From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

For everyone’s eyes only. It seems that the Coalition is not the only home of three-word slogans, with NSW Labor about to launch a “Stop the Cuts” campaign. Only problem is, we weren’t supposed to know. This email — addressed to “candidates and campaigns” — landed in the inbox of NSW supporters overnight, and Crikey tipsters duly passed it on. The link to the campaign material has been taken down, but the UK Register managed to get a look. We’ve put the call in to NSW Labor to find out just how many people got the email, but the secret’s well and truly out. Awks.

Ackland shown the door. Fans of Sydney Morning Herald columnist Richard Ackland will be sad to hear that he’s been sacked — for writing for The Saturday Paper. Ackland, who also publishes law journals Justinian and the Gazette of Law and Journalism, tweeted the news this morning. We’ve put a call in to Ackland to find out more, but didn’t hear back before deadline. It seems a bit stiff, but perhaps this is a sign of how seriously Fairfax is taking the competition at The Saturday Paper.

#WorldCupFail. Soccer diehards like Ms Tips who rose at 2am today to watch Australia give Holland a run for their money might have wondered what on earth happened to the commentary from the learned Craig Foster, who is the star of SBS’s commentary team and is in Brazil for the tournament. Foster dropped out towards the end of the nailbiting game (we lost 3-2), and could occasionally be heard as if speaking from some great distance. We raced to SBS for an explanation, and they told us this:

“Although the commentary by our team in Brazil dropped out part-way through the match due to unexpected delivery issues, Australian-based SBS Football Host, David Zdrilic stepped in, alerting audiences and continuing with the commentary. SBS Football Host and Commentator, David Basheer came back a minute after the drop-out to commentate the remainder of the match.

The interruption has been rectified and SBS are taking every measure to ensure that our broadcast is not affected in the future. Although Australian audiences couldn’t hear Craig’s passionate commentary of what was an unquestionably thrilling match between Australia and the Netherlands, they could undoubtedly feel it.”

And the government wants to trim SBS’ budget even further. If they do that the coverage might amount to Ms Tips yelling instructions at Mark Bresciano from her Melbourne sofa.

Ready for your close-up? We’ve already filled you in on the Mid-Winter Ball action, but here’s something a little more, er, cheeky. Fairfax journo Sarah Whyte snapped colleague Jonathan Swan before he was fully prepared for the glitz and glamour, but deleted the tweet soon after. Lucky we snapped this first:

And the winner is … Although Ms Tips was sad to not even be considered for News Corp’s Tim Blair’s “craziest left-wing frightbat” award, we made up for it by launching our own “craziest right-wing nutjob” poll in Crikey yesterday. With 39% of the votes, Blair’s fellow News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt just came away with the win over second-place getter and radio ranter Alan Jones with 35%. Piers Akerman limped in to third place, while Blair barely rated a mention in the poll that he inspired. See the full results from the near-5000 votes here.

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