For March the blog had some 186,420 visitors making some 1,060,747 visits to view 1,836,000 pages plus 1,038,250 views from feed readers making some 2.8 million views in total. The BBC’s Rory-Cellan Jones on the other hand says that according to Nielsen Netratings “with unique user figures well below 50,000″ political blogs are too small to measure with accuracy.  This will come as a huge surprise to PoliticalBetting.com, Iain Dale, UK Polling Report et al who all have days, never mind months, with more traffic than that. Guido had a look at Nielsen’s Blogpulse service and couldn’t find a single British blog ranked. Even the massive celeb site Popbitch.com wasn’t ranked. According to one industry source it is because Nielsen uses a panel system.  Do they actually have a UK panel?  Other UK internet metrics companies track real user data taken at network ISP level or server level.

Anyway if you were not one of the 54,970 visitors viewing 346,044 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• Saatchis Sharpen Tory Message
• Punters Slash Odds, Ed Balls Now Expected to Lose
• Slaptastic
• Spin Room Verdict
• A Future Blair For All
• Guardian Editor’s Internal Rant at Murdoch
• Statistics Boss : Stop Lying Mr Brown
• The Fall of Vince Fable

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

It takes something for a civil servant to write publicly to the PM admonishing him for lying.  Could it be that three lies this month based on twisted statistics were just too much for the offical charged with counting the beans.

The Lies of March:

• “Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling..”
• This lie drove Michael Scholar at the ONS to protest (above) at Brown’s corruption of the integrity of the statistics.
• “We have shown our commitment to our armed forces by increasing expenditure on them every year…”
• In real terms expenditure went down and he had to apologise to parliament for this lie.
• “Everyone now has a clear right to see their neighbourhood policing team spending 80% of their time on the beat”
• The Advertising Standards Authority banned a government advertising campaign from going ahead using the same claim because it was misleading.

Gordon pathologically lies with numbers all the time, he constantly reels off fudged statistics whenever he is questioned.  Crime statistics are massaged and worst of all the government’s real debt position is hidden using PFI and by ignoring public sector pension obligations. When the Tories get in one of the first things they should do is restate the national debt to honestly reflect the dire truth of the position hidden by Gordon’s years of deceit…

Hat-tip : C4 News Fact Check

Monday was all about Byers; cartoon, lawyers competition, over 4000 people signed a petition to have him stripped of the “right honourable” title at one point at a rate of 1 every 10 seconds and don’t forget that excruciating video.

Guido also deconstructed a typical bit of spin from Vince Cable bigging himself up in the press.  Mugshots of the dirty dozen Labour figures who are either facing criminal charges for theft, have been suspended from the party, suspended from the Lords, found to be expense fiddling, offering to whore themselves out or some permutation of all of the above featured on Tuesday.  Amusing bits of gossip about Balls and Michael Foot capped off the day, Guido was particularly proud of this headline.

Wednesday the blog scooped Patsy Hewitt was due to lecture on corporate morality and Thursday she cancelled.  PMQs saw Dave use Guido’s Baldemort quip about Liam Byrne (Armando Iannucci says he used the line about someone else and Guido owes him a fiver, send the invoice to Dave mate).  The Tory attack ad against Ed Balls moved Guido to make a donation.

Friday the blog was heavy on economics: Gordon’s debt fiddles and Brown’s Gold Bottom.

Lots of mad emails this week, Guido was invited to the New Statesman’s budget lunch with Liam Byrne, accepted and was then dis-invited for some reason.  Not much of a soup fan anyway.  This follows on from being invited to be a Guardian Student Journalist of the Year judge last month, agreeing to various terms and then getting dis-invited.  Bemusing.  What happens?  Do they lose their nerve and get cold feet?

