There is something fishy about this – how does Osborne justify a mortgage for more than the house actually cost?  Isn’t that maximising the interest burden on the taxpayer to an unhealthy degree?  Also this two-year period where he claimed [...]

Guido left the Speccie summer party early – summonsed by Mrs Fawkes who is convinced Miss Fawkes has Swine Flu.  So this will probably be the first report back. Dave did his usual 15 minutes (his routine is that he shows [...]

If this week’s weather hasn’t got you all hot ‘n’ bothered, then what better way of remedying that than by watching tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm)? David Laws, the Lib Dems’ children, schools and families, will be the [...]

Could Swine Flu prove the joker in the pack? Looking at the Politics Home news charts, which measures the column inches of each major story, the largest rises are the news that Shadow Chancellor George Osborne is to be investigated [...]

Gordon Brown refused to say this week whether he would be personally campaigning in the Norwich North by-election. I think we can take that as a "no, I won't be going" reply from the PM. But with the Tories looking likely to [...]

The Washington Post reports that Saddam Hussein’s interrogations by the FBI have been released, under US Freedom of Information laws, to the ‘National Security Archive’, an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University. The NSA’s [...]

The Eastern Daily Press has produced an intriguing analysis of last month’s local elections results, attempting to estimate how voting then might map across to the Norwich North by-election to be held later this month: Calculating party support ahead of the [...]

Until only a few weeks ago, Chris Ostrowski, Labour's young candidate in the Norwich North by-election, was planning to leave the country this autumn, together with his wife Katy, to go and do an MA in International Relations at a [...]

On 22 October last year, Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister, told MPs that the privatisation of the Tote - the horse race betting business - would be shelved for the foreseeable future. These were his reasons: "In my Ministerial Written Statement [...]

Phillip Blond, in response to Sunder Katwala, says: My main point is a philosophical and historical one that liberty (which I believe in) is not produced from liberalism. Indeed my intellectual argument is that that pure liberalism or liberalism [...]

It strikes me as being in both bad taste and politically foolish for Alan Duncan to suggest that Gordon Brown is “vandalising” the despatch box when he uses a thick pen to take notes during PMQs. It is bad taste [...]

At that debate on Tuesday Sir Michael White interrupted Guido’s speech criticising him to such a degree that it was cut short.  So Guido sent the full text over to the Guardianistas’ to republish. Taking the fight to his own [...]

I happen to agree with John Bercow's proposal for Deputy Speakers to be elected. It is just as important that they command the support of the House as the Speaker himself. But I did think it was a little odd, [...]

Here are the allegations, as summarised in a Lib Dem press release issued this afternoon: George Osborne used his second homes allowance on a London property and then switched it to a large farmhouse in his Cheshire constituency of Tatton. He [...]

If you are not getting any government press releases emailed to your inbox Guido has found out why: The Government News Distribution Service at the Central Office of Information is, due to a system change-over, unable to e-mail out any press [...]

You might enjoy: Michelle Cottle in The Plank: Love, Shmove Les Christie in CNN Money.com: New Orleans: Fastest growing city in the U.S Robin Goldstein in Blind Taste: Do taste and smell adjectives signal value, or do they create it? The Croydonian: Some holiday [...]

From Kirsty Wark: Last night Review's editor Liz Gibbons and I went to see an extraordinarily moving short "scratch" play at The Royal Court in London called "The Tweets of Tehran". It was a fortuitous last minute change of [...]

I read this Brad DeLong post about the US unemployment numbers, and the Obama administrations incorrect forecast of the future path of said numbers with a sense of familiarity. After all, in Britain too, we’ve been exposed time and again [...]

The Republicans have a 2012 problem. The conventional wisdom is that it is the adultery of Nevada's Senator John Ensign and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford that has left them in a mess. But that - as Michael Barone points out - [...]

Northern Ireland is trying to decommission its grammar schools. The case against selection is being made with the familiar vehemence: a system that allows an 11-year-old child to fail a test and be branded second-rate is retrograde. This seems to [...]