Good morning, on this fine morning – Charlie Sheen’s birthday, and one of Nottingham Lib Dem’s “delivery days.” Here’s hoping for no rain for me and for Charlie.

Top stories

Unbeknownst to the rest of us, the Tories have carried out a coup:

Tories claim: we have seized control of Scotland Yard

The Conservatives have wrested control of Scotland Yard from the Home Office and now have its top officers working to their agenda, a senior aide to the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has told the Guardian.

Kit Malthouse, the deputy mayor for policing, has declared that he and Johnson “have our hands on the tiller” of the Metropolitan police and have an electoral mandate to influence what it does.

He asserted that the Johnson regime had “elbowed the Home Office out of the picture” and would no longer act as a rubber stamp to whatever the force proposed, insisting: “We do not want to be a passenger on the Met cruise.”

What to link to in the Telegraph? Wogan thinks newsreading is easy? Bikini Godesses? Batman beats Spiderman?

Or Sentenced to death on the NHS?

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

Two must-read blog posts

Liberal England: Televised debates will be bad for Liberal Democrats

Yesterday we brought you news that Nick Clegg has agreed to take part in Sky’s debate of party leaders. Jonathan Calder thinks this might not be the best of ideas:

The arrangements under which the party gets close to equal treatment with the two main parties during election campaigns were hard won. If Sky TV is allowed to tear them up (if there is more than one debate, will Nick Clegg be invited to all of them?) we are unlikely to gain from it. As far as the media are concerned, the story is Labour vs Tory, Brown vs Cameron. The Lib Dems and Nick Clegg are a distraction to this and if they can sideline us they will.

Caron’s Musings: A Morning at the Pantomime – Holyrood Megrahi Debate misses the mark

Caron gives a blow-by-blow account of the Scottish Parliament’s debate about the release of Megrahi.

So, our Parliament gathers to scrutinise one of the biggest decisions ever taken by a Scottish Minister. Yes, the mood is going to be tense, but you would expect an air of industry, of gravity. You expect the contributions to be full of detailed analysis and careful consideration. You would think that everyone would absolutely be on their best behaviour, knowing that the rest of the UK and potentially America is watching. […]

Unfortunately, our MSPs can occasionally be relied upon to behave with all the decorum of a roomful of 2 year olds fighting over a single bag of sweeties and today was one of these occasions. It was as if the nation had dressed its parliamentarians up in their best clothes for the big occasion and crossed its fingers and hoped for the best that they would be on their best behaviour.

And finally, an honourable mention to Mark Reckons’ Fisking Mike Ion on LabourList regarding voting against Labour.