An astute reader just sent us this – they spotted Ashcroft’s jet parked at Lyall Bay on Saturday August 30 and managed to snap a quick pic. The photo below is from TV3’s coverage. Looks like the same plane.
Maybe Ashcroft was meeting with the SFO, who leaked information to him, which he later passed on the Key.
And then the SFO can say that they didn’t leak the details to Key.
You guys are free to post on whatever you like, and I say this at the risk of having my comment deleted, but there have now been 15 posts at least since Helen Clark alleged the SFO leaked to National without a mention of it — the biggest story of Monday.
a_y_b,
Do you think this information — whose plane was where at what time — is more important than the PM’s allegations?
[lprent: It isn’t a news site – it is an opinion site. Posters write on what they consider is interesting. Same as the other sites. What was it – DPF on kiwiblog did 34 posts on Winston last week. Almost obsessional. ]
he must have been there to meet with the SFO, he then jetted to Auckland to meet with John Key. Classic C/T, right from the play book etc etc etc.
Can you actually see the numbers on the tail of the plane in the bottom photo? I am assuming each air craft has unique numbers/identifying marks on the tail/wings?
Actually, it carried Owen Glenn to also see JK in Auckland so he could back the winner with a $500K donation.
Rumour also has it that Lord Lucan and Shergar were also present.
My point is that he was evidently in Wellington as well as Auckland. I suspect there is someone out there to whom that information might be useful. Let’s wait and see eh? 😉
What is the requirement for large donations these days under the EFA. 2 weeks to report to the electoral commission. There is also a cap on overseas donations as well.
A secretive conservative political funder jets into at least two NZ airports…and secret payments to political parties are top of the agenda at the moment…I certainly find this intriguing news…
Of course, maybe he was just in Welly to visit the zoo. And Te Papa.
The photo tells us that he left Wellington soon after 8.48 AM, Saturday 30th August, likely for Auckland.
Given that 8.48AM (~ + 30 min) is a pretty inhospitable time of day, the question arises how long had he been in Wgtn. up till then.
Long enough to watch the Owen Glenn affaire break, catch up with Wgtn-based National party apparatchiks, and hand over the number of a Swiss bank account ?
Who else was on that plane .. Crosby & Textor ? Conservative Party Central Office ?
lp, I believe the limit on overseas donations is $1,000. I very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew all the way to New Zealand, and then onto Wellington, to give a secret one thousand dollar cheque.
I thought Labour was running the line that National had a secret stash of many millions of dollars. Suddenly the line is that they’re short of money and need to take money from foreign billionaires illegally. In Chris Trotter’s words, that is an example of “projection”. Just because Labour takes really big pots of money from foreign billionaires, and tries to cover up its coalition partners doing likewise, doesn’t mean National is doing it.
Tim Ellis – I also very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew to other side of the world just to have a general chat about british politics as John Key claims.
here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.
hs: Yes – but on the other hand Labour are implementing policy and promising more of the same careful management that they have been doing since 1999. NRT was bemoaning that in this post.
Labour don’t quite have the credibility gap that the Nay’s have after the abrupt policy changes over the last few years. So far what we’re hearing from the Nay’s is at best incoherent. Sounds like an choir singing from different songbooks.
Hope you guys don’t mind me pinching the images (let me know if you do and I’ll remove them). I think the more interesting thing here is how Key supposedly believes in climate change now but is still more than willing to welcome his rich mates who come to him aboard luxury corporate jets: http://newzblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/planespotting/ .
Grow up, illuminatedtiger. By the same argument Helen Clark, who wants to lead the world on climate change, welcomed her “rich mate” Owen Glenn, who actually donated large amounts of money both to her own party and a coalition partner. Where do you think Owen Glenn lives? I’ll give you a clue: not New Zealand. How do you think he arrived in New Zealand? I’ll give you another clue: he didn’t swim here.
The suggestion about an anthology of prostitutes is part of a joke I heard years ago:
A group of specialists in collective nouns was in bar an observed such a group of professionals and came up with the following:
A jam of tarts
A flourish of strumpets
An anthology of English pros
hs it seems like your favourite tactic is telling others what to do. in the meantime while the victims of your overbearing assertions are figuring out your fallacies you have netly evaded the issue. Key does say he is going to win the election when everybody else plainly knows that he wont. in the meantime he offers no policy and and a whole parcel of obfuscatory meaningless trivial garbage that says nothng and I suppose that is a reflection of his intellect. I say that because we know what his agenda is. His party is the party of those who believe they are HARD DONE BY and now believe it is their right to grab everything by force instead of waiting in turn for a fair distribution of society’s fruits. take three thorazine and go to bed.
1. Thorazine is no longer available in NZ
2. I can’t remember one instance of either Key or Clark saying they were going to win the election.
3. You are a clearly a deluded moron
I think I know what Ashcroft was doing here. Hasn’t Key been wanting to buy a private jet for a while now?
hs:
“Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?”
I believe your last comment to randal proved that yes, it can be. Don’t you have some pretend patients to attend to?
[Tane: And banned for a month for your smears. Such a pity, we’d just started linking to you too…]
[lprent: Looks like he didn’t like getting linked to this morning. I put this comment on his post about getting banned. I was wondering why he’d gotten himself banned – obviously was better to be a martyr.
Dave that is bullshit. You got banned because you wrote a smear against the site or a writer on it. Moreover based on this post I’d guess that you repeated an unsubstantiated, unproven smear by that pathetically technical incompetent Whale.
You have lied all of the way through this post. Why comes to mind. I’d guess this little effort comes because I actually linked to one of your posts this morning.
Are you having to re-establish you credentials. You know exactly what our policy is about smearing the posters or the site. You’ve been putting comments up there for long enough.
]
“here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?”
A few policies have been released, which is a few more than the Labour Party – unless you can show me where to find the links to current policy on Labour’s website.
“It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The thing on top of the tail appears to make it a Falcon 900, which is a variation of the 50.
I saw a red van parked outside the brothel on Wakefield st today. Trevor Mallard has a red van – must have been him eh…. The number plate was different and it wasn’t the same model van that Trevor has but I’m so sure it was him because I wish it was….
Do I get a [standard-super-snoop] chocolate fish now ?
first things first…where is the national party policy besides…”I am like Barack Obama” and “what is the SFO number” and “how much money can I screw out of this rich Pom withour being busted?”
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key ”
I’d imagine that ayb will take the SP option here – simply ignore the comments and pretend the post he made doesn’t exist.
Besides, neither of them could possibly talk about Clark’s allegations regarding the SFO. Word on the street is that Helen can do no wrong. It’s election year, you see.
dave got banned for suggesting that the site was run from the 9th floor. That is an allegation that we’ve had for a while along with various attributions for contributors or that it is run from the NZLP. It isn’t correct as stated in the About.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About. We can’t do much about the bloated ego’s allegations because of our anonymity policy. That requires we neither confirm or deny for exactly the same reasons that the US does about nuclear weapons.
As for the plane. a_y_b described why this post was here
If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.
I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.
Last time I post here. This blog has become 1984, where yesterday is rewritten to prove tomorrow is correct. Its really a polite way of saying what I can’t say without getting this post deleted.
[lprent: Please promise. It’d make me so happy because you contribute buggerall, and I have to read them. ]
It’s so strange how it’s never smart people who have the type of trouble sweetd describes above. Smart people seem to be able to discuss issues on this site from all sorts of points of view without being censored.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About.
I’m not trying to be pedantic lpren, I just want to clear something up, a language thing.
In the context of trying to prove something you call Whale “ineffectual”. Calling him “ineffectual” you are saying something very different than if you said ‘He’s barking up the wrong tree’. It comes down to is he failing to prove it or is there noting he can prove?
I don’t really care either way, but this subject has been hotly debated and denied, people banned etc ever since the Happy New Year post.
Cyber-Santa came a little late to The Standard this year but we’re certainly not complaining – evidently we’ve got a New Year’s present instead.
He and the techno-elves have moved us to a brand spanking new server cluster that should give us plenty of breathing room and make those pesky traffic congestion problems we were having a thing of the past.
Seriously though, it wasn’t really Santa. Just like James Bond apparently we have our very own M and it’s him we have to thank instead.
We’re still secretly hoping for the pimped out Austin Aston Martin but this should tide us over in the meantime. Thanks M!
Next time Key wants to meet unwelcome wealthy foreign donors, for gongs, Cash-for-Honours or otherwise, he should just take a leaf out of Mike Williams book and meet them in the South of France. The weather, Languedoc and Lobster Thermador are so much nicer than in Cibo’s….
About the only thing that can be noted as being unequivocal in this thread is that there is no visual evidence, to the readers of this blog, that the two aircraft shown in the two photos above are the same aircraft, since the one shown taking off is too fuzzy.
Ashcroft owns a company (Flying Lion) that owns a Falcon 900 registered VP-BMS. All I can really tell from the photo at the top of this page is that the aircraft shown parked doesn’t appear to have that registration and appears to be a different aircraft (different number of windows). Since I can’t actually read the tail number I don’t actually know who owns that aircraft.
Perhaps the original poster can read the number better from the (presumably) larger photo they were originally sent?
Come on lp, give me a break! I understand your reasons for making standard authors anonymous and I don’t care where they come from, but comparing your reasoning to the US neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is pretty ludicrous. A simple “we don’t have to, and we’re not gonna” would suffice.
As for the plane, I don’t like visiting whale’s site (call me pompous, but I think the language and tone he uses is a bit excessive) but if the second plane photographed in Auckland really is Michael Ashcroft’s plane, then the one that appeared at the Standard in Wellington clearly isn’t.
