Tom Levitt's new business venture

Well it seems that Tom Levitt certainly isn't letting the grass grow under his feet, and news has reached us that he has already set up his own company. Indeed, he's announced it on his linkedin page* (emphasis added):

Building on my considerable experience of the third/voluntary sector in UK I am in the process of setting up a consultancy on third sector/private sector partnerships: Sector 4 Focus.

Brief details of the company can be found here, and it seems that the company has been registered by a North London firm of accountants. A quick trip to the library look at the records held by Bureau van Dijk on the company shows that both Tom and Teresa Marta Levitt are the directors, and that the company was created on 2nd March 2010. A domain name has been registered on the same date by Tom Levitt.

Now it seems that Levitt's timing may be spot on. Looming deep cuts to the public sector will used as an opportunity to hive off the work of said sector to the voluntary sector. It's something which New Labour facilitated, and the Tories have talked about vastly expanding. Levitt has seen an opportunity to rake in consultancy fees.

There's a lot more background to this story, and it's something we'll no doubt explore before too long.

* - his page still mistakenly describes him as an MP

Helpful edits to Tom Levitt's Wikipedia page

Having this weekend seen an article in the Telegraph about how the Wikipedia pages of certain MPs appear to be being edited by individuals with House of Commons IP addresses, we thought we'd pop along to Tom Levitt's page to see what we could find.

Well, it seems that over the past few months there have been several tit-for-tat edits and re-edits, mainly surrounding the issue of Levitt's expenses. A series of edits caught our eye.

30th October 2009 - removal of a link to the Tom Levitt's Expenses blog

16th November 2009 - removal of a section linking the Levitt expenses furore to his decision to stand down as an MP

20th April 2010 - editing of another section about Levitt's expenses - compare these two paragraphs (changes in bold):

In Late 2009 towards the end of the furore over MP's expenses, it was revealed Mr Levitt had attempted to claim for a memorial wreath. This caused outrage in the High Peak area. He late repaid this money.

In 2009 during the furore over MP's expenses, it was revealed Mr Levitt had on one occasion inadvertently submitted a claim for a memorial wreath. This caused outrage in the High Peak press even though he had never actually received any money.

10th May 2010 (today!) - editing the amended expenses section again, adding 'inadvertently' once more and removing the following text:

Questions do remain, however, over the non-payment of [[capital gains tax]] on the sale of Mr Levitt's second home in London, and the use of taxpayers' money for a new bathroom, also in London.

The same editor also peevishly removed all traces of Levitt's successor as MP, Andrew Bingham, from the sections of the page about the post of High Peak MP.

So who made all of these edits? Well, it seems that we can't discover the IP address so easily, but helpfully, the editor has decided to choose a username which possibly points to a culprit - 'Teresamarta'. Tom's wife is called Teresa, and a search on Google yields links to pages here and here which show Mrs Levitt's middle initial is 'M' and the name is Marta (name highlighted).