Ever since he was revealed to have furiously hurled three Nokias at a Downing Street wall Gordon Brown has been the unofficial mobile phone throwing world champion. Until now…

The Prime Mentalist has cruelly had his top Team GB achievement taken away from him after Finland set a new world record for throwing a mobile. 18-year-old Ere Karjalainen launched his phone an impressive 101.46 metres, smashing Gordon’s previous personal best of the width of a room in Number 10. Guido is sure Brown would never let anyone take his gold away from him…

Team GB might have done the nation proud during the Olympics, but they needed to win a lot more medals if they wanted to earn back all the gold the Prime Mentalist sold off. Guido has done the maths:

Each gold medal contains 6g (or 1/5 oz) of gold.

This means five gold medals are needed to make one ounce.

Gordon Brown sold off 12.7 million ounces of gold.

5 x 12.7 million = 63.5 million gold medals.

At least the new Team GB did better than the old one…

Chuka Umunna has been upping the pressure on Dave over Sunday trading laws, accusing ministers of misleading Parliament and writing to the holidaying PM to demand clarification. Last night he snorted:

Could you imagine Labour's fmr BIS Sec,Peter Mandelson,allowing another cabinet minister to dictate policy on his brief as Pickles is doing?—
Chuka Umunna (@ChukaUmunna) August 14, 2012

Clearly Chuka has forgotten all about Labour’s attempts to deregulate Sunday trading restrictions, when old boss Gordon Brown tried to force the then Trade and Industry secretary Alan Johnson into adopting the policy. The FT reported at the time:

“Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are tacitly supporting deregulation of Sunday shopping to allow 24-hour trading for large shops, according to a leading industry lobbyist. The lobbyist insisted there were differences between Mr Brown and Mr Johnson. “Gordon Brown wanted to include deregulation in the Budget, but Alan Johnson put the brakes on,” he said.”

And they weren’t even in Coalition…

The Prime Mentalist has caused a stir north of the border by recreating the famous opening scene from Chariots of Fire. Still dressed in a suit, Brown sprinted across a Scottish beach with former first minister Henry McLeish. A stunned eyewitness reported:

“They were suited and booted and I wondered if it was a photo call. But there were no cameras in sight. They carried on to the front of the beach and it looked as if they were making a line in the sand. Brown ran about 50 metres and then stopped. The others stopped for a second but then carried on and ran for another 300 metres.”

Knowing Gordon, they probably should have let him win…

Gordon Brown has refused invitation to Olympic ceremony. Bless him. Team UK has a fighting chance now #CurseOfJonahBrown—
Fraser Nelson (@frasernelson) July 19, 2012

There was some great news for Team GB this morning.

Perhaps this will be a turning point for the Olympics…

Guido got his hopes up when he saw that Gordon Brown would be appearing in the dock in a Kuala Lumpur court, but sadly the Prime Mentalist will only be a witness rather than a suspect. According to Malaysian newspaper The Sun Daily, Gordon has been summoned by the defence in a bizarre sedition trial halfway across the planet. At least that gives him another chance to rack up some more air miles…

After resigning as CEO of Barclays this morning, Bob Diamond may yet exact some revenge on the government when he testifies tomorrow in front of the Treasury Select Committee.

There are two LIBOR fixing scandals – the first involves traders massaging the settling of LIBOR rates a few basis points, mere hundreths of a percent, off market reality to flatter their trading books. It appears to have been going on for years and not just at Barclays. This was not so petty corruption.

The second LIBOR fixing scandal is of a different order altogether – it involves the wholesale systematic substantial misrepresentation of true LIBOR, with the encouragement of the Treasury, the FSA and in particular the Bank of England. The policy was to under-report LIBOR rates at much lower levels than were actually trading in the market. This deliberate policy was to cover-up the increased risks to the UK banking system revealed by higher LIBOR rates.

It is emerging that Gordon Brown’s economic adviser in Downing Street, Shriti Vadera, an ex-UBS investment banker, circulated a paper on ”Reducing Libor” at the height of the banking crisis, which she argued would be “a major contribution to the stability of the banking system and to the health of the economy”.

That message will have gone out to the Treasury in Whitehall, the regulators and the Bank of England. They in turn will have given a nod and a wink to the investment banks. Bob Diamond is reportedly furious that the “lowballing” of LIBOR rates by Barclays – which was explicitly encouraged by the authorities  to stabilise already panicked markets – is being used against Barclays. Bob Diamond is expected to testify tomorrow that the Bank of England’s deputy governor Paul Tucker encouraged the “lowballing”.

The politicisation and manipulation of interest rates is ongoing even after Gordon Brown and Shriti Vadera are long gone. The £275 billion Quantitative Easing (QE) programme implemented by Mervyn King with George Osborne’s blessing is designed to artificially lower interest rates. We currently have a false market in Gilts, it is arguably the biggest bubble since the South Sea Bubble. It is cheating pensioners and savers of income on an unprecedented scale. This is a robbery organised from within the Bank of England …

The star witness at any future banking inquiry…

News International has today written to the Leveson Inquiry asking them to seek further evidence from Gordon Brown over his claim that the Sun illegally accessed his son’s medical records. Gordon Brown is getting his lawyers on to The Times…

Read all about it… over on MediaGuido…

The Times is reporting that News International has written to the Leveson Inquiry asking them to seek further evidence from Gordon Brown over his claim that they illegally accessed his son’s medical records. The move comes after the Dundee-based Sunday Post revealed that they had got a story about his son a few weeks earlier but decided not to run it after contacting Brown. The Sun denied Brown’s claim when he made it last July at the height of the phone-hacking scandal claiming the source was a “dad whose son also has the crippling disease and he wanted to highlight the plight of sufferers”. Claim and counter-claim are being traded.

News International asked the inquiry to seek written evidence from The Sunday Post and Mr Brown. Sources at The Sunday Post tell Guido they only knew that Brown’s son was unwell, not his exact illness. When they contacted Brown’s spokesman and he refused to comment they left the matter there and did not pursue it. Guido sources tell him that Brown’s lawyers will be contacting News International shortly to advise them accordingly in the strongest possible terms. Brown is adamant, and will it appears be backed up by The Sunday Post if required, that his son’s illness was not in the public domain.