Budget!

Now he's admitted it: The bank bailout is going to cost us at least £220 billion, probably much more. What folly it was to save the banks! They should have nationalized the lot. It would have been cheap at the low prices shares had reached. Then they could all have been relaunched as mutuals or cooperatives, owned by their customers and their staff.

Well there's one obvious way to recoup some of our losses: cancel Trident replacement and stop posing as a Great Power. The latest estimate for the cost was £70 billion, but you can rely on that to increase as the £ slides further against the $. Oh dear, the dollar! I was forgetting that British defence and foreign policy are made in Washington. The Americans won't let us cancel an export order for billions of dollars.

Well at least we haven't yet climbed on the bandwaggon to convert the world to US-style Christianity. Here's a little taste of what is coming - and don't laugh! http://www.iccm-1.org/