bench.

Wannabe Green MP for Brighton and Euro MP for the Greens Caroline Lucas, Lord Trimble, the retired Prod leader for many years and now put out to grass, and SNP MP Angus McNeil who raised th e question of slimy liar Lod Levy and Cash for Coronets, and the odd Conservative leader of Westminster Council and now Chairman of the Local Government Association ("excellent") Sir Simon Milton who David Davis points out in his Guardian piece today has called for " local councils to scale back the overzealous use of local surveillance powers ", under RUPI.

Short cut to Gemma Garrett's blog and her collected speeches here

QUOTABLE QUOTES by Total Politics Groupies

"There is no question that David Davis is doing this out of principle," Daily Telegraph 15/6/08

Shani Chakrabarti, Liberty (Believers in freedom not the place where you can buy fabulous pashminas that look really, really good when it's cold and you've gt 2 minutes with somebody from Al Jazeera on St Stephen's Green)

"There is no question that David Davis is doing this out of principle," Daily Telegraph 15/6/08

"During my six months working for DD in 2005 Tony Blair's 90 day detention proposals I saw first hand how passionately he feels about this issue. It's not a matter of political conviction, it's almost as if it is in his DNA. He genuinely thinks that extending pre charge detention to 42 days will make the country less safe. It will give the terrorists a propaganda victory." Iain Dale on his Blog June 12th .. but voting as he did (and the Conservative Opposition) for 28 days in the slammer without charge, is ...well....er ... OK I suppose.

"It's like something out of Italian comic opera,'' Labour lawmaker Denis MacShane on BBC News 24.... DD gets the doe eyed maiden in the end ?

DD groupie Sir Simon Milton hit the news today as Chairman of the LGA complaining about surveillance under RUPI being used to chase up dog foulers and Hey Presto ! there is Rentaquote Shami Chakrabarti taking time off from adjusting her scarf in wild support of the DD's other friend , "This is about using quite serious powers that are meant for crime, not minor matters." BBC Online

....as for Spy Blog ... we haven't quite worked out where they fit in yet. .... why should they, spies never do.