The Scrapbook team are currently taking a break from the site to work on a number of other exciting projects. Apologies in advance for the lack of posts. Keep an eye on our Twitter for further updates in due course.

With eight Irish unionist MPs holding the government over a barrel, at least two top Tories have attended party fundraisers for the DUP – with the Electoral Commission investigating suggestions that public money may have been laundered into party coffers.

Michael Gove headlined a function branded as a “major business in the community event” at a top hotel last September, while ex-cabinet minister Priti Patel spoke at a similar hotel bash sponsored by Belfast International Airport. Both events charged £1,500 per table – and face claims that their role as DUP fundraisers was not made clear.

Reports of the event attended by Gove – who is currently environment secretary – state it was pitched to some potential attendees as a “chance to shape forthcoming agriculture policies”. One invitation stated:

“North Antrim annual business and community dinner hosted and facilitated by Ian Paisley MP, with special guest Rt Hon Michael Gove, MP, Secretary of State for Environment and Rural Affairs”

What’s more, unionist-dominated Mid East and Antrim Council paid £1,500 to sponsor a table. While the cheque was apparently made out to the hotel, DUP MP Ian Paisley asked the council to send the taxpayer-funded payment to … errrr … his office. The DUP have refused to comment on the Electoral Commission investigation.

With Stormont departments already flush with cash thanks to the Tory-DUP deal, are the unionists now using their leverage over senior Tories to bolster their own funds?

UKIP in Wales leader Neil Hamilton has been embarrassing himself more than usual, defending Enoch Powell’s so-called rivers of blood speech as “proved right by events”.

The BBC reports:

When it was put to him that Powell accepted he was a racist, Mr Hamilton suggested that it was “racism in the sense of appreciating differences in cultures, and differences between nations, not that one race or nation is inferior to another by definition”

“He wasn’t a racist in the crude sense”, Mr Hamilton added.

So ‘good racism’ not bad racism, then?

At least he likes his envelopes brown.

Labour-run Sandwell Council has rebuffed residents of Bell End who demanded the local authority use its powers to change the ‘rude’ name of their street.

Apparently they reckon it’s affecting property values. The Telegraph reported in January:

“The residents even claim the street name is driving down house prices, saying that semi-detached houses in Bell End are valued at around £60,000 less than the £186,000 odd fetched by similar properties on nearby Uplands Avenue.”

But a Change.org petition to save the ‘historic’ street name — named after a mine in the locality — has since gathered nearly 5,000 signatures. A council spokesperson announced today that they plan to take no action on the matter.

And the road that Bell End leads on to?

Mincing Lane.

With an FBI raid on Donald Trump’s lawyer heating up the Justice Department Russia probe, news also breaks that US investigators are looking into a $150,000 donation from a Ukrainian oligarch.

Funds from Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk were transferred to the Trump Foundation following a speech to a 2015 conference in Kiev, with payment solicited by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — whose offices were raided by the FBI yesterday.

Pinchuk has made a fortune selling steel pipe to the state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Awkwardly enough, Trump isn’t the only Western politician with possible financial links to Pinchuk, with none other than David Cameron giving a similar speech at the invitation of the billionaire in March last year.

While his office have refused to confirm what fee may have been paid, Call-Me-Dave is reportedly charging up to £120,000 for one-hour speeches on Brexit, which looks to be a major focus of his address in the Ukrainian capital Kiev:

Just as well that Russians had nothing to do with Brexit … errr ….

While there has been much (justified) rejoicing at the British National Party losing its final district councillor, the far-right group formerly led by Nick Griffin had been overtaken by other far-right groups long ago.

But thankfully, they’re not the only racist turds having a tough time. Let’s spare a thought for the delightful chaps at Britain First it’s not been a good few months:

• 18 December: Britain first leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen banned from Twitter
• 7 March: Paul Golding sentenced to 18 weeks in prison for anti-Muslim hate crime
• 7 March: Jayda Fransen sentenced to 36 weeks at the same trial
• 14 March: Facebook bans the two-million-follower Britain First Facebook page, cutting off their main means of communication
• Jayda Fransen referred to the government’s Prevent anti-extremism programme

And it doesn’t end there. Lovely Paul and Jayda are being sued for libel over a YouTube video allegedly claiming that sales of halal meat fund Islamic terrorism.

