We started off by talking about an environmental protester who today claimed that police tried to recruit her as a paid spy to inform on her organisation. Plane Stupid member Matilda Gifford said police told her that they have a network of informants inside protest organisations, which they tried to persuade her to join. This has been going on for donkey’s years. There was an old saying that if there were ten trade unionists in one room one of them would be providing information to MI5. It appears the security services are still doing this, which doesn’t surprise me. I’ll say now what I said in the eighties; if the police would redirect their time and resources into putting more bobbies on the beat rather than trying to infiltrate harmless environmentalist organisations we would all be better off.
We also took a look back on the budget. I was joined by the saintly Vincent Cable MP for Twickenham, treasury spokesman for the Lib Dems and the all round ‘voice of reason’ at the moment when it comes to the economy. He gave his thoughts which I’m sure most of you broadly agreed with. I was in favour of the budget, in fact, I thought they perhaps should have put income tax up a bit more. Not sure as many of you would agree with me about that.
More from me next week