Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday has delivered a man who will not apologise, a runway that will cost you fifteen pence before it is even built, and a travel adaptor that may well attempt to kill you. One raises one's lorgnette - and discovers the news has, once again, entirely outdone itself.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings dispatches of the gravest and most impudent variety - a convicted murderer who would appear to have found one final move upon the board, a Prime Minister who has relocated the entire machinery of government to Manchester, and a Principality quite literally visible from space. This Author's lorgnette has rarely been so thoroughly exercised.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a dispatch so richly stocked with folly, scandal, and civic catastrophe that this Author scarcely knows where to begin - save to say that the rivers are not safe, the energy companies are not sorry enough, and the leader of a political party has contrived not to vote in his own party's elections. Pour yourself something fortifying, and read on.