The one at the Standard has fourteen windows, versus twelve in the one that Whale says is Ashcroft’s plane. They have different numbers, different livery, and the Standard’s one is longer. According to a google search, others in the past have identified Ashcroft’s plane registration number as VP-BMS, which is the aircraft in Whale’s picture. The one pictured here clearly doesn’t have that registration number.
So it looks like there isn’t any evidence that Ashcroft came to Wellington, based on this picture. I don’t know anything about airplanes, apart from how to fasten my seatbelt and fall asleep before the hostesses try and put revolting food trays in my lap, but I’d be happy owning either of those planes. As an aside, wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if it turned out that the owner of the Wellington plane did actually meet a New Zealand politician while in Wellington?
Details details details. Such unnecessary things in the world of perception is reality. The blurry makes the clarity in the hands of the spins. Perhaps the plane belongs to Owen Glenn?
Whale has a picture comparison that is easier to play ‘spot the difference’ between the stated model that is owned and the clearer picture as displayed here in Wellington.
burt: You’re correct and incorrect. The girlfriend keeps criticizing my use of language.
What I meant was that there are certainly union members, definitely NZLP members (me for instance), probably green members, maybe feminists, etc writing on this site. Whale has proved that this is the case for unionists, although why he didn’t just look at the About which implicitly says that is beyond me. The trade unionists have been the heart of the labour movement for a long time.
Whale’s main thesis is that the site is run by one or more of EPMU, NZLP and/or 9th floor. That he hasn’t proved. He is wrong in his basic assumption because the site is run and paid for by me – as my credit card shows each month. I’ve stated that many times and I do it so the left has a place to post and talk about issues. It is a bonus that we can also get them discussed by people from all over the political spectrum, I think that is useful, and try to maintain that attribute of the site. Obviously Whale thinks I’m lying so I think he is a fool because that is what you see in the comments on the site.
His second thesis is that the posts are written from work by various contributors. There even I have limits. They aren’t written from parliament IP’s because I’d see that. Most of the large posts are written out of work hours from their log histories and the scheduled times. A lot of the smaller ones are written at are what a roughly break times. I wrote quite a long one today at work in small breaks over a hour or so while I was waiting for things to happen.
Am I going to bother to prove any of this? Absolutely not because the only way to do it is to look at the full logs, and that would identify not only the posters but also the commentators – see the Policy.
Take the blogs as they are written by the writers. They will use material from other people. The material they are written from turns up in the mailboxes from all over the place (I get a lot which I pass on to the mailing list), links to other sites, speculative ideas, post suggestions, photos, PDF’s, etc. It is a way for people to get things aired in public.
Am we going to confirm or deny peoples identities – nope. It’d be pretty easy even for a incompetent like Whale to simply work through a list of politically active leftie people (there aren’t that many in NZ). So we don’t discuss identity, and I don’t even know who most of them are in real life. They are just gmail addresses.
The bloated ego can keep jerking off in his number inflated corner of the blogosphere. He is ineffectual in proving his speculations and will continue to be so because even I can’t prove them true or false, and I run the site. The site was set up that way because that made it impossible to hack it and to break into peoples real identities. That is why the blog posters here can operate with a degree of freedom that will not impact back onto their real life. All of Whales crap is just smear designed to detract from the content of the posts using an irrelevant speculation that is impossible for him to prove and impossible for me to disprove. Besides it gives the pathetic bugger something to write about, and he really needs it as his writing is appalling – sort of like the Truth on P and with about the same level of content.
But if his speculations get repeated here even by inference on this site – I’m going to boot people permanently and with extreme malice. I’m tired of it, it is only used to try to distract from a post or comments, and it is a waste of bandwidth that I’m paying for. Besides I could do to reduce server loadings.
The little stats server here runs noon-noon Noon-midnight page views are just below the page views for the whole of yesterday. Yesterdays page views were a record. Throwing idiots off the system may lessen the load – it is cheaper than the next server upgrade.
“If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.”
You can’t see the difference, therefore it must be his plane?
Like I said, it’s election year. You NZLP activists will try anything, won’t you.
“I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.”
There was a little matter of the medals that were returned. But I suppose that doesn’t make a good book.
Honestly, you need to be more objective, if you can find the time between pretending nobody’s noticed Clark smearing the SFO.
Thank you so much for promoting my Blog. I might actually go up a few places in the blogosphere because of you. I am currently number 35 whereas your hero Slippery John is number 54. Not bad for a single blogger only out to inform people and give them some real news for a change.
About the conspiracy thing you seem so hung up on let me enlighten you about the terms you use so loosely and erroneously.
So when John Key and other people from National secretly meet with Lord Ashcroft who is known for his right-wing secret funding, who is known for supporting secret donations, who is a ruthless wheeler dealer and who helped Howard change election laws to make undisclosed donations possible and we only found out because a journalist actually did his job, the above synonyms apply.
Fact no 1. Lord Aschroft came to Auckland
Fact no 2. John Key and Lord Ashcroft met
Fact no 3. They tried to keep it secret
Facts combined = Conspiracy
We don’t know what they conspire about but two powerful men meeting secretly with a known penchant for wheeling dealing and secrecy spells a conspiracy.
Do we know if they are conspiring something criminal or something which would be disapproved of by the general public? No we don’t but we do know that politics often are about back room deals and the deception of the voting public.
From the fact that Lord Ashcroft has a history of secret donations and John Key and National through another bit of intrepid civil journalism we do know that the like to keep secrets and do not want the voter to know their real agenda. What we don’t know is what that secret agenda is.
So in order to point out a “conspiracy” we do not have to prove what it is that the conspirators are conspiring about. Just two or more people keeping secrets for reasons only known to them is a conspiracy. The fact is that News 3 caught a politician, who wants to be trusted and voted for, doing something he wanted to keep secret from the people he wants to vote for him.
When an event occurs and it is clearly the result of people planning and conspiring to perpetrate this event and a theory about why and how this could have happened without a sound criminal and crimescene investigation is announced as the truth without actual proof as to their involvement than that is a Conspiracy theory.
When a perpetrator or perpetrators are accused and even in light of the impossibility of them having been involved in the way the theorists claim than their conspiracy theory becomes a “mad Conspiracy theory”.
When it becomes clear that their theory falters in just about every single claim they make and they still hold on to that theory you are looking at “crazy Conspiracy nutters”.
The 911 truth movement is a movement of millions of people around the world who come from an amazing different variety of walks of live. We don’t profess to know the truth. We are in search of the truth. That is a big difference.
What we do know is that the Anthrax used in the Anthrax attacks after the 911 Attacks was a US military grade weaponised strain only produced in one location in the US. Fort Derrick. So it could not have been 19 hijackers or other “terrorists” who send this to News paper outlets and two vehemently anti war Democratic senators.
What this group has been able to prove is that the chemical signature of Nano thermite (a military quality incendiary and explosive used to blow up buildings) and nano sized iron spheres indicating a far higher temperature than was possible with Kerosene and office fires was abundant in the dust of WTC 1, 2 and 3
What this group has been able to prove is that the biggest crime scene ever in New York was destroyed in an unprecedented fashion and much to the distress of the police, fire-fighters and other crime investigation professionals.
What we have been able to establish that a crime has been committed but it could not have been done by 19 hijackers with box cutters.
So in order to find out who perpetrated the atrocities on that day we urgently ask for a new and independent investigation based on science and sound criminal investigative protocols by a commission of professionals and surviving family members with subpoena power and proper funding so that we may find out what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and perhaps even who did it.
We want real answers and justice for the people who died on that day, who are still dying because of the dust and the toxins they breathed in on that day, for the family members, for the soldiers who died in the wars and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq who died and suffered as a result of the events of that day.
[lprent: Spam engine caught it. TE: I’ll give you leeway (this time) – but please do this size of ‘comment’ on your own site and link to it.]
Yes Tara – In fact it is likely that Ashcroft had his plane repainted between Auckland and Wellington.
When AYB’s whole post is based on a photo of a plane though, and that photo is shown to be of the wrong plane, the least one could do is to acknowledge the error.
“None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.”
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft is one of David Irving’s lizard men either, but in rational circles we put the burden of evidence on proof.
Unfortunately AYB doesn’t see the world the same way, or he would have retracted by now.
Comment for Burt and everyone – has anyone actually proved which plane Ashcroft flew to New Zealand in?
Just because he owns BMS, does that prove he came to NZ in it this time around? It could be sitting in a hangar with the engines being overhauled.
There is a very interesting point about the other aircraft, and BMS, that they both have the initial registration letters VP, which means a British colony, most VPs seem to be Carribean islands. Could be they are both registered in the same country.
I have consulted the source and he has replied as follows:
Swampy’s reference to VP-BMS and 12 windows seems to have been taken from googling by ‘Falcon 900’ and ‘Ashcroft’ to give
and similar sites.
VP-BZE photographed in Wellington appears to be a later, slightly extended model, consistent with what a billionaire ex-Treasurer of the British Conservative Party would fly.
The pool of executive jets in Aotearoa is very small so it is unlikely that another Falcon Dassault 900 would just happen to be passing through.
The CAA should have a record of aircraft movements.
Unfortunately, the resolution of the shot from TV3’s footage was not great enough to count the windows. Could someone nicely ask TV3 to count the windows on that jet if there are any better images ?
It is unlikely that he was travelling such great distances alone at considerable cost. Who else was on the plane ?
Could Key’s conservative reforms in NZ be a model for those mooted in the UK after the next election ?
Tara Swampy, those are interesting points. Except Lord Ashcroft is known as only having one plane, which is the one featured by TV3, and is consistent with the registration numbers. The plane in Wellington is not a Dassault Falcon 900. It is a Dassault Falcon 7x.
