Salmond’s “bedfellows”, Huhne’s “cellmate”, Burnham’s big mouth, Steve’s mayor plans, and who still loves Tony…

Plus much more, in Guido on Sunday, only in the Daily Star Sunday.

You can now read yesterday’s column here. 

In #DailyStarSunday find out where Steve Hilton WON'T be mayor. Who is Huhne's "cell-mate" and who in Labour is cheering return of Blair…—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) March 04, 2012

Not really sure what to make of the Guardian’s advert, the management seem very proud of it. Alan Rusbridger says it is about what they mean by “open news” as they move towards a mutual form of journalism. Meaning probably that they won’t pay for content, the HuffSlo Arianna model of slave-journalism is already mirrored over at Comment is Free (of charge). So many wannabees crave having Guardian bylines that they will write for free. Which is just as well, because that is probably the only way the Guardian is going to avoid bankruptcy.

In the newspaper’s reception they have put stuffed pigs staring at Guardian staff as they walk in:

Given the amount of hypocrisy at Kings Place in the building that is the HQ of left-of-centre hand-wringing; the hundreds of millions in offshore GMG corporate holdings in the Caymans tax haven, the half-a-million quid a year reward for failure paid to the editor of a loss-making paper that rails against high-pay, the columns from the multi-millionairess anti-poverty campaigner Polly Toynbee, the support for comprehensive schools from journalists who went to and send their children to private schools, it seems fair to quote Orwell to them:

“No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

After all, the Guardian’s pigs do walk on two legs…

According to the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee ‘Workfare is transparently unfair to most people, substituting slave labour for big companies.’ Except when the Guardian do it. “The scheme is unpaid…”

Guido was a little unnerved by the high praise coming from Peter Preston in the Guardian, he described “the Daily Star Sunday’s signing of Guido Fawkes” as “the best tabloid move of the week.” We couldn’t agree more.

Half a million people read it in print yesterday, and you can now read the blog’s Sunday column online here.

Rupert Murdoch isn’t the only one who can spring a surprise. Along with Sally Bercow, we have a column this week in the Daily Star Sunday taking on Toby Young and Jordan. So unless you prefer the bigger pair of tits in the Sun, buy the Daily Star Sunday…

Congratulations are in order to Toby Young who has landed the much coveted role of political columnist at the Sun on Sunday, which will likely mean that he will be the most read political columnist in the country. With Speccie editor Fraser Nelson now writing a column for the Telegraph, the Speccie contributor has effectively filled his bosses’ old Screws slot. Toby has apparently written about his new gig in the magazine tomorrow…

UPDATE: This could get spicy:

EXCL: hearing the extremely former "guru to Ed Miliband", Maurice Glasman, will be a columnist for the Sun on Sunday? Yawn—
Vincent Moss (@vincentmoss) February 22, 2012

UPDATE II: Slight amendment to the headline via @TimGattITV

“Who polices the police?” asks Trevor Kavanagh column this morning. The answer to that question is that a free press sees money changing hands with public servants, seems to be Kavanagh’s main point. Guido isn’t so sure that will cut it.

One of the biggest digs in the whole column is at former Telegraph editor Will Lewis, who authorised payments for the stolen expenses files and is now at News International. He sits on the Management Standards Committee passing the police the ammunition about Sun hacks they need to try to recover their own tarnished reputation. Not popular in Wapping…

The events of this summer proved that the relationship between News International and the police was too close and that it impinged on the group being able to properly fulfil their role in the accountability process. That is not to say though that the police need to respond with anti-terror officers, dawn raids and what looks like a coordinated attempt to go for the Sun’s jugular. Why do journalists like Coulson, Brooks and the Guardian’s Amelia Hill get to meet the police by appointment when they are suspects? For the Sun it’s been very different:

“Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents.”

Nobody is saying that any newspaper should be above the law, or that investigations should cease, but the Met are even more foolish than anyone already thought if they believe putting a bit of disproportionate stick about is going to shift the spotlight from their own failures, corruption and general incompetence.

Not a good week for Mirror Group newspapers. Yesterday Guido repeated to Leveson exactly what he has blogged previously, the editor of the Sunday Mirror, Tina Weaver, authorised phone-hacking and blagging according to two journalist sources. Today Heather Mills told Leveson that Piers Morgan could only have listened to her voicemails as a result of illegality.

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.

Lord Hunt, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, was a charmer when Guido met him last November. He claimed to be a fan and said his kids printed out the profane comments from a previous Guido blog piece about him and stuck them on his fridge. The meeting followed some comments he made suggesting that blogs were a regulatory problem. This blogger thinks statutory regulations are a problem.

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.