Osborne turns to business leaders for assistance

Chancellor George Osborne invited a group of successful business people to No 11 for drinks this week, including former M&S supremo Sir Stuart Rose.What glad tidings did he have to share with them? 

My source there says: ‘He asked if anyone had any ideas for what he could do. All a bit worrying…’ Poor George was also the target of Labour leader Ed Miliband’s first Commons joke this week, about the Chancellor being ‘lashed to the mast’ – a veiled reference to Osborne’s erstwhile friend from student days, dusky dominatrix Natalie Rowe.

As the historic vote approaches on whether the UN  should recognise Palestine as a sovereign state, I hear of an unfortunate setback at BICOM, a London lobbying group devoted to creating a ‘more supportive environment for Israel in the UK’.

Its chief executive, former Labour MP for Rochdale, Lorna Fitzsimons, 44, has mistakenly sent to the Press details of how BICOM is seeking to influence media coverage. Such as liaising with BBC and Sky to ensure ‘the most objectively favourable line was taken…’ 

Ms Fitzsimons writes: ‘I briefed Jonathan Ford, the Financial Times leader writer for his upcoming leading article… BICOM had regular contact with the Editor at Large of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, helping to inform him about the forthcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood…’ A BICOM spokesman denies that Ms Fitzsimons is to lose her job.

The alleged fling of  U.S. presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, pictured, with black, 6ft 8in tall baseball star Glen Rice ‘will add texture to the deeply traditional persona she has cultivated for her Tea Party followers’, according to a news report. Perhaps ‘adding texture’ will become the new ‘Ugandan affairs’ – the euphemism for clandestine sex made famous by Private Eye.

Fastidious X Factor boss Simon Cowell has offered to finance massages for Beverly Hills neighbours upset by lengthy work on his $8million mansion after some called Beverly Hills police, infuriated by his 100 workmen and the five ‘chuck wagons’ feeding them. ‘He ripped out the windows and bathrooms, only to do it all over again, and pulled out and replanted his trees three times,’ alleges one local.

Tory MP Sir Peter Tapsell, 81, asked the PM, David Cameron, why we’re not prosecuting bankers like the U.S. Cameron had no answer. City expert Sir Peter says: ‘If a lot of these people operated in London, surely they were infringing British law. Will the British police or DPP investigate?’ I think we can guess the answer.

Julian Barnes’s fine new novel, The Sense of an Ending, is about how a woman comes between two schoolboy friends and the sad result over the course of their lives. Barnes, 65, is no stranger to the kind of heartache suffered by his central character, Tony Webster. 

His late wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, had an affair with author Jeannette Winterson but was ultimately reconciled with Barnes, the main beneficiary of her estate after she died in 2008. His new novel is dedicated simply to ‘Pat’.