A good week for majorities, at last!

TMP commends to all those interested in democracy and rare moments of populism at work, the recent story of Sark, and the defeat of the bullying tactics of the billionaire Barclay brothers, who arrived uninvited in this tax haven, built a monstrosity of a fortress, bought up businesses and property - and then set about trying to change the laws to favour their interests.

With the collusion of the UK government (which does not want feisty, self-opinionated and self-determining tax havens in their portfolio of empire remnants) they then forced the island community to dump their immensely efficient and successful 1564 constitution, expensively adopt the ECHR (despite the fact that Sark had the good sense to stay outside the EU), and adopt "democracy".

The reclusive Barclays were confident that they had bought the election result they wanted - but instead "got their arses kicked" when the islanders decided enough was enough, and by an overwhelming majority returned a ruling body that is not going to do what the Barclays tell them. And the islanders were well aware that by voting against the interests of the elderly Barclay twins, they would likely suffer reprisals - which arrived in a startlingly petulant manner when all the Barclay's interests were shut, and the local staff laid off, the moment it was clear that the election had not gone their way.

Also add the Manchester congestion charge referendum result, and this has been a very rare week indeed:

Voice of the People 2 - Overbearing Autocracy Nil.

New Labour, old currency crisis

Dear God, how TMP wishes it was not quite so consistently prescient. We warned that Broon was going to trash the currency, and by Jove he has! Surely the country has seen more than enough by now to realise that following no more boom and bust/ best placed country for the recession he is a pathological liar and an abject incompetent. Apparently with a superhero complex.

We wouldn't be too surprised to see David Cameron at last lose his cool in his frustration to get a straight answer to simple questions, and lay the old Caledonian fraud out during PMQs.

Never mind Woolies, it's high time New Labour had its own closing down sale.

The essence of Britishness

As the Damian Green affair reminds us, Britain floats on a raft of vague laws - and an unwritten constitution that has (over many centuries) created a understanding of how to interpret and compromise between all parties about the way things work. Dare we call it "the essence of Britishness"?

It has survived thus far because good men have generally not done nothing when push came to shove, as in the current Green farrago. However, it is very vulnerable to the growing jobsworth culture of forms and process that has put more power in the hands of those who either don't understand, or see it (as many of the brain-cleansed senior plod now seem to) as an opportunity for a spot of front line social engineering.

Gorbals' replacement of a very well-attuned toff by a mediocre but compliant civil servant is a good example of how such a system can be perverted. And it's good to note that HM's instincts were perfectly sound, as usual.

However, this perverse but precious nature of Britishness is something even a generally socially dysfunctional character like Broon has started to wake up and realise is something that doesn't necessary instill itself by osmosis once a person steps across the border.

The big fix for this increasingly unnerving state of unBritishness is going to be tricky. In the short term it is best solved by dumping Baron Mandelson's puppet government in a skip, and clearing up the worst of the mess before we can usefully move forward.

Al Murray for PM?

Power for pennies?

Model of a NEREUS 10Mwe power plant.

Scale 1:25 10 x 10 x 10 meters

The crisis we face is essentially about energy costs and energy politics; Broon's woefully inept and increasingly totalitarian government continues to ignore the long term run down of the main UK generation plant - and we don't trust those direct debiting French and German owners of out power industries to worry about it, either.

That joke about the last person to leave Britain turning out the lights is redundant; the lights will be out long before he's buggered off on present form.

But with electricity available for 1p a kWh, everything has changes again. So why are we ignoring the only practical solution that's out there?

It's time to club together with you mates and raise ~£10m to install a bite-sized nuclear plant for your town. Town-sized reactors are nothing new - basically the sort of thing that powers submarines and warships - has been proposed as the core of a land solution

Many councils have "widdled" larger sums down Icelandic drains lately, so it's not exactly outrageous money. Do the sums and this makes a world of sense - plus overcapacity gets sold back into the grid. So, can the safety issues can be confronted? But when the choice is this - or going "cold turkey" on civilisation as we know it - TMP suspects a lot of people will realise that there are simply not enough bunnies to go round for us all to hug to keep warm.

So bad, she makes him look good

TMP wonders if continually pointing out the manifest shortcomings of Jacqui Smith is actually a good idea?

The ever-paranoid and bullying Broon probably regards the fact that this woman is so quite breathtakingly incompetent as "usefully nonthreatening" - much like his puppet chancellor, and Jack "how the f*ck is his still drawing a cabinet minster's salary?" Straw. Today, Ed Balls-up reminded us yet again that Labour administrations across the country are smug, self-satisfied, process-bound and utterly inept ...from the ground up.

Commentators are starting to suggest that even those people that briefly believed that the Broon/Darling miracle might work are starting to realise that his self anointment as the global saviour was no less phony than any other of his "no more boom and bust" lies. The latest stalled economy numbers suggest that it is pretty much all over bar the shouting.

Wake up Cameron, watch Obama at work - why not start holding forth at press conferences as the PM elect..? Such is the perversity of the electoral system in the US that you could (just) be in power before him!! (But please don't appoint Cherie Blair as Secretary of State, eh?)