Amongst all the incidents of misbehaviour of MPs there is a sense that not only have the Government allowed the situation to get out out of hand but they have also lost any sense of political judgement.

The Government have gone ahead with a modification of public service annual increases and agreed that MPs and the Armed Forces should have the full recommended increase. All that was required in the name of integrity and common sense was to declare that no one whether it be the banks controlled by the Government, Civil Servants or anyone in the public sector including MPs would receive a jot this year. The only exception would be the Armed Forces who have emerged as the one sector of British public life for whom we can have any respect. Will they ever learn?

The Prime Minister addressed the European Parliament this week and was subsequently savaged by Daniel Hannon a Tory MEP for the South East of England. It was a vitriolic and damming indictment of the PM and a video of Hannon's performance was carried widely in the blog sphere. The remarkable thing is that none of the traditional UK media carried the incident. I cannot believe if a member of say the Senate or House of Representatives was to commit a similar act when the President was visiting another country that it would go unnoticed and unreported. I cannot for the life of me understand the reluctance to report on, what by any standard, was a very newsworthy incident.

The world of finance continues it ostrich like course. It has just been announced that Insurance giant Legal & General is to half its dividend after plunging £1.13 billion into the red. What is remarkable is that a company continues to pay substantial dividends to shareholders when the company has lost money. It is surely a recipe for disaster.

We returned last Wednesday from a month in Hong Kong which included a four day visit to Beijing. A memorable trip and one we will never forget. I will probably bore people for years with my advocacy of China and how they are progressing by evolution and not revolution. For now suffice to say that we probably have much to learn from the Chinese.

The Local Government Association has advised Local Councils of 200 words that should not be used by councils in the interest of better communications and good English. I fear that many in local (and central) government will now be speechless.

I am off to Hong Kong tomorrow for a months stay with my youngest daughter. I enjoyed my last visit so much and I am really looking forward to this second visit. More racing at Happy Valley will be in order.

Another nail in the coffin of democracy as the system is brought into even greater disrepute. Well done Home Secretary you are a worthy member of the sleaze factory at Westminster.

Prince Charles was in the news last week voicing his opinions about slums. He of course is well qualified to do so given his great experience of living in them.

In the present world economic debacle everyone appears to advocate that we have to fund a recovery by throwing money we don't have at the problem. The only way we may be able to do this is by printing more money. I have wondered (although I have not so far blogged on the subject) whether this will inevitably lead to severe inflation down the line. It was interesting to come across a blog on the Financial Times that more or less addressed the same subject all be it more eloquently than I could do so.

Morgan Stanley’s Jocahcim Fels and Spyros Andreopoulos looked at the possibility of hyperinflation hitting the western shores of the UK, Europe and the US. They said one stark lesson from the ongoing financial and economic crisis is that so-called black swans — large-impact, hard-to-predict and seemingly rare events — can occur more frequently than generally believed. With policymakers around the world throwing massive conventional and unconventional monetary and fiscal stimuli at their economies they thought it is worth exploring the black swan event of very high inflation or even hyperinflation.

The risk of hyperinflation cannot be dismissed very easily any longer. The classification of hyperinflation is an episode where the inflation rate exceeds 50 per cent per month. In history this has occurred in the 1920s in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia. In 1923, for example, Germany experienced a 3.25m per cent inflation rate in a single month. Since the 1950s hyperinflation has been experienced in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ukraine and Zimbabwe.

The root cause of hyperinflation is excessive money supply growth, usually caused by governments instructing their central banks to help finance expenditures through rapid money creation. It could possibly happen in Europe or the US under certain conditions.

Firstly, the rapid expansion of the monetary base by the Federal Reserve, The European Central Bank and the Bank of England would have to continue and feed into a more rapid and sustained expansion of money in the hands of the general public. Secondly, governments would have to face difficulties financing their bailout packages and funding their debt. Lastly, public confidence in the government’s ability to service debt without resorting to the printing press would have to disappear, as well as the government’s actual ability to withstand the pressure to do so in the first place.

And while all of the above is an extreme scenario the pundits Fels and Andreopoulus concluded that given the size of the current and prospective economic and financial problems, and given the size of the monetary and fiscal stimulus that central banks and governments are throwing at these problems, investors would be well advised not to ignore this tail risk, especially as markets are priced for the opposite outcome of lasting deflation in the next several years. Put differently, they believe that buying some insurance against the black swan event of high inflation or even hyperinflation makes sense and is relatively cheap currently. They add that when hyperinflation occurred in the eastern block countries towards the end of the communist era, most citizens hedged via significant purchases of black-market US dollars, the US dollar becoming the effective proxy store of value. This time round, that would not be an option.

My own view is that there may of course be an upside in hyperinflation. Given the vast amounts that need to be borrowed now the effect of high inflation might be to minimise in relative terms the cost of the present borrowings. But I do not have an answer and what is really worrying is that neither does anyone else.

At a time when we are heading for a 1930's type depression I wondered about the relevance and priority of providing for single sex wards.

Certainly in an ideal world they are desirable but hospitals after all are primarily for the curing of diseases and the mending of bodies. If in the process of achieving these priority objectives it means that some lady has a fleeting view of a male arse then I see no great problem. Given the multiplicity of problems we as a nation face one wonders whether Mr Johnson might not have postponed his latest great initiative.

