The International Energy Agency has proposed to the G8 group of wealthy countries we should spend $46 trillion on halving the world's carbon emissions by 2050, to save the planet.

They do not seem to have noticed, though, that $46 trillion is more than two-thirds of what the world earns and that, if we spend that amount saving the world, hundreds of millions of black, brown and yellow people will have to die of hunger.

Two male vicars in the Church of England have married each other, in church, using a traditional wedding service taken straight out of the Book of Common Prayer.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has barely batted an eyelid and it has been left to the Archbishop of Uganda to point out their behaviour is slightly at variance with Christian teaching and the recently agreed procedures of the Church.

Twenty-six out of the 27 governments of the European Union have refused to allow their people a vote on the European Constitution and, in the one country that did, the people said no. Our lords and masters in Brussels have therefore decided to go ahead with implementing their Constitution.

The House of Commons has voted to allow the Government to lock me up for six weeks, whenever it fancies, without giving me a reason or telling me what it thinks I have done wrong.

The Government only got its way because of the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party, which has always opposed detention without charge. Mr Brown tells us he offered the DUP no inducements at all to turn its long-standing policy on its head and he clearly thinks we are going to believe him.

Half of the rich folks of the Ribble Valley have developed arthritis and have written to the council to say they cannot drag their bins down the drive to the kerb. The silly twerps at the council offices believe them all.

The Queen will shortly be visiting the Ribble Valley. She was in fine fettle at the Trooping of the Colour on Saturday, tapping her toe to the rhythm of the massed bands of the Household Division.

When I was a lad, the soldiers all had chests full of medals but, in the decades of peace, they largely disappeared. It was depressing to see the medals are again so much in evidence. As ever, our soldiers are courageous and dutiful. As ever, we house them in slums, send them into battle with duff kit and spend their heroism on doomed and unjust causes.

There was one bright spot. The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery paraded with the Guards and was utterly magnificent. Their Commanding Officer led them out in resplendent uniform, was a paragon of dignity and held herself in the saddle as if she had been born there.

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