As the attention surrounding phone hacking widens beyond the News of the World, Guido thought he would be the first person to ask what former employees of other tabloid newspapers knew about the widespread practice.

Take former Mirror man Bob Roberts for example. Can he hand on heart suggest he had no idea phone hacking was taking place, when his newspaper was proven to be by far the worst “blaggers” by the Information Commissioner with nearly 2,000 cases of their journalists pretending to be someone they were not in order to gain information they were  not entitled to, or worse still bribing phone company, HMRC or DVLC employees:

Guido is looking forward to the Guardian pursuing Ed Miliband’s press man with vigour…

UPDATE: Bob tells Guido “categorically” that he had “no knowledge or personal experience” of phone hacking during his time at the Mirror.

Despite the rise in unemployment and inflation the rise in misery has flattened out in Guido’s Misery Index, the reality-based antidote to Dave’s blue-sky happiness index. Given the budget deficit is still the biggest economic challenge the country faces today,  the GMI adds on the government’s deficit divided by the GDP taken from the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail Prices Index + Unemployment rate + ( Public Sector Net Cash Requirement / GDP ) = Misery Index

Plugging in the latest available figures for January 2010 gives you:

4.8% + 7.9% + (20.7 / 331.2 x 100)  = 17.77

After a brief suggestion that things were getting better, Britain seems stuck back in the blues…

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here

There are many ways the government could have avoided hiking VAT and stuck to their pre-election plans. They could have cut spending a further 2% rather than the mere 3.3% they are planning to shave off spending. The best solution to unfunded over-spending is to reduce spending, not raise taxes. The UK’s gross contribution to the EU budget exceeds the expected income from the VAT hike…

Both the LibDems and the Tories knew how bad the deficit was before the election and yet both said they had no plans to raise VAT, yet it was raised in the first budget. So what changed?

Today’s release showing a shock rise in borrowing means Osborne is now at risk of missing his fiscal target for 2010/11. The increase is blamed on higher NHS and defence spending plus more money going to the EU.

The Misery Index calculation reflects the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics and is based on the inflation and unemployment rates plus public sector borrowing in terms of GDP. More government over-spending means more misery…

It was billed as the “internet election”, but almost all are agreed that didn’t really happen. However the social media battle between the three parties did heat up during the television debates and especially with Cleggmania. For all their talk, Labour became the “party of Twitter” for all the wrong reasons, losing a candidate and having an MP cautioned under the Representation of the Peoples Act for innovatively using Twitter to break election law. Facebook is where the most cut through from the Westminster bubble was achieved though:

Social media boffins Famecount have been comparing the state of the parties online over the last year and it seems the Tories came out on top in terms of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. Despite the fair amount of flak picked up along the way, they spent plenty of cash online. Ed Miliband has some catching up to do, despite his near constant inane Twitter outpourings…

Continuing with the Reagan inspired Misery Index, it seems the country got a little happier in the last few months but things have taken a downward turn again. Given the budget deficit is the biggest economic challenge the country faces today, Guido’s Misery Index adds the government’s deficit divided by the GDP to RPI and the number of people unemployed, all taken from the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail Prices Index + Unemployment rate + ( Public Sector Net Cash Requirement / GDP ) = Misery Index

The latest available figures for December 2010 give you:

4.6% + 7.9% + (2.4 / 331.4 x 100)  = 13.30

The Misery Index was steadily increasing since the beginning of the year. People got happier as Danny Alexander and Osborne took their axes to the deficit, however the latest rise in unemployment has reversed this trend. And that’s before the regressive VAT rise…

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here.

As the news emerges that The Telegraph is set to join the FT, News of the World and The Times behind the paywall, Guido is intrigued to why such a decision was made when all the evidence shows it’s not a winner. The Times has lost 95% of their online traffic, but the bad news doesn’t stop there. Since they introduced their pay-wall in June their paper sales have headed south as well:

Introducing a pay-wall was supposed to increase revenue by forcing people to buy the paper or subscribe online. Instead the decline of newspaper sales is unmitigated. There will be glum faces over in Victoria as it dawns on the hacks that soon nobody will be reading their work…

Dave wants us to have some kind of gross national happiness index, an idea Sarkozy has also pushed. Not sure if the government really has any control over our overall happiness, it seems to Guido that governments mostly cause unhappiness and can do little to make us smile. The national mood is cheered by things like good weather, Royal Weddings and sporting victories which are beyond the government’s direct control.

Ronald Reagan popularised the idea of a “Misery Index” initiated by the economist Arthur Okun, an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It was simply the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate.

Given the budget deficit is the biggest economic challenge the country faces today, Guido’s Misery Index adds on the government’s deficit divided by the GDP taken from the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail Prices Index + Unemployment rate + ( Public Sector Net Cash Requirement / GDP ) = Misery Index

Plugging in the latest available figures for September 2010 gives you:

4.6% + 7.7% + (20.7 / 331.4 x 100)  = 18.55

The Misery Index has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the year. Misery rising even after Gordon has gone. Welcome to Tory Britain, it’s certainly blue.

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here.

While the Mirror and the Guardian try to breathe air into the phone hacking scandal, lets take a look at why it isn’t really only about evil Murdoch and his newspapers. A little evidence based research, with the help of the Information Commissioner’s Office, shows how all the papers were up to dirty tricks and “blagging” - pretending to be someone you are not in order to gain information you are not entitled to or worse still bribing phone company, HMRC and DVLC employees to obtain information. Who do you think had the most recorded offences?

So where is Watson’s call to have the Mirror and the Mail hauled up before Parliament to answer questions, or does that not fit the attack strategy?

Guido has reflected on the shared culture and worldview of the Guardian and the BBC in the past;

The BBC is viewed by many right-wingers as the broadcasting arm of the Guardianistas. The Beeboids argue that this is unfair, and that the BBC is an unbiased, objective, public service broadcaster.

Yesterday the regular Guardian contributor Tim Montgomerie described the BBC as “Guardian TV“. Is this the ranting of right-wing blow-hards? No. The evidence is clear, via the excellent Biased BBC blog we learn that the BBC deliberately focuses recruitment advertising on the ranks of the Guardianistas.

Look at how it allocates the spending of hundreds of thousands of pounds on recruitment advertising:

When the BBC spends 86% of its recruitment advertising budget in the Guardian, we’re entitled to question the objectivity of the BBC’s editorial culture…

N.B. On a personal note, could BBC interviewers stop mistakenly introducing Guido as a “conservative”, if they do Guido will thank them for allowing him to appear on the left-wing BBC – as Nicky Campbell will tell you. Guido is a libertarian, not a conservative.