Birmingham Labour Call in Shrinks

Labour Candidate Slams Balls Spending Plans | Indy

Tory ‘Go Home’ Posters Are Labour Policy | Tom Harris MP

Nigerian Fraudsters Fool British Council | Telegraph

10% of North’s Shale Could Meet Demands For 40 Years | Simon Miller

Amnesty Boss Tweets Mental Health Jokes | Scrapbook

Scotland Yard Look at London Unite Selections | Standard

Peers Make Peace Over Fruit Pastilles | Speccie

The Wonga Delusion | ASI

Why LibDems Are Wrong About ‘Go Home’ Posters | Raheem Kassam

Stafford Nurses Struck Off | Mail

Commentator Changes Explained | Iain Dale

FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2013

Birmingham Labour Call in Shrinks

Labour-controlled Birmingham council have called in psychiatrists so councillors can undergo “personality tests”, presumably to make sure they are loony lefty enough. £1,600 of taxpayers’ money will be spent on the Carl Jung-inspired sessions. Silly season well and truly under way then…

Harriet Harman’s How To Guide to Twitter

Yet another MP showing their unrivalled grasp of how the Internet works this week. In which Harriet Harman tries to ‘@’ Polly Toynbee in a tweet by typing in her email address, before posting a picture of a newspaper rather than, you know, a link:
Not like she’s the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport or anything…

SpAd Movements: Osborne Aide on Maternity Leave

Guido hears Treasury SpAd Eleanor Wolfson, better half of former Osborne adviser and Tory donor Lord Wolfson, is off on maternity leave. Jennifer Donnellan is being drafted in as cover. Walking the well-trodden path from the Conservative Research Department to Special Adviser…

Clegg’s Argie Job Flop

Readers will remember Clegg’s ‘Million Jobs’ campaign, ingeniously illustrated with a map of where the LibDems were taking credit for creating jobs in Britain. So where lie their successes? Well according to the map jobs have been created all over the place:

At least Clegg has a friend in Cristina…

Labour Lessons in Reducing Your Tax Bill to Zero

KenCo “paid every pound of tax he is required to by law”, said Ed. Nothing wrong with the Labour leader’s own inheritance tax avoidance either. Nor the£210,000 tax dodge by the owners of the former Labour HQ. Not to mention the John Mills donation given to the party in shares to avoid a bill from the Exchequer. Or those clever little legacy schemes that help donors reduce their own inheritance tax bills. Now another perfectly legal means of avoiding tax: Labour has reduced its corporation tax bill from £561,000 to zero by offsetting expenses and previous tax losses. Despite a £2.8 million surplus. One for Margaret Hodge to investigate with her usual vigour…

Never Wonga For Long

It was all going so well for the ABC. Justin Welby’s policy of putting Wonga out of business through old fashioned market-based competition had won him plenty of admirers. Certainly pushing his capitalist credentials a lot more convincingly than his predecessor, who no doubt backs a more statist solution. Even Ed’s guru Maurice Glasman was on board. Then an almost perfect scoop from the FT: the Church invests pension funds in Wonga through Accel, a US venture capital firm.
Welby has been in full crisis comms mode on Today this morning. Awkward…

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013

PCS Forced to Hand Out Direct Debit Forms After Pickles Decree

The revolting PCS union are taking Eric Pickles to court over his changing the rules to stop union subscriptions automatically being docked from the wage packets of DCLG civil servants. A few of them have even  bothered to protest today. Their latest leaflet would imply that they don’t have much hope for the court battle – they’ve already starting handing out Direct Debit forms for membership fees. Guido could not help notice that despite the PCS finding room for tick boxes for every conceivable sexual orientation and/or gender identification, they fail to fit in a box to opt in or out of the union’s political levy. How queer…

Guidogram Going Out Shortly

The Guidogram round-up of the week is going out shortly.
Thousands of Westminster insiders read the Guidogram, everyone from Downing Street insiders to Fleet Street never miss it. Don’t miss the latest on Claire Perry…
Join the conspiracy and become a subscriber to the Guidogram, free, to keep in the loop. You’re either in front of Guido, or behind…