Jenny Scott has been appointed as head of spin at the Bank of England. Petite brainbox Jenny was one of the best reasons to watch the Daily Politics and had perhaps an over-enthusiastic following.

Jenny studied economics at Cambridge, worked at the Bank of England in 1992 as a professional economist during the ERM crisis before moving to Reuters in 1994 until becoming the BBC’s Economics Correspondent. In 2005 she became co-presenter with Brillo of the Daily Politics.

Guido particularly enjoyed her occasional cat-fights with Yvette Cooper and her teaching of rudimentary economics to Ed Balls. Viewer’s loss is Mervyn’s gain…

Inside Andrew Hosken’s new biography Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone (after the slightly tedious chapters about left-wing politics) we learn that a City Hall worker on the eighth floor was the source of the emails which may prove to be the downfall of Ken Livingstone. How was this incredible feat of political espionage achieved? A temporary worker read the password off a Post-It note…

He/she was able to log in as Lee Jasper and print off the emails, by the yard, which ended up in Andrew Gilligan’s welcoming hands. General Lee Jasper had to stand down as a result and we all got to laugh at a few hot and steamy emails that he had sent to a female colleague.

Gilligan won the Journalist of the Year award on the back of the the stories. Coincidentally a survey by Infosecurity released today found that

“women are far more likely to give away their passwords to total strangers than their male counterparts, with 45% of women versus 10% of men prepared to give away their password, to strangers masquerading as market researchers with the lure of a chocolate bar as an incentive for filling in the survey.”

Last night’s hustings will be dissected and the post-match spin applied by the various teams. Two things struck Guido. Firstly Ken seemed uncharacteristically lacking in confidence. He talked about “the new mayor” and what Boris would do as a mayor. Not his usual chirpy cockney character.

Secondly, on balance whereas none of the candidates made a compelling case, Andrew Neil was very good. Well briefed, firm, aggressive enough, refusing to accept bullshit spin. He had tough questions for them all that were thought out with supplementary comebacks. Whereas Paxman would sneer, Brillo laced his interrogative aggression with humour. The victor of last night’s hustings was definitely Brillo.

Guido has checked the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Post, the CNN and Drudge websites. The visit of his Holiness the Pope is everywhere. The visit of his twattyness the PM is nowhere to be seen. Not on front pages, not on inside pages. Nowhere.

Gordon has hired a high-powered PR team and they don’t even think to avoid a scheduling clash with Pope Benedict – which was always going to be the big box office draw. Gordon was giving delusional interviews yesterday lauding his important role as “a bridge to Europe”. Laughable.

UPDATE : According to Nick Robinson this morning, British Embassy officials admit they didn’t know the Pope was coming to Washington at the same time. The British Embassy n Washington is the biggest and most expensive outpost of the FCO. Well done chaps…