Yesterday the luvvies at the UK Film Council quango were summoned by Ed Vaizey to answer claims they had misused resources to promote their own survival rather than the interests of the British movie industry. The suspicion at the DCMS is that they were running a scaremongering spin operation drawing in the likes of Clint Eastwood and billionaire film producer Steven Spielberg to write publicly demanding the British taxpayer subsidises their movies.

A UK Film Council spin-doctor yesterday denied the allegations, piously intoning that: “The future of the UK film industry is the only thing the UK Film Council is interested in.” Unfortunately PR Week had already gone to press before Vaizey had voiced his suspicion that the luvvies were using public resources to promote their own interests, rather than those of the film industry. In PR Week Oliver Rawlins, the film quango’s head spinner boasted that he had

“been handling a comms strategy relying on third-party advocacy… We’ve ensured that the message has been simple, clear and consistent: this is a terrible decision that disregards the commercial benefits of the UK Film Council…”

Which rather undermines the quango’s subsequent claim that they weren’t spinning to save their own necks…

Simon Hughes has gone off one again, demanding grandly that the LibDems have a veto on Coalition policy.

John Redwood is dismissive:

“Mr Hughes thinks Lib Dem backbenchers should have a veto on Coalition policies. Some would say only if Conservative backbenchers as well can have one, to be fair.”

As Redwood points out, even if all the LibDem MPs vote against a government proposal, with the support of Labour MPs they still can’t get a majority. Only if 40 Tory MPs rebel and Labour votes en bloc with them, can the government lose. Like perhaps on AV…

The knee-jerk reaction from the left to being called “deficit deniers” is nigh on hysterical, this morning Comrade Maguire over at the Mirror indulges in a ritual denuciation of Maggie, quotes Neil Kinnock approvingly and says “I’m proud to be called one of George Osborne’s deficit deniers”. Given that the polling shows the public understands the need for spending cuts and the peril the deficit presents, our Kev is advertising his exit from what could be described as the reality-based community.

Over at the Staggers, Medhi Hussein, too says “I’m proud to be a deficit denier”.  Confusingly, for a self-described polemicist, he then qualifies what he writes, claiming that he doesn’t “deny the existence of this country’s largest Budget deficit since the war” nor “pretend that cuts will never come”. Which somewhat suggests that one of the few media admirers of Balls isn’t such a proud deficit denier after all.

The deficit-denier-in-chief, Ed Balls, one half of the duo that abolished “boom and bust”, is the bookies favourite to be eliminated in the first round of the Labour leadership election. Nevertheless Balls is sticking to his “so what?” position, claiming deficit reduction is the “economics of the madhouse”. Absurdly Balls reckons even Alistair Darling’s modest deficit reduction plan was wrong: “Halving the deficit in four years by cutting public spending… I think was a mistake. In government at the time in 2009 I always accepted collective responsibility, but at the time in 2009 I thought the pace of deficit reduction through spending cuts was not deliverable, I didn’t think it could have been done… I’m not happy to accept cuts in any part of the budget…” Guido thinks that is really the “economics of the madhouse”…