A cracking prize for you this week in the form £50 to spend on a Mother’s Day bunch of flowers from Arena Flowers. The winner will be announced by close of play today in order to meet delivery requirements for Sunday. Good luck…

UPDATE: We have a winner – and the overall standard of entries was dire – so if Universal Hiss emails back in time he can still send his mum the flowers he won with:

“How’s your pudding Gordon?”

Don’t forget!

Back in June Guido reported that the campaign to end taxpayer funding of trade union officials had gone global. Phil Gingrey, a Republican congressman from Georgia, was attempting to restrict the activity of Pilgrims, or what they call “release time”. Today’s Washington Post has waded into the growing disquiet at “Union business, on the taxpayers’ dime“:

“…if union activities were paid for by union dues rather than tax dollars, there would be less dues money available for campaign contributions to the grateful politicians who negotiate release-time benefits for the contributing unions.

Release-time provisions have existed for 40 years. What is new is a willingness to call attention to them and contest them, a willingness born of the pressure the recession has put on municipal budgets. Just as a recession has the benefit of making private enterprises more conscious of efficiencies, it makes governments less cavalier about expenditures.”

So the barriers to change are the same on both sides of the pond: greedy politicos.

Good luck trying this Mr Romney/Gingrich/Santorum…

Find out where he thinks Obama was born thirteen minutes in to this rabble rousing speech to CPAC.

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) R.I.P.

Given that his kids have a $100m trust fund, you would have thought Mitt Romney would have taken a little more care in organising this photo op.

UPDATE:  It is a Photoshop.

GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich seems to be taking the old saying “aim for the moon, and even if you miss you will land amongst the stars” literally. In a speech yesterday he promised to have established a moon base by the end of his second term. How’s this for blue sky thinking:

“When we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon, they can petition to become a state… I wanted every young American to say to themselves, I could be one of those 13,000. I could be a pioneer. I need to study science and math and engineering. I need to learn how to be a technician. I can be a part of building a bigger, better future. I can actually go out and live the future, looking at the solar system and being part of a generation of courageous people who do something big and bold and heroic.”

Steve Hilton declined to comment…

A trillion in cuts in the first year. Sod the salami slicing, it’s time to take out whole departments. We could learn a lot…

Tatiana Limanova, an award-winning journalist and host of a Russian national news show on the REN-TV channel, reported on the APEC summit in the United States, giving a traditional gesture a moment after mentioning Obama. The station’s owner is close to Vladamir Putin, Tatiana has now been fired. Guido is unable to confirm that she has been offered a job on Fox News…