Hugh Muir’s diary

• The bone of contention list between Downing Street and the Kremlin goes on a bit. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko; the imprisonment of Pussy Riot; the bolstering of Assad; human rights abuses, various. But you can’t just keep ranting at a man like Putin. Lucky, then, that we have Conservative Friends of Russia, the group launched last month in the garden of the Russian ambassador. No opposition types at that party. For the strategy is to cuddle, not chastise, and to that end we learn that the PR consultant behind CFoR, Richard Royal, has just returned from a 10-day trip to Putin country. The aim of the trip, he says, was to see the “real Russia”. Other Tories also went. Labourites too, claims Royal. Who were they? He’s not saying. A new Russian cultural agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, picked up his bill and, while there, Royal gave an interview to Russia Today, the pro-Kremlin TV channel. He’s no idiot. But Putin’s people will have found his visit useful.

• After a period of silence, good to hear again from the coalition’s uber-thinker Oliver Letwin. When he isn’t busy throwing constituents’ letters in the park bin, he’s closeted away, a-plottin’ and a-thinkin’. On Monday, when he gave a speech at the Institute for Government, Why Mandarins Matter, he had much to say about the Commons public administration select committee’s recent thoughts in the same area. Sadly, according to his fellow Tory party grandee and chair of said select committee Bernard Jenkin, he didn’t know what he was talking about. He made a claim, blogs Jenkin, “which can only be described as a distortion of what we recommended in our recent report”. There is, says Jenkin, “no suggestion in our report that the civil service should ‘formulate political programmes’ or ‘formulate such a strategy independent of the political programme of the elected government’. This unreasonable extrapolation has emerged from Mr Letwin’s imagination in his attempt to avoid the obvious failures of government to think and to act strategically.” Any idea, says Jenkin, “that his select committee was advocating a civil service should be involved in any ‘subversion of democracy’ is a travesty of our recommendations”. Readers, he says, “can draw their own conclusions about why the government is apparently so determined to misrepresent our report”. In short, a good cuffing. Back into the dark room, Olly.

• The war over the award of the west coast rail franchise hots up, with Sir Richard Branson – having controversially lost the contract – urging on his troops and the Department for Transport hunkering down in its position. Branson seeks a judicial review and goes armed with a petition that has attracted 173,417 signatures deploring the decision to transfer the route to the US-owned FirstGroup. Against this contentious backdrop, the mandarins of Marsham Street must have been looking forward to this week’s Business Traveller magazine awards, a glitzy lunchtime event hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald. Unfortunate, then, that the prize for “best UK domestic train service” went to Branson’s Virgin Trains – for the sixth year running. Unfortunate, too, for FirstGroup. First Great Western were the sponsors.

• A good week’s work for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. While they were meeting and greeting and dancing in the South Pacific, their lawyers were putting the squeeze on Closer magazine in France for publishing those pictures of topless Kate. Next comes the criminal prosecution. And with that in mind, whoever it was on a French Spitting Image-style programme that decided to create a topless Kate puppet should have a care. The French judiciary, if not the French people, are taking this very seriously.

• Finally, confession time. This from Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone Group, speaking at this week’s Roman Catholic church hosted conference in London: A Blueprint for Better Business. Our company’s values, he said, are providing “salaries for workers, products that improve the living conditions of people and paying taxes”. This from the Guardian in June: “Vodafone faces tax payment row. Telecoms company paid zero corporation tax in the UK this year, despite handing more than £2.3bn to other countries.” That’s worth a few Hail Marys, isn’t it?

Twitter: @hugh_muir

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