Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
AT THE end of January the Guardian reported all kinds of bad financial behaviour at chocolate-maker Ferrero.
I would just like to add one thing to its report: Ferrero has a former senior Tory Cabinet minister on its payroll. Yet again this shows that, where we find companies behaving badly, we often find Tories.
As the Guardian reported, the sweet-making company is having a fat-cat moment. Giovanni Ferrero, son of the company’s founder, is paying himself and his family a €642 million (£542m) dividend.
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests
DENNIS BROE enjoys the political edge of a series that unmasks British imperialism, resonates with the present and has been buried by Disney


