The BBC’s Newsnight has heard the same stories and probably from the same sources:

When Guido met Lord Hunt he brought up the subject of Weaver sitting on the Press Complaints Commission, he looked uncomfortable and squirmed without giving an answer. Guido told him to get his own house in order. It is a sick joke that Tina Weaver still sits as a member of the Commission.

It was reported that Lord Hunt told the Leveson Inquiry last week that we had a “very good” discussion and Guido told him that what he writes is “always accurate”. Guido recalls, more precisely, that he said this blog always strives for accuracy.

It was also reported that Guido “promised to go away and consider” being kitemarked under the new beefed up PCC successor. It is true to say that when pressed Guido may have told Lord Hunt that he would consider it, not saying “no” there and then. It is however a very definite no to kitemarking, or any other form of self-censorship.

This blog aims to amuse, inform and entertain our readers, reporting the truth as we see it. That sentence is this blog’s entire code of conduct.

Mohamed Nasheed once held a cabinet meeting under water in a climate change stunt and it won him hero status in that field. The paper has always sung his praises:

“After his election last year, Nasheed raised the possibility of buying a new homeland for the country’s 396,000 residents with the hundreds of millions of dollars that tourists spend. Earlier this year, he announced that the Maldives would stop using fossil fuels by 2020. The president is also committed to converting an atoll into a UN-protected biosphere to preserve the unique wildlife and fauna found on the 1,100 islands.”

At one point in 2009 the Observer claimed that Nasheed could not only save the Maldives but also the world. Who would have thought a green fanatic would have such fascistic tendencies…  

The Guardian aren’t having a great day.

Firstly Polly this morning, then this, and now it seems Moinboit has gone off on one.

Read the comprehensive take down of the Moonbat here.

Guido reported last month that Lord Ashcroft was adding to his political publishing empire by buying DeHavilland Political Intelligence for £12.8 million. This will give him control of the political intelligence services sector in the UK. PoliticsHome was his first purchase, originally conceived to take on Dods’ established political monitoring business, in the end instead of out-competing the rival Dods, Ashcroft bought and merged the two loss making businesses. PoliticsHome is losing £10,000 a week and the bigger Dods is losing £20,000 a week because their print businesses are, according to the directors “in long-term structural decline”. As a financial imperative the emphasis has shifted onto organising lobbyist’s events and conferences as well as selling political monitoring and intelligence. The event organising business could be hit hard by the statutory registration of lobbyists being coupled with politicians and civil servants having to register their contacts with lobbyists. Politicians will simply stop attending and if they don’t come, the lobbyists won’t pay.

The key growth business is political monitoring, 40% of Dods’ revenues comes from this sector. It had one rival, DeHavilland, founded in 1998 by Adam Afriyie, now Conservative MP for Windsor; he sold it in 2005, to Guardian Media Group owned Emap for £8 million, now they are now selling it on to Ashcroft-controlled Dods plc for £12.8 million. If the Office of Fair Trading nods the deal through it will give the combined group control of the political monitoring sector which is used by corporate and public affairs professionals to keep track of political and legislative developments. The lack of competition will inevitably allow the combined near-monopoly to jack up prices to customers. Ouch.

The takeover deal is being funded entirely by Lord Ashcroft underwiting a share placing that will see his resultant holding in Dods plc potentially go up to 42.9%, way over the 29.9% limit past which the City Takeover Code requires the purchaser to make a full offer to the remaining shareholders to buy them out. Dods are seeking a Rule 9 Waiver on his behalf to allow it to go through without Ashcroft making an offer for the shares he does not already own in Dods, effectively stranding the minority shareholders in the company. Minority shareholders might be looking for an exit given that the illiquid shares have performed badly, more than halving since Ashcroft bought a controlling stake. The Takeover Panel has ruled that Dods need to get a difficult “Whitewash Resolution” from the minority shareholders at an Extraordinary General Meeting to wave the deal through. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, the EGM is being held quietly and without any fanfare at this very moment in the City offices of the company’s law firm, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP. Shareholder attendance will be very limited…

“Not even Eoin Clarke’s would claim his writings are essential reading, but his blog appears to be one of the few places on the interweb to give Ed Miliband a sympathetic hearing – so perhaps that’s why he reads it.”

Well it looks like the good doctor has found another reader. In her column this morning Polly Toynbee takes fear mongering about the NHS to new levels, and she has damning sources to back her up:

“If leaks to Dr Eoin Clarke’s website prove correct, the main risk is of costs becoming unaffordable as private companies siphon off profits and GP commissioners lack the expertise to control costs.”

