Nice heritage site status you've got there, Liverpool. Shame if anything were to happen to it
• Good – and bad – news for Liverpool, whose waterfront is a Unesco-designated world heritage site, as heritage minister John Penrose grants listed-building status to the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Department for Culture gives the press notice the Beatles-themed headline: "There are places I'll remember all my life" – a line from Lennon's In My Life. Within hours, though, the not so good news as reports predict that a massive development proposed by Peel Holdings is likely to get agreement tomorrow night from Liverpool City Council. Bad because Unesco inspected the plans at the end of last year and declared itself unhappy with what is proposed. So much so, we understand, that it is contemplating stripping the city of its illustrious and hard-won title. Unthinkable. Well, Unesco giveth, Unesco taketh away.
• What's happened to former Downing Street spin doctor Damian McBride since he joined the Catholic aid agency Cafod a year ago? He certainly seems to have been keeping a low profile. As Gordon Brown's spinmeister he enjoyed notable prominence until a dramatic fall from grace when he was caught sending dodgy emails. Even so, in his present incarnation he strikes one as a man who enjoys life. This is evident from a tweet on Saturday, referring to a particularly exciting evening. "Great night, great lasagna, great celebrit telepathy with @will_blair & @willtimmins – and thanks for the thoughtful offer of Rose Schloer." Clearly, McBride has not really got hold of the Cafod-Catholic thing, yet. Last Friday the faithful were fasting to raise funds for the aid agency. In the aftermath, did they want to know about his upmarket night on the nosh? Probably not.
• Astonishment across the chancelleries of Europe, meanwhile, as Vladimir Putin pulls off his shock victory to regain the Russian presidency. His reclamation will be smooth. Funnily enough, no one ever bothered to remove any of his personal effects. His slippers are where he left them. We haven't quite got the measure of Putin, but opponents there know exactly what they are dealing with. Ilya Yashin, quoted in the French magazine Le Point, observes: "Putin's great weakness? He wants to govern like Stalin but live like Abramovich." And to govern for as long as War and Peace.
• One of the more successful British bloggers – attracting 250,000 unique visitors a month – is Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome. The site rides high on the largesse of Lord Ashcroft, and by selling monthly inside intelligence on the Tories to companies that need to know that sort of thing. Montgomerie really knows the party. So what's the headline to get them going, he was asked during a discussion in the Oxford cloisters last Friday. "Gay Scottish Conservative climate change sceptic lashes out," he said. Cue rage, frothing, loads of green ink.
• The phone rings. It's our dear friend, the peacenik, author and all-purpose troublemaker Pat Arrowsmith. Friday was her 82nd birthday. She looked, as always, to the birthdays list in this, her favourite paper. For the first time she can remember, she wasn't there. "It's very unnerving," she tells us. "One gets used to these things. Perhaps I'm dead. If so, no one's told me." We point out that she sounds pretty much alive and that if dead, we would have put something on the obits page . Everyone needs validation, especially at such a grand old age.
• Pat will endure for some time yet, but sad news indeed on the passing of that guardian of the establishment, Norman St John-Stevas – Lord St John of Fawsley or, as he was known in the lobby, Lord Cringe on All Foursly. He will be missed, not least by those who valued his opinions. He well appreciated the value of those opinions, as became clear when a BBC type called to ask for an interview in the 1980s. No inquiry from St John-Stevas about the subject to be discussed. Just how much? Usual BBC fee? Of course, replied the fixer. "In that case, I have views on whatever it is you want to ask me about..." Irreplaceable really.
Twitter: @hugh_muir