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:

https://twitter.com/#!/vincentmoss/statuses/172382036215083008

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.

You won’t hear much about this from the left today, but Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is the latest leader to be forced out of office on a wave of protest. It seems he wasn’t a very nice chap and his arresting a judge was the last straw for an angry public who took to the streets. There is surprisingly muted coverage about the incident over at the Guardian. Could it be because Nasheed was until very recently the darling of the green movement?

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…