Always keen to help out, Guido went over to the site, but could not find any evidence of any leaks. No quotes, no documentation, nothing. Here is what Clarke said, and Polly thinks justifies the high standards set by her Guardian colleagues:

“I am told that the reason for this is that the report contains a very serious warning about the long term damage the bill will do to the NHS. “

Polly is publishing on the basis of second-hand, un-sourced “leaks” from a website already widely derided for spouting nonsense. What would Lord Justice Leveson say!

“The total directors’ pay and pensions bill for Trinity Mirror last year was £3.9million – £1.3million of which was cash bonuses. Of that, Sly Bailey’s package of pay and pensions was a staggering £1.7m, including a cash bonus of £660k. However, the share price for Trinity Mirror today is 48p whereas 12 months ago it was 90p.”

The NUJ estimates that more than fifty of those editorial jobs on the line could be paid for with this money.

And the hacks know it.

UPDATE: More news coming out of Canary Wharf. Guido understands that Trinity CEO is currently in Barbados. She left it to Mark Hollinshead to break the redundancy news to staff. When he asked if there were any questions, the entire staff walked out in silence…

After Guido pointed out the inappropriate smearing of Gove and his links to a Jewish antisemitism Charity, carefully timed for Holocaust Memorial Day, the paper has backtracked and apologised. Not with due prominence in their paper, but in a quote to the Jerusalem Post instead:

“The story does not in any way suggest that the funding ofsecurity guards for Jewish schools was inappropriate, only that Mr. Gove should have stood aside from the grant giving process given his relationship with CST. It was scheduled for publication on Thursday but pushed back because of the volume of news that day. We should have spotted the unfortunate timing and regret any offense caused.”

A textbook non-apology, but interesting that they didn’t see fit to say sorry for including a quote from SpinWatch’s David Miller in the same story. The same David Miller who is rather fond of printing neo-Nazi essays and believes in vast “Jewish lobby” conspiracies. Perhaps the Guardian should have had a look through their own archives before giving Miller coverage. Here’s what they published about him in July:

“SpinProfiles and Neocon Europe are projects that, under the guise of academia, are used to carry out campaigns of smear and harassment by creating selectively produced profiles of people and groups with different political outlooks, often ignoring facts that do not support their agenda. This approach characterises both of Miller’s projects, and to treat them as academic endeavours is to do a great disservice to British academia’s long tradition of neutral and unbiased inquiry.”

One of these factors alone can be spun as an oversight. But two…

UPDATE: A source to Gove gets in touch to say said: “It is unbelievable to attack any politician for funding the protection of Jewish children. It is even more extraordinary and frankly offensive to do it on Holocaust Memorial Day.”

UPDATE II: The CST aren’t happy either. They note that the Guardian did not even bother to contact them before running the story and have let rip on their own blog.

Guido can’t find Harriet Harman’s “first major speech on the future of the media” trailed in any other paper besides this morning’s Guardian. Apparently Ed Vaizey’s DCMS shadow is declaring that she is “going to be a champion of press freedom”:

Before her first major speech on the future of the media, Harman claimed there was a clear consensus around these principles, and last night challenged editors to put forward practical proposals. “I think it would really help Leveson if newspaper editors came forward with a solution. We have had a good scoping of the issues, but now it is time for the editors to lay their cards on the table. They need to propose the solution, rather than have one imposed upon them.”

All this has come as a bit of a surprise to a source with knowledge of the Shadow Culture brief. Guido hears whispers of a meeting last Monday (January 16) where Harman had to be talked out of  supporting the state regulating the press. Just nine days ago Harman was openly advocating imposing the very solution that she derides today. Add to that her track record of trying to censor the tabloids and Page 3 plus her past support for extreme political correctness suggests the idea of her being some sort of champion for free speech becomes risible… 

Guido’s spiritual mother Madame Popbitch is up at Leveson next week, but that wasn’t the only name on the witness list to catch his eye. The Fake Sheik, Mazher Mahmood, has been recalled. The clue to why is the witness immediately before him on the list – his old boss Roy Greenslade. After Mahmood’s farcical first outing, Greenslade wrote:

It is lucky – for both of us – that I had to listen to his contribution from the media marquee because press and public were banned from the courtroom … because I would certainly have shouted out when he replied to counsel’s question about why he had left the paper under a cloud. He said simply: “We had a disagreement.”

A disagreement? Well, that’s one way of describing it. In fact, it is a euphemistic description of the reality. “We” – the paper and, in this case, me – had a major falling out with Mahmood. I was then at the Sunday Times, running the news department, and I recall the incident well. When Mahmood resigned, he was on the verge of being dismissed for an act regarded within the office as gross impropriety.

Greenslade directly challenges Mahmood’s evidence and the showdown is set for Wednesday. Get the background here and grab the popcorn…