Brilliant Ideas of the 21st Century - Number 2,358.

I just love market economics - don't you? No? Oh! Well go and watch the Italians kicking lumps out of the French in Euro 2008, then.

Those of you left - Pity little Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England. He's been forced to write a naughtiness note to Chancellor Alistair Darling explaining why inflation is up to 3.3 per cent.

When it was at 2 per cent old Merv didn't have to put pen to paper because that was the Government's target. Even when it rose to 3 per cent The Swervester left the Basildon Bond alone. No, only when it rose that extra 0.3 of a percent did he have to get scribbling.

The rules dictate that if inflation rises by MORE than a single percentage point above Number 11's target then Merv has to put the Naughty Hat on and explain what the fuck is going on.

Now, Merv is paid about two hundred squillion quid to monitor the economy and come up with Baldrickesque cunning plans to keep everything in check. So, what does he do? Well, he sits in detention in BoE Towers and writes to Alistair (yes, he who appears as a negative on film) and says that inflation has gone up too much because the cost of things is rising a lot. What, is it anticipated, will be his solution to this jolly poor state of affairs? He's going to put up interest rates, that's what. Yes, he's going make the cost of things rise a lot to stop the cost of things rising a lot. It's a belter!!

Hearing this on Radio Old Folks this morning Pither, of course, began screaming at his wireless, saying such things as "If petrol is going up so much, why don't you thieving bastards cut the fuel duty a bit to take the sting out of the economy?" No-one replied. My "If the cost of meat has gone up, why don't those greedy, grasping wankers in charge of supermarkets take the rise on the chin and turn in profits of £4 hundred million instead of £ 4 billion each year?" Strangely, that fell on deaf ears as well (Merv had apparently gone for a lie down after his strokes of the pen and his stroke of genius).

Meanwhile, at the House of Fun, the Government showed an astonishing degree of connection with the mood in the real world by proposing that MPs not only do not take a pay rise this year but also no longer vote their own into being in subsequent years! You think???? Well, howdy fucking doody!! You'd think that to fuck things up as royally as they have done they would actually be paying us, but no. These cunts actually get PAID for what they do. Not only that, they have, until now, decided how much they should be paid. Jesus, I wish I had that deal with my employers.

Still, shed no tears for our hard-pressed members (look that fucking word up in the dictionary and there is ONE definition which fits exactly), they still have their exes to rely on. You know, the exes which pay to put their kids through university, pay to employ nannies to look after their spawn, pay those niggling lap-dancing bills, cover that heroin addiction, pay to keep them in hot and cold running rent boys while the rest of us flog our bollocks off keeping them in a style to which they should never have become accustomed.

Oh, happy days.

Merv, although educated in my home town's grammar school, can fuck off to Grantham, along with every MP, excepting of course the 3.3 per cent of them who actually do what they are paid for without trying to rip the rest of us off.