Chris Huhne tells Prospect that Nick Clegg in Brussels would indeed “be a tremendous commissioner.”

St George’s Hospital in Tooting is under new management and it seems that they have begun to clear out the rot. Jane Pilgrim, the “nurse” who was paid a full-time salary not to nurse, but to work full-time campaigning against the government, has been taken off her full-time duties for Unison and returned to the job we pay her to do – looking after patients:

From: Jane Pilgrim
Sent: 15 September 2011 ██:██
To: ███████████████████████
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: on-call

I will not see Emails today until 4PM AS I am clinical.

Urgent calls
07██████████
UNISON 1███

Have a Good Day

Thanks

Jane

Fittingly this small but not insignificant victory comes during the week of TUC conference. Guido hears our old friend Jane was none to happy about the move. Jane can go back to work safe in the knowledge her precedent has possibly ruined her movement’s subsidised fun and games at taxpayers’ expense. Her case has directly lead to the issue of taxpayer funded union officials, or “Pilgrims” as they have come to be known, shooting up the agenda. Guido hears from the more switched on ministers that the days of unproductive Pilgrims are numbered. The government is reviewing the £86 million loophole that pays for the union’s organisational infrastructure, allowing them to save the money raised by member subscriptions for more important things. Like keeping the Labour Party solvent…

You can read the whole saga here. We’re celebrating that this blog has helped to increase public sector productivity…

Guido has already pointed out the obvious failing in the Indy’s exposure yesterday of dirty tricks on Fleet Street. Despite apparently having the original invoices revealing who commissioned the murky and illegal goings on, the Indy refuses to reveal who were the journalists authorising the pay-outs to the über-blagger Steve Wittamore to procure illegal information.

Journalists face two years jail time for each offence. Some 389 journalists were identified by the Information Commissioner’s Operation Motorman inquiry yet none of them have yet been named or shamed never mind charged. With the papers clearly too tame, or too complicit, to do it, Guido has decided to put up a £1,000 reward to whomever helps him to successfully obtain the unredacted files and invoices that show the blagging hacks. It can be in cash to you or a donation to the charity of your choice.

It is reported that the investigators were preparing charges for conspiracy and they were thwarted in their intentions. Somebody has those Motorman files and has shown them to the Indy. If you show them to Guido, we promise the truth will out, nobody will nobble us, we will name and shame. Go on, do the right thing…

Voicemail : 0709 284 0531

Fax : 0709 201 2337

Guido.Fawkes@Order-Order.com

A rare thing happened earlier – Chris Huhne popped up for live interviews about his brief on both Sky and the BBC. Given that he has spent the last four months hiding from cameras, desperate not to be drawn in on questions regarding his cowardice and lies, he must be feeling rather lucky. The police thought he would be charged weeks ago and the CPS are certainly dragging their feet. He’s also given an interview to Prospect. Amongst the usual moans about losing the AV vote, Huhne seems to twist the knife on Clegg some what. He thinks Clegg would be “a tremendous” EU trade commissioner – the definition of damning with faint praise. He was quick to qualify his words though:

“It seems completely ridiculous to think of anything other than Nick continuing as leader of the party. He’s a lot younger than me, more than ten years younger than me for Christ’s sake, and I think that Nick will see out my time in politics.”

Unless the CPS chicken out, Nick isn’t going to have to wait much longer…

A rare surplus in the public sector net cash requirement seems to have distorted the misery index, despite the gloom on the horizon and rising unemployment. Guido is definitely not happy, having just spent longer than ever necessary trying to navigate around the utterly shoddy, messy and overly complex new website for the Office of National Statistics, he’s in need of a drink. Another spectacular public sector IT success…

From now onwards the Misery Index will be bought to you using Bloomberg data.

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here.

The FT’s cerebral editor Lionel Barber gave the Fulbright Lecture last night about media matters of concern to the chatterati (“The Future of News and Newspapers in the Digital Revolution“). Barber joins the chorus for a Media Standards Commission, with teeth, to replace the discredited Press Complaints Commission.

Of interest to Guido was that he wants the regulator’s remit to cover blogs:

Should the new system embrace new media such as the Huffington Post UK or individual political bloggers such as Guido Fawkes?  My answer is Yes, not simply in the interests of a level playing field but also because the distinction between old and new media are rapidly becoming meaningless in the new digital eco-system.  New media is moving into reporting. Old media is blogging and tweeting, and using social media to promote and distribute news and analysis around the world.

If bloggers don’t cooperate he wants “a statutory levy on advertising revenues for non-participants, with such levies being used to fund the new body”. Good luck with that, because it will require some extra-territorial innovations in international law. It is never going to happen, you’ll have to prise the keyboard out of Guido’s cold dead hands…

If they’d fired Hari this story would have gone away, instead the Indy’s mad decision to welcome him back in 2012, so long as no more significant revelations emerge, has poured more fuel on the fire. In many ways Hari is no longer the issue and fingers are being pointed above his head:

General mood livid over hari situation. Mainly at double standards. One rule for bosses/favoured few, another for those churning out paper—
indy hack (@indy_hack) September 14, 2011

Guido had to chuckle when he had a look at the Indy’s  coverage of the sacking of the New York Times fantasist Jayson Blair:

“It was a byword for journalistic integrity, a beacon of truth and one of America’s proudest institutions. Then, in 2003, The New York Times was brought to its knees. A 27-year-old reporter, one of the newsroom’s brightest stars, was exposed as a plagiarist who fabricated stories and concocted quotes. The fall-out was epic: the editor quit, staff mutinied and the paper’s reputation was left in tatters.”

Sound familiar?

It seems Coke & Sex Week has gone international, with another prominent right-winger’s past being flung into the public eye. This one is going to be huge. Sarah Palin is accused of having a one night stand in 1987, behind her soon to be husband’s back, with 6ft 7in NBA player Glen Rice. The tryst allegedly took place in her sister Molly’s dorm room at the University of Alaska. Palin was a sports reporter at the time. However that’s not all:

“The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by the respected if controversial author, Joe McGinniss, claims Palin was seen snorting cocaine off the top of a 55-gallon drum while snowmobiling with friends. It also alleges she smoked marijuana with a professor while at Mat-Su College in Alaska.”

Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s business partner is also accused of sleeping with the former Alaskan governor in 1996. Unlike with a certain Tory Chancellor, at least it seems Palin wasn’t so stupid as to be caught grinning in front a plate of charlie. This might not go down so well with the hockey moms, but Guido is certainly amused…

Writing the Purple Book, Peter Mandelson says Ed is:

“prone to clutch at straws and grab at any passing fad…”