Personally, Guido can never remember his bank account details, so in order to help his many African correspondents:-

Account Name: George Galloway Election Fund

Account Number: 00 86 45 38

Sort Code: 30 90 47

DoB: 16 August 1954

Please make cheques payable to “George Galloway Election Fund” with your name and address on the back, so we can send you a receipt, and send it to: George Galloway Election Fund, PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU. A luta continua…

Guido gets invited to the occasional think tank bash and when in London generally goes to the ones with the best booze (full marks to the Adam Smith Institute – up market beers and champagne).

Not sure what the booze situation is tonight in Westminster for the Centre for Policy Studies seminar on Politics, Policy and the Internet, the invitation doesn’t say. George Osborne is a big Politics 2.0 advocate of the power of the web and he is headlining it along with Tom Steinberg.

At exactly the same time over at Bloomberg’s offices in the City, Jeremy Hunt, the DCMS Shadow, is talking about the New Media Politics Revolution. Booze is clearly highlighted on the invite.

Decisions, decisions…

The ailing* Daily Mirror has a noble history, but in the last decade or so it has lost its way terribly. Publishing fake pictures of British soldiers in Iraq committing “outrages” and the editor and the financial reporters involved in a share ramping scandal at the expense of readers.

The Mirror does a lot of Cameron bashing. Kevin Maguire, political editor, writes Beano-like articles with references to Lord Snooty and druggie Dave, the Bambi-killing toff. All good knock about stuff (though Guido does wonder if this means he patronisingly thinks Mirror buyers have the reading age of a Beano reader?)

The story last week that Samantha Cameron was guilty of “snubbing a charity trying to stop mothers dying in childbirth… because she was too busy with her job… at posh stationer Smythson” struck Guido as pretty low.

The Daily Express had to pay £500,000 to the parents of Madeleine McCann after admitting just making up stories. The Mirror does seem to be going down the same path with this kind of story. It is one thing to follow Dave about on his bike and root through his bins for disposable nappies, to see if his words match his deeds, that is just about defensible. This was just a completely manufactured story to paint Samantha Cameron in a bad light.

Perry de Havilland over at Samizdata draws attention to the German hacker group that has published thousands of plastic foil reproductions of the German Interior Minister’s fingerprint, ready to glue to someone else’s finger to provide a false biometric reading. Which set Guido thinking…

Guido will buy dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant for anyone who provides him with a verifiable* copy of Jacqui Smith’s fingerprints.

You can do it yourself – How to Fake a Fingerprint in 12 Easy Steps – Chaos Club, there is an instructive D. I. Y. video here.

Remember, remember: people should not be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people.

*Verification should be an explanation of how it was obtained, preferably with photographic evidence. Forinstance if she comes into your kebab shop and you capture her on CCTV holding your laminated menu. Don’t worry about copying the fingerprint. We will take it from the surface direct, so keep it safe. As far as Guido knows there is no law prohibiting gathering finger residue fluids – yet.

They are calling it Downing Street blue-on-blue infighting. The neo-Brownies from the PR world ousting the old Brownie tribe who successfully undermined Blair. The truth is the Brownies are second rate compared to the Blairites, this was patently obvious to any objective observer. Even Guido, no fan of Blair, could see that he was a politician with a high calibre team. Brown on the other hand is a brooding malevolent weirdo who had no choice but to surround himself with second raters, Blair had attracted the best and the brightest of New Labour’s talent pool.

The Brownies were able to undermine a triple election winning prime minister, brief against rivals, selectively leak, obstruct, frustrate rival policy objectives out of spite and generally behave like petulant secretive plotters always positioning for factional advantage rather than in the national interest. They were capable of that, alas when they finally assumed control of No. 10 it became clear within months that they were not a capable or competent premiership team.
If Gordon is to have any hope of narrowing the double digit lead Cameron has over him at the polls he clearly needs to up his game. Stephen Carter has been brought in from his job as CEO of Brunswick to do that because the veteran Brownies are part of the problem, not the solution, too immersed in the Labour tribe, good at arm twisting the party rank and file, not at reaching out to swing voters. His PPS Ian Austin’s heckles of Cameron at PMQs amuse only the class warriors on the Labour back benches – they even manage to irritate the chippy Speaker. His counsel is no use to Gordon now the electorate that matters to him is no longer merely the PLP.

Month after month of poll decline has finally got the message through to Brown. Hence we see the marginalising of his former closest supporters, even his pollster, Deborah Mattinson is said to be on her way out. Spencer Livermore went in tears. Gordon’s praetorian guard MPs Tom Watson and Iain Austin, respectively Gordon’s attack puppy and heckler-in-chief, occupied ground floor offices in Downing Street adjacent to the cabinet room. The pair liked to think of themselves as Gordon’s enforcers. Stephen Carter has had them kicked out of their offices and their places taken by his deputy and secretary.