Just Gordon

No 4080
Set by Dipak Ghosh
It looks as if it might be time for some members of the current cabinet to start thinking about writing their autobiographies – using their spare time in the near future. We asked you to suggest suitable titles for books from prominent cabinet ministers.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Bad luck to a lot of compers this week – for failing to spot just what the comp title meant: Just Gordon should have made you think of Just William. In other words you had to take a well-known book title or turn of phrase and tweak it to make it work with your chosen politician. This was not the “incongruous combination of book and author” comp, which we have set before (for example, when the as-yet-unsurpassed The Invisible Man by Luciano Pavarotti featured in 1993). This time round we had How to Win Friends and Influence People by Gordon Brown, Location, Location, Location by Hazel Blears and Alan Johnson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. The singletons get £5 book tokens this week, Shirley Curran gets £10, and the rest get £20 – with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Josh Ekroy.

Hazel Blears Crocodile Blears
James Purnell Shampoo Socialist
Ed Miliband He Ain’t Eddie. He’s My Brother
Alistair Darling Comical Ally
David Silverman

David Miliband The Milibland Leading the Miliblind
Peter Mandelson My Really Rather Damascene Moment
Alan Johnson Waiting for Gordo
Jack Straw Clutching at Myself
Ed Balls Gizza Chancellorship Yvette Cooper Married to the Job Tessa Jowell No Longer Married
to the Mob
Alistair Darling I Did It His Way
Josh Ekroy

Jacqui Smith Belmarsh Belle
Hilary Benn Mr Benn Goes to Parliament
Andy Burnham Burnham Would
Peter Mandelson No More Guacamole
Gordon Brown A Good Man in Downing Street
Anne Du Croz

Jacqui Smith Blue Remembered Bills
Hazel Blears No Place Like Homes
Jack Straw Writing the Wrongs
Harriet Harman Gordon’s Little Helper
D A Prince

Peter Mandelson Down and Out in Brussels and London
Gordon Brown Flush Gordon
Shirley Curran

Hazel Blears Woman on a Motorcycle
Bob Wells

Alistair Darling Goodbye to All VAT
Sid Field

Gordon Brown The Brown Version
Alanna Blake

Hazel Blears A Taste of Money
N H Twitchell

Alistair Darling Desperately Seeking Prudence
Brian D Allingham

Peter Hain No Pain Without Hain
H Glenister

No 4083 Now you’re talking
Set by Hank T Romein

The news media like to employ a figure of speech called metonymy and regularly claim to have received statements from streets and buildings. Let us take them literally and imagine, for example, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, the White House and the Kremlin really do possess the power of speech. What might they (or other streets or buildings of your choice) have told us over the years – but especially now?

Max 125 words by 2 July

Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

This England

Each printed entry will receive a £5 book token. Entries on a POSTCARD, please, to This England, NS, 1st Floor, Boundary House, 91-93 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HR

Magna Carta scrapped
The right of people to collect wood from Britain’s forests that was enshrined under Magna Carta in 1215 has been overturned due to concerns about health and safety.

The Forestry Commission has suggested instead people should buy wood from local firewood merchants allowed into the forest.

Mike Kamp, 59, has been collecting cheap fuel for his wood-burning stove for the past 12 years.

He said: “Magna Carta states that a common man is allowed to enter forests and take deadwood for firewood.”

Peter Garson, of the Forestry Commission Wales, said: “We have a duty of care to the public in our woodlands and a much higher duty of care where we issue permission for particular activities.”

Daily Telegraph (David Harling)

Horses for courses

Cardinal Allen Catholic High School, Fleetwood, is holding a 15-mile horse ride along the beach at Fleetwood on Sunday, 12 July.

Entry forms are available from the school office and by phoning the school. Proceeds will go towards school funds, and anybody can take part as long as they have a horse.

Longridge News (Ann Bowman)