Britain : Leading the World in Wild Oat Sowing!

The country has been scandalized by the story of a 13 year old boy who has fathered a child with his 15 year old girlfriend. When a reporter asked the young chap how he would manage financially he replied, “What's financially?” Gordon Brown has already sounded him out about taking over the Treasury once Alistair Darling finally gets the sack. The Children's Secretary, a man called Ed Balls (yes that is his real name – I double checked) expressed his concern by publicly vilifying the young couple and the local Social Services Department revealed that they would be providing intensive support – beginning by allowing the story to be plastered all over the papers. They will also be taking responsibility for putting the new father through intensive training for his new career appearing on daytime talk shows.

This is a welcome new departure for the Government's job creation policy. After all, the wheels are starting to come off the plan for getting unemployable former bankers off the dole queue by giving them jobs in government. Sir James Crosby has had to leave his job at the FSA, on the grounds that running the Halifax into the ground didn't really qualify him for a job which involves stopping people from running their banks into the ground. If that wasn't bad enough Glen Moreno, who was overseeing the government's massive new shareholding in the nation's banks had to resign after it turned out that he'd spent most of his professional life helping rich people to dodge tax, Tom Daschele style. I am astonished that this took anyone by surprise – he was a banker, after all, so helping rich people to get richer was his job.

Meanwhile, the government's drugs adviser has said that ecstasy is less dangerous than riding a horse. This is true. My daughter Sally once rode a horse into a rave and banged her head!