Cheering here, Matt

When Gordon Brown has lost the general election, and it emerges from diaries and media confessions by those no longer terrified of the man that he was from the start an appalling, raging, dithering, laptop-throwing typhoon of aggression, paranoia and insecurity, would those many in Westminster, Whitehall and Fleet Street who will soon be sharpening their quills to write that, of course, they knew it all along, please ask themselves why, in that case, they don't write it now?

When the decision is taken irreversibly to go for the nuclear generation of electricity in Britain in a really big way, could all those in the political and media class who are at present sitting on the fence, kindly admit their former indecision, and spare us their thoughts on how there was “never” going to be any other way for Britain to abide by our green commitments?

Matthew Parris. Cheered me up no end, looking forward to a time when the present unpleasantness will be in the past - if I'm spared, as me grannie used to say.