If you were not one of the 61,453 visitors viewing 431,638 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• Desperate Labour Rip off Hacks
• Labour’s Dirty Dozen
• Tories Launch Ed Balls Attack Advert
• How Many Laws Has Byers Confessed to Breaking?
• Loose Lips Sink Ships
• Union Boss Fat-Cat Lies About His Pay on TV
• How to Sting Greedy MPs

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

Pretty good week for the blog, Monday’s CCHQ floor-plan was an object of fascination to thousands of readers and revealed that Ashcroft was out of Tory HQ.  To the Tory staffer who claimed that it was out of date, Guido has to tell him that it is more likely to be his version that is out of date.  Guido was first to report that Transport Minister Sadiq Khan had been caught lying and ordered to repay thousands. Thanks to EyeSpy.MP we were first to reveal (Sarah’s Discreet Tête à Tête Tweeted) that the dodgy non-dom Lord Paul was having lunch with Sarah Brown – before she had even finished her dessert.  The Race to Be Dave’s Downing Street Mouthpiece was the post that resulted in the most, errrm, ‘feedback’ from the Westminster politico-media village.

The email that tickled Guido the most was the one from a Jehovah’s Witness complaining that Guido had compared the LibDem theme tune to “a Jehovah Witness recruitment ad“.  They attached an MP3 of their choir and Guido confesses that it was in comparison Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.

If you were not one of the 57,785 visitors viewing 384,508 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• Cash Carrying Charlie Whelans Pop into Downing Street
• On and On and On
• Yes Wee Can
• Beware the Whelan in Sheep’s Clothing
• Lib Dem Choir Clanger
• Liam Gets His Fingers Byrnt
• EXCLUSIVE : Sadiq Khan Caught Lying to Lyon
  Tells Standards Commissioner He Can’t Remember ‘Mistaken’ Claim

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

If you were not one of the 59,667 visitors viewing 387,114 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• Gordon’s Scottish Snowstorm
• Voters Want Clear Tory Policies
• Absolutely Brilliant Feminists
• Do As They Say, Not As They Do
• Baroness Uddin – No Charges
• Troughing Labour MPs Plead Not Guilty
• Nick Hogan Freed by the Blogosphere

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

If you were not one of the 61,252 visitors viewing 417,935 pages over the last seven days, here are the seven most popular stories (in order of popularity) that you missed:

• So Gordon, About Your Dodgy Non-Doms
• The ‘Donkey Jacket’ Remembered
• Flashback : Has Tony Gone Offshore?
• Jonah’s Pharmaceutical Omnishambles
• Michael Foot Has Died Aged 96
• Ashcroft Admits Non-Dom Status
• Graphic Example of Media Influence

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

Today has been a rather heavy day for evidence based blogging, but one more graph:

Every time Labour show a whiff of recovery the pound crashes.

More evidence based blogging to discover how much do the respective Tory and Labour non-dom peers claim off the taxpayers on an average day on the red benches?

A Guido co-conspirator in the comments points out that between 2001 -2008 Lord Ashcroft attended parliament 285 times at a total cost to the taxpayer of £0.00 in expenses, with an average cost of £0.00.

During the same period Lord Swarj Paul attended parliament 1047 times at a cost to the taxpayer of £281,263 in expenses. The average cost per visit was £268.64 and in 2008/9 this jumped to £405.58 per visit.

While Lord Ashcroft was setting up the extremely successful Crimestoppers organisation, Lord Paul was raiding the pension funds of hardworking British steel workers.

Which one is more patriotic?

Source : here.

Labour and the Tories are duking it out over non-dom donations.  So time for some evidence based blogging:

Since 2001 Ashcroft has given £5,160,915 to the Tories and Labour’s troika of of non-dom donors, Mittal, Cohen and Paul have given £6,734,250. Mittal bought a bit of corporate lobbying for his £4 million. Tony Blair lobbied for Mittal’s business interests when he was still Prime Minister…

Source data from the Electoral Commission.

Almost forgot to do the numbers for the short month of February: 1,576,691 page views from 914,466 visits by 166,205 visitors plus an additional 890,571 views via feed readers.  So a total just short of two and half million page views…