Snowmail: race and the law
Updated on 05 September 2008
On tonight's show...
Greetings all, a little blast from me to take you through to the weekend and it's stacking up like this tonight:
Can't say too much, but we've a strong exclusive to kick off with.
Essentially, it is evidence of racial discrimination and a failure to tell the truth by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Our very own Simon Israel has had exclusive access to key legal papers. He will report on a case that raises questions not just about how the CPS keeps its own house in order but about its suitability to prosecute cases in which race is an issue.
The fall-out from the government's decision to drop one-off payments to people to help with their fuel bills continues.
Gordon Brown says there is no point in short term gimmicks and says instead we should focus on energy efficiency.
Eh? So the suspension of stamp duty isn't a gimmick then?
We've been talking to Hilary Benn, who's charged with defending this U-turn. What's his view about a windfall tax as an alternative?
There's a lot more around tonight.
We have the giant spider currently careening around Liverpool in the name of culture; the Bentley factory is shutting down for a week then re-opening on a three day working week because nobody's buying enough Bentleys, including all those footballers in Cheshire where they make 'em.
And angry commuters upset about poor train times in Argentina have set fire to a couple of trains instead of suffering down the centuries like we do.
We are also going to investigate dark matter in Yorkshire. Is this a genuine scientific discovery or a new brew from Theakstons?
Frankly, I don't know and Tom Clarke, our correspondent has, er, disappeared. Further evidence of dark matter?
In fact, Tom has been down a deep mine where they're trying to prove the existence of dark matter at rather less cost than the multi-billion pound experiment at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland.
They're confident they can beat them to it.
I hope to be with you around seven, come lightness or the dark.
Anyone for grey goo?
Alex T
AND FROM JON SNOW IN MINNESOTA:
The balloons worked, the confetti too. But did John McCain's speech? In some senses it was a convention speech in which he was running against himself, as a paid up member of the Republican party, a party the voters are blaming for many of their woes.
But John McCain told them "I don't work for a party, I don't work for special interests, I don't work for me, I work for YOU...I am a maverick" and so he is.
But the problem he has was writ clear in his speech last night here in St Paul, Minnesota at the closing moment of the Republican national convention.
He thanked the president for leading the nation from 9/11 but didn't name him. He dressed himself as a Washington outsider, a Washington he would change.
Yet he's been there for a quarter of a century already. He's deploying Obama's call for "change" but the echo seems to be a dullish thud.
The sense here was that it was a classic McCain speech, strong on war stories and his own heroism, weak on policy and weaker still on what he would actually do to ease the nation's pain and sense of drift.
He is not able to detail what he clearly believes, that George Bush has mishandled national security and the economy.
There's no one in his party that doesn't know it but it dare not speak its name.
So he is to run as an outsider, consolidated by a genuine outsider, Sarah Palin.
But Ms Palin may have a small problem. The Jewish lobby has discovered that her church in Alaska sponsors "Jews for Jesus", an outfit that seeks to convert Jews to Christianity, much hated by the lobby.
The church had a collection for Jews for Jesus on 17th of August. Was she there? Did she donate?
Hilary Clinton goes to Florida on Monday, heartland of the Jewish community. It will be interesting to see what she makes of Ms Palin.
The polls are tight, the Democrats are a party in the ascent with a presidential candidate they may not be able to elect and the Republicans are a party in freefall, with a leader they just might be able to elect...
Few US elections have been so finely poised.
In the meantime Snowmail, from my end at least, is going on the American road.
I'm going to drive from the Mexican border to the state of Washington in the American North West.
I'm making a documentary on the overall condition of America and shall try to blog every day about what I find.
It may prove an exciting litmus test of what's really going on here in the aftermath of both parties setting out their wares.
I shall be back in Blighty filing from there on the 15th of September.
Watch our noon report and see Jon Voight teach Sarah Smith a thing or two