Now, given that we know Lord Ashcroft came to Auckland, and that his plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, with Ashcroft’s registration numbers, was filmed at Auckland airport, what do you think the chances are that a second plane, a different model, filmed at Wellington airport, also belonged to Ashcroft?
Pretty close to nil, I would say. I am not saying that Ashcroft didn’t go to Wellington. I have no idea whether he did. All I am saying is that the picture of the plane at Wellington airport, which appeared at the Standard, does not belong to Ashcroft, and is not any evidence that he was in Wellington, which is what the Standard claimed.
What the Standard’s picture does show is that a Falcon 7x was in Wellington. We know this is not Ashcroft’s jet. It is a very nice jet though, worth about US $40 million. I have no idea who owns it. Probably not a New Zealander. The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.
.. but I’m not clear that TV3 shows a 900 or a 7X taking off at Auckland with Ashcroft in it. It would be nice if someone could count the windows to prove or disprove it .. but at this point its a bit academic.
It is certainly interesting that he was around at the time of the Owen Glen saga which has yet to play itself out.
“Lord Ashcroft has become a significant figure in Australian politics having been identified as the single largest individual donor to any Australian political party during the Financial Year 2004/2005. The Australian Electoral Commission reported in February 2006 that Ashcroft (who gave his address as “House of Lords, Westminster, London”) had donated $1,000,000 to the Liberal Party in September 2004 just before the 2004 Federal election. It was the biggest single disclosed private donation in Australian political history.[10]
Over the last weekend of August 2008, Lord Ashcroft flew into Auckland, New Zealand in his private Lear Jet. While there he was confirmed to have met with senior figures from the New Zealand National Party; the main opposition party in the upcoming New Zealand general elections.”
VP-BMS is recorded at airliners.net and other sites as being owned by Flying Lion, a company owned by Ashcroft which according to some other sites “has only one major asset…a Falcon 900”.
Is there any recorded footage that positively identifies that BMS was here last weekend? It was here when Ashcroft came over in April in conjunction with the VCs.
1. There is no footage of which I am aware that BMS was here last weekend. It appears that he used BZE on this trip
2. Did Labour ask Ashcroft for a donation ?
Dunno. I don’t think they’d bother given his history.
“In the UK, he was a major donor to and Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague. His tenure was marked by a number of controversies: he was seen to pay little UK income tax due to his domicile in Belize; and he was at the centre of a debate about openness and accountability of political funding.
Unsubstantiated speculation about his business affairs was concluded when he pursued a libel action against The Times. This was settled on 9 December 1999, when The Times issued a statement that “[…] Litigation between the parties has been settled to mutual satisfaction, with each side bearing its own costs.”[8]
In 2004 he clashed with Conservative leader Michael Howard when he offered a £2m donation on the condition that it should go to his specified candidates, rather than into general Conservative Central Office funds.
In December 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.[9]
On 12th October 2007 he was accused by Labour MP’s for being allowed to heavily fund the local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. The Electoral Commission is investigating and changes to the rules are predicted.
During the “Cash for Peerages” controversy, on 31 March 2006 he was named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m.”
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The registration code VP-BZE was previously used by a Falcon 50 that has since been re-registered in the US.
Since the Falcon 7X is such a new aircraft (RTM about a year ago) the current usage BZE must be fairly recently registered in Bermuda.
“Welcome aboard Air Ashcroft, the Tories’ favourite airline”
David Hencke, The Guardian,
Saturday November 3 2007
When Gordon Brown does his weekly commute between Edinburgh and London, he flies with British Airways or BMI on scheduled flights crammed with other passengers. By contrast, when David Cameron touched down in Khartoum last November for a fact-finding mission to Darfur, his relaxation was due in no small part to a journey spent on the supple leather couches of a Falcon 900 private jet.
Courtesy of millionaire donor Lord Ashcroft, shadow cabinet ministers have enjoyed the use of the luxury jet on trips to Israel, China, Mali and the Czech Republic, according to information in the Parliamentary Register of Interests and declarations to the Electoral Commission.
The trips – 32 so far – have already attracted questions from Labour MPs and led to a complaint to the commission that Michael Ashcroft’s largesse has been significantly underestimated, possibly by as much as £500,000, in declarations of the perk’s value to the Tory frontbench.
Altogether shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles.
Analysis conducted for the Guardian reveals that Tory globetrotting has racked up 1,289 tonnes of carbon emissions. The biggest footprint was made by Michael Ancram when he was shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary, according to environmental consultants Carbon Footprint. Mr Ancram’s flights emitted 372 tonnes, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and Poland. The plane’s movements are being tracked by planespotters who logged it leaving Luton empty to fly to Khartoum to pick up Mr Cameron and return him to Britain. Indeed spotting the Ashcroft jet seems to have become a bit of cult on spotter blogs.
Lord Ashcroft’s generosity through his Bermuda-registered firm Flying Lion allows the Tory leader and his colleagues to travel in style to global hotspots. The jet features “supple leathers, glistening veneers and deep pile carpet as standard”, according to its French maker, Dassault.
It boasts a galley that “houses all the essentials for a fine dining experience 45,000ft in the air”. Comfort is generous, with a 7ft-wide cabin “so you can move easily with your head held high” and the jet has satellite communications and full conference facilities. For anyone thinking of investing in this kind of luxury, the typical asking price for a second-hand one is around $30m (£14.3m).
But it is the value placed on the flights that has drawn criticism. Mr Hague declares a trip on Lord Ashcroft’s jet to Belize, Brazil, the Falklands, Iceland and Panama as being worth £8,486, the equivalent of flying first-class. Yet to hire a Falcon with Premier Aviation would cost £55,000 for a one-way trip to New York alone.
Labour MP Tom Watson said: “There appears to be a huge discrepancy between, say, David Cameron’s declaration of £16,000 for the cost of his trip to Darfur and the cost of hiring a similar jet from a commercial firm. I got a quote of over £100,000 to hire a jet to go to Khartoum.”
Lord Ashcroft is relaxed about the plane and faintly amused that he is now the subject of interest among planespotters: “Am I becoming a cult figure like Madonna?” he said. He is also unrepentant about making it available to the Tory frontbench on a bigger scale in the future. “I hope it will be used by all the shadow cabinet over the next few years,” he added.
Lord Ashcroft is not the only person to make private aircraft available to the Tory frontbench. Mr Cameron’s carbon footprint is much higher if another 68 internal flights, including a short helicopter ride from Birmingham to Warwick, are taken into account. He has flown just over 3,700 miles on the Ashcroft jet.
The green cost
The Falcon burns about 3,000 US gallons of fuel to cover its maximum range of 4-5,000 miles. A Boeing 777 uses about 30,000 US gallons to cover the same distance. But the Boeing can carry 300 people, which significantly reduces its carbon footprint per passenger kilometre, the usual yardstick for emissions. If the Falcon flew with three passengers, then each would be responsible for 10 times as much pollution as those in the Boeing.
[lprent: Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. You’ll find that regardless of how interesting the article is at least a high proportion of the participants here will regard it as a waste of bandwidth. They usually start moaning after some repeated occourances, and I get involved.
Bugger – just found the first limit in google chrome – no dictionary. Switching back to firefox. ]
Tim, there’s no record of the Brazilian Air Force owning any Dassault Falcon aircraft. The nearest thing they have are three Learjets. They might have also used one of ten Embraers to fly the Minister in.
It’s the CIA doing a black bag secret rendition jobby. The GOP is worried that Colin Powell has gone completely off the reservation and was about to endorse Obama, see. So they’ve whisked him down here, and they’ve got the poor bugger tied to a chair with Judith bloody Collins in full on scold mode at him in 3 hr stretches.
Michael Ashcroft commissioned a programme of research, with the aim of building a clear picture of public opinion on the questions that would determine the outcome of the general election.
As well as measuring the true level of support for the parties he sought to establish the underlying attributes associated with each, and how these changed during the course of the election campaign. Crucially, he also aimed to establish whether the state of opinion in marginal constituencies reflected that in Britain as a whole.
…
including the biggest political poll ever conducted in Britain, with a sample of 10,000. This included:
* a tracking poll monitoring daily movements in opinion from January 2005 until the May election
* polls and focus groups in specific marginal constituencies around the country
* a national post-election ‘call-back’ survey to establish why people voted as they did
.. http://www.populuslimited.com/michael-ashcroft-case-study.html
During the run-up to the May 2005 general election, Michael Ashcroft became interested in political opinion polls. Using two respected polling companies, he decided to commission some research of his own. Once his polls had been analysed, they produced some fascinating findings and some valuable lessons for the Conservative Party.
He began to become interested in political polling in the autumn of 2004 at a time when he was already working to help Conservative candidates win and hold on to some of the most marginal seats up and down the country.
Initially, he concentrated his research in these key marginal seats but then, as his fascination with polling grew, he decided to conduct a vast poll of 10,000 voters (the usual size is 1,500 people) in order to produce the biggest ever poll in the UK on political attitudes. Initially, he did this out of self-interest but in July 2005 he published the findings for all to see.
Between mid January 2005 and the eve of polling day in May 2005, he also conducted a daily Americanstyle “tracker poll’ which he hoped would show how voters were responding to key Tory policies in the run-up to the general election.
Why is Michael Ashcroft considered an election winning expert?
Written by Mark Pack on 28th August 2007 ? 1:50 pm
Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there?s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.
Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.
But how good is Ashcroft?
Well, here?s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:
The national swing from Labour to Conservatives was 3.2 per cent, yet the swing in the seats which we supported was 3.8 per cent.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times by Michael Ashcroft, p.296
You read that right: by his own admission, all his expertise and money achieved was a paltry o.6 per cent extra swing.
