and i owe mr woollard an apology for confusing a tory with an ex-tory. we should perhaps share an ex-g&t.

I, too, will believe it when I see it. I don’t believe that the government did put it in that Motorway Cafe menu of a Queen’s Speech they handed to her Majesty the other day.

Was it in the Queen’s Speech? Did I blink?

Or can he do a Democratic Diktat?

Perhaps the facility to do so was in a law not debated while they were talking about foxes for a year.

I think we can all guess the answer to that.

We have far too many unelected people (Lord This and Baroness That) holding ever more important portfolios and beyond the reach of elected MPs to challenge them properly. In the Commons, it is more and more the case that you only get the monkey and not the organ-grinder. Whatever next – a return to the PM in the Lords?

Geoffrey: I am quite taken by the independent tickets… trouble is finding independents in all constituencies.

I shall investigate further….

Looking forward to the Sundays to see what political nonsense pops up. Bound to be some, of course.

You make oi larf!

May I suggest a liberal (small ‘l’) glass of Rioja? Works wonders for the voice and banishes colds by putting the fear of god into them.

Enjoy your weekend.

PS… not to keen on ‘creationist’ thinking… I discovered the earth was not flat either some years back. Bizarrely, my cousin, who escaped from Scotland at the age of 13 to Canada became a lay preacher in one of those mumbo jumbo temples they have over there, was absolutely convinced the Earth was only 4500 years old. I got one of my geology books out and pointed to various fossils. He smiled in a beatific way and said that God was bountiful and put them there… underground for us to find at some point in time. It was at this point that I gave up trying to have a sensible discussion with him and got mildly over refreshed.

1o years later I met my cousin again in London. No mention whatsoever of religion. I can only assume that he he had been cured. We drank rather a lot and he asked me casually, apropos of nothing if I would like a brown bear. I agreed that a brown bear would enhance my life and thought no more of it it. My cousin returned to Canada. Six weeks later I received a very large box – and I mean large – from DHL.

Inside was a dead brown bear…or at least the skin, complete with a stuffed head. He had, apparently shot the bear on his ranch with police approval because it was a danger to kids at the outward bound establishment he was running.

Fortunately, I met a lovely Swedish woman half my age – we lived together for a few years and on partin, amicably, I gave her the brown bear. It seemed appropriate!

Life can, indeed, be strange. More of the same, for me, I hope.

I will certainly keep a close eye on dear old Baggers (and his lady wife, Cybil), especially as his creator (do we believe in creation on this blog?) is making all of the right noises.

However, the ’shadow’ DEFRA secretary is definitely on my hit list. Nick Herbert (whom I used to know when he was a junior at Conservative Central Office) and his Countryside Alliance buddies are very much mistaken in conflating the plight of rural post offices, village schools, district hospital services and local police stations with his and their persistent public passion and only-too-real pet subject – that of ‘un-banning’ hunting and hare coursing.

Mr Herbert is also terribly out-of-tune with enlightened rural electors and, in pursuing his prey, he is wrong electorally and wrong politically. He is also wrong morally and the people can see this.

He and his closest closet should be shoved to the outer margins of a party that pretends and purports to be fit for purpose in government.

If he and the others in his closest closet are not soon shoved out, the Tories will for ever be electorally, politically and morally condemned as the truly nasty party.

There, I feel better already! (I have an awful cold at present and I am temporarily and uncharacteristically speechless).