Maurice O'Brien

And you thought you'd paid your dues!

I MUST have been seven when I first discovered the demonic powers of a man called the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Olympic 'dream'? You're having a laugh!

IT MAY not be an expression routinely bandied around the corridors of power, but Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Jeremy Hunt would do well to ponder the proverb 'all frills and no knickers'.

A wasteful solution to a rubbish problem

THE grinding noise beneath the car could have been something costly coming adrift or a particularly lethal bit of sabotage, either way in the darkness it sounded like bad news.

Lions are being led by a stampede of donkeys

ALMOST a lifetime ago, as a teenage cadet sergeant in the Air Training Corps, I recall preparing for an exercise with squadrons from all over the country during Easter camp at a Royal Air Force base in darkest Yorkshire.

Dave plays the tough guy...while billions go missing

HIP HIP hooray! One relatively successful war and Dave thinks he's A. Blair. And whether there was even a twitch of unease at the premature feel of that Tripoli victory parade, it must be uncomfortable realising that Libyan rebels still bitterly fighting in Sirte are not jousting with mere ghosts.

I'd say bravo, NHS - if I was allowed to talk!

IT'S BEST not to argue when your boss warns that unless you make an appointment to see a doctor she'll make it for you.

How do we fight you? Let me count the days

IT SEEMS like only yesterday, but by my reckoning it's actually 161 yesterdays, since Le Petit Sarko announced that Gaddafi must go.

National insurance offers no health reassurance

SOME of you probably still can't believe how easily you fell for that con trick about a working lifetime's National Insurance contributions providing comfort and tranquillity through one's twilight years and into eternity.

Red kite at night, not to Grizzly Adams' delight

A COUPLE of mornings a week the silence in my back garden is almost deafening. Absent is the usual hubbub of chattering blue tits, squabbling sparrows or the self-contented chortling of blackbirds rooting around in the bushes.

Time for another round in Second Chance Saloon

NOW we know that Dave's turned Number 10 into the Second Chance Saloon he should probably own up and reveal exactly how many other unfortunates he's got in there toiling away on rehab.

Match point for Theresa or is it a foul ball?

HOW much does the BBC spend annually on its own version of a final salary pension scheme for a bunch of has-been, never-was or never-likely-to-be tennis 'stars'?

Special mission for the world's 'top trumps'

IT MUST be a tad surreal when you're the most powerful nation on the planet and the only characters you can rustle up to challenge Barack for control of the White House answer to the name of Mitt, Newt, Rick, Jon, Flip, Chuck, Rock, Hank, Wizz or Trump.

How do we save las Malvinas now, Dave?

ONCE upon a time when gunboat diplomacy was in vogue, accusing someone's prime minister of "mediocrity bordering on stupidity" would have had everyone hurriedly pulling on their tin hats.

Blair's old gloss can't paint over the Middle East cracks

IT WAS like old times. Tremor in the voice, glottals stopping like an intricate passage from Riverdance, that weird Anglo-Scottish hooray accent, mellowed with a mid-Atlantic tinge, and even a hint of the Middle East picked up from visitors spirited up in the private lift to the all-expenses- paid floor he occupies at Jerusalem's American Colony Hotel.

How did we lose our basic instinct - simple humanity?

AS SCANDALS go it was hardly of tsunami proportions. Were the victims dogs or cats, or even a retired circus elephant, then the furore might well have been greater.

Reading behind the lines of library plans

THE wisdom of placing the running of your libraries in private hands may be a moot point when figures from the National Literacy Trust show one in six Britons have a reading level below that of an 11-year-old.

Naked truth of the MPs' new clothes

ONE of the great curiosities of the late 20th century was the concept of 'dress down Fridays' which spread so rapidly across the Atlantic that it became almost compulsory to show up on the last day of the working week in gardening gear.

Online banking? The cheque's in the post...

THE one time I tried to pay a credit card bill online was a disaster. The experience involved three major system crashes, a damage-only accident when it disowned the password it had approved just moments earlier; and then nothing.

Give us an alternative to the same old spin

APPARENTLY some politicians tell lies; and the latest news is that the woodland toilet habits of bears may be every bit as unpleasant as we suspected.

Dave can't shake off the quiff of privilege

MOST mornings when I pull back the curtains I'm greeted by the sight of a couple of obese, moth-eaten old pigeons squatting moodily on a neighbour's roof.