A reportedly depressed Gordon Brown is ruling out working with an SNP Government in Holyrood reports Radio Clyde. Gordon said he would have no truck with SNP leader Alex Salmond, even if Scottish voters make him First Minister.

The LibDem’s Lord Oakeshott is complaining that Labour peers are ten times more likely than Tories to be coining it on government quangos. Labour has 211 peers after a decade of ermine sales by Sleazy Levy. The Tories have 203 and the LibDems 77 peers. This works out to approximately 1 in 10 Labour peers, 1 in 25 LibDems and 1 in 100 Tory peers in clover.

According to Oakeshott, more than 20 Labour peers are making substantial sums from quango work, 2 Tories are on the gravy train and three LibDems are living it up at the taxpayer’s expense. We are talking six-figure sums here, £600 to £800 a day, with many on over £100,000 a year.

Oakeshott says “Ministers might as well put up an ‘Opposition Peers need not apply’ sign. This is creeping corruption, alongside the shameless sleaze of cash for Labour peerages. New Labour trumpets the need for transparency and diversity. It doesn’t work that way when they hand out jobs to their own Peers.”

Many of the Labour peers who have been appointed to jobs by secretaries of state are former Labour party officials or trade unionists. Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, who used to have an official role on Labour’s ruling body, the NEC, now earns £45,802 as chair of an obscure quango which oversees the New Covent Garden Market Flower market. Jobs for the boys and girls…

Hain was recently overheard saying “Phil needs to grow up”…

Looks like the decline and fall of Phil Taylor is permanent.

Meantime Hain is scaremongering on the campaign trail that the Tories could be back in government in Wales. Now this Thursday is going to be bad for Labour, but not that bad…

In general Guido doesn’t do local stories unless they have national implications because they are (a) of local interest only (b) incredibly involved (c) boring. Also they invariably involve tales of petty corruption which would require resources that Guido does not have to validate. The Sunday Times has the resources to put an undercover reporter into Labour’s Leeds party operation to uncover corrupt Postal Vote practises. Guido does not and sticks to Westminster stories.

There are plenty of local focus blogs that break local stories, Greenwich Watch does what it says on the tin to great effect and the annoyance of the local council. The blog billed as the “Welsh version of Guido Fawkes” goes from strength to strength. Despite a certain similarity www.ArsemblyWales.org will not be confused with the official ww.AssemblyWales.org. Some tribute sites are better than others. This one has a few other stylistic similarities that co-conspirators might recognise

A co-conspirator draws to Guido’s attention a report in yesterday’s London Paper. After spending an evening in a Soho restaurant Gordon Brown “emerged, clutching a mysterious brown envelope, he was harangued by a group of hoodies. ‘They were all screaming abuse at him, calling him gay and a poof… They were getting aggressive. A girl said she’d had her benefits cut and was going to rob him.’ ”

The chancellor was bundled into his car by security officers.

Today Gordon Brown was getting heckled by the mother of a cystic fibrosis patient over the removal of free TV sets from a PFI hospital ward. Linda Smith was held back by police at the entrance to the Heartlands Hospital, in Birmingham but was later allowed to enter the building and had a five-minute talk with the chancellor.

Mrs Smith, 56, complained to the chancellor that it was not right for children on the ward for hours on end to have nothing to amuse them “Children spend their last weeks and months of their lives on that ward… They can’t go out because of the risk of infection. The fact that they have pulled the plug is criminal.”

Where’s Gordon?™ tracks Gordon’s campaign trail as he tries to shore up the Labour vote.

The Romsey Redhead herself, Sandra Gidley, is fighting the good fight against the scourge of tee-totalism. Guido has just received her press release commenting on Alcohol Concern’s call for parents who give alcohol to under-15s to face prosecution. The LibDem Health spokesperson says “Watching adults drink responsibly can actually encourage young people to have a more mature attitude to alcohol.” So Donald James Kennedy will be alright.

Guido’s mother used to dip his soother in rum, never did Guido any harm…