It does not get any easier for the Deputy Prime Minister. Nick Clegg is having a one-on-one right now with Steve Coogan. Apparently the coked-up starf**ker is back on his high horse and is seeking “assurances from Nick Clegg that he will continue to stand up to the power of newspaper editors and owners when the moment comes to decide” whether the press will be able to point out his hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy like waging a war against Murdoch and then taking his money as soon as he needed a channel for his new so-so Sky TV show.

Guido will be at the Hacked Off fringe meeting at 18.15 to ask him about it. Details of the meeting in Brighton at LibDem conference are here.

Yesterday the Guardian‘s very own ‘public-interest’ phone-hacker David Leigh announced a salvation plan for the beleaguered paper: a £2-a-month levy on every household broadband bill to bail out bankrupt newspapers. That’s right, they aren’t making money because people are not buying their papers, so they are now demanding a bailout. Leigh’s proposal argues:

“A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber’s bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online. There are almost 20m UK households that are paying upwards of £15 a month for a good broadband connection, plus another 5m mobile internet subscriptions. People willingly pay this money to a handful of telecommunications companies, but pay nothing for the news content they receive as a result, whose continued survival is generally agreed to be a fundamental plank of democracy. A £2 levy on top – collected easily from the small number of UK service providers (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc) who would add it on to consumers’ bills – would raise more than £500 million annually. It could be collected by a freestanding agency, on the lines of the BBC licence fee, and redistributed automatically to “news providers” according to their share of UK online readership.”

The irony of this suggestion coming from inside Guardian towers has not been lost on media commentators across the spectrum. Regular readers will be well-versed in the hypocrisy of the editor Alan Rusbridger, who is also a director of Guardian Media Group, overseeing editorials on tax avoidance, high pay and spending cuts whilst sitting on the parent company board which shelters assets and cash in the Caymans. Rusbridger trousers half-a-million pounds per year while staff are fired by the dozen. Now they want a bailout, a £2-a-month levy on every broadband user in the country is a tax that would be as regressive as they come. This is the Guardian’s poll tax moment.

Guido has been saying it for years, this is yet further evidence that the less popular newspapers are thrashing about in their final death throes. Under threat from an ever-stronger online industry much of the print media can no longer sustain itself. Paywalls kill readership, news content is almost always available for free and – in the age of Twitter – papers are reporting yesterday’s news. This year the Guardian made losses of £75.6 million. Roy Greenslade asks “has David Leigh cracked it?” A more appropriate question would be whether Leigh, and his paper, have finally cracked up.

In the column this week:

Blair lined up to be in parliament in 2015! Huhne seat fight, Diane Abbott's bonus culture. The first Tory/UKIP coalition. #DailyStarSunday—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 23, 2012

Media Guido understands that Romilly Weeks, who currently covers Westminster for ITV News, is set to become their full time Political Correspondent. The Telegraph’s Home Affairs Editor Martin Beckford is joining the Mail on Sundayin the same role.

Who else is on the move? Email Media Guido.

If you had picked up your Daily Star Sunday yesterday you would be in the know about talk of another reshuffle next year, the Sage of Twickenham downgrading his predictions and the failure of parliamentary reform.

Last Sunday we suggested the reshuffling of LibDems out of the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office could presage military action in Iran. Today, a week later, the Mail on Sunday catches up and says the same. Keep up!

Guido’s favourite story this week was how the Tories are blatantly fundraising on the back of the Olympic Games:

At a £1,000-a-head fundraising dinner on Thursday, an Olympic torch “signed by Seb Coe, David Cameron and will be signed by Boris” was auctioned for over £30,000. No wonder the Prime Minister called them “the Golden Games”.

Yesterday’s column is now online here

Tories profiting from the Olympics, the self-serving sole parliamentary reform MPs have voted for, how Ed Miliband buttered up Charles Moore and the touching tale of a cross-party handshake.

Last Sunday we suggested the reshuffling of LibDems out of the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office could presage military action in Iran. Today, a week later, the Mail on Sunday catches up and says the same.

Don’t miss today’s Daily Star Sunday. Buy it!

On a day like today it seems relevant to reflect on the public’s general distrust of tabloids. A Populus poll commissioned by lobbyists Open Road and released today has found that the public distrusts the Sun more than any other tabloid. 59% of the public distrust the Sun either “somewhat” or “completely”. The findings don’t make happy reading for the other redtops either, with 43% distrusting the Mirror, 39% the Mail and 32% the Express. Guido is happy to accept that this blog was categorised alongside the other tabloids and report that we are, err, less distrusted than all our tabloid rivals. We’re feeling pretty superior…

Open Road’s client News Corp will no doubt be pleased with their lobbying firm choosing today to further blacken the name of their biggest selling newspaper. Doh!

If you picked up your Daily Star Sunday yesterday you would know that MPs are still claiming £3.6 million in expenses to pay the wages of members of their families, including the holier than thou John Mann. Why bombing Iran may soon be Nick Clegg’s fault and all about Ed’s real life “pre-distribution”.

Yesterday’s column is now online here…

All your latest reshuffle news, whose sexy summer party boasted “private fun rooms” and a  close shave for Boris.

Yesterday’s column is now online here.

The Mirror have issued a high-minded statement explaining why they nobly decided against publishing the naked Prince Harry pics:

“The Daily Mirror took the decision not to publish the pictures of Prince Harry because we would be in clear breach of the Press Complaints Commission’s Editors’ Code of Practice, regarding intrusion of privacy, which we signed up to and we stand by that decision.”

Nothing to do with them losing the bidding war for the photos to the Sun then…