Given the campaign I ran at the general election secured a Labour to Liberal Democrats swing that was 9.8 points above the national average, I guess that makes me 16.3 times better than Lord Ashcroft 🙂
Do drop me a line Michael; my consultancy rates would be very competitive?
By Rachel Sylvester
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/12/2007
Have your say Read comments
He has a powerful empire, a network of agents and a Caribbean hideaway. It is not surprising that some of David Cameron’s most senior allies refer to Lord Ashcroft, privately, as “Blofeld”.
# Andrew Gimson: Lord Ashcroft – reveal yourself
# Three Line Whip: The fag end of a Government
# Three Line Whip: Cameron and Brown, cat and mouse
The millionaire deputy chairman of the Conservative Party directs the operations of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Capturing Target seats, from his well-equipped suite of offices in Millbank Tower. The only thing missing is a white cat. The Tories’ presiding electoral genius pores over Sudoku puzzles instead.
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Yesterday, the Conservative leader defended Lord Ashcroft, at his monthly press conference, by saying that he is responsible for only four per cent of donations to the Tory party, far less than David Sainsbury or Lakshmi Mittal have given to Labour.
He was “happy”, he said, with the assurances he has been given that the peer’s tax and residency status are in order.
But Mr Cameron knows as well as anyone that the mud being thrown at Labour over sleaze will stick to all politicians in the end.
Every morning, as Tory strategists meet to discuss their battle plan, they ask whether they are missing anything damaging in their own affairs. They can be sure of one thing. When the spotlight does eventually move away from Gordon Brown and towards Mr Cameron it will linger long and hard on Lord Ashcroft.
# Three Line Whip: Optimism and the Olympics
# Brassneck: Mind your tone, Mr Cameron
Privately, senior figures around the Conservative leader have been worried about the party’s dependence on the peer for some time. As deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft is more powerful than ever.
He does not just give donations, he is also responsible for the party’s polling and target seat strategy. When the shadow cabinet is briefed on focus group or poll research, it is Lord Ashcroft who presents the results. That puts him in an extraordinarily powerful position.
The party may not be, as one senior Tory put it, a “wholly owned subsidiary of Ashcroft plc” but part of it has certainly been captured by his management team.
The concerns that first circulated when Mr Cameron took over are beginning to resurface. Senior Tories warn that the deputy chairman is running a “party within a party”. Some MPs mutter that he could be their leader’s Achilles’ heel.
Certainly, Lord Ashcroft is a generous benefactor. According to the Electoral Commission website, he has given almost £2.6 million to the Conservatives since 2003.
About half of this comes in the form of donations in kind – polling, focus group work, consultancy work and at one point last year, rather bizarrely, £5,927.88 for “bottle openers”.
The peer also frequently flies senior Tories around in his private jet – David Cameron, William Hague, Andrew Mitchell, Patrick McLoughlin and David Davis have all used it.
Recently, he paid for the Tory leader, and several shadow cabinet ministers, to attend the rugby world cup in Paris.
..snip..
On July 13 the London Times published two leaked foreign office documents. The first involved a telegram written in 1997 by the British high commissioner in Belize, Gordon Barker, cautioning against the appointment of Ashcroft to the chair of the Caribbean trade advisory group. It warned that the Belize government viewed him with “deep suspicion’ and remarked that rumors concerning his business deals cast a “shadow over his reputation that ought not to be ignored.’
This was followed by a 1994 report by a British foreign office adviser calling for tighter regulation of financial services in Belize and noting with some alarm that “low standards of regulation and supervision’ were attracting “those seeking to conceal proceeds of drug trafficking and other serious crime.’
Ashcroft’s response was allegedly to quash the report and solicit the British government to intervene on his behalf. Another document involved a letter from a local diplomat in 1996, Charles Drace-Francis, stating that Ashcroft made threats to the effect that he would “stir up trouble’ for Britain unless he were allowed to set up a branch of his Belize bank in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Four days later the Times disclosed that Mr. Ashcroft’s name appeared in a series of files kept by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as part of its investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering in Belize. It later transpired that cocaine was found on at least two ships sailing under the Belize “flag of convenience’ in 1994, under a shipping register in which Mr. Ashcroft had a 50 percent stake until earlier this year.
The attempted rebuttal to such charges by the Conservative Party Central Office, as well as the pro-Tory Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers, was far from emphatic. A statement by the US State Department to the effect that no conclusive proof had been established connecting Michael Ashcroft with money laundering and no specific concerns had been raised with either the British or Belize governments was released.
The Times then published an article which explained that Ashcroft had been index-numbered on the files of the DEA, a step taken only when serious suspicions exist. On the same day Peter Bradley, Labour MP for Wrekin, raised explicit allegations within Parliament. Utilising the legal immunity afforded under parliamentary privilege, Bradley stated that Ashcroft and his companies had been repeatedly mentioned in connection with money laundering by the DEA. Among the most incriminating examples was one document dated April 1994 with the heading: “Intelligence concerning possible air smuggling/money laundering activity undertaken by Michael Ashcroft.’
.. snip ..
The House of Commons has heard details from a series of documents linking Conservative treasurer Michael Ashcroft to drug trafficking.
Labour MP Peter Bradley used parliamentary privilege to read from files, which he said came from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the International Narcotics Bureau.
.. snip .. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/400078.stm
You’re a spammer of epic proportions. Cut and paste do not a thoughtful post make.
I see AYB hasn’t retracted this post yet, either. AYB, is Key still a bona fide member of the secret order of baby eating nine rich white men secretly ruling the world still?
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Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Both PM and deputy PM in action on foreign relationships, major climate report being released today, and DOC staff facing escalating threats. Both the PM and deputy PM are in action ...
The Auditor-General's investigators are to look into the National Party's complaints about taxpayer funding being used to underwrite KiwiBuild homes. ...
Ashcroft’s jet spotted in Wellington too 
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And your point is?
AYB: I’d have to agree with daveski here – what is your point? Perhaps you should add it..
Maybe Ashcroft was meeting with the SFO, who leaked information to him, which he later passed on the Key.
And then the SFO can say that they didn’t leak the details to Key.
You guys are free to post on whatever you like, and I say this at the risk of having my comment deleted, but there have now been 15 posts at least since Helen Clark alleged the SFO leaked to National without a mention of it — the biggest story of Monday.
a_y_b,
Do you think this information — whose plane was where at what time — is more important than the PM’s allegations?
[lprent: It isn’t a news site – it is an opinion site. Posters write on what they consider is interesting. Same as the other sites. What was it – DPF on kiwiblog did 34 posts on Winston last week. Almost obsessional. ]
he must have been there to meet with the SFO, he then jetted to Auckland to meet with John Key. Classic C/T, right from the play book etc etc etc.
Can you actually see the numbers on the tail of the plane in the bottom photo? I am assuming each air craft has unique numbers/identifying marks on the tail/wings?
Actually, it carried Owen Glenn to also see JK in Auckland so he could back the winner with a $500K donation.
Rumour also has it that Lord Lucan and Shergar were also present.
Hell, if I were a multisquillionaire coming on a flying visit to NZ, I would want to visit Wellington too 🙂
L
My point is that he was evidently in Wellington as well as Auckland. I suspect there is someone out there to whom that information might be useful. Let’s wait and see eh? 😉
What is the requirement for large donations these days under the EFA. 2 weeks to report to the electoral commission. There is also a cap on overseas donations as well.
A secretive conservative political funder jets into at least two NZ airports…and secret payments to political parties are top of the agenda at the moment…I certainly find this intriguing news…
Of course, maybe he was just in Welly to visit the zoo. And Te Papa.
I suspect that he landed in Wgtn to restock the jet’s kitchen with babies for the long flight back to the UK.
Looks like Labour needs a new bogeyman since the exclusive bretheren are oh so 2004.
It’s all part of the grand conspiracy
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Plan.jpg
The photo tells us that he left Wellington soon after 8.48 AM, Saturday 30th August, likely for Auckland.
Given that 8.48AM (~ + 30 min) is a pretty inhospitable time of day, the question arises how long had he been in Wgtn. up till then.
Long enough to watch the Owen Glenn affaire break, catch up with Wgtn-based National party apparatchiks, and hand over the number of a Swiss bank account ?
Who else was on that plane .. Crosby & Textor ? Conservative Party Central Office ?
Is that why Rodney was so studiously chewing his thumb on Parliamentary TV ?
Tara
I think you might enjoy this website.
http://aotearoaawiderperspective.wordpress.com/
It’s great for conspiracy theorists.
lp, I believe the limit on overseas donations is $1,000. I very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew all the way to New Zealand, and then onto Wellington, to give a secret one thousand dollar cheque.
I thought Labour was running the line that National had a secret stash of many millions of dollars. Suddenly the line is that they’re short of money and need to take money from foreign billionaires illegally. In Chris Trotter’s words, that is an example of “projection”. Just because Labour takes really big pots of money from foreign billionaires, and tries to cover up its coalition partners doing likewise, doesn’t mean National is doing it.
Can’t you guys do better ?
A number of substantive points have been raised.
Possibly donating some books for the Bookfair this weekend?
Remember to drop your old books in..
http://www.standrews.org.nz/dcm/events/bookfair.html
Tim Ellis – I also very much doubt that Lord Ashcroft flew to other side of the world just to have a general chat about british politics as John Key claims.
here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.
Ah ‘plane-spotting’ the rich-kid’s version of ‘train-spotting’, which is the posh-kid’s version of ‘car-spotting’, which is essentially what kids do.