There are some politicians who increasingly irritate me. To the list that comprises Paddy Ashdown, David Owens, Norman Lamont and Dennis Skinner there is another applicant by the name of David Miliband. I am not quite sure why he is so irritating but it may be because he is well dressed, articulate, urbane, educated and invariably wrong. He is a disaster as Foreign Secretary and upsetting our relationship with India (following his disastrous spat with Putin) is a feat that few could have achieved.

It is almost six months since I last blogged and I had intended to forego the self indulgence. However we are in such a disasterous situation that I feel obliged to add my twopenny contribution.

There were not many interested in politics who were surprised by the disclosures in yesterday's Sunday Times. The Lords is an anocronism and their Lordships totally irrelevent to a modern democracy. The one thing they possible had going for them was that unlike those in the House of Commons they possible had some integrity. Yesterdays allegations and todays disclosure of the actual recordings of conversation suggests that we were were totally wrong to give them the benfit of the doubt that somehow they were different to their colleagues in the lower house.

They draw up to £325 per day for signing in and out and have the benefit of the best and cheapest dining facilities in central London.

It is of some interest to me at least that The USA has a population of just over 300 million people and 100 Senators in their Upper House. In the UK we have 740 Peers, when we have a population of just over 60 million. Using the US standard we should need 20, not 740, in a reformed House of Lords.

Not only are their Lordships an irrelevance and probably corrupt but there are far too many of them.

The excellent blog by Guy Fawkes has reported that no fewer than 472 BBC staff were hanging on the telephone 10 days ago to discuss its coverage of the upcoming US party conventions. Fawkes suggests that this happens because there is no serious budget control, no profit motive and unlimited access to funds courtesy of a feudal taxation system to the benefit of the broadcasting barons.

Like the millions squandered on the foul mouthed Ross this latest wastage of licence fees are the seeds for the eventual demise of the BBC. They are their own worst enemy and make it very difficult for traditional supporters of the BBC and public service media to continue their support and argue against the right wing views of the good Mr Fawkes.

I was involved in a discussion recently about red and grey squirrels and whether the latter as intruders should be culled. It seemed to me that the grey squirrel and its place in the UK is reminiscent and a metaphor for all the collective xenophobic instincts about Johnny Foreigner.

Just returned from a visit to Ireland to attend a wedding and stay with my in-laws. Thoroughly enjoyable few days particularly as my brother in law is recovering from a serious cancer. The wedding party at the bride's parents house was all I have come to expect in Ireland. Great hospitality - the mussels had been caught and cooked that day and the accompanying Chateauneuf Du Pape (I enjoy a good red wine with mussels) was superb. Ireland is beginning to have the economic jitters the UK is experiencing but it has not so far destroyed the Irish enthusiasm and ability to party.

The rate of inflation is expected to have risen above 3% when the figures for May are released by the Bank of England later today. This would force the Bank's Governor to write to the Chancellor explaining why the rate is above the target of 2%

The figure of 2% like many other targets of this Government is a figure plucked out of the deep blue sky. It is preposterous to think that if inflation in the rest of the world increases that somehow the United Kingdom will not be affected because the former Chancellor in his great wisdom has decreed that it should not rise above 2%. The consequential act of the Governor writing to the Chancellor is as meaningless as the subjects of King Canute explaining why the tide did not obey His Majesty's instruction.

What is required, and I have argued this since the figure of 2% was first introduced, is that the target should be the average inflation rate of a basket of similar currencies. It is madness to introduce measures to maintain a 2% rate when the rest of the world is inflating at a much greater level.

There was a letter in the Times this week pointing out that the USA has a population of just over 300 million people and 100 Senators in their Upper House. In the UK we have 740 Peers, when we have a population of just over 60 million. Using the US standard we should need 20, not 740, in a reformed House of Lords.

Yet another glaring example of our capacity to over govern and waste money.

A return to blogging after a less than totally successful sojourn in France and a longish period of helping (or as some might say hindering) the recovery of Maura from a bad fracture of the tibia and fibia which had to be reset on her return. We stayed at an old presbytery in the South West of France at a place called Bournac next to a Cemetery and I have in mind to write up my diary about the experience. It will be entitled 'The curse of Bournac'.

Leaving is not all sweet sorrow.

One of the immediately sad aspects of moving to France is that I have had to resign as Vice Chair of the Charity Age Concern Southampton, a Charity that campaigns on behalf of the elderly in this City. Of equal concern is that Maura will need to stop acting as a voluntary case worker for The Soldiers, Sailors and Air Force Association. They are a remarkable charity who provide real assistance to ex-members of the Services who need help. The Charity does a remarkable job for those who offer the final sacrifice and fall on hard times and who are neglected by our Government.

Most things so far on the downside but hopefully the benefits of moving will become apparent soon.

Iran, France and the Bomb.

Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister proposal to prepare for war is dangerous in the extreme. The threat to world peace may well be Monsieur Kouchner himself.

The five acknowledged nuclear powers who possess about 31,000 nuclear warheads are USA, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom. India and Pakistan have not formally placed their nuclear arsenal on a delivery system and the position of Israel is unclear although it is generally believed that they should be included as possessing a capability (probably with US assistance) to deliver a nuclear weapon.

For years the United Kingdom subscribed to the theory that the best deterrent was the threat of mutual destruction. Since Iran is the most important country in the Middle East and since Israel is considered to have a capability with US assistance to deliver a nuclear weapon the logic would appear to be that even if Iran eventually possesses a bomb it would be a contribution to peace rather than war in the area.