The UK’s advertising regulator has slammed a payday loan company for sending fake SMS messages purporting to be from people’s friends. Thousands are thought to have received the texts, which are address the recipient as “mate” and claim that they are “still out in town” – suggesting they should take out a loan and join them.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld 13 complaints over the messages, finding that they were unsolicited,  faked up and encouraged the use of payday loans to fund a social life.

Despite owning and operating the website concerned, the company behind the dodgy promotion, First Financial (UK) Ltd, could not explain how it got hold of the mobile numbers targeted — attempting to blame marketing firm Akklaim Telecoms.

It can only be a matter of time before the Information Commissioner comes knocking.

WHAT THE ASA SAID:

“recipients of [the texts] would understand from the statement “I’m still out in town” that the sender had used the money from the payday loan to fund their day out and that this was therefore an acceptable way in which to spend the money. Because the text messages implied that it was suitable to use a payday loan for the purpose of ‘socialising’, we concluded that [the texts] were irresponsible.”

“[The texts] opened with the welcome “Hi mate” and ad (b) also stated “Hows u?”, which suggested that the recipient of the message was personally known to the sender …Although those numbers would not have matched a name in the contact list on the recipients’ mobile phones, this was unlikely to have prevented the suggestion that the message had been sent by someone known to the recipients.”

David Cameron hosted “transparency champions” from across the globe at 10 Downing Street last week. He’s lucky they aren’t British — because they would doubtless be wondering why the PM won’t reveal the corporate lobbying clients of his new advisers.

Unlike other consultancies, the shadowy Tory lobbying company whose owners ran Boris Johnson’s mayoral campaign and now work for Cameron won’t say who else pays them consultancy fees — despite alleged influence on a U-turn for curbs for booze and fags.

And it seems that Aussie company boss Mark Textor — business partner of his controversial countryman Lynton Crosby — doesn’t like being reminded of this fact.

Here’s his tetchy exchange with Mirror hack James Lyons:

We will hopefully find out in the fullness of time.

The lobbying register is coming!

It doesn’t augur well.

Via Will Heaven

A Labour councillor from Whitby has claimed that he has fathered an extra terrestrial. According to the Northern Echo, town councillor Simon Parkes rowed with his wife after he told her he had sired a baby called “Zarka” with an alien he refers to as the “Cat Queen” — who he still has sex with “four times a year”.

Scrapbook readers may remember his previous bizarre claims – that his mother was a nine-foot green alien and that he has travelled on board a spaceship.

Despite previously stated ambitions, colleagues look to have prevented bonkers Parkes from getting anywhere near the larger Scarborough Borough Council.

Nadine Dorries, who caused uproar by abandoning parliament to appear on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, has told Total Politics that she “definitely would do more reality [TV] stuff”:

“I definitely would do more reality stuff. My constituents absolutely love it, because they’ve got someone of their own, who they see in Tesco, on there… I’d love to do Strictly Come Dancing – who knows?”

She must be hoping that BBC producers haven’t been reading her blog:

“It should be all over for the BBC.”

“I hope every member of the British public thinks hard about what the BBC now stands for; and I hope people in my own party who support both the institution of the BBC and the licence fee will ask themselves, why?”

“The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay, the BBC has to be the biggest.”

“Why do we expect people who are worried about whether or not they can afford their mortgage and Christmas, to pay £140 for a licence fee”, Dorries asked.

Presumably so that she can receive a fat fee while repeatedly moonlighting from her day job.

If Gordon Brown had a catchphrase it would be the wooden utterance — often delivered for the benefit of party activists or public sector workers — thanking them “for all that they do”.

Signing a “G8 quilt” made by primary school children alongside Barack Obama today, Cameron seems to have tapped his predecessor for inspiration.

Better that than leading Barack into a broom cupboard.

Probably not his sickest tweet ever — but it’s up there.

If the Guardian’s splash based on leaked GCHQ PowerPoint slides lifts the lid on bugging of diplomats at international meetings, it has been unscrewed since at least 2004 — when former international development secretary Clare Short let the cat out of the bag on spying at the United Nations.

In an interview with John Humphrys, Short was asked about US spooks’ attempts to enlist the British in bugging UN Security Council delegations in the run up to the Iraq war.

The former Birmingham MP, who quit the Labour Party in 2006, then revealed that British intelligence services has been bugging, errr, UN secretary general Kofi Annan with the knowledge of ministers:

JH: What this memo showed … was pressure from the United States on other countries to get support for a second UN resolution and spying indeed on those countries. Do you believe that Britain, our government, might have been involved in that with the United States?

CS: … The UK in this time was also spying on Kofi Annan’s office and getting reports from him about what was going on …

JH: Pressure is one thing, you expect that I suppose, spinning is another thing – you expect that I suppose, spying, spying in the United Nations is something quite different isn’t it?

CS: Well indeed, but these things are done. And in the case of Kofi’s office it’s been done for some time.

JH: Let me repeat the question then, do you believe Britain has been involved in it?

CS: Well I know, I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan’s conversations.

Indeed, I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking ‘Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying’.

JH: So in other words British spies – let’s be very clear about this in case I’m misunderstanding you – British spies have been instructed to carry out operations inside the United Nations on people like Kofi Annan?

CS: Yes, absolutely.

JH: Did you know about this when you were in government?

CS: Absolutely, I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations.

JH: Is this legal?

CS: I don’t know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don’t know about the legalities.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Perhaps the Tory SpAds that assisted with those three Free Schools in his constituency can shed some light on the matter?

Recorded attacks against Muslims in London have increased by 700% in the wake of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, the Metropolitan Police have revealed. Commander Simon Letchford told Today on Radio 4 that recorded Islamophobic incidents have jumped from one a day to eight — and that the true total is likely to be significantly higher.

While most incidents have been verbal abuse, the figures also include criminal damage, assaults and two suspected arson attacks on a school in Bromley and and an Islamic centre in Barnet — both mocked on social media by the official EDL Twitter feed and that of a splinter group, Combined Ex-Forces:

But EDL leader Tommy Robinson failed to see the funny side when a Twitter troll made reference to his own children.