'Blow wind, come wrack...'

I swore to myself I wouldn't mention Berlusconi again so soon, but he just won't let it lie, will he? It's all very well being universally recognised as the most preposterously tactless leader of a democracy at the moment, but, like Muhammad Ali in his heyday, Silvio's got his sights set on posterity. How to go about this? Lech over 18-year-olds in public, and, when your wife objects, ask her to apologise. Genius. 

Gordon Brown's initial response to the Gurkhas' pleas for fair treatment (and I'd thought we did away with cannon fodder as a military tenet since it proved less than a resounding success, oh, 90 years ago) was so impressively misjudged that it seemed the Government had to be hell-bent on lasting notoriety and political suicide in one fell swoop, but their resolve buckled before a confrontation with Joanna Lumley...and absolutely everyone else too (even nationalists; the Gurkhas may be small and Asiatic but they carry echoes of the military adventures of Empire days).  It's as if the Government suddenly dimly remembered that it was nice to be liked.

So, the 'banzai' moment was lost - for now. At least they're still shitting on some foreigners who've helped them. They've got to find a cuddlier target than Iraqis to victimise, though: Labour's support is still in double figures, after all. If only Dubya was still around with those monumentally stupid schemes they could join in on...