The House of Commons is paying over a grand a year for Sky Sports to play on its annunciator screens. And still Starmer takes the free box Arsenal tickets…
The taxpayer bill over the last three years has ticked up:
- 2023/24 £1,099
- 2024/25 £1,207
- 2025/26 £1,307
Guido is told “the House does not have any other TV subscriptions for annunciators on the estate, barring the Sky Sports subscription.” Give MPs their EastEnders…
The Mail ran a story today claiming entrepreneur Matthew Freud entertained Angela Rayner at his Notting Hill house recently. An unlikely partnership…
Fleet Street observers speculate it has something to do with Freud’s fractured link to Rupert Murdoch. He was married to Rupert’s daughter Elisabeth until 2014 – they’re now divorced….
Labour figures on the left have long campaigned/threatened to launch Leveson 2 – regulations aimed at severely restricting press freedom. Freud knows the consequences for Fleet Street – has the Mail been duped into running a story that is more about the Press being imperilled than it seems to realise…
Rayner is gearing up for her run at No10. Only the taxman stands in her way…
Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayley Sewart:
“I can confirm that officers from the Met’s Central Specialist Crime team are in the process of carrying out search warrants at two addresses, one in the Wiltshire area, and another in the Camden area.
The searches are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences, involving a 72-year-old man.
He has not been arrested and enquiries are ongoing.”
The hated Building Safety Regulator is growing at a blistering pace. Oh no…
Information obtained by Guido’s FOI Unit shows the BSR’s total headcount as of 04 July 2024 was 412 – that has shot up to 535 by December. Total costs for the 23/24 year were £21.130 million – those have risen by over £10 million in a year to £31.374 million…
The BSR’s new chairman Andy Roe was recently made a Labour peer. A report by the cross-party Lords Industry and Regulators Committee was released in December. Among other things it identified:
- Regulations are forcing flat owners to pay for a ‘waking watch’ because new alarm systems don’t count as emergency work in construction. £17,897 per building…
- Residents are waiting for more than a year to conduct repair work, including on leaks/
- The BSR will not allow flat owners to replace rotting parts of their buildings.
- Approval is required for things as small as a loo.
- Staff are not well trained enough to perform the functions of the regulator.
It should be abolished…
Guido first reported in October last year that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – which had only just got going under Rayner – was for the most part dead under David Lammy. Guido got a call that night from an unfortunate civil servant arguing that ‘DPM’ Lammy definitely still had an ‘office’ – not true…
It was after all a Rayner initiative. No substantial staff were redeployed by the MoJ to cover for Rayner’s rebranded housing civil servants, who obviously just went back to MHCLG. In a final humiliation for Lammy Guido can report the Cabinet Office rooms used by Rayner for the ODPM have now been filled by Darren Jones’ “Command Unit“…
To clarify those are the windowless rooms with only a skylight. If Rayner comes back she can probably give herself an even bigger room – wouldn’t want to break up Darren Jones’ party. In the meantime David Lammy gets to go around calling himself the ‘DPM’ and – oh, that’s it…
Speaking at his press conference on the Pride in Place programme which was obviously all about Mandelson, Starmer said:
“Tomorrow’s front pages are unlikely to be about the Pride in Place programme.”
