Gotcha…

The Guidogram round-up of the week is going out shortly.

Thousands of Westminster insiders read the Guidogram, everyone from Downing Street insiders to Fleet Street never miss it. As we usher in the New Year Guido has been leading the way this week. Read all about Jim Davidson, Jean Michel Jarre and Political Scrapbook’s latest intern shame…

Join the conspiracy and become a subscriber to the Guidogram, free, to keep in the loop. You’re either in front of Guido, or behind…

Poor old Political Scrapbook. The union-sponsored socialists are not having a very good run of things this year. Firstly Guido exposed their worse-than-the-workhouse “volunteer” system – where you volunteer to do all the work on the site for free, and then you don’t even get any gruel. Moooore, you say?

Today Mr Bumble and his starving slave “interns” finally realised that the festive season was over and made it back to the workhouse; producing their first blogpost since way before Christmas; which consisted of a picture lifted from somewhere else. Sadly for the lazy socialists, the story was shot down within minutes by Kebab Time blogger @OnTablets:

It seems they are mocking Scrapbook’s progressive idols too.

Was it worth the waiting for? Well no…

Another nail in the husky coffin as Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin concedes defeat to Nigel Lawson and accepts that the Kyoto Treaty is dead and nothing will be following it. Back in 2008 the two men made a bet, the details of which were published in a Standpoint interview:

Oliver Lewtin: I’d be very happy to have a wager, and I offer you a £100 bet that before either of us is dead, whichever is the first — our estates can pay — we will see a very substantial agreement on carbon reduction.

Nigel Lawson: But I don’t think I want the bet to be “in my lifetime” because I’d like to get the £100. I’m sorry it’s such a modest amount you’re prepared to wager — it shows how unconfident you are — but I would like to be able to collect before I die. So I think we should say “by the time Kyoto runs out”, because there is meant to be no hiatus; there is meant to be a successor to Kyoto. So “by 2012 we will have the agreement” — maybe I’ll die before then, of course —but 2012 is the acid test.

Oliver Letwin: On the same basis, Nigel, I’m perfectly willing to take that bet too. The reason I’m willing to take the bet is that I know that the only way it can be made to happen is if we try to make it happen and if we build up the moral authority to make it happen by taking the steps ourselves.

Letwin has apparently now agreed to settle the bet. Lord Lawson is on a bit of victory lap this afternoon:

“Oliver is one of the nicest people in politics, and one of the cleverest. It is, however, disconcerting that UK climate change policy - which makes no conceivable sense in the absence of a binding global agreement – has been based on the advice of someone so totally divorced from any understanding of practical realities.”

Well quite.

Norman Lamb’s local paper reports that he was “ambushed” by Morris dancers in his constituency over Christmas. One photo op that the LibDem Care Minister should have skipped…

Guido thought that the Huffington Post UK editor Carla Buzasi might have had a new year resolution to clean up her site, especially given how much she complains about people writing about women and their bodies. Last year we saw her stoop as low as printing pictures of children in swimwear to try and harvest Google search engine traffic. And what does their Political Editor Mehdi Hasan, who has the audacity to attack other publications for failing to respect women’s “dignity”, have to say about it all?

Not very much it seems. No new leaf either, instead the HuffPoUK have hit the ground running this year with a classy post about a mother and daughter incest porn duo. Conveniently they managed to get all the key search words like “PICTURES” and “Mother & Daughter Porn Duo”  into the headline so pervs typing that into Google will land at their post. There is the obligatory gallery of half naked snaps of the two as well, of course.

Is the desperate quest for traffic really worth peddling such filth?

Gerard Depardieu must be pretty desperate in his bid to flee Hollande’s socialism: he has been granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin.

The former communist is now offering tax asylum to western Europe’s rich and famous. Russia’s 13% income tax rate is one sixth as oppressive as Francois Hollande’s unconstitutional 75% supertax. A sign of the changing times, Putin’s announcement was made via Twitter:

Vladimir Putin signs order giving Gérard Depardieu Russian citizenship—
President of Russia (@KremlinRussia_E) January 03, 2013

Trolling on an international scale…

Nice of the Guardian to give the Argies premium advertising space this morning for the annual sabre rattling about the Falklands and a new territorial claim to Queen Elizabeth Land in Antarctica.

It’s one thing simply publishing the rant in their letters page, however they have given Christina Fernandez de Kirchner nearly half a page as well as a follow up article bigging up “the populist president’s” “blistering” letter that “acidly” slams colonialism. They even excitedly report the element of surprise of the advert.

As if it was an invasion…