hocus pocus

GORDON Brown is moving towards dealing an electoral blow to the Conservatives by seeking to outlaw big donations to local parties between General Elections.
THE witches are coming...to Chessington World of Adventures and Zoo this month, as the park opens up for Halloween Hocus Pocus from October 20-31.

Centre stage is a coven of witches moving in to take over the park, setting up camp and creating all sorts of chaos to prevent visitors from putting their spells into the park's massive cauldron!

Chessington Zoo's rats, owls, spiders and snakes will all come out to greet guests as the park is transformed into a scary, haunted and dark hubbub of Halloween festivities. With pumpkins, bats and vampires aplenty, Halloween Hocus Pocus will be the place to celebrate - with rides in the dark and plenty of creepy crawlies.

And that's not all - the Chessington Challenge will be back with a new selection of scary Challenges for those who dare brave them.

We are giving away two family tickets.

To find out how to win, see the Recorder Review on Thursday.

It arises from near panic among Labour MPs with marginal seats, who believe the mega-rich Lord Ashcroft is involved in a corrupt electoral practice of buying elections through bankrolling parties at a local level.

Although both main parties are dependant on millionaire individual donors, in the wake of the cash for honours controversy the Conservatives have proposed an annual cap of ￡50,000 on individual donations.

Labour will never agree to because the party needs the backing of the trade unions to finance so much of its campaigning. So Labour will carry on accepting union money but is quite prepared to change the rules to enhance its election prospects.

Lord Ashcroft's "crime" has been to target his cash support into constituencies which the Tories need to win in order to form a government.

It's rich for Mr Brown to complain at Lord Ashcroft's largesse, when a look at the Electoral Commission's web site reveals how much some Labour constituency parties receive from the trade unions and regional Co-operative Societies.

Robert Halfon, the Tory candidate for Harlow in Essex, makes other valid points. At the 2005 election, he achieved a 6.4% swing, cutting Bill Rammell's majority to just 97. He's been reselected to finish the job next time but says he is faced with a huge inbuilt disadvantage.

"Not only does the MP have ￡18,000 of taxpayer funds annually to 'communicate' with the electorate - not forgetting the ￡10,000 bonus recently added - he also has ￡7,000 postal expenses and a fully staffed office also paid for by the taxpayer," says Mr Halfon.

"So, with a ￡28,000 annual communications allowance, a huge postage allowance and trade union funds, Labour MPs have an automatic head start over any challenger. Support from Lord Ashcroft and others to Conservative Parliamentary Candidates merely levels the playing field."

The endgame for both Labour and the Tories is the introduction of state funding for politics. They know the public is opposed, but with membership of political parties at an all time low, they argue democracy has to be financed somehow.

Surely it's far better for the parties - and this means all those registered with the Electoral Commission - to receive cheques from the Treasury instead of being reliant on large corporations, the trade unions, and the whims of millionaires.

SIR Michael Lord (Con, Suffolk Central & Ipswich North) and Brooks Newmark (Con, Braintree) are the latest MPs to voice their anger at Royal Mail's decision to decimate local post offices. Essex county council yesterday staged a protest meeting outside the Commons to publicise its online petition.

Ipswich's Labour MP Chris Mole blames the Tory controlled borough and county councils for failing to strengthen the post office network in the town -but his Tory opponent Ben Gummer says the closures have been forced a result of government policy.

"What Chris Mole fails to point out amid all his hand wringing is that it is his own Labour administration that has instructed the Post Office to close 2,500 branches across the country." Rarely do I find myself glued to the television watching C-Span, but there I was, watching a fine game of political jousting.

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, the special security firm hired by the Department of Defense, testified before a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 2. I saw part of his testimony on C-Span this week.

I've been around long enough to know how these hearings work. Depending on if you are a Democrat or a Republican, you have a script to follow that either makes out the witness testifying to be a skunk or a saint.

In the case of Mr. Prince and Blackwater, the Democrats had the job of trying to destroy Mr. Prince's credibility.

Mr. Prince, a 38-year-old former Navy SEAL, had to defend Blackwater against a congressional report's finding that Blackwater is out-of-control and indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. You must remember, this congressional report was authored by minions of the Democratically-controlled congressional committee. One focus on the report regarded a Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater personnel killed 11 Iraqi civilians.

Until the Sept. 16 incident, not many people knew private security forces were employed in Iraq. I must admit the first time I heard about this was while watching the CBS drama "Jericho," in which one of the main characters supposedly worked for a group called, "Ravenwood," which was a government-hired private security firm in Iraq.

Pure fiction I thought.

But not so. Blackwater is one of three private security firms under employment by the Department of Defense. The other two are are Dyncorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater has been paid about $1 billion for its services by the government since 2001. As I understand it, these firms are given missions by the DOD. They mainly involve providing security for important people visiting Iraq. This could include contractors, diplomats, even members of Congress.

As contractors, Blackwater and the other firms, must abide by "rules of engagement." They are only a defensive force, so while they are armed, they only use their firearms when under the threat of attack or when they're attacked.

On Sept. 16, Prince said, Blackwater guards acted properly after a car bomb exploded near a diplomatic convoy.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that after the bomb detonated Blackwater guards came under small-arms fire and some of them returned fire at, which included vehicles that appeared to be suicide car bombers. There were 20 Blackwater guards there, five of them discharged their weapons.

I certainly can't judge Blackwater. It isn't perfect. Humans are human and bad things happen in war zones. However, the statistics behind Blackwater's effectiveness in Iraq speak volumes.

Since Blackwater has been operating in Iraq, it has conducted more than 16,000 missions. During those missions, on 195 occasions, Blackwater personnel discharged their weapons. Prince said Blackwater doesn't keep statistics on how often its personnel are attacked in Iraq, because it happens virtually every day.

In incidents where Blackwater used its weapons, civilians died. At the Congressional hearing, only 13 Iraqi deaths were mentioned. Certainly there were more. Meanwhile, about 30 Blackwater employees have been killed in Iraq and "hundreds" have been wounded, Prince said.

In all of those missions, how many of the VIP's Blackwater was protecting were killed? None. In fact, not one suffered even a serious injury.

War is a horrible thing, the worst of things. For Congress to be pointing a finger at Blackwater, that's ridiculous. It's like judging the conduct of our military based on the misconduct of very few bad apples. I support our troops, who get few accolades for their efforts.

One of the complaints listed in the congressional report: ''In the vast majority of instances in which Blackwater fired shots, Blackwater is firing from a moving vehicle and does not remain at the scene to determine if the shots resulted in casualties."

You don't conduct a "CSI" investigation in a place where terrorists are shooting at you. That expectation is just crazy. Nobody said realism was a necessity in Washington, D.C.