Drunk in Charge

There was more bad news for Gordon Brown today – Scotland has been named as having the world's eighth highest alcohol consumption. I'm told that Gordon is determined to act and intends to appoint an Alcohol Tsar to address the problem. He believes that with a little bit of hard work and focus will soon restore Scotland to number one! Now all he needs is to find someone in the Labour Party who is capable of organising a piss-up in a brewery.

Earlier in the week I had been appalled to learn of the alleged fraud perpetrated by Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of running one of those massive pyramid schemes, or Ponzi schemes as we are now obliged to call them as the media have decided that the American term is sexier than the old fashioned British one. Interestingly, the same thing happens with the code names given to military operations. The British version of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the obscure Operation Telic and when the Americans launched Operation Desert Storm, the British part of the liberation of Kuwait was called Operation Granby. I once asked an old military friend of mine who expained that this is because our army has been around for much longer than the American one so has used up all the good code names. The tradition was started by King Harold who named his defence of Hastings, rather unfortunately, 'Operation Keep Your Eyes Open'. The Battle didn't actually take place at Hastings, incidentally, but at the nearby town of Battle. Now what are the chances of that happening?

Anyway back to the point, which is, if memory serves, Sir Allen Stanford. On the day the news broke, I was lunching with an old friend, Anthony, and I expressed my indiganation that this chap had sullied the Knighthood with his actions. Anthony tried to reassure me by explaining that Stanford doesn't have a proper Knighthood but rather one that he got from the government of Antigua and Barbuda in return for bankrolling most of the country. This did not make me any happier. I had to give the bloody Labour Party a fortune for my Knighthood – if I'd known I could have got a cheap one in the Caribbean I could have saved myself thousands, and worked on my tan at the same time! Stanford has not, of course, been convicted of anything illegal in America. We agreed, however, that he has already been found guilty of the worst of all crimes – trying to make cricket entertaining. One doesn't go to the cricket to have fun! No, one goes to spend the morning reading the paper, the afternoon slowly getting drunk and the evening sleeping it off. One doesn't want to be interrupted by the game!

Earlier in the week, I noticed that Gordon Brown paid a visit to the Pope, and he will soon be going to visit Barak Obama to pass on the Papal advice. I have it on good authority that Gordon has been telling everyone that His Holiness spoke about Jesus casting the money-changers from the Temple, and how they were then gainfully employed by Pontius Pilate regulating the Judean financial system as it recovered from the mid-1st century economic downturn.