MIF09 Procession: Not Smoking May Damage Your GSOH

Off to see Procession.

From Turner Prize winning Jezzer Deller.

Previewed by LOL right here.

Inevitably the Corporation, or perhaps strictly speaking the NHS Smoke Free GM in the shape of Minister for Fun Cllr Pat Karney (right, "cross"-dressed as an undertaker) didn't seem to get it.

But there has been a compromise with the "Unrepentent Smokers" element of the march to get a topical second banner: Smirking About Smoking May Damage Your Grant. Or something like that.

Governor Sarah Palin: Jumped or Pushed? Who Cares?

Either way it's an end to Insania from Wasilla. Or is it? New York Times, reported by Alternet, think this means she's gonna be running for Pres:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Thursday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, allowing her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Others that she may be running away before some of that old Alaska mud pie sticks.

Local Council By-Elections: Terrible Night For Tories

Clearly Labour was not in the hunt in either of these local government by-elections reported by Cllr Luke Akehurst. Staggeringly bad results for Conservatives on the face of it:

Ferndown C Ward, E Dorset DC. Con hold. Con 510 (51.7%, -26), Ind 477 (48.3%, +48.3). Swing of 37.2% from Con to Ind since 2007.

Nonsuch Ward, LB Sutton. LD gain from Con. LD 1665 (50.6%, +3.5), Con 1329 (40.4%, -7.4), BNP 211 (6.4%, +6.4), Lab 88 (2.7%, -2.5). Swing of 5.5% from Con to LD since 2006.

Lucy Powell: Labour's Prospective MP For Withington, on Christie

Grrrrr! Just wrote a brilliant extended caption for the above. Vanished into thin air! Blogger gremlins saving John Leech MP from a broadside. It shall be re-created anon. Meanwhile a sneak preview of Monday's Channel 4 Politics Slot with Lucy Powell telling it like it is on the Christie Hospital positive future front.

George Osborne: Flipping, Father, Frances Framed For Fiasco

Kathy Newman's repost for Channel 4 News reveals that something else, a bit darker, may have emerged in the investigation of George Osborne's flippery pokery. The Telegraph also have the untaxed £748,000 profit from selling his previous "second home" in London, which would have been liable to some £300,000 in Capital Gains Tax had he not "flipped" it and told the Inland Revenue that it was his "main home".

We have to go back to the Mail in June 2008 to catch George giving credit to someone else, his wife Frances to be precise, for sorting out all his boring financial matters. Perhaps she should be Shadow Chancellor instead? Somethingly reminiscent of the Mad Nad Dorries blame shifting to Pee-Ay poor pregnant Pippa? She hadn't even seen her expenses claims claimed the fantasist MP for Mid Narnia. But I digress.

Perhaps it is the fact that the mortgage or loan or familial loose change or whatever, swirled around from GOOey home to GOOier home was laid on by a family member, as The Times reported that was dad, Sir Peter the seventeenth baronet. Seems that whoever the lender is now the "tracker" nature of this things means he is now claiming next to nothing from the taxpayer. You'd have to be a saint to not be worried about something cooked up by a fella's missus with her father-in-law. And him "trade" and all.

So that's alright then? Tory sources are it seems trying to "pair" Ozzy with his opposite number, though sadly that doesn't work either as there's nothing to report from there. We've been worried about GOO-ey's grasp of reality, political nous and integrity when it comes to cash money for a long while now.

Those humungous "office of George Osborne" donations from Rothschilds and the like that he forgot to forget that he'd forgotten to declare for one, and the private runnings of yet another Rothschild that he did declare for another.