Blogger and campaigner Mark Wallace is offering a generous reward for a brave upholder of the British justice system to set off the Ecuadorian embassy fire alarm and flush out Julian Assange.

The great and the good on Twitter have chipped in, and as we go to pixel the total stands at over £6,500.

Guido is heading towards Knightsbridge this evening…

This morning Guido revealed that Len McCluskey aims to raise a £30 million war chest to fund Unite’s takeover of the Labour Party. The internal Unite document sent to Guido shows that Red Len hopes to make up to £12 million by consolidating their posh property in Eastbourne.

According to their website the Eastbourne Centre offers 130 ensuite bedrooms, gourmet dining and two well-stocked bars, all kitted out with a plush Labour Red interior. Unite members get a generous discount. Up the workers…

Read all about the scourge of Rupert Murdoch’s latest hobby…

...Over on Media Guido…

It’s no secret that Hugh Grant was pretty Hacked Off about the press coverage of his Sunset Boulevard indiscretion with hooker Divine Brown, and now the Hollywood star has joined the board of the press standards lobby group. Grant will help fund the Hacked Off Campaign as it establishes itself as a registered company.

In other news Hacked Off is currently on the lookout for a new Head of Media Relations. Successful candidates will need “excellent written and oral skills”…

Like Guido, regular readers will no longer be surprised to see stories from this blog appear in Andrew Pierce’s Mail column. On Friday Guido ran two stories on Michael Gove’s school playing fields saga, the first revealing just how many fields were flogged under Labour and the second unearthing the hypocrisy of Andy Burnham. Imagine the shock in the Guy Newsroom when Pierce then penned a piece yesterday revealing just exactly how many school playing fields had been sold off under the last government accompanied by the very same quote from the Shadow Health Secretary:

Coincidence, of course…

See also: Magpie Pierce Lifts Another Guido Story, Andrew Pierce is a Thief – An Occasional Series, Andrew Pierce Goes all Hari, Did You See Guido’s Column in the Mail Today?, An Open Letter to Paul Dacre

This morning’s public borrowing figures do not make happy reading for the government. Despite July traditionally providing good news in terms of tax receipts, Chancellor Zero has borrowed £600 million in the last month – compared with a £2.8 billion surplus in the same month last year. The total borrowing projection for this year is now some £30 billion more than in 2011, despite the Coalition predicting that borrowing would fall.

BBC News‘ Jane Hill is suggesting that the government has borrowed the money “by accident“. Perhaps she has been reading Tory whip Greg Hands’ tweets to Guido:

@GuidoFawkes Yes, but point is Labour would do it deliberately.—
Greg Hands (@GregHands) August 21, 2012

Well that’s okay then…

Last week Guido revealed yet another of  Energy and Climate Change Committee chairman Tim Yeo’s conflict of interests with the green tycoon’s taxi company, Eco City Vehicles, helping to provide London with new environmentally-friendly taxis. It gets worse.

The photograph above shows Eco City Vehicles CEO Peter Da Costa smiling broadly as he signs the agreement to introduce an Age Limit for taxis in London. Da Costa signed Boris Johnson’s Air Quality Strategy, giving Yeo’s seal of approval to plans to force drivers to replace cabs that are over ten years old. Eco City Vehicles aim to dominate the capital with their German-made taxis at £30,000 each. Da Costa himself is pictured here on a test drive with the new model. No wonder he was looking so smug…

Red Len McCluskey is driving a secret policy aiming to build up a £30 million war chest to fund Unite’s “struggle for Labour’s soul“. An internal Unite document seen by Guido reveals that the union is planning a huge consolidation of its property portfolio:

The document then shows that Unite will spend the cash on a new political strategy which aims to parachute union-friendly candidates into marginal seats. They seek to:

• “Advance Unite’s ‘policy agenda’ through Labour’s ‘constitutional structures.
• Work with other affiliated unions to secure the adoption of trade union (or union-friendly) candidates in winnable constituencies in particular.
• Increase Unite members’ involvement and participation in local Labour Parties.”

It’s the blueprint to turn Labour Red…

Back in July John Prescott claimed he was the victim of an elaborate plot by the Tories to smear him over dodgy government credit card purchases. Central to Prezza’s conspiracy theory was a redacted letter from Gus O’Donnell, with Hull’s next top copper demanding an investigation into the apparent cover-up. The story was run by Political Scrapbook, and even the Observer weighed in. Now there is egg-on-face all round as the whole theory was debunked this morning, with an answer to Prezza’s Parliamentary Question in the Lords revealing the letter in question was censored simply to redact factual errors:

“A factual error in the Cabinet Office reply of 18 November 2011, incorrectly suggesting that departmental civil servants had been disciplined for the use of the Government Procurement Card under the previous Administration, was removed from the version of 21 November. In fact, the fraud stemmed from seven transactions on a cloned credit card. A second paragraph was also deleted from the version of 18 November in error. The Cabinet Secretary has written to the noble Lord to explain the background.”

Prezza can take off his tin foil hat…

This morning Team Ed have expressed their outrage at the Coalition’s proposals to sell off NHS operations overseas, with the Labour leadership quickly condemning plans to set up profit-making hospitals abroad as “rampant commercialism“. Clearly they have forgotten that it was the last Labour government that came up with the idea in the first place. Andy Burnham said at the time:

“There is great potential to benefit from the exceptional knowledge and intelligence within the NHS. This will mean better value for that investment of taxpayers’ money and funds raised going straight back into NHS organisations, which will benefit patients across the country. We know that BBC Worldwide has already had success in this area, and now the NHS, another of this country’s best-loved institutions, must make the most of these international opportunities. A key part of responding to the economic challenge that the NHS faces will be realising the full potential of innovation, not only making effective use of our knowledge and skills at home, but also making money abroad that can be reinvested back into the NHS.”

Guido’s diagnosis? A severe case of the flip-flop…