Citing the Data Protection Act, the Bank of England have refused to tell Guido how much they pay Alison, their full-time trade union official. She’s seconded to Unite the Union, though seems to do nothing that an HR title couldn’t cover.

Why they feel the need for a union recruiter in the central bank beggars belief. 

The bank’s website seems very proud of this arrangement. Many would argue she’s a strange choice for their profile of typical employees. Before she became a Pilgrim, Alison tried her hand at being a bank regulator. That went well…

UPDATE: Guido forgot to add that the Bank pay for her to have an assistant as well.

[orderorder-live-event altcast_code=”3df4176d91″ height=”700″ width=”480″]

Blinking in the winter darkness Neo-Guido walked into the ITV Daybreak studios at an ungodly hour this morning expecting to spar about welfare with socialist prodigy Owen Jones. In make-up it was announced that it would actually be Diane Abbott joining him on the sofa. Perhaps because of the “Twitter-race row“ back in January she didn’t look too happy when greeted with a cheery good morning. With a shake of the head the handshake was spurned and not a word was exchanged off camera. Talk about divide and rule…

Daybreak host Kate Garraway (Mrs Derek Draper) handled things much better – there was even a smile. Despite the last time she came face to face with Neo-Guido…

Good luck trying this Mr Romney/Gingrich/Santorum…

What becomes of disgraced coalition cabinet members after they are forced to resign? Well if this morning is anything to go by it seems they perform a pincer movement on George Osborne, calling for tax cuts.

If Huhne weighed in it would be a full house…

While there is an irony about Fox complaining it is too hard to sack people, he makes some good points in the FT:

The budget must confidently assert that capitalism works. But it doesn’t work if failure is rewarded as if it was success. …individual risk and effort is not rewarded when the UK government share of GDP has risen from 38 per cent in 1999 to 51 per cent in 2011, the effective top rate of tax is over 50 per cent, and CPI inflation for the last five years has averaged 3.5 per cent.To restore Britain’s competitiveness we must begin by deregulating the labour market. Political objections must be overridden.

In the Guardian, David Laws follows up Monday’s Newsnight outing with a welcome call to speed up taking the poorest out of tax. He wants to put up taxes though to fund it. Hmm…

A cynical person might think this must be coordinated, but Guido isn’t so sure. There’s no doubt that Laws’ interventions are sanctioned by his leader, though Guido doubts the same can be said be said for Fox. Steve Hilton will like it, but No.11 sources seem rather relaxed about the whole affair this morning…

If Ken’s twitter “lines to take” sheet was leaked, Guido would wager this week’s focus is on Boris being a “part time” Mayor. Time and again his cronies and activists have mentioned the 900 words Boris bangs out for the Telegraph for some £250,000-a-year as evidence that he’s not pulling his weight. Even his biographer Sonia Purnell, who didn’t pull her punches in “Just Boris“, says BoJo is anything but lazy.

On the surface it would seem that Ken has spent the last four years doing nothing much except sit in the public gallery at City Hall. However a quick delve into the records of Silveta Limited, which he runs with his latest wife Emma Beal, shows he’s hardly one to talk about outside interests. Ken’s last filed set of accounts show a far from chicken feed £319,478 sitting in the bank.

Not that hypocrisy has ever really bothered Ken…