Nominations for officers of the CCHQ Staff Association close on Friday. The inaugral meeting will be on June 1st.

Soviet-style it will be a party approved union, organising picnics and such-like. Millbank Militant demands at the AGM are expected to include the provision of moisturiser in the men’s loos. Suspect the CCHQ-SA will not be affiliating to the TUC…

Just chasing up something, having difficulty finding out the name of the firm representing poor Ruth. Do any of you many loafing lawyers happen to know?

Simon Heffer is no longer going to edit the comment pages at the Torygraph. There will be cheering in Notting Hill tonight…

UPDATE : A co-conspirator points out that this is something like the eighth comment editor in three years.

Hat-tip: Image stolen from B3ta

LibDem equality spokesperson, Lorely Burt, is today calling for an end to discrimination against Catholics. She therefore rises in my estimation considerably (am pretty certain she also put her card behind the bar one night after an event Guido attended, it is all a bit vague).

“Before he steps down, Tony Blair should consider removing this institutional discrimination. After all, if reports are to believed, he may have a rather more personal interest in Catholic affairs when he leaves No. 10; he should act whilst he still has the chance.” Hmm.

Remember, remember…

Guido is amused by the deliberations of Kitty Donaldson’s Parliamentary Women’s Lobby. It was set up in 1999 as a dining club to allow political figures to meet women political reporters. Anyway Kitty wanted to formalise things with a constitution requiring declarations of interest and a code of conduct (not about starting with cutlery from the outside).

The whole thing has reached a bit of an impasse after a rumpus over the code of conduct. Frantic emails between all members followed and culminated in the suggestion that if Gordon Brown announced at the PWL he was taking Britain into the Euro, they would all have to agree not to report on it for an hour so Kitty could settle the bill. Madness.

A number of more “senior” women journos have had enough and think the whole thing has got rather silly. No-one else is standing against the proposed chairman and vice-chairman, mainly because they say they have got better things to do. As one of them put it: “I answer to my newsdesk not the PWL”.

P.S. Please don’t be misogynistic in the comments, Melissa Kite will only recycle the material for another article.

Iain is being a little unfair on the blessed Ruth citing her as potentially Labour’s Most Incompetent Minister.

Firstly Mrs Balls (Yvette Cooper) deserves most of the opprobrium for the HIPs mess and there is a competitive field of choices in the ministerial incompetence stakes. Prezza has messed up more policies in his time than most. Hewitt is hardly the best of the bunch, Des Browne sends men to die for lack of equipment and lack of any comprehensible strategic or even credible tactical plan in Afghanistan.

Des Browne gets Guido’s vote, his incompetence is the most serious. It is wasting the lives of British soldiers…