Looking back over the news from the last few weeks it was hard not to see a common thread.

-       the NHS being used as of right by visitors to the UK – free of charge because no checks are applied, naturally.

-       E111 cards being obtained by European nationals for use in their home countries – paid for by the NHS, naturally.

-       foreign students owing millions in cash loans, wrongly allocated due to inadequate checks, naturally.

-       Kids Company receiving millions of government handouts with no adequate controls on the way they spent it, naturally. 

-       legal aid support for illegal immigrants in their fight to remain in the UK, naturally.

Perhaps it is our natural cynicism but all these examples suggest a lack of government. Clearly questions should be asked of our civil service, but they report to ministers. What is very clear is that those tasked with spending our taxes have little concern for the way that they do it. They probably don’t even see it as real money. No surprises really, but when you link these items rather than looking at them in isolation, the extent of our wasted taxes causes more than a degree of pain. Will there ever come a day when a minister attempts to manage his/her department, sets simple clear objectives and tasks individuals to meet them, and be accountable for successes or failures? What a silly question.

    We were talking about the recent trend for parents to use double-barreled Christian names on their newborn. It seems a natural step forward from the manufactured names that have appeared in recent years. Let’s hope Fanny, popular in Victorian times, doesn’t have a resurgence of popularity. The possible additions to make it double-barreled could have a child on anti-depressants within days of starting junior school! (By sheer chance I went into Tesco a day after I wrote this and heard a woman call to her daughter. Her shout of Adora and the potential combination with the old name I mentioned earlier, cracked me up. Other shoppers probably felt sorry for an old git that suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter for no apparent reason.) Who let him out without a carer they were probably asking?

    A windy lane (3 miles long) near where a couple of us live has received some sort of designation as a cycling route. Clearly the Lycra fraternity have heard about it and reacted with alacrity.  It’s now unusual to transit the lane without coming across cyclists. It’s almost impossible to pass them as well. The twists and turns are constant and you take their life in your hands if you try to overtake. Imagine the frustration of finding yourself behind a convoy of thirteen of them. That’s the record so far.  And they built a convoy of 22 cars behind them. (I’m not suffering from OCD, I just had to know). There are spots in the lane where the cyclists could have pulled in to let the cars through – another pigs might fly thought. Needless to say, they didn’t. But I’m just another inconsiderate motorist I suppose.

    It’s hard to keep Kids Company out of the news at the moment, a superb piece in Tuesday’s Newsnight programme. They shared the contents of an email that came from Kids Company to The Cabinet Office as the organization faced collapse. It gave an apocalyptic picture of the chaos that would result from the collapse. Arson attacks on government buildings, increases in knife and gun crime, starvation and modern day slavery were quoted as potential risks. The email appeared to have come from Alan Yentob, though we can’t believe it did. Whoever wrote it is of no importance really. It simply reinforces the fact that the organization run by ‘fruit salad lady' was totally out of control. Nuts and fruit salad sounds like a vegetarian picnic so maybe that’s what they were running.

    Silence will now reign for a couple of weeks due to a previous commitment.