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Seeing the multitudes, Dave went up into Westminster: and when he was set, his Ministers and the multitudes came upon him:

And Dave opened his mouth and taught them, saying,

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; but I say unto you that whosoever payeth cash shall be in danger of hell fire.

Just as the baritone Yevgeny Nikitin was about to become the first Russian to sing the lead role in a Wagner opera (The Flying Dutchman) at Bayreuth, a scandal broke out. Alas, the elaborate pattern of tattoos covering most of Mr Nikitin’s body included a swastika with a superimposed emblem of the SS.

Tony wants to be back, Vince wants to lead the LibDems, Dave wants to hang on and Nick wants to be a European Commissioner. And we, having realised we’ll never be governed, just want to be entertained.

Take Tony, for example. He clearly thinks he ought to be where the Milibandits are now, and the way back is paved with statesman-like appearances. A real statesman, unlike all those Milibandits, is above petty vanities. He’s man enough to admit he was wrong once or twice, a little dark lining on an otherwise silver cloud.

I hardly ever post more than one blog a day, but news from Syria is coming in hard and fast, and I just couldn’t resist.

It became known within the last hour that, provided he gets away with his life, Assad can always retrain as a stand-up comedian. WikiLeak has just published 2.5 million e-mails exchanged by Syrian leaders. Apparently, 538 of them came from Assad personally, and most of those were jokes.

I’m certain that no collusion exists between the two nuclear powers, and they haven’t surreptitiously joined forces to blow up the world. But one can be forgiven for getting that impression.

Grownups expect little children to believe in Father Christmas. Yet confidently holding the same expectation with teenagers should give grounds for concern. Someone there is stupid: the children if the parents’ expectation is justified; the parents themselves if it isn’t.

A friend of mine recently overheard a fascinating exchange on a London bus. A misbehaving little boy got a light smack from his mother, a working-class woman by the sound of her. Such brutality offended a middle-aged woman, German by the sound of her.

‘In Germany, ve don’t smack children,’ she said. ‘In England,’ replied the woman, ‘we don’t gas Jews.’ End of conversation.

Poor Anton wasn’t the only Ferdinand to have endured abuse last season. After that unfortunate incident involving John Terry, every time his elder brother Rio touched the ball in an away game he heard thunderous chants of ‘Anton is a c…’.

Shared misfortune tends to bring families even closer together, and the other day Rio tweeted a counterattack. Upset with his, now presumably former, friend Ashley Cole, who had acted as character witness in Terry’s defence, Rio enthusiastically endorsed someone else’s description of Cole as ‘choc ice’.

To paraphrase Marx, history repeats itself first as a tragedy, then as a song. The one I have in mind contains these lyrics: ‘Once I built a railroad, made it run// Made it race against time// Once I built a railroad, now it’s done// Brother can you spare a dime?’

Applying the same sentiment to our situation and adjusting the language towards British usage, one finds the fit just about perfect. Thank you, Dave and George, for your bright idea to spend our money on another 800 miles of railways.

France celebrated her national holiday yesterday, 14 July. On this day the mob stormed the Bastille, razed it and erected on the site what Robbie Burns described metaphorically as The Tree of Liberty.

Heard ye o’ the tree o’ France,

I watna what's the name o’t;

Around the tree the patriots dance,

Weel Europe kens the fame o’t.

It stands where ance the Bastille stood,

A prison built by kings, man,