Whither the Lobby?

Guido Fawkes and myself are debating the future of the Lobby System over at the Press Gazette's excellent Discuss Journalism site today.

Basically, Guido thinks it's undemocratic and elitist and should be abolished, while I think that abolishing it would lead to its replacement by something even more elitist and undemocratic. Further contributions, either on this site or the Press Gazette's, are of course very welcome.

Brown to axe Blair's "city regions" project?

A few weeks back, I wrote in the North West Enquirer, Newcastle Journal and elsewhere about Ruth Kelly's plans to roll-out the "London model" of devolution to cities like Manchester and Newcastle as the latest move in the Government's regional agenda.

According to old regional lobby mucker Jon Walker in yesterday's Birmingham Post, however, this will be one of the first things to go once Gordy gets his hands on the levers of power. Interesting.

Fame at last for the world's greatest Lily Allen fan

An old mate of mine from my London days now edits a blog called the Daily Growl which was plugging Lily Allen well before she became a mainstream media babe.

So it was great to see his efforts paying off with a plug in this Sunday's Observer Review section, which featured a full-page piece on the chart-topping singer, described by the NME as "the cool as fuck sound of summer 2006."

Incidentally the name Daily Growl is neither indicative of my friend's disposition nor of the contents of his blog. It comes from the name of the opening track of the 2002 Lambchop album Is a woman.