Guido has watched press hating media luvvie Brian Cathcart’s fall from his place as the darling of the regulation lobby to the masker of Hacked Off’s secretive billionaire backers with great amusement. Now Cathcart has been heckled by visitors to a literary festival demanding to know who is funding Hacked Off. After he refused to reveal the names of his donors, angry audience members shouted “answer the question!” Cathcart responded by betraying his true disdain for our newspapers:

“Our funds? It’s almost funny to be lectured on financial probity by newspapers. For example, the Telegraph, which is owned by a couple of brothers who live in a tax exile in the Channel Islands. To be lectured on probity by the Daily Mail, whose owner is, as far as I am aware, a non-dom, and the owner of The Times and The Sun, who, well, where would you start?”

Only it wasn’t the newspapers asking, but inconveniently a media ethics lecturer and members of the public. Not like Cathcart to let the facts get in the way of a bad story…

The pretentiously-named ‘EU Staff for Europe’, the trade union representing Brussels bureaucrats, is firmly against Dave’s budget deal. They are sending round a petition citing grand reasons for opposing the cuts, but their real motive is betrayed early on:

“As you all daily hear and read, the European project is under constant attack. In reaction to the financial crisis, the response proposed by the Member States is to reduce for the first time ever the EU budget. This historical error puts our and future generations at risks and will have long lasting effects. As regards the EU public service, it will severely affect not only the working conditions of the staff in the coming years but also, in the longer-term, the attractivity of the careers in European Institutions.

We therefore would like, as member of the personnel deeply concerned by this situation, to send the constructive letter to the Presidents of the Institutions herebelow. Rather than limiting the action to a cut of expenses, we believe that a more ambitious and forward looking approach is necessary.”

With no hint of irony, they go on:

“It is essential that we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the rising tide of selfishness and the political groping which lies behind it.”

2,500 union-backed EU turkeys have voted against Christmas so far…

Thrasher has found the perfect job to fill his empty hours now he is only a mere MP, and bide his time before he departs for Europe. Guido can reveal that the former chief whip has been appointed a senior adviser to Montrose Associates, a strategic intelligence  firm specialising in dealing with reputational damage. He will be raking in £36,000-a-year in his new post. Michael Crick is going to be busy…

The Comrade Blimps of the infantile left are screaming this morning at the Mail’s frontpage splash. Philpott clearly is an evil man, nevertheless the fact remains he had an accomplice in the killing of six children – the welfare state. Welfare payments were his motive, he wanted a bigger house and the return of the kids taken by his ex together with the £1,000 a month bounty that they carried. The jury agreed with the prosecution that Philpott’s motivation was money, he was receiving £60,000 from the state and lost £12,000 when his ex left with the cash crop. He had no intention of working to support his children, he expected taxpayers to work to support him and his children.

He wanted to frame his ex for burning down the “too small” council house to get the return of the children she had taken and get him re-housed in a bigger council house. Philpott’s plan was a product of the twisted logic incentivised by the welfare system. The more children you can’t support, the more cash you are paid.

How convenient that “fascist” Di Canio gave David Miliband the perfect chance to loudly leave his £25,000 job at Sunderland Football Club on a matter of principle. How convenient too, that the former Labour-leader-in-waiting is getting away just at the time widespread anger is boiling over in Africa at the club’s sponsor: a sponsor that David Miliband secured. Regular readers will remember Tullow Oil.

According to the Guardian, David played a vital role in forging the Sunderland deal with Tullow, the African oil firm who have been humiliated this week after accusing the Ugandan President of being involved in a $50 million bribe, leading to the company making a grovelling apology.

This sort of hiccup cannot have gone down too well with Miliband’s other employers – he is an advisor to African leaders through Tony Blair’s African Governance Initiative. Along with his escape to New York, a cynic would say Miliband saw a perfect excuse to spin this one…

Rachel Sylvester has coined a useful term in this morning’s Times to describe the hard-left online wing of the Labour Party: “Digital Bennism”. She says Miliband is facing his biggest challenge yet in standing up to his very noisy lefty critics:

Unite, is threatening to withdraw funding amid a vitriolic campaign on Twitter and blogs from leftwingers who oppose the Shadow Cabinet.

LabourList has been inundated with comments calling for Mr Byrne to resign or be sacked. “Byrne should burn,” said one, while others condemned him as “delusional”, an “idiot” and “the weakest link”. Mr Miliband was accused of abandoning Labour’s core principles by failing to stand up for “those who are being victimised” and allowing his party to be “hijacked by new Labour or Tory lite”. At one point John Reid, the Blairite former Cabinet minister, intervened in the online discussion to ask: “Is this a Labour Party website or have I clicked on a SWP one by mistake?”

Blogs, Twitter and Facebook give this deluded faction a much stronger platform than they used to achieve with a banner and a crap chant. It’s worth noting that most of the leading left-wing blogs are “proudly sponsored” by union gold…

Even in opposition, Ed Balls is still finding ways to waste taxpayers’ money. New figures show a group of senior Labour MPs have claimed £151,474 on expenses paid to Gordon and Badley Communications, a PR firm run by two party acolytes. Fiona Gordon is the partner of Labour MP Steve McCabe and was the Prime Mentalist’s political secretary, Caroline Badley was a party press officer. Guido wonders how many other non-Labour affiliated PR firms were considered.

The 16 senior Labour MPs using taxpayer cash to help out their old pals include Balls, Yvette Cooper, Liam Byrne, Jon Cruddas, Tom Watson, Bridget Phillipson, Diana Johnson, Emma Reynolds, Gisela Stuart, Ian Austin, Jack Dromey, Julie Hilling, Khalid Mahmood, Lyn Brown, Robert Flello and Shabana Mahmood. Cronyism plain and simple…

Regular readers will remember how Guido has been on the case of shamed Labour rent-swapper Linda Riordan. In October last year it was revealed how this expenses piggy rented out her London flat to another MP and skimmed off an extra £1,000-a-month in profit from the taxpayer, charging a rent of £1,560 on a property where her mortgage costs her some £500-a-month. The other MP in question, Iain McKenzie, amusingly insisted he had never heard of Riordan. Nonetheless, Riordan admitted that she had been caught red-handed and promised to kick McKenzie out, sell up and pay back the profits.

In the last few weeks Riordan has finally flogged her London property, putting an end to the whole dodgy arrangement. Whether her constituents will forgive her in 2015 is another matter…

Peter Hain’s trip to open a school in Sierra Leone last week seems to have gone well: he managed to land yet another job along the way. He’s just been appointed as a non-executive director at Amara, a major mining company that has subsidiaries in Burkina Faso, Mali and the Ivory Coast. Sounds like a nice little earner…

When he’s not being questioned by the cops for being rude to gypsies, former DfE minister Tim Loughton is dreaming up new ways to embarrass his old boss Michael Gove. As Guido revealed in yesterday’s Sun column, Loughton has sent in 87 awkward written questions to the department since he was given the chop. He is right to have a go at the police for wasting taxpayer cash, but given that it costs on average £164 to answer each question, FoI data estimates DfE have spent £14,268 on Loughton’s retirement fishing trip. Revenge is a dish that does not come cheap.