It wouldn’t be the Dods Researcher of the Year Awards without twentysomething parliamentary staffers brutally briefing against each other and trying to do in their opponents. Remember when Labour MP Helen Goodman opened a fair in her Bishop Auckland constituency with a long speech about a village 70 miles away? “She obviously does not know the place and whoever had done the research for the speech had not got it right,” said local Neil Flowers at the time, adding “a lot of what she said is mentioned in the first part of the Wikipedia entry”. Well, nominated for this year’s coveted prize of Labour Researcher of the Year is Oxford-educated Bonnie Burke, researcher in the office of Helen Goodman. “The finger of suspicion has to lie firmly at Burke’s door,” says a totally impartial colleague…

UPDATE: Helen gets in touch to absolve Bonnie of all responsibility, instead blaming “a young person doing a weeks [sic] work experience”. Rather than, y’know, herself, as the MP for the constituency.