Randal the only party that has fronted up with substantive policy to date is the Greens.
http://www.policy.net.nz
The rest are lagging behind badly and Labour is probably one of the worst offenders
So his plane was in Wellington. So what?
thats not the point hs. Keys says he is the pm in waiting so lets hear his POLICY. is that plain enough for YOU?
hs: Yes – but on the other hand Labour are implementing policy and promising more of the same careful management that they have been doing since 1999. NRT was bemoaning that in this post.
Labour don’t quite have the credibility gap that the Nay’s have after the abrupt policy changes over the last few years. So far what we’re hearing from the Nay’s is at best incoherent. Sounds like an choir singing from different songbooks.
Don’t froth Randal
Key has not said he is PM in waiting – he may be depending on the election result.
I’m sure more policy will roll out from all parties when the PM announces the election date.
You should also note that no one would have to be talking about NZF in the media if WP hadn’t lied to the public and parliament.
For policy released to date from the parties I do however recommend the site I linked to above.
http://www.policy.net.nz
Implementing policy – like what in the last 12 months ?
Hope you guys don’t mind me pinching the images (let me know if you do and I’ll remove them). I think the more interesting thing here is how Key supposedly believes in climate change now but is still more than willing to welcome his rich mates who come to him aboard luxury corporate jets: http://newzblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/planespotting/ .
Grow up, illuminatedtiger. By the same argument Helen Clark, who wants to lead the world on climate change, welcomed her “rich mate” Owen Glenn, who actually donated large amounts of money both to her own party and a coalition partner. Where do you think Owen Glenn lives? I’ll give you a clue: not New Zealand. How do you think he arrived in New Zealand? I’ll give you another clue: he didn’t swim here.
Captcha never fails: January transport
So Owen Glen flew to NZ privately then Tim?
Everyone of course has to fly but some do it more efficiently than others. Show me the proof that Glen didn’t arrive here aboard a public airliner.
Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?
Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?
Of course it could:
http://robinsod.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/i-been-busted/
[lprent: Link-whoring with elegance – completely in context (*sigh*). You’re almost as slippery as JK. ]
Just to add to conspiracy theories I was also in Wellington on Friday night, staying on the Club Floor of a major hotel.
However I can categorically state that I did not meet with Lord Ashcroft!!
All this post has succeeded in doing is make me throw away any liberal,left sympathising sentements I may of had.
I now have made a vow to tramp down the under priviged and exploit my workers untill I have enough cash to own and operate a plane like that.
I bet even a few of the wowsers on this site pictured themselves inside with a gaggle of hookers.
Crank:
Just make sure it runs of hydrogen 😉 .
However I can categorically state that I did not meet with Lord Ashcroft!!
Of course you didn’t – he thinks you’re a dick. (You should hear what he says about Farrar…)
Um, that’s an anthology of prostitutes (English pros)
That’s never the collective noun for sex workers.
Sounds about right to me. Me and Ashman pretty much did the collected works back in the day…
Source:
Wow it has gone pun-tastic all of a sudden. Though maybe Sod’s comment is more of a double entendre
A woman walked into a bar and asked for a double entendre. So the barman gave her one.
That’s very funny billy – now, would you care to exercise that wit back at our blog?
hs it seems like your favourite tactic is telling others what to do. in the meantime while the victims of your overbearing assertions are figuring out your fallacies you have netly evaded the issue. Key does say he is going to win the election when everybody else plainly knows that he wont. in the meantime he offers no policy and and a whole parcel of obfuscatory meaningless trivial garbage that says nothng and I suppose that is a reflection of his intellect. I say that because we know what his agenda is. His party is the party of those who believe they are HARD DONE BY and now believe it is their right to grab everything by force instead of waiting in turn for a fair distribution of society’s fruits. take three thorazine and go to bed.
Randal
1. Thorazine is no longer available in NZ
2. I can’t remember one instance of either Key or Clark saying they were going to win the election.
3. You are a clearly a deluded moron
Seeing as we’re telling jokes, how many anticlimaxes does it take to change a lightbulb?
Four.
Matthew, nice.
Thanks Billy, it was your one that motivated me to put it down.
I think I know what Ashcroft was doing here. Hasn’t Key been wanting to buy a private jet for a while now?
hs:
“Could this discussion be any more fatuous ?”
I believe your last comment to randal proved that yes, it can be. Don’t you have some pretend patients to attend to?
Actually – Glenn Arrived here in a boat…
A few of the VRWC were discussing a pirate style takeover complete with pirate flag and eye patches drunkely one night…
Unfortuantley it never went ahead…
Are you sure thats Lord Ashcrofts jet
it looks like this one, but this one is his actual jet – but its got more windows this ones got 12
[Tane: And banned for a month for your smears. Such a pity, we’d just started linking to you too…]
[lprent: Looks like he didn’t like getting linked to this morning. I put this comment on his post about getting banned. I was wondering why he’d gotten himself banned – obviously was better to be a martyr.
Dave that is bullshit. You got banned because you wrote a smear against the site or a writer on it. Moreover based on this post I’d guess that you repeated an unsubstantiated, unproven smear by that pathetically technical incompetent Whale.
You have lied all of the way through this post. Why comes to mind. I’d guess this little effort comes because I actually linked to one of your posts this morning.
Are you having to re-establish you credentials. You know exactly what our policy is about smearing the posters or the site. You’ve been putting comments up there for long enough.
]
Seeing as how we’ve resorted to lightbulb jokes….
How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Only one, but first and foremost the lightbulb has to WANT to change
“here’s a substantive point. JOhn Keys was all over the news this morning about New Zealand Firsts 2005 election spending. When is Keys going to front up with some policy?”
A few policies have been released, which is a few more than the Labour Party – unless you can show me where to find the links to current policy on Labour’s website.
“It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The thing on top of the tail appears to make it a Falcon 900, which is a variation of the 50.
Swampy
I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key…
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.”
The plot thickens then.
Who else has JK been meeting?
I vote Grover Norquist.
I saw a red van parked outside the brothel on Wakefield st today. Trevor Mallard has a red van – must have been him eh…. The number plate was different and it wasn’t the same model van that Trevor has but I’m so sure it was him because I wish it was….
Do I get a [standard-super-snoop] chocolate fish now ?
first things first…where is the national party policy besides…”I am like Barack Obama” and “what is the SFO number” and “how much money can I screw out of this rich Pom withour being busted?”
[IrishBill says: I banned you this morning, Dad. If you comment again you’ll get another week.]
“I wouldn’t point out to The Standard that the photo above is not actually Ashcroft’s plane.
You are likely to face a two month ban for baseless smears.
Its not as though you are insinuating something true like the SFO leaks to John Key ”
I’d imagine that ayb will take the SP option here – simply ignore the comments and pretend the post he made doesn’t exist.
Besides, neither of them could possibly talk about Clark’s allegations regarding the SFO. Word on the street is that Helen can do no wrong. It’s election year, you see.
C of T, Dean:
dave got banned for suggesting that the site was run from the 9th floor. That is an allegation that we’ve had for a while along with various attributions for contributors or that it is run from the NZLP. It isn’t correct as stated in the About.
In fact the only person that really seems to be determined to prove it is Whale. So far he has been ineffectual and hasn’t managed to prove bugger all that wasn’t in our About. We can’t do much about the bloated ego’s allegations because of our anonymity policy. That requires we neither confirm or deny for exactly the same reasons that the US does about nuclear weapons.
As for the plane. a_y_b described why this post was here
If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.
I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.
Last time I post here. This blog has become 1984, where yesterday is rewritten to prove tomorrow is correct. Its really a polite way of saying what I can’t say without getting this post deleted.
[lprent: Please promise. It’d make me so happy because you contribute buggerall, and I have to read them. ]
It’s so strange how it’s never smart people who have the type of trouble sweetd describes above. Smart people seem to be able to discuss issues on this site from all sorts of points of view without being censored.
I wonder why?
lprent
I’m not trying to be pedantic lpren, I just want to clear something up, a language thing.
In the context of trying to prove something you call Whale “ineffectual”. Calling him “ineffectual” you are saying something very different than if you said ‘He’s barking up the wrong tree’. It comes down to is he failing to prove it or is there noting he can prove?
I don’t really care either way, but this subject has been hotly debated and denied, people banned etc ever since the Happy New Year post.
That was all_your_base as well.
Next time Key wants to meet unwelcome wealthy foreign donors, for gongs, Cash-for-Honours or otherwise, he should just take a leaf out of Mike Williams book and meet them in the South of France. The weather, Languedoc and Lobster Thermador are so much nicer than in Cibo’s….
Dear Concerned of Tawa,
About the only thing that can be noted as being unequivocal in this thread is that there is no visual evidence, to the readers of this blog, that the two aircraft shown in the two photos above are the same aircraft, since the one shown taking off is too fuzzy.
Ashcroft owns a company (Flying Lion) that owns a Falcon 900 registered VP-BMS. All I can really tell from the photo at the top of this page is that the aircraft shown parked doesn’t appear to have that registration and appears to be a different aircraft (different number of windows). Since I can’t actually read the tail number I don’t actually know who owns that aircraft.
Perhaps the original poster can read the number better from the (presumably) larger photo they were originally sent?
Come on lp, give me a break! I understand your reasons for making standard authors anonymous and I don’t care where they come from, but comparing your reasoning to the US neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is pretty ludicrous. A simple “we don’t have to, and we’re not gonna” would suffice.
As for the plane, I don’t like visiting whale’s site (call me pompous, but I think the language and tone he uses is a bit excessive) but if the second plane photographed in Auckland really is Michael Ashcroft’s plane, then the one that appeared at the Standard in Wellington clearly isn’t.
