Guido is off for beer and sandwiches with Eric Pickles to mark the launch of the growing  Trade Union Reform Campaign. The new group must be doing something right given that they have sent both the Morning Star and the TUC round the bend today.

In a pre-emptive move the TUC rushed yet another one of their poorly researched spin memos declaring all of the great things that taxpayer-funded trade  union officials apparently do. It will come as no surprise that the Taxpayers’ Alliance were able to shred it within hours.

Next time the TUC want to be taken seriously, they shouldn’t get the pseudo-academic/Morning Star writer Gregor Gall to do their research. He relied on a discredited BIS review that was conducted under the union-funded Labour government. No wonder it was pro-brother…

After campaigning for nearly a year now on the issue of Pilgrims, Guido likes what has been trailed so far from Pickles’ planned speech:

“The public want their council tax frozen and their bins emptied every week. They don’t want it spent on trade unions’ political campaigning. It’s not right that the public’s money is covertly being used to bankroll union activists. They are diverting resources away from frontline services, waging class war with public funds. At a time when every council needs to help pay off Labour’s deficit, it’s time to cut these pilgrims and axe these non-jobs on the rates. Unions should not be given free office facilities and the free service of union dues being collected by government employers.”

TURC has attracted the support of both Liam Fox and Aidan Burley, amongst others. Anyone know what the dress code is?

It’s always nice to know your work is appreciated, so Guido enjoyed his chat last night with a northern Labour MP whose name escapes him and whose face blends in.

“Amicably” discussing the Commons subsidy and difference in prices for the public and Members, Guido was asked what he was doing sipping a taxpayer subsidised lager in parliament:

“Research”.

Andrew Lansley told the Speccie…

‘I don’t like a minimum price, we are acting against below cost selling. My problem with a minimum price, well I have two problems. One is it’s regressive, so there are perfectly normal families who just don’t happen to have much money who like to buy cheap beer or cheap wine. Should they be prevented? No, I don’t think so and if you put in a minimum price, one of the journalists calculated that if you set it at 50p a unit it would add £600 million to the profits of retailers and drinks manufacturers which doesn’t seem to me to be the right thing to do in these circumstances.’

In the wake of the Mail on Sunday’s scoop about Tory MP Aidan Burley stupidly attending that stag party, the BBC have done a useful compendium of other similar incidents. They seem to have forgotten one key public figure who actually donned the suit himself though: the Shadow Chancellor. What a surprising omission…

Guido is very happy to announce that the Jura Whisky give-away is back…

There is a bottle of Superstition up for grabs for the wittiest caption. If nobody is funny then Guido will just have to drink it, so get your thinking caps on.

While you think about it, why not sign up to become a “Diurach” here.

Guido has a bottle of the finest from the nice people at Glenfiddich to give to last week’s caption contest winner. Nothing really tickled him though, so instead the prize is going to the commenter “Selohesra” who has recently taken up limerick writing. Here’s a selection of some of the cleaner ones:

There once was an MP called Chuka
Whose left wing credentials weren’t Pukka
Privileged and greedy
With tax planning quite seedy
Lets hope he ends up in the gutter

There once was a PM called Thatcher
There are scarcely any could match her
Churchill was one
Before my days begun
So for me its the union dispatcher

A deputy PM called Nick
Came across as a little bit thick
As was plain to be seen
On the €uro he was keen
The tosser, the loser, the pr*ck

An ex PM from Kirkcaldy
Whose grip on reality was shoddy
Claimed his name was not Brown
That he lived in toytown
And henceforth had to be called Noddy

Well Guido laughed, so congratulations…

Though he has his moments, few were surprised to see Labour MP John Mann contribute to the Westminster Hall debate on the lobbying on Tuesday. There was one particular target for his angst:

“Let us take the case of Bell Pottinger and the Werrity scandal. In that case, the question that arises is about the international role of lobbyists, because what has not come out is information about the role that Bell Pottinger was playing in Sri Lanka. People have been distracted from that issue, not least because Lord Bell is doing quite a lot of the public relations to try to cover his tracks and what was going on… Bell Pottinger is being paid to facilitate such things on behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka … 

There must be absolute transparency in all the meetings that we have as politicians, and there is not. The lack of transparency is the fundamental weakness that exists, with people claiming that “private engagements” have happened. There should be no such thing as a “private engagement” for a Minister, and there should be very little of it for an MP. There should be transparency.”

Some good points, however Mann failed to declare his own “private engagement” with Bell Pottinger. Attendees at the 2005 Labour conference regaled to Guido the spectacle of a grossly inebriated Mann skulling £46-a-bottle Mumm Cordon Rouge 1996 at the expense of, you guessed it, Bell Pottinger. A proud rent-a-quoter such as Mann should remember the one about glass houses…

A Friday treat for you from last night –  an “absolutely totally brilliant” butchering of a Dylan classic “Forever Young” by our old friend:

Despite Gordon Brown saying  there was “no place in public life” for him, Draper is back in the fold and singing his heart out as his old chum Tom Watson looks on at last night’s fundraiser for Ed Miliband’s Political Adviser Polly Billington’s shoo-in selection bid for the Thurrock constituency. As he can’t be seen in shot, presumably McBride is holding the camera…

With the Labour bloggers taking their lines from direct meetings with Ed Miliband, Political Scrapbook doing the red-raggy ones and Left Foot Forward and LabourList parroting press releases, it is as if Draper’s vision has finally been achieved. Only after he got out of the way…

UPDATE: Amusing snippets coming in from last night from all sorts of places. Apparently Polly and Ed Balls sung Endless Love and Dolly did three songs. Who knew Like a Rolling Stone had thirteen verses…

Guido took a stroll round the distinctly underwhelming camp at St Paul’s last night. One or two things did make him giggle though:

His face lit up by a thousand corporations…

It all go a little too tiring and emotional for one merry camper…

UPDATE: Behind the paywall The Times have some disgruntled voices:

“Zakandrew Roberts, 18, joined Occupy London on its first day, but left on Saturday after a series of incidents, including someone urinating in his tent and a friend being threatened with a penknife. He claimed that the camp had deteriorated from a group of serious campaigners intent on highlighting issues about economic equality, to “drunks and drug-takers . . . here for a laugh”. Mr Roberts, an unemployed charity worker, said: “Half the people there don’t know why they are there or what they are protesting about. I want political change, not to get high and drunk all the time.”

Watch out for that progressive punch, it’s lethal…