Following the “success” of “Call Clegg”, Media Guido has learnt that LBC  Radio will be hosting “Fone Farage”, after Cameron’s EU speech at 5pm this Friday

Ideally drinks will be served.

Showing a characteristic display of financial carelessness, the Shadow Chancellor is literally throwing his money about. A co-conspirator passed Guido a paying-in slip for £6,500 that was dropped on the ground by Ed Balls last week, it got the Guy News team digging. Especially as Balls had been spotted before paying in similar amounts that do not match anything in the Register of Members Interests. Team Balls argue he was simply transferring his money between his building society savings account and his current account to deal with his personal deficit. With cheques. Guido would recommend online banking, safer and secure. Balls has always been so reckless when it comes to banks and money…

https://twitter.com/Number10press/status/290848856151834624

To the Hague for something vague! Better late than never. Or so the PM will be hoping…

We are being spoiled for media ding dongs so far this year. You have to wonder whether Guardian website guy Jonathan Haynes still thinks that pointing out of a typo on the Telegraph was so funny. The replies from Telegraph Washington correspondent Jon Swaine have been sent into Guido half a dozen times:

https://twitter.com/jonswaine/status/290806577529757696

https://twitter.com/jonswaine/status/290810970891227136

https://twitter.com/jonswaine/status/290811247740452864

Wince…

Guido often teases the intern-exploiting, chauvinist vanity project that is the New Statesman. Is this constructive criticism warranted? Let us see how the Staggers’ money-making – or more accurately losing – capabilities compare to their great rivals at the Spectator.

The Speccie’s average paid weekly circulation last year was 56,635. Annualised that makes roughly 2,945,000 copies sold. Their last available accounts show a profit of £448,000, no mean feat in the age of the dying dead tree press. A quick calculation tells us that the Speccie makes some 15p profit on each copy sold.

So what about the Staggers? Their average paid circulation last year was, the editor claimed to the Press Gazette, 20,000, though some say the actual number is in the mid-to-high teens. Being generous we can say that around 1,000,000 copies were sold in the last year. Their latest accounts show huge losses of £1,408,000. The New Statesman therefore loses some £1.35 on every copy of the magazine sold. 

Without Mike Danson’s millions, loaned to the Staggers interest free and with no repayment date, or real likelihood of repayment, the Staggers would be no more. It is a money-hemorrhaging left-wing, vanity project…

It’s not just Cameron’s Europe speech that is going a bit Yes2AV; his gay marriage bill is in troubled waters too. Guido revealed in his Daily Star Sunday column that Cameron “lost the room” when backbench Tory MP Eleanor Laing blasted the plans and her naughty colleagues chatted away amongst themselves while the PM tried to explain his logic at a strategy briefing last Tuesday. Later in the week Fox got involved, but the trouble doesn’t stop there.

It is believed that Lord Strathclyde couldn’t face the prospect of forcing the issue through the Lords and “seasoned Westminster watchers who knew his replacement Lord Hill back in the ’80s are surprised he has been chosen to push the gay marriage Bill through the Lords, given his own rather traditional views.”

Labour could create a real stinker here, but troublemaking voices in the party are being drowned out:

“It’s not just Tories who are feeling queasy; lots of Catholic Labour MPs are trying to halt the Bill. Their plan to put an amendment down calling for a referendum on the issue has been met with short shrift by Ed Miliband’s people, despite the fact it would set the squabbling Tories bickering even more.”

The amendment would gain a lot of support from traditional Tories, but Guido hears that Downing Street have their own plan to avoid to large a fall out in the Commons…

Sources familiar with the planning say that the latest interventions have “seriously spooked” the government and No. 10 are pushing for the Bill to be published in the next fortnight; most likely on Thursday, January 24. The second reading is then pencilled in for the day that Parliament rises for the February Recess; Thursday, February 14. Apparently No. 10 are hoping “dozens of MPs will have left early to go to their constituencies.” Then again No.10 have never been very good at keeping secrets…