The action by the Halal Food Authority — a nonprofit body involved in food certification — could land the pair personally on the hook for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Britain First are telling supporters that Fransen could lose her home.

A report by Oxford University academics has revealed that closures of Sure Start children’s centres are actually DOUBLE the number recorded in ‘official’ government statistics – meaning up to 1,000 could have closed in the last eight years.

Despite the existence of a national database, the government isn’t bothering to record all closures. How very convenient! The report, commissioned by social mobility charity the Sutton Trust, states:

“The national database recorded a 14% drop in centre numbers between 2009 and October 2017. However, there is no clear definition of a ‘children’s centre’ and therefore many closures announced locally were not yet reflected in the database”

No prizes for guessing why:

“Financial pressures came top in 84% of local authorities as a principal driver of change in recent years.”

Meanwhile 160,000 children are set to see their free school meals cut.

Welcome to Tory Britain, kids!

Unite staffer Shelly Asquith writes for LabourList today on the union’s programme in schools, which sees reps – under the supervision of teachers – attending Citizenship Education classes to discuss activism and the labour movement with students.

Tweeting a link, Asquith’s boss Red Len couldn’t resist having a pop at the Daily Mail for its previous coverage of the initiative:

When the Daily Mail learnt of the Unite in Schools programme, it accused the .@unitetheunion of trying to "brainwash children". This is the real story of the work Unite is doing in schools.https://t.co/sA1k2VHeCb

— Len McCluskey (@LenMcCluskey) April 4, 2018

With their apparent objection to the widespread practice of external parties contributing to citizenship classes, Scrapbook hopes no one tells Mail editors of the activities of … errr … their own columnist, James Delingpole.

Delingpole was joined recently on his eponymous podcast for Breitbart News by fellow libertarian crackpot Brendan O’Neill – where they describe their two-day “mission to red pill the youth” at an elite boarding school in Oxfordshire.

Acting as “provocateurs in residence”, the pair attended classes and meetings with students, stirring up debate on their pet topics: Brexit, free speech, sexual consent and climate change (denial).

Delingpole says:

“I wish more schools would do this, public schools and state schools, because the kids need to be exposed to these dangerous ideas of ours”

O’Neill chimes in:

“We’ve been saying things you might not get away with in many schools. The fact that this school is open to those kinds of discussions and trusts the students enough to have that kind of discussion speaks well of [the school]”

Expose school children to political ideas … except left-wing ones, in which case it MUST BE STOPPED.

Readers from the capital will doubtless be familiar with ‘newspaper editor’ George Osborne and the use of the London Evening Standard as his personal political cudgel.

But have the most perceptive amongst them detected a slowing of front page splashes designed to undermine Theresa May?

Politico’s London Playbook reveals:

Sworn enemies George Osborne and Theresa May are speaking again. The Evening Standard editor told an audience he met the PM “a couple of weeks ago” for private talks.

Scrapbook trusts that George enjoyed his visit to “death row”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0IUCVI2MB8

Awkward.

A new report from the government’s official auditors has left transport secretary Chris Grayling exposed over fibs to parliament.

Scrapping promised rail electrification plans — in a statement sneaked out on the last day before summer recess — Grayling told parliament last year that new tech meant the vital upgrades were no longer necessary:

“New bi-mode train technology offers seamless transfer from diesel power to electric that is undetectable to passengers … This means that we no longer need to electrify every line to achieve the same significant improvements to journeys”

But the National Audit Office begs to differ — revealing the real reason for the cancellation in a report released today:

“The Department decided to cancel projects in 2017 because Network Rail’s 2014–2019 investment portfolio was no longer affordable.”

The report witheringly sets up Grayling’s statement before knocking it down in the next paragraph.

Embarrassing.