Snowmail: big beasts, separate cages
Updated on 27 January 2009
Despite today's big policy announcement the business secretary has yet to face his new opposite number, writes Jon Snow.
Peter Mandelson, as business secretary, has announced a finance package for the car industry.
This was also the first day Ken Clarke got to respond - though see my Snowblog for the crazy reality that the two men will not, in fact, engage at all.
Not because they don't want to but because parliamentary rules forbid it. One's a lord, the other's a commoner, and never the twain shall meet (well, not across the same despatch box anyway).
A right ermine mess
The lords are still a-leaping, now with horror and shock and despair that those four peers may have been so unwise.
And now we hear that around 140 of their lordships currently act as advisers or consultants for hundreds of companies, although their rules mean they do not have to publish how much they earn from these commercial relationships.
It's all a right ermine mess. Gary Gibbon is on the trail of a few of them.
Eight babies, one mother, and she's going to breastfeed the lot... But there's more to this multiple birth than meets the eye. Tom Clarke is on the case.
Obama outreach
Barack Obama has chosen to give his first overseas interview to al-Arabiya television network and to proffer a hand to the Muslim world, following up on his inaugural speech and mentioning again the desire to engage with Iran (see my Snowblog).
The future of film?
And we're profiling the film Faintheart, which has been recruited and financed on MySpace, has a budget of £1m, is available as a free download, and yet expects to make a profit from its DVD edition. Is this the future?