The one at the Standard has fourteen windows, versus twelve in the one that Whale says is Ashcroft’s plane. They have different numbers, different livery, and the Standard’s one is longer. According to a google search, others in the past have identified Ashcroft’s plane registration number as VP-BMS, which is the aircraft in Whale’s picture. The one pictured here clearly doesn’t have that registration number.
So it looks like there isn’t any evidence that Ashcroft came to Wellington, based on this picture. I don’t know anything about airplanes, apart from how to fasten my seatbelt and fall asleep before the hostesses try and put revolting food trays in my lap, but I’d be happy owning either of those planes. As an aside, wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if it turned out that the owner of the Wellington plane did actually meet a New Zealand politician while in Wellington?
Swampy
Details details details. Such unnecessary things in the world of perception is reality. The blurry makes the clarity in the hands of the spins. Perhaps the plane belongs to Owen Glenn?
Whale has a picture comparison that is easier to play ‘spot the difference’ between the stated model that is owned and the clearer picture as displayed here in Wellington.
see: Standard smears wrong
burt: You’re correct and incorrect. The girlfriend keeps criticizing my use of language.
What I meant was that there are certainly union members, definitely NZLP members (me for instance), probably green members, maybe feminists, etc writing on this site. Whale has proved that this is the case for unionists, although why he didn’t just look at the About which implicitly says that is beyond me. The trade unionists have been the heart of the labour movement for a long time.
Whale’s main thesis is that the site is run by one or more of EPMU, NZLP and/or 9th floor. That he hasn’t proved. He is wrong in his basic assumption because the site is run and paid for by me – as my credit card shows each month. I’ve stated that many times and I do it so the left has a place to post and talk about issues. It is a bonus that we can also get them discussed by people from all over the political spectrum, I think that is useful, and try to maintain that attribute of the site. Obviously Whale thinks I’m lying so I think he is a fool because that is what you see in the comments on the site.
His second thesis is that the posts are written from work by various contributors. There even I have limits. They aren’t written from parliament IP’s because I’d see that. Most of the large posts are written out of work hours from their log histories and the scheduled times. A lot of the smaller ones are written at are what a roughly break times. I wrote quite a long one today at work in small breaks over a hour or so while I was waiting for things to happen.
Am I going to bother to prove any of this? Absolutely not because the only way to do it is to look at the full logs, and that would identify not only the posters but also the commentators – see the Policy.
Take the blogs as they are written by the writers. They will use material from other people. The material they are written from turns up in the mailboxes from all over the place (I get a lot which I pass on to the mailing list), links to other sites, speculative ideas, post suggestions, photos, PDF’s, etc. It is a way for people to get things aired in public.
Am we going to confirm or deny peoples identities – nope. It’d be pretty easy even for a incompetent like Whale to simply work through a list of politically active leftie people (there aren’t that many in NZ). So we don’t discuss identity, and I don’t even know who most of them are in real life. They are just gmail addresses.
The bloated ego can keep jerking off in his number inflated corner of the blogosphere. He is ineffectual in proving his speculations and will continue to be so because even I can’t prove them true or false, and I run the site. The site was set up that way because that made it impossible to hack it and to break into peoples real identities. That is why the blog posters here can operate with a degree of freedom that will not impact back onto their real life. All of Whales crap is just smear designed to detract from the content of the posts using an irrelevant speculation that is impossible for him to prove and impossible for me to disprove. Besides it gives the pathetic bugger something to write about, and he really needs it as his writing is appalling – sort of like the Truth on P and with about the same level of content.
But if his speculations get repeated here even by inference on this site – I’m going to boot people permanently and with extreme malice. I’m tired of it, it is only used to try to distract from a post or comments, and it is a waste of bandwidth that I’m paying for. Besides I could do to reduce server loadings.
The little stats server here runs noon-noon Noon-midnight page views are just below the page views for the whole of yesterday. Yesterdays page views were a record. Throwing idiots off the system may lessen the load – it is cheaper than the next server upgrade.
“If it isn’t the same plane, well there should be enough detail to pick off the numbers on the tail. A detailed description of the differences between the models would probably assist that. I can’t see a difference myself from these cruddy photo’s.”
You can’t see the difference, therefore it must be his plane?
Like I said, it’s election year. You NZLP activists will try anything, won’t you.
“I’d still like to know what in the hell Ashcroft is doing here. We’ll probably find out when Hager writes his next politics book from sources inside the sieve.”
There was a little matter of the medals that were returned. But I suppose that doesn’t make a good book.
Honestly, you need to be more objective, if you can find the time between pretending nobody’s noticed Clark smearing the SFO.
It was John McCain’s lawyers, they are vetting JK for veep.
They want someone like Obama, and they just found out Palin’s a woman, so she’s out.
Looks like a retraction from all_your_base is in order. Those be different planes.
J Mex, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
HS,
Thank you so much for promoting my Blog. I might actually go up a few places in the blogosphere because of you. I am currently number 35 whereas your hero Slippery John is number 54. Not bad for a single blogger only out to inform people and give them some real news for a change.
About the conspiracy thing you seem so hung up on let me enlighten you about the terms you use so loosely and erroneously.
Conspiracy
Synonyms: plotting, intrigue, huggermugger, trickery, scheming, secrecy, manoeuvring
Synonyms: intrigue, plot, deception, stratagem, manoeuvre, ruse, scheme
So when John Key and other people from National secretly meet with Lord Ashcroft who is known for his right-wing secret funding, who is known for supporting secret donations, who is a ruthless wheeler dealer and who helped Howard change election laws to make undisclosed donations possible and we only found out because a journalist actually did his job, the above synonyms apply.
Fact no 1. Lord Aschroft came to Auckland
Fact no 2. John Key and Lord Ashcroft met
Fact no 3. They tried to keep it secret
Facts combined = Conspiracy
We don’t know what they conspire about but two powerful men meeting secretly with a known penchant for wheeling dealing and secrecy spells a conspiracy.
Do we know if they are conspiring something criminal or something which would be disapproved of by the general public? No we don’t but we do know that politics often are about back room deals and the deception of the voting public.
From the fact that Lord Ashcroft has a history of secret donations and John Key and National through another bit of intrepid civil journalism we do know that the like to keep secrets and do not want the voter to know their real agenda. What we don’t know is what that secret agenda is.
So in order to point out a “conspiracy” we do not have to prove what it is that the conspirators are conspiring about. Just two or more people keeping secrets for reasons only known to them is a conspiracy. The fact is that News 3 caught a politician, who wants to be trusted and voted for, doing something he wanted to keep secret from the people he wants to vote for him.
Conspiracy Theory
Theory
Synonyms: philosophy, model, concept, system, scheme, idea, notion, principle, belief, rule, technique
Synonyms: hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, assumption, premise, presumption, supposition, guess
When an event occurs and it is clearly the result of people planning and conspiring to perpetrate this event and a theory about why and how this could have happened without a sound criminal and crimescene investigation is announced as the truth without actual proof as to their involvement than that is a Conspiracy theory.
When a perpetrator or perpetrators are accused and even in light of the impossibility of them having been involved in the way the theorists claim than their conspiracy theory becomes a “mad Conspiracy theory”.
When it becomes clear that their theory falters in just about every single claim they make and they still hold on to that theory you are looking at “crazy Conspiracy nutters”.
911Truth movement
movement (n)
Synonyms: drive, crusade, undertaking, program, measure, effort
The 911 truth movement is a movement of millions of people around the world who come from an amazing different variety of walks of live. We don’t profess to know the truth. We are in search of the truth. That is a big difference.
What we do know is that we have not been told the truth by the American Government, FEMA, NIST and the 911 commission.
What we do know is that the Anthrax used in the Anthrax attacks after the 911 Attacks was a US military grade weaponised strain only produced in one location in the US. Fort Derrick. So it could not have been 19 hijackers or other “terrorists” who send this to News paper outlets and two vehemently anti war Democratic senators.
We also do know that Cheney and Bush started to take Cipro, a Anti dote to Anthrax on the day of the 911 attacks
And we what also know is that in the case of the attack on Iraq the world has been lied into this war.
How do we know?
Scholars, Pilots, FAA professionals, Architects, Engineers, Firefighters, Military,Journalists, Film-makers, Family members of the victims of 911 and down right dedicated citizens have been able to prove is that the official “Conspiracy” theory could not have occurred.
What this group has been able to prove is that the chemical signature of Nano thermite (a military quality incendiary and explosive used to blow up buildings) and nano sized iron spheres indicating a far higher temperature than was possible with Kerosene and office fires was abundant in the dust of WTC 1, 2 and 3
What this group has been able to prove is that the biggest crime scene ever in New York was destroyed in an unprecedented fashion and much to the distress of the police, fire-fighters and other crime investigation professionals.
What we have been able to establish that a crime has been committed but it could not have been done by 19 hijackers with box cutters.
So in order to find out who perpetrated the atrocities on that day we urgently ask for a new and independent investigation based on science and sound criminal investigative protocols by a commission of professionals and surviving family members with subpoena power and proper funding so that we may find out what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and perhaps even who did it.
We want real answers and justice for the people who died on that day, who are still dying because of the dust and the toxins they breathed in on that day, for the family members, for the soldiers who died in the wars and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq who died and suffered as a result of the events of that day.
[lprent: Spam engine caught it. TE: I’ll give you leeway (this time) – but please do this size of ‘comment’ on your own site and link to it.]
Oops purgatory again. Too many links me thinks. Sorry, Iprent could you check it out?
Sure, will do. Thanks Iprent.
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.
Yes Tara – In fact it is likely that Ashcroft had his plane repainted between Auckland and Wellington.
When AYB’s whole post is based on a photo of a plane though, and that photo is shown to be of the wrong plane, the least one could do is to acknowledge the error.
“None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft visited Wellington.”
