That's hardly a lean, green Tory machine, John
The White Hell Event has claimed its first political victim: John Redwood is buying a 4x4 after his Jaguar XF disgraced itself in the snow. The Jaguar, which has had several policy disagreements with the former Tory cabinet minister over the correct gear and sat-nav maps, finally came to a halt on a gentle but slushy hill near his home. Redwood, MP for Wokingham, rolled it into a nearby snowdrift and abandoned it for the night. "It took two attempts the next day to dig it out and to get it to work," he complains.
But a 4x4 still seems a bit out of keeping with current political thought. Anybody who really wanted to get on in the modern, compassionate Conservative party would surely get themselves a bicycle.
+ If Gordon Brown wants to reassure middle-class voters, as he claimed in a speech yesterday, he has appointed the wrong business guru to the House of Lords. Never mind Alan Sugar, arise Lord Boden of Fulham (But with a Small Place in Dorset Where We Like to Spend the Odd Weekend).
Achtung! EU gets a dressing down from our new allies
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How often are the British told that we must stop being so rude about the European Union because everybody else across the continent loves it so, embraces bendy banana regulations, and probably holds street parties every Europe Day?
Well, it's not just us. Even the Germans have had enough. Das Bild, Germany's equivalent of The Sun, is enraged at high EU salaries. "Greedy EU officials earn up to £15,574 after tax each month but still want 3.7% more," says the paper. "Euro bureaucrats bank twice as much as their German counterparts, and pay considerably less tax."
This is not just a one-off either. The same paper reported the appointment of a European president and foreign minister under the heading: "Pair chosen to head EU are political nobodies."
What happens now? If their attitude to public opinion is anything to go by, European leaders will simply ask Das Bild to keep rewriting their story until £15,574 a month seems quite cheap.
Johnson's about-turn may see him banished
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Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has deported an asylum seeker despite a passionate campaign by the man's local MP - a rising star called, er, Alan Johnson. As MP for Hull West and Hessle, Johnson wrote to the Home Office in 2007 to say that returning a political activist called Emmanuel Njoya to Cameroon "could be fatal". Njoya had campaigned for Johnson during the 2005 general election. So he must have been surprised to be deported last September, barely three months after his champion had become home secretary.
A Home Office spokesman said: "Such cases are not normally referred to the home secretary. However, he is confident that procedures have been followed carefully to ensure that Mr Njoya and his family could be returned safely having been refused asylum."
Labour party members in Hull are apparently so furious that one really must fear for Johnson's safety. Is there a friendly country somewhere that might offer him asylum?
Eric - just the right figure to take on Lord Ashdown
Chubby Eric Pickles, chairman of the Conservatives, has been challenged to yomp across Dartmoor with Paddy Ashdown after describing the 68-year-old former Liberal Democrat leader as "frail and confused" in a pre-election spat.
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"I suspect he'd have passed out on a boggy patch trying to keep up," says the Lib Dem MP Colin Breed. That's the least of Eric's worries: Lord Ashdown is a former commando. So Eric should keep alert for any balaclava-clad figures climbing in through his bedroom window at night, clutching a sharpened bus pass.
+ What is David Mellor, a former Tory cabinet minister, trying to tell us with his mobile phone ring tone - the Russian national anthem? When it was the theme tune of the old Soviet Union, the song paid tribute to Stalin and Lenin, and ended with the words: "In the victory of communism's deathless ideal, we see the future of our own dear land."
It's good to see older Tories trying to fit in with the spirit of the modern party, but David, there is a limit.
+ You can't be too careful these days about health and safety. The Labour MP Tom Harris reports the following warning on the food counter of the Members' Tea Room: "Mackerel on cos leaf (contains fish)".
+ Northeast Lincolnshire council (Tory) is advertising for a corporate consultation officer to "support the delivery of the northeast Lincolnshire community engagement framework". The successful candidate will have to manage something called the Citizens' Panel.
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Oh dear. How many more times? The people of northeast Lincolnshire already have a panel of citizens to represent their views. They are known as "councillors" and are elected specially for that purpose. Are Conservatives quite as dedicated to efficient government as they like us to think?
LITTLE BRITAIN
+ George Ardley's family and friends decided drastic action was needed when freezing weather prevented hearses getting to the farmer's funeral: they hired a digger to carry the coffin, pictured. Cousin Glenys Henshaw said: "George loved a joke. He would have seen the funny side."
- Manchester Evening News
+ A detective inspector from Humberside police called for assistance to deal with an illegal encampment of travellers and a large public crowd. An inspector who had just travelled the same route said if he looked in more detail, he would see an enormous red and white striped tent and an elephant: the circus was in town.
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- Police magazine
A Suffolk prisoner who murdered his mother wants women guards banned in male jails as their presence prevents him looking at pornography. Craig Topping, who is currently at HMP Blundeston, near Lowestoft, said: "Although this may seem selfish, I do not appreciate being unable to access pornographic material of a more explicit type. Any woman working in a male prison surely knows what to expect and should be able to turn a blind eye."
- East Anglian Daily Times