Skreened

What bad news be slipped out as all eyes are on Washington?

For a spinner next Tuesday is a mouth-watering prospect. For at noon Washington time, (1700 GMT), the mega news story in the world will be the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. His speech, surely, will dominate the airwaves for at least twenty-four hours.

And the great thing is that the “news managers” have known about this for months and will be there all prepared. Next Tuesday is “put out your garbage day”.

So what will be government and other bodies have stored up ready to be announced knowing that it will be totally over-shadowed by the events in Washington?

What about the go-ahead for the Heathrow third runway? This has many doubters in the Labour party and Brown made it clear at PMQs today that there will be no pre-vote in parliament.

Then there’s the announcement that the likely investigation into Damien Green and the Home Office leaking has been dropped – something that could cause problems for Jacqui Smith.

It might be a smart move for Cameron and Clegg is to pre-empt the spin machines by writing to the Prime Minister to ask that nothing substantial is announced on that afternoon. He’ll reject it, of course, but at least it would flag this up to the media.

Politics is, of course, a dirty game and you have to use everything to gain the maximum advantage.