Monday I couldn’t say this out loud in the office, but our people certainly do a better class of expenses fiddle. There was something awfully depressing about all those Labour claims for dry rot, porn, bath plugs, nappies and Kit-Kats from the vending machine at B&Q. Fancy selling your soul for that?! The fact that
Monday Good job we don’t do negative campaigning any more. If we did we’d have to start a unit called Blears Smears! As it is, in this post-McBride era, we are simply setting up Operation Ginger Whinger. Much more professional. We need to combat any potential threat from the tiny, squeaky woman even if it
Monday Farewell then GWB. Whoever thought that was a good idea? Nobody here, I can assure you. Measuring output in terms of General Wellbeing is just plain silly when the really important stuff is all to do with hard figures. As such, we will be using a brand new measure of the nation’s progress from
Monday What a great call for Dave to get ‘bloody angry’! It’s passionate, sexy and modern, not to mention emotionally intelligent, yet also authoritarian and traditional, and a tiny bit kinky at the same time. All the girls agree that it really suits him and should be used more often. Apparently Jed got it from
Monday This is just silly. Why won’t anyone tell me what Dave didn’t have? I only asked if it wasn’t a verruca but Poppy got v cross and said: ‘Dave does not not have a verruca!’ in a really aggressive way. ‘Well, what wasn’t it then?’ I asked. ‘He didn’t not have athlete’s foot did
Monday Bath plugs 25; scatter cushions 173; patio heaters 15; gazebos 3 (v bad). I’ve made an official complaint to Nigel. They’re going to have to get me some help. I cannot man the Expenses Hotline on my own any longer and neither should I be expected to. It’s worse since they started sending in
Monday Our new Expenses Helpline is completely jammed. We’re not even scratching the surface of the demand. Had an MP on this morning hysterical about his Sky subscription. Something about ‘buxom babes’ and ‘essential research into Broken Britain’. Another backbencher demanding to know what to do about his hunting fees — ‘Are they saying I
Monday It’s all v odd. As far as I can tell, until this week we didn’t have any tax cuts at all and people were jolly cross about it. Now we seem to have dozens of tax cuts which we are going to have to drop and people are even crosser. What I want to
Monday V exciting! Our new Apology and Regret Strategy is such a success we are going to expand it. Jed says we’ve really set the agenda with some groundbreaking grovelling which has made Gordon look like a horrid grump who can’t own up when he’s as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile
Monday Dave’s horrible clothes are a triumph! Of course everyone is claiming it was their idea, but the fact is no one remembered he’d got those smelly old trainers made out of recycled tyre rubber and wine bottle corks until I pointed it out. Sam was a bit trickier. Once Tom and I got over
Monday Major recession panic. Clearly we are being out-apocalypsed by Labour. Dave furious and wants to know why we’re still only predicting the worst downturn in 80 years while Ed Balls is calling it the Most Terrifying Depression in the History of Mankind. Obviously, we need to do the doom vision thing better, or we
Monday Am bit confused about Responsible Capitalism. While wanting to Be The Change as always, the new RC guidelines are making the bagel run v complicated. Not sure the little place on the corner fully demonstrates a ‘sense of responsibility and a moral framework’. On the other hand, the only real alternative is the big-chain
Monday Tricky times. I’ve got two statements to work on and they’re virtually interchangeable. Am worried Dave will end up urging the FSA to investigate the despicable conduct of Labour peers while calling for City fat cats to be suspended from the House of Lords. Possibly there is some overlap so it wouldn’t be the
Sunday Strange call from Gary. Wanted to know if I knew anything about meatloaf. I said no, not my taste in music but that wasn’t what he was after. Said he’d rung every single girl in the press office and no one knew how to cook it, or what was in it, apart from meat.
Sunday Totally shattered. Up at dawn doing Dave’s bookshelves for Marr with Wonky Tom. He brought a heap of boring stuff and wouldn’t let me put Katie Price’s Perfect Ponies out. Insisted on some weird sci-fi books that only he would read. After bit of negotiation I managed to get Black Beauty on the bottom
Monday Mr Clarke on the phone again, v crabby. He says it’s taking a lot of hours out of his day having to answer questions about the economy and can’t we stop people calling him so he can get on with counting sparrows. ‘At this rate the only way I’ll get my RSPB garden-watch sheet
Tamzin Lightwater’s New Year’s Resolutions Here they are, my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009: 1. Keep job. Make self indispensable to Dave, thus ensuring that should the axe fall again on the Tory nerve centre as Britain plunges ever deeper into recession, Yours Truly will be last person Jed thinks of when he’s trying to
Monday Mr Maude ecstatic about the polls. Says it’s the most significant narrowing he has seen in all his years of being miserable about the possibility of the Tories ever winning again. ‘Only four points ahead! We’re doomed! DOOMED I tell you!’ All the way to the Panic Room he was shouting: ‘Consigned to the
Monday Tremendous excitement after the PBR. Dave called us into The Cauldron, our inner sanctum, for a top-secret briefing. Felt v privileged to be there, just me and 150 other core members of CCHQ. Dave was wonderful. He completely cleared up any nagging doubts we might have had as to why we are not opposing
Monday Hooray! We are the party of spending cuts and proud of it — at last! It really was a stroke of genius by Dave to put Mr Letwin in charge of drawing them up because Mr Letwin is just about the cleverest economic brain we have, aside from Mr Redwood of course! He certainly