My cup runneth over, says Jeremy the culture secretary. But it is my cup. Get your own
• In an ideal Con-Dem world it would be every man for himself, but circumstances dictate that we are all in this together. And so there must be rules. At Jeremy Hunt's house of fun (aka the Culture Department) they are making sure the staff know exactly what those rules are. They have a new pantry but it's not any old pantry. Among other things, it's the minister's pantry. And there are people using it other than those in his private office. There must be an etiquette to these things. Thus, according to a patronising missive circulated to staff, it is important to remember that "the pantry is used to make drinks for ministerial meetings and these take priority". No socialism in the house of fun. "Cupboards marked 'ministerial use only' mean exactly that." The small fridge under the work top is for ministerial use only, as is the dishwasher. Ditto the glasses and cups in the cupboard and on the trolley. This is what makes the secretary of state so very popular within the department don't you think?
• What japes they are having at the Audit Commission, one of the first organisations to be thrown on to Eric Pickles's bonfire of the quangos. Embarrassingly, it is taking quite some time to burn. Getting rid of it will save us £50m, said Grant Shapps yesterday. But much to the amusement of Radio 4's Today programme, which has turned the whole thing into a running gag, the closure date has moved from 2012-2013, to "after 2012". And now, given the volume of work, experts suggest it could still be around in 2015, replenished by the re-hiring of staff who have already taken redundancy. Still eventually, one assumes, it will be gone, its work handed to Big Dave's chums in the private sector. They run a tight ship. PricewaterhouseCoopers is helping NHS Leeds cut its costs as wards are closed and jobs are cut. The bill so far: £800,000.
• And what a boon it was for the streetfighters in the English Defence League to be able to parade Sikh spokesman Guramit Singh as evidence of their commitment to the multicultural society. Shows that we embrace everyone, they said: we're not Islamaphobic or racist. But that wouldn't work so well were it to transpire that even other Sikhs think he is several eggs short of a souffle. And indeed they do. For alas, poor Singh faces a threat from a number of the most prominent British Sikh organisations, who say he is bringing the religion into disrepute, and are threatening an appeal to the leader of the Akal Takht – the highest seat of the religion worldwide – to have him excommunicated. One hopes his friends in the EDL aren't of the fairweather variety. They may soon be the only friends he has left.
• Nick Clegg, knows a song about that. And there he is, shunned by those who once loved him, grumpily shuttling about London to talk about his social mobility strategy. Haunted by his own gilded past and the advantage he enjoyed from an internship. Many say that the essential things for the disadvantaged to acquire are the "soft skills", things like punctuality. And it wasn't all Clegg's fault that he was 70 minutes late for his own launch – Harriet Harman had detained him at the Commons. But it did oblige David Willetts to busk manfully in his place. ("Has anyone else got a contribution they'd like to make? Ah, here's Alan Milburn!") The stand-in must have wondered whether Clegg wouldn't have progressed across London slightly faster if he'd taken the tube to London Bridge rather than the ministerial Range Rover. It's only three stops on the Jubilee line. Poor Nick would have known that a year ago.
• Finally, it's official: Obama will run again. But who will run against him? Mitt Romney of Massachusetts has been passed over before, Newt Gingrich has lived a life both carnal and colourful. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, is dull, dull, dull. And as for Sarah Palin ... Oh man! So could it be Chris Christie, the rotund, fiscally stringent New Jersey governor, whose love of the tuck shop rivals that of our own Eric Pickles? "The most dangerous place in America is the space between Chris Christie and the buffet," explained polling analyst Frank Luntz on the Today programme yesterday. If there are doughnuts on the trail, he's in.