None of the above excludes the possibility that Ashcroft is one of David Irving’s lizard men either, but in rational circles we put the burden of evidence on proof.
Unfortunately AYB doesn’t see the world the same way, or he would have retracted by now.
Well he does look a bit lizardy. And he spits when he talks.
Still, I maintain that he was probably here to sell Johnny a plane. He’s always wanted one.
Comment for Burt and everyone – has anyone actually proved which plane Ashcroft flew to New Zealand in?
Just because he owns BMS, does that prove he came to NZ in it this time around? It could be sitting in a hangar with the engines being overhauled.
There is a very interesting point about the other aircraft, and BMS, that they both have the initial registration letters VP, which means a British colony, most VPs seem to be Carribean islands. Could be they are both registered in the same country.
I have consulted the source and he has replied as follows:
Swampy’s reference to VP-BMS and 12 windows seems to have been taken from googling by ‘Falcon 900’ and ‘Ashcroft’ to give
and similar sites.
VP-BZE photographed in Wellington appears to be a later, slightly extended model, consistent with what a billionaire ex-Treasurer of the British Conservative Party would fly.
The pool of executive jets in Aotearoa is very small so it is unlikely that another Falcon Dassault 900 would just happen to be passing through.
The CAA should have a record of aircraft movements.
Unfortunately, the resolution of the shot from TV3’s footage was not great enough to count the windows. Could someone nicely ask TV3 to count the windows on that jet if there are any better images ?
It is unlikely that he was travelling such great distances alone at considerable cost. Who else was on the plane ?
Could Key’s conservative reforms in NZ be a model for those mooted in the UK after the next election ?
Tara Swampy, those are interesting points. Except Lord Ashcroft is known as only having one plane, which is the one featured by TV3, and is consistent with the registration numbers. The plane in Wellington is not a Dassault Falcon 900. It is a Dassault Falcon 7x.
Now, given that we know Lord Ashcroft came to Auckland, and that his plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, with Ashcroft’s registration numbers, was filmed at Auckland airport, what do you think the chances are that a second plane, a different model, filmed at Wellington airport, also belonged to Ashcroft?
Pretty close to nil, I would say. I am not saying that Ashcroft didn’t go to Wellington. I have no idea whether he did. All I am saying is that the picture of the plane at Wellington airport, which appeared at the Standard, does not belong to Ashcroft, and is not any evidence that he was in Wellington, which is what the Standard claimed.
What the Standard’s picture does show is that a Falcon 7x was in Wellington. We know this is not Ashcroft’s jet. It is a very nice jet though, worth about US $40 million. I have no idea who owns it. Probably not a New Zealander. The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.
I reckon it was the former Cardinal Ratzinger, schooling Bill English on how to win caucus leadership votes.
Tim: I agree, it’s a Falcon 7X
see ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Falcon_7X.jpg
and ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Falcon_7X
.. but I’m not clear that TV3 shows a 900 or a 7X taking off at Auckland with Ashcroft in it. It would be nice if someone could count the windows to prove or disprove it .. but at this point its a bit academic.
It is certainly interesting that he was around at the time of the Owen Glen saga which has yet to play itself out.
Tim:
“The Brazilian Foreign minister was in New Zealand at that time. Could be his.”
Foreign dignitaries are usually welcomed at the International Terminal.
Private individuals, such as Ashcroft, generally use the Flight Center .. near where VP-BZE stood waiting.
“Lord Ashcroft has become a significant figure in Australian politics having been identified as the single largest individual donor to any Australian political party during the Financial Year 2004/2005. The Australian Electoral Commission reported in February 2006 that Ashcroft (who gave his address as “House of Lords, Westminster, London”) had donated $1,000,000 to the Liberal Party in September 2004 just before the 2004 Federal election. It was the biggest single disclosed private donation in Australian political history.[10]
Over the last weekend of August 2008, Lord Ashcroft flew into Auckland, New Zealand in his private Lear Jet. While there he was confirmed to have met with senior figures from the New Zealand National Party; the main opposition party in the upcoming New Zealand general elections.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
Tim, Swampy:
VP-BZE could be derived from Belize of which Ashcroft is a national. See ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
VP-BMS is recorded at airliners.net and other sites as being owned by Flying Lion, a company owned by Ashcroft which according to some other sites “has only one major asset…a Falcon 900”.
I found two websites that linked VP-BZE with Flying Lion as well:
http://www.airframes.org/reg/vpbze and
http://www.ecacnav.com/Content.asp?PageID=128&OpNum=11050&Operator=FLYING+LION+LTD.
The latter site lists both of the abovementioned aircraft under Flying Lion’s name.
Is there any recorded footage that positively identifies that BMS was here last weekend? It was here when Ashcroft came over in April in conjunction with the VCs.
Tara
Do you think that Labour asked Ashcroft for a donation?
Swampy:
1. There is no footage of which I am aware that BMS was here last weekend. It appears that he used BZE on this trip
2. Did Labour ask Ashcroft for a donation ?
Dunno. I don’t think they’d bother given his history.
“In the UK, he was a major donor to and Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague. His tenure was marked by a number of controversies: he was seen to pay little UK income tax due to his domicile in Belize; and he was at the centre of a debate about openness and accountability of political funding.
Unsubstantiated speculation about his business affairs was concluded when he pursued a libel action against The Times. This was settled on 9 December 1999, when The Times issued a statement that “[…] Litigation between the parties has been settled to mutual satisfaction, with each side bearing its own costs.”[8]
In 2004 he clashed with Conservative leader Michael Howard when he offered a £2m donation on the condition that it should go to his specified candidates, rather than into general Conservative Central Office funds.
In December 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.[9]
On 12th October 2007 he was accused by Labour MP’s for being allowed to heavily fund the local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. The Electoral Commission is investigating and changes to the rules are predicted.
During the “Cash for Peerages” controversy, on 31 March 2006 he was named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ashcroft
“Draco TB
September 2, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It’s a Dassault Falcon 50. Quite a nice aircraft – one that I fully enjoyed flying in MS Flight Sim 2000. Other than that – I have NFI what this post is about.”
The registration code VP-BZE was previously used by a Falcon 50 that has since been re-registered in the US.
Since the Falcon 7X is such a new aircraft (RTM about a year ago) the current usage BZE must be fairly recently registered in Bermuda.
“Welcome aboard Air Ashcroft, the Tories’ favourite airline”
David Hencke, The Guardian,
Saturday November 3 2007
When Gordon Brown does his weekly commute between Edinburgh and London, he flies with British Airways or BMI on scheduled flights crammed with other passengers. By contrast, when David Cameron touched down in Khartoum last November for a fact-finding mission to Darfur, his relaxation was due in no small part to a journey spent on the supple leather couches of a Falcon 900 private jet.
Courtesy of millionaire donor Lord Ashcroft, shadow cabinet ministers have enjoyed the use of the luxury jet on trips to Israel, China, Mali and the Czech Republic, according to information in the Parliamentary Register of Interests and declarations to the Electoral Commission.
The trips – 32 so far – have already attracted questions from Labour MPs and led to a complaint to the commission that Michael Ashcroft’s largesse has been significantly underestimated, possibly by as much as £500,000, in declarations of the perk’s value to the Tory frontbench.
Altogether shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles.
Analysis conducted for the Guardian reveals that Tory globetrotting has racked up 1,289 tonnes of carbon emissions. The biggest footprint was made by Michael Ancram when he was shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary, according to environmental consultants Carbon Footprint. Mr Ancram’s flights emitted 372 tonnes, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and Poland. The plane’s movements are being tracked by planespotters who logged it leaving Luton empty to fly to Khartoum to pick up Mr Cameron and return him to Britain. Indeed spotting the Ashcroft jet seems to have become a bit of cult on spotter blogs.
Lord Ashcroft’s generosity through his Bermuda-registered firm Flying Lion allows the Tory leader and his colleagues to travel in style to global hotspots. The jet features “supple leathers, glistening veneers and deep pile carpet as standard”, according to its French maker, Dassault.
It boasts a galley that “houses all the essentials for a fine dining experience 45,000ft in the air”. Comfort is generous, with a 7ft-wide cabin “so you can move easily with your head held high” and the jet has satellite communications and full conference facilities. For anyone thinking of investing in this kind of luxury, the typical asking price for a second-hand one is around $30m (£14.3m).
But it is the value placed on the flights that has drawn criticism. Mr Hague declares a trip on Lord Ashcroft’s jet to Belize, Brazil, the Falklands, Iceland and Panama as being worth £8,486, the equivalent of flying first-class. Yet to hire a Falcon with Premier Aviation would cost £55,000 for a one-way trip to New York alone.
Labour MP Tom Watson said: “There appears to be a huge discrepancy between, say, David Cameron’s declaration of £16,000 for the cost of his trip to Darfur and the cost of hiring a similar jet from a commercial firm. I got a quote of over £100,000 to hire a jet to go to Khartoum.”
Lord Ashcroft is relaxed about the plane and faintly amused that he is now the subject of interest among planespotters: “Am I becoming a cult figure like Madonna?” he said. He is also unrepentant about making it available to the Tory frontbench on a bigger scale in the future. “I hope it will be used by all the shadow cabinet over the next few years,” he added.
Lord Ashcroft is not the only person to make private aircraft available to the Tory frontbench. Mr Cameron’s carbon footprint is much higher if another 68 internal flights, including a short helicopter ride from Birmingham to Warwick, are taken into account. He has flown just over 3,700 miles on the Ashcroft jet.
