What Katie did next.........

Needless to say, the meeja is squeezing every drop of juice out of the Wedding. We are breathlessly informed that Katie went to Westminster Abbey so that’s where the nuptial will be started. Wow! We would never have guessed. And Wills and Katie sat down to start the wedding plans. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Er..............no! The plans will already have been well and truly in place for years, down to the finest detail. We Brits may no longer be terribly good at much, but we beat the world in setting up pageants, and this requires meticulous planning well in advance.

‘Let us pause to consider the English,

Who, when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish,

Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing; viz –

That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is;

A club to which benighted bounders of Frenchman and Germans and Italians cannot even aspire to belong,

Because they don’t speak English, and Americans are worst of all because they speak it wrong.

Englishman are distinguished by their traditions and ceremonials,

And also by their love for colonies and their contempt for colonials............’

All State occasions will have their plans – the funerals of Her Maj and the Duke will be already in salt, although hopefully both doleful events lie far in the future.

The DT published a 15-page supplement – and there’s months to go yet. Needless to say, it has not taken long for the Grub Street smelly-socks to start raking up dirt. They are now running with the story that the rough side of Kate’s mother’s family (she is famously working class by background) will not be invited. The truth, as I understand it, is that there was a rift in the maternal side in Kate’s grandma’s time. The parents may be millionaires but they are self-made from mostly working-class stock. That should put a bit of muscle into the Windsor line, as Diana put some height into them.

Presumably, when it is all over Katie will take up residence in Anglesey as an officer’s wife. That should liven up ladies’ nights in the Officers Mess, and also has the added benefit that the Old Bill will be able to stop the smelly socks on the Menai Bridge.

Peter Oborne did a cracking piece in the DT about Maggie’s resistance to the wretched Euro, and the treachery that went on in the Tory party. By A strange irony, the present crisis seems to be leading to the rehabilitation of G Brown, late of No 10. Keeping the UK out of the Euro probably suffices to make up for his manifest and manifold sins as PM. We are not told whether the other non-members, such as the Baltic States, are still itching to join. I guess the enthusiasm has wilted somewhat. But as we have a wedge of drinking vouchers in Irish banks, we are not gloating.

Reverting to the Blessed Margaret, a couple of anecdotes that might give a small insight into her character.

A colleague of mine who was in the Cabinet Office on the staff of No 10 told me that one afternoon she was at a meeting there. Partway through, a sepulchral figure arose from behind the sofa. Maggie looked round and simply said ‘Subside, Denis!’ Which he did.

Shortly after her demise, I was having dinner with George Thomas, the former Speaker. George was renowned for his wonderful speaking-voice, so it was a cruel tragedy when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He went into hospital for an operation, and when he came round from the anaesthetic he was conscious of a women sitting by his bedside holding his hand. It was the Iron Lady herself. He said that there were two Maggies – one the tough, uncompromising politician; the other one who was extraordinarily kind. Needless to say, George, an ex-miner and a Welsh Labour Party man of the old school, would not hear a word against her.

Here is the latest in Dave’s defence cuts fiasco.

The Service Chiefs generally wanted to demobilise the Tornados because they are high-maintenance and limited in payload during the hot season in Afghaniscam; because there were already sufficient fighter-bombers in Afghaniscam, and because the RAF only needed one type of fast jet, the Typhoon. So what does Dave do? Why, he decided to keep the Tornados and decommission HMS Ark Royal, our only fleet carrier together with its Harriers so that there will be no top cover until HMS Prince of Wales gets its aircraft at some remote time in the future. Decommissioning the Tornados would have saved £5 billion. It would have cost £120 million to keep Ark Royal going. Bet they loved that in Buenos Aires. The previous Ark was decommissioned not long before the last punch-up with the Argies, only now there’s oil down there.

Nice one, Dave. La Luta continua!

I reckon that when Dave reads the obituary columns he can’t figure out how people die in alphabetical order! If his crazy immigration policy is any guide, he must have got his degree by outsourcing his exam papers to Bangalore. There is a cap on skilled people, but otherwise it seems monkey business as usual; the latest is that one of the kidnappers of the Chandlers says he is joining his wife and family in London because he owes £50,000 to his handlers as start-up money for the kidnapping. Don’t fret, Ali; Social Services will pay. The cap will have a minimal effect on immigrant numbers; stupid gesture politics.

As is the 50% top tax band. Labour’s policy, insofar as they have any, is to get rid of Alistair ‘call me’ Darling’s sop to the chattering classes about bank bonuses. George is silent, but it is estimated that the 50% rate will lose the Treasury about £800 million through tax avoidance, emigration and people simply working less. He is obviously a stranger to the Laffer Curve. Gesture politics are usually pointless; these do actual harm. He has just announced that he will hand over £7 billion to the mangy Celtic Tiger, about the same as the total cuts announced in his last budget, plus another £7 billion to the Brussels brigands for the ‘bail out’. That would have kept the Ark going for few years yet.

And POTUS is following the customary line for politicians who have lost it at home by going on ulendo around the globe (‘If it’s Thursday, it must be Paris’). Let’s hope he doesn’t follow that other well-worn route to distract attention from domestic failures by having another bloody war somewhere; there are those in American politics who follow Talleyrand – ‘you can use a bayonet for anything except sitting on’.