Adam Bienkov on Twitter points to this blog post by political blogger Guido Fawkes in 2008:

Despite Gordon’s whining to the EU it is now the case that Irish banks now represent the safest place to deposit money in Europe, with a AAA guarantee from a country with the lowest national debt to GDP ratio of any AAA country.

Thanks to Gordon’s prolificacy Irish commercial banks are safer than even the Bank of England.

Curiously, Paul Staines has said nothing recently about the Irish financial crisis.

The Guardian reported just a few minutes ago:

Ireland nationalised its second-largest bank today and pumped billions of euros into the rest of its beleaguered financial sector, just a day after mass street protests in Dublin against public spending cuts to pay for the bank bailouts. Allied Irish became the fourth bank to be nationalised by the Fianna Fáil-led government while the publicly owned Anglo Irish Bank, the country’s largest, was told it needed at least another €7bn (£6bn) of taxpayer funds to stay afloat.

A Reuters report says Ireland nationalising the bank buys it some more time, but ‘the clock is ticking’.

This reminds us of the time radical libertarian MEP Dan Hannan confidently predicted the Icelandic economy was doing brilliantly thanks to deregulation.

They never learn from their mistakes hey?

Tory MP Nadine Dorries says on her blog:

Is there such a thing as Twitter addiction? How can anyone live a normal life who can do that? Surely these people cannot be in employment because if they are, how can they work? if they aren’t then it’s time they got a job which involves being sat at a key board because there’s nothing much up with their fingers, brain or attention span!!

Fair enough, you are allowed to have that opinion.

Then she goes on to say:

I will put money on that being a Daily Mail story one day. In the meantime, do you know of anyone else who has Tweeted more than 35,000 times in less than six months? If so, email my office and let me know. Or, better still, if it’s someone you know is on benefits, contact the DWP.

Has Dorries turned into a Daily Mail journalist herself? It wouldn’t surprise us.

What a sad woman.
(via Mr S Pill)

A blogger has published this open letter in response to Nadine Dorries:

For many disabled people, the internet has opened up a portal into a world of social contact. Many of us are socially extremely isolated. We may be limited in our ability to engage in the world by physical disabilities, or by mental illness. For us, twitter, and other social media, might provide our only human contact.
…
Since starting to use twitter a few months ago, I have come into contact with other disabled people, who are also socially isolated. And others who are less socially isolated, but for whom twitter has provided a way of meeting people with similar interests or outlook. These people have opened up the world for me. They have made my life less restricted and sterile. I have conversations with them, in much the same way a less restricted person might when meeting a friend at a cafe or pub. This is what twitter is for me – a method of making friends.

But Dorries would rather have such people just reported to the DWP… perhaps because she thinks that benefits are a “lifestyle choice” too.

In the New Statesman this week Dorries explains why she loves Sarah Palin so much.

Following Ed Miliband’s announcement that he supports voting reform, a new opinion poll shows that 39% of people back changing the voting system with only 29% in favour of keeping First Past the Post.

Crucially, Labour voters, who had opposed voting reform in recent polls, now support it by 43%-32%. 32% of voters are still undecided.

The poll also confirmed that Right Wing attacks on Ed Miliband had flopped, as large majorities of people agreed that Ed Miliband is serious about reducing the deficit, was right to distance himself from the war on Iraq, right to admit that Labour made mistakes, and right to condemn irresponsible strikes. As with every other poll, there was also massive public support from supporters of all main parties for higher taxes on the rich and banks, greater rights for agency workers, and a higher minimum wage.

You may remember George Osborne claiming earlier this month that “people who think it’s a lifestyle choice to just sit on out-of-work benefits – that lifestyle choice is going to come to an end. The money won’t be there.”

So I asked the Department of Work and Pensions how many people are currently making the lifestyle choice to live on benefits.

After all, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just announced that this was a massive problem, so I assumed they would be working on their new strategy to ensure that in future no one would make the lifestyle choice to live on benefits.

I just got the answer from the DWP:

“To qualify for a particular benefit an individual must meet the conditions that the government specifies. For example, the conditions for receiving Jobseeker‘s Allowance are that an individual must be available for, and actively seeking, work. The entitlement conditions for receipt of benefit are set out in the relevant social security regulations for the benefit(s) concerned. There is no condition in regulations that allows someone to receive benefit as a lifestyle choice.”

So according to George Osborne, the key aim of welfare policy in future will be to stop people taking the lifestyle choice to live on benefits.

According to the Department responsible it is already the case that no one can receive benefits as a lifestyle choice.

What an utter, utter embarrassing shambles a fantastic example of joined up, effective government.

According to Labour party rules at least 6 women have to be elected to the shadow cabinet.

The 49 names has been announced – LabourList has the full list.

There are 13 women on the list (in alphabetical order):

Diane Abbott
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Yvette Cooper
Mary Creagh
Angela Eagle
Maria Eagle
Caroline Flint
Meg Hillier
Tessa Jowell
Barbara Keeley
Fiona Mactaggart
Ann McKechin
Emily Thornberry

Of these – Yvette Cooper is a shoo-in. Caroline Flint and Tessa Jowell also very likely. I wonder if Diane Abbott and Emily Thornberry will split Labour MPs on the left. I don’t know much about the others – but they have just under a 50% chance of being elected.

Update: Harriet Harman (as deputy leader) and Rosie Winterton (as chief whip) will also be in the shadow cabinet, as has been pointed out to me on Twitter.

So that brings the minimum to eight women.
[Roberta's name also now corrected]