For inspiration for a St Patrick’s Day post Guido looked back over the last few years to see what the form was. The standard copy seems to be mentioning Guinness and being drunk, as well as using green text.

Seems a shame to break such a fine tradition.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig!

The social media revolution is officially complete in Parliament. One Tory MP opened a CV at the start of an interview for a new researcher this week and spotted that the candidate claimed to be a “social media expert”. “So what would you bring to the job?” he quipped, “…in fewer than 140 characters…”

The flummoxed young lady didn’t get the job.

Man of letters and Labour spinner extraordinaire Tom Baldwin has penned another of his now infamous rants to the media with a host of outlandish demands and decrees.  Labour are too broke for a proper spring conference, instead their one day event in Nottingham next week looks set to achieve all the press coverage it deserves. Baldwin has other ideas though. Writing to the broadcasters he demands:

“We are keen to resolve this amicably and would suggest a couple of options to you going forward… give us coverage of this event with no comment from other parties… Alternatively, you could reflect the fact the Conservative-led Government has thus far been given far more coverage, given the two party political conferences covering four days in total, and restrict the air time given to the government parties in the run-up to the balance period.”

Clearly designed to rile Guido and everyone else in order to generate coverage and get people talking, the tactic seems to work though Baldwin hasn’t got  a leg to stand on. A quick peek through the weekend telly round ups from the weekend of the Tories conference found on the Saturday, Channel 4 News covered Miliband’s speech to Labour councillors on the squeezed middle. Sky had the same speeches live. The BBC trailed an interview with David Hansen on fuel duty. On the Sunday David Miliband was on Marr while Alistair Darling did Sky.

Fair and balanced…

Cherie Blair says Tony…

“…still excites me, in all possible ways”.

It all becomes clear. We’ve all been so blind, but now finally someone has joined up the dots and shown us the truth. Labour front bencher Karen Buck has solved the mystery of why the government are cutting Housing Benefit. It is to force “black women, ethnic minority women and Muslim women” out of London obviously. Silence from Ed…

Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party during the heyday of the SDP-Liberal Alliance. During that period if he had offered the olive branch of electoral reform to the third party he could well have become prime minister. He didn’t out of principle, because in those days he wanted a left-wing Labour government. So what has converted him to the complex cause of electoral reform? Guy News investigates:

£103,000 in director’s fees so far and 30,000 shares in the company poised to make millions in profits from the introduction of electronic voting… what was it exactly that first attracted Lord Kinnock to the cause of the alternative vote system?

Kinnock is a non-executive director of DRS Limited which works closely with ERS Limited, most recently on the multi-million pound deal that unsuccessfully introduced electronic voting systems in Scotland.  The multi-million pound business which is ERS Limited funnels money into the not-for-profit ERS which has so far given over a £1 million to the “Yes to AV” campaign. Guido doesn’t think it too cynical to ask why a private profiteering corporation would throw a million quid at a political campaign unless there was something in it for their shareholders. Kinnock isn’t doing it for nothing either, so far he has only pocketed £103,000 in director’s fees from the electronic voting systems profiteers. The fact is, if we get AV, Kinnock’s shares in DRS Limited will rocket up in value…