Bless. I always get a frisson watching politicians apologise. Like being caught watching porn by your nan.

Your nan caught you watching pr0n?

I issued a full and frank apology at the time, and we have both agreed the matter is closed.

Thanks for sharing sir!

Looks like Cameron needs to be doing some more backtracking on this. Look at what the Tory boys up north are up to: http://northofwestminster.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/tories-north-south-hizb-ut-tahrir-divide-call-for-their-banning-in-the-south-promote-them-in-the-north/

at least Cameron apologised… a display of values that no one on the Government benches could live up to…(just try to imagine Brown apologising for something he himself had got wrong rather than someone 500 years ago!)

Don’t forget that dependable adage for the aspiring journalist: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story line.

I wonder what were the contributions to this debacle of Andy Coulson, Conservative director of communications, previously editor of the News of the World, and Michael Gove, shadow education minister. It’s difficult to believe that Cameron was making the running on his own initiative all alone.

Let’s not worry about the substantive issue, eh?

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/30/ed-balls-is-not-fit-to-be-secretary-of-state-for-schools/

At prime ministers’ questions last week, he said the schools had received funds from a government Pathfinder fund aimed at combating violent extremism.

But it later emerged the money had come from a different government fund.

Oh, that’s all right then! Trebles all round! You don’t think that the thrust of the story was more ‘Government giving money to schools linked to Hizb-ut-Tahrir’ rather than ‘from a specific fund’? Seriously, as a killer argument ‘you got the wrong pathfinder scheme’ is beyond feeble.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is not banned in the UK, denies links to terrorism and says it opposes violence.

“The Conservatives have said they will ban the organisation if they win power.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8387063.stm

That straightens out the position of the Conservatives except that I think we should know how many other organisations the Conservatives intend to ban.

And the central issue of taxpayers money being used to fund organisations like Hizb-tu-Tahrir is, of course, lost in all this. Sure he got the name of the fund wrong, a mistake that should not have happened, but the voters that give a damn about the future of this country will still understand that their money goes to fund those that support the dismantling of our political culture.

Why does the Left not seem to care?

Ah yes, “linked to”, the favourite catchphrase of the smear merchant.

the right doesn’t care about HuT prospectively running schools either. The attack on labour was one on the PVE scheme. no follow up questions this week. and there won’t be any in future.

Under Gove and Cameron’s plans for school vouchers etc it will be far, far easier for HuT types to set up a school in a far more direct way. They say they’ll ban HuT but they probably won’t – if they did they’d have to ban scores of other organisations.

the tories are massively in favour of faith schools, extreme or otherwise – both Cameron and gove send their children to faith schools. If you think Cameron brought this up becaues of a passion for faithless schools or even because of a commitment ot govt money not going to religious types ith dodgy views, you’re barking.

At least they’ll now think twice before recycling dodgy info from the Islamophobic ‘think tank’ the CSC, the source of the error, which has got to be a good thing for this country in general.