The green cost
The Falcon burns about 3,000 US gallons of fuel to cover its maximum range of 4-5,000 miles. A Boeing 777 uses about 30,000 US gallons to cover the same distance. But the Boeing can carry 300 people, which significantly reduces its carbon footprint per passenger kilometre, the usual yardstick for emissions. If the Falcon flew with three passengers, then each would be responsible for 10 times as much pollution as those in the Boeing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/nov/03/uk.conservatives
[lprent: Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. You’ll find that regardless of how interesting the article is at least a high proportion of the participants here will regard it as a waste of bandwidth. They usually start moaning after some repeated occourances, and I get involved.
Bugger – just found the first limit in google chrome – no dictionary. Switching back to firefox. ]
Thanks, point taken, but I thought this was a good one ..
“Please don’t quote the whole article into a comment. Quote a few selected juicy bits (teasers) and then provide a link is usually sufficent. ”
Is it possible to edit that entry retrospectively, according to your guidelines ?
Tim, there’s no record of the Brazilian Air Force owning any Dassault Falcon aircraft. The nearest thing they have are three Learjets. They might have also used one of ten Embraers to fly the Minister in.
It’s the CIA doing a black bag secret rendition jobby. The GOP is worried that Colin Powell has gone completely off the reservation and was about to endorse Obama, see. So they’ve whisked him down here, and they’ve got the poor bugger tied to a chair with Judith bloody Collins in full on scold mode at him in 3 hr stretches.
It’s inhuman I tells ya.
Michael Ashcroft commissioned a programme of research, with the aim of building a clear picture of public opinion on the questions that would determine the outcome of the general election.
As well as measuring the true level of support for the parties he sought to establish the underlying attributes associated with each, and how these changed during the course of the election campaign. Crucially, he also aimed to establish whether the state of opinion in marginal constituencies reflected that in Britain as a whole.
…
including the biggest political poll ever conducted in Britain, with a sample of 10,000. This included:
* a tracking poll monitoring daily movements in opinion from January 2005 until the May election
* polls and focus groups in specific marginal constituencies around the country
* a national post-election ‘call-back’ survey to establish why people voted as they did
..
http://www.populuslimited.com/michael-ashcroft-case-study.html
During the run-up to the May 2005 general election, Michael Ashcroft became interested in political opinion polls. Using two respected polling companies, he decided to commission some research of his own. Once his polls had been analysed, they produced some fascinating findings and some valuable lessons for the Conservative Party.
He began to become interested in political polling in the autumn of 2004 at a time when he was already working to help Conservative candidates win and hold on to some of the most marginal seats up and down the country.
Initially, he concentrated his research in these key marginal seats but then, as his fascination with polling grew, he decided to conduct a vast poll of 10,000 voters (the usual size is 1,500 people) in order to produce the biggest ever poll in the UK on political attitudes. Initially, he did this out of self-interest but in July 2005 he published the findings for all to see.
Between mid January 2005 and the eve of polling day in May 2005, he also conducted a daily Americanstyle “tracker poll’ which he hoped would show how voters were responding to key Tory policies in the run-up to the general election.
http://www.lordashcroft.com/politics/generalelectionreport.html
Why is Michael Ashcroft considered an election winning expert?
Written by Mark Pack on 28th August 2007 ? 1:50 pm
Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there?s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.
Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.
But how good is Ashcroft?
Well, here?s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:
The national swing from Labour to Conservatives was 3.2 per cent, yet the swing in the seats which we supported was 3.8 per cent.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times by Michael Ashcroft, p.296
You read that right: by his own admission, all his expertise and money achieved was a paltry o.6 per cent extra swing.
Given the campaign I ran at the general election secured a Labour to Liberal Democrats swing that was 9.8 points above the national average, I guess that makes me 16.3 times better than Lord Ashcroft 🙂
Do drop me a line Michael; my consultancy rates would be very competitive?
http://www.libdemvoice.org/michael-ashcroft-1239.html
Is Lord Ashcroft ashamed to live here?
By Rachel Sylvester
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/12/2007
Have your say Read comments
He has a powerful empire, a network of agents and a Caribbean hideaway. It is not surprising that some of David Cameron’s most senior allies refer to Lord Ashcroft, privately, as “Blofeld”.
# Andrew Gimson: Lord Ashcroft – reveal yourself
# Three Line Whip: The fag end of a Government
# Three Line Whip: Cameron and Brown, cat and mouse
The millionaire deputy chairman of the Conservative Party directs the operations of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Capturing Target seats, from his well-equipped suite of offices in Millbank Tower. The only thing missing is a white cat. The Tories’ presiding electoral genius pores over Sudoku puzzles instead.
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Yesterday, the Conservative leader defended Lord Ashcroft, at his monthly press conference, by saying that he is responsible for only four per cent of donations to the Tory party, far less than David Sainsbury or Lakshmi Mittal have given to Labour.
He was “happy”, he said, with the assurances he has been given that the peer’s tax and residency status are in order.
But Mr Cameron knows as well as anyone that the mud being thrown at Labour over sleaze will stick to all politicians in the end.
Every morning, as Tory strategists meet to discuss their battle plan, they ask whether they are missing anything damaging in their own affairs. They can be sure of one thing. When the spotlight does eventually move away from Gordon Brown and towards Mr Cameron it will linger long and hard on Lord Ashcroft.
# Three Line Whip: Optimism and the Olympics
# Brassneck: Mind your tone, Mr Cameron
Privately, senior figures around the Conservative leader have been worried about the party’s dependence on the peer for some time. As deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft is more powerful than ever.
He does not just give donations, he is also responsible for the party’s polling and target seat strategy. When the shadow cabinet is briefed on focus group or poll research, it is Lord Ashcroft who presents the results. That puts him in an extraordinarily powerful position.
The party may not be, as one senior Tory put it, a “wholly owned subsidiary of Ashcroft plc” but part of it has certainly been captured by his management team.
The concerns that first circulated when Mr Cameron took over are beginning to resurface. Senior Tories warn that the deputy chairman is running a “party within a party”. Some MPs mutter that he could be their leader’s Achilles’ heel.
Certainly, Lord Ashcroft is a generous benefactor. According to the Electoral Commission website, he has given almost £2.6 million to the Conservatives since 2003.
About half of this comes in the form of donations in kind – polling, focus group work, consultancy work and at one point last year, rather bizarrely, £5,927.88 for “bottle openers”.
The peer also frequently flies senior Tories around in his private jet – David Cameron, William Hague, Andrew Mitchell, Patrick McLoughlin and David Davis have all used it.
Recently, he paid for the Tory leader, and several shadow cabinet ministers, to attend the rugby world cup in Paris.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/12/04/do0401.xml
Ashcroft & the DEA
..snip..
On July 13 the London Times published two leaked foreign office documents. The first involved a telegram written in 1997 by the British high commissioner in Belize, Gordon Barker, cautioning against the appointment of Ashcroft to the chair of the Caribbean trade advisory group. It warned that the Belize government viewed him with “deep suspicion’ and remarked that rumors concerning his business deals cast a “shadow over his reputation that ought not to be ignored.’
This was followed by a 1994 report by a British foreign office adviser calling for tighter regulation of financial services in Belize and noting with some alarm that “low standards of regulation and supervision’ were attracting “those seeking to conceal proceeds of drug trafficking and other serious crime.’
Ashcroft’s response was allegedly to quash the report and solicit the British government to intervene on his behalf. Another document involved a letter from a local diplomat in 1996, Charles Drace-Francis, stating that Ashcroft made threats to the effect that he would “stir up trouble’ for Britain unless he were allowed to set up a branch of his Belize bank in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Four days later the Times disclosed that Mr. Ashcroft’s name appeared in a series of files kept by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as part of its investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering in Belize. It later transpired that cocaine was found on at least two ships sailing under the Belize “flag of convenience’ in 1994, under a shipping register in which Mr. Ashcroft had a 50 percent stake until earlier this year.
The attempted rebuttal to such charges by the Conservative Party Central Office, as well as the pro-Tory Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers, was far from emphatic. A statement by the US State Department to the effect that no conclusive proof had been established connecting Michael Ashcroft with money laundering and no specific concerns had been raised with either the British or Belize governments was released.
The Times then published an article which explained that Ashcroft had been index-numbered on the files of the DEA, a step taken only when serious suspicions exist. On the same day Peter Bradley, Labour MP for Wrekin, raised explicit allegations within Parliament. Utilising the legal immunity afforded under parliamentary privilege, Bradley stated that Ashcroft and his companies had been repeatedly mentioned in connection with money laundering by the DEA. Among the most incriminating examples was one document dated April 1994 with the heading: “Intelligence concerning possible air smuggling/money laundering activity undertaken by Michael Ashcroft.’
.. snip ..
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/ash-a04.shtml
Michael Ashcroft: Special Report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ashcroft/
UK Parliament hears Ashcroft allegations
The House of Commons has heard details from a series of documents linking Conservative treasurer Michael Ashcroft to drug trafficking.
Labour MP Peter Bradley used parliamentary privilege to read from files, which he said came from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the International Narcotics Bureau.
.. snip ..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/400078.stm
UK: The Ashcroft Affair – The Accusation
Verbatim Text Of The Speech In The House Of Commons Yesterday By Peter Bradley, Labour Mp For The Wrekin, Questioning Michael Ashcroft’S Activities:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n754.a01.html
On Ashcroft & Belize, see
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5SpfhmFHyjwC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=ashcroft+belize&source=web&ots=k1lVXGdjNB&sig=nGdTVaoFyC7F6KEL0iRwwk7kBEk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result
Tara:
You’re a spammer of epic proportions. Cut and paste do not a thoughtful post make.
I see AYB hasn’t retracted this post yet, either. AYB, is Key still a bona fide member of the secret order of baby eating nine rich white men secretly ruling the world still?