Chancellors choice cuts

As George Osbourne, our shiny new Chancellor gears up for his first crack at a budget, suddenly all the election rhetoric spouted about who would make the biggest cuts and the widest slashes is about to take form, physical and manifest under his hand. He has to cancel the milk and find all the cash that's slipped down the back of our national couch.

And as the body politic struggles under it's huge inherited debt, we the electorate can only hope and pray, wincing through our fingers as the knife bites, that George is a clever surgeon and not a bloody butcher...

Coalition compromise

In the wake of the general election and the horse-trading that has obviously gone on in the frantic to and fro since, there has emerged a coalition, a yellow and blue one.

This is the first time, in a very long time that Britain has had a coalition government, and there seems an air of hope in the country that it may work. There have been big concessions on both sides, but perhaps that's what the country needs, politicians working together for the good of the country.

I for one would like to think it could work, because I like to see the people in charge of the country smiling, naturally, not as if they're hooked up to an invisible face crane or have just sat on an oversized product from the Ann Summers shop.

Cash for access

Three Labour former Cabinet ministers and a Conservative MP have all been caught with their snouts well and truly jammed in in the trough.

Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon, and holding up the blue end Sir John Butterfill, were all filmed during an undercover sting operation by reporters for Channel 4's Dispatches programme. The reporters pretended to be from an American lobby group, the politicians pretended they could influence our law making process for cash, indeed Stephen Byers went so far as to suggest he was 'a cab for hire'.

One assumes all their pants are on fire.

Standards, what standards?

The former head of the Commons standards watchdog, Tory MP David Curry, has been ordered by the Standards and Privileges Committee to pay back £28,000 he claimed in expenses for a second home in Yorkshire which he used as a 'love nest' to entertain his mistress 'Cherry' Edwards.

Proving if nothing else 'where there's muck, there's brass' as the locals might say...

Fudgit Budget

With nothing to give away, and no desire to be seen clawing cash from the pockets of people about to vote whether they get another ride on the gravy train, the Labour budget was always going to conservative, with a small 'c'.

This was merely a paper shuffling exercise, not a fiscal agenda, just a 'fudgit budget'.

Go tell the Greeks

After some fancy footwork on it's figures, Greece has finally come to the conclusion that it's time to 'fess up and hold out it's trotter to the other members of the Eurozone club.

It won't be disappointed, Germany and France would be way, way too embarrassed to allow a 'Eurozoner' economy to fail, even if it deserves to.

Could this prove to be their Achillies heel?

Gone, but not forgotten

Extolling the highest of principles, loyalty, compassion, duty to his fellow man, and a gritty determination to do the right thing in word, deed and action, unwavering in the face of party politics.

These were the things that marked Michael Foot out as a titan of our time.

One of the finest Prime Ministers the Labour party never had.

Lording it up...

The devil is in the detail as they say. Lord Ashcroft, the Conservative peer, made assurances to William Hague in 2000 that he'd take up 'long term residency' in the UK before taking seat in the House of Lords. Lord Mandelson, made a peer in controversial circumstances himself, has snitched Ashcroft out to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, suggesting that Ashcroft meant 'resident for tax'. Poor old 'Snitchys' finger pointing is going nowhere though as Ashcroft was vetted before the commission was established.

Bullying allegations confirmed by aide

New revelations in the form of a taped interview between pro-Labour journalist Suzie Mackenzie and one of Gordon Browns closest aides, Dr Stewart Wood, appear to confirm that allegations of bullying behaviour at No 10 are indeed true.

Ms Mackenzie says she made the tape public because people have the right to ask 'Is Gordon Brown fit to be Prime Minister?'

'Of course he is, we elected him... oh no, that's right we didn't...'