South West Wiltshire Liberal Democrats

Sir Miles Groppling OBE his spot.

Following a request from himself this slot has been allocated to Sir Miles Groppling OBE.

We're providing this as a service to Sir Miles and his large audience. Views expressed are not those of the website providers, in fact it's safe to say that we disagree profoundly with everything which follows, especially those bits which are libellous, slanderous, plagiaristic, politically incorrect or downright illegal. Anyone wishing to complain about the content should do so directly to Sir Miles, OBE.

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Here are two new words for your dictionary:

Doogling - mindlessly typing words into Google for no particular reason.

Clinking - As in clink here for WC www.wiltshire.gov.uk

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My contacts in Berlin have asked for a guide to the Labour leadership contest. Here it is:

Es gibt zwei Millibaender. Nicht eins. Zwei. Es gibt auch ein Balls. Das is nicht zwei Balls. Eins. Es gibt auch eine Frau und einen Schwartzer Mench. Das ist aber einen Person. Eins - nicht zwei. Und es gibt noch einen, der niemand weisst, muss aber ein sein.

Das macht funf, und sie sind die kandidaten. Wir wunschen alles den besten Gluck.

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You have to imagine you're the most powerful man in the world.

You're not there - imagine harder. It might be easier to imagine yourself inside the mind of the most powerful man in the world, rather than attempting to transfer that power into your own body, which of course isn't used to it.

Now imagine something happening over which, despite being the most powerful man in the world, you have no control or power.

It could for example be a ball about to bounce over a little white line. You knew when the ball slipped through your hands that its momentum would carry it slowly over the white line. You also know that however hard you order your limbs to respond they cannot do what's required. You cannot reach out to catch the little ball before it goes over the little line because you are just too many inches away, your hands cannot respond, only your head can turn to watch as the nightmare you will relive every night and every day for the rest of your fifteen thousand nights and days develops over what for the rest of the watching world is less than a second of conventional time.

That's powerlessness.

And that's why Mr President is floundering. He knows he should have unlimited power over the waves and the oil beneath them, but he also knows he doesn't. So he lashes out and blames other people, using the anally obsessive language common amongst USAsians.

Blame diversion is what we all do, even people like us who, for all our imaginings, are not at all powerful.

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Members of Parliament are supposed to be collectively responsible for running the country. They have ultimate responsibility, in theory, for the state of the economy, the National Health Service, the taxation and benefits system, our armed forces, the police and criminal justice systems, relationships with foreign powers etc. All extremely complicated matters.

The problem of how they should get paid for what they do is a very simple one. The average twelve year old could sort it out it in half an hour. Yet all 650 of our MPs can't get anywhere near a solution in an almost infinite number of man-hours. We should pay them less.

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When I was in the heart of government many years ago I had a friend who wrote scripts for the so-called 'Yes, Minister' series on the televisor. For reasons of security I can't reveal his real name and will call him by his code name of 'J'. He was always asking me if I had any ideas for programmes, so one day after a long and very liquid lunch I sat down at my desk and sketched out some ideas.

"What have you got for me Miles," he asked when I met him in the club that evening.

"Well Douglas," I said, "I've got three fairly brilliant plots I think you'll like. Imagine the Home Secretary is a person of the female persuasion. While she's working late in the office her husband pops to the video shop, takes out a couple of mucky films to entertain himself, then hands in the receipts and charges it to the taxpayer as part of Mrs Home Secretary's parliamentary allowance."

J looked concerned. I went on.

"My second plot is about the PM getting a visit from the head of the anti-terrorist branch. As he gets out of his car at 10 Downing Street he's holding a file giving details of an IRA attack which the police are aware of and about to thwart. The press blow up the photos and reveal all, making the police and the PM look foolish."

J frowned.

"The other one - you'll love this - is about ministerial researchers who deliberately spread naughty stories about leaders of the opposition party by leaking to the press. The press print them, all hell breaks loose, everyone blames everyone else and the minister has to step in and sort everything out."

J looked grim. "Miles," he said, "I'm sorry old chap but satire is like caricature. It has to be close enough to the truth to make the point but far enough from it to be amusing. If you move so far away from plausibility that you're in the realm of fantasy then you've missed the point. I'm afraid your plots are so utterly incredible I couldn't possibly use them."

Oh well, I thought as I went home. I'll keep them just the same. Might come in handy one day.

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The throwing of green custard at The Lord Mandelson reminded me of when I was in the Secret Service when the cold war was at its hottest. We had reason to suspect that a couple of our colleagues - Oxbridge types, of course - were feeding information about secret documents to the Soviets. Nowadays if you want to sell a secret you just attach the document to an email and send it to President@kremlin.gov.ru , but in those primitive times you had to obtain the document, secretly copy it, and then arrange a dead letter drop to get it to the enemy agent.

We resolved to try to catch the suspects red-handed - almost literally. We left a package in an intray with the label 'How to make an H-bomb - top secret' as bait. Inside was a small explosive device which, when the package was opened, would shower anyone within ten feet in purple dye. It would also trigger a radio message to reveal to the security personnel that the trap was sprung.

The ploy worked perfectly. By pretending to work late the treacherous pair found themselves alone in the office. They took the bait and the package exploded. Immediately the police entered the building and arrested the purple traitors.

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News reports say that people in the USA have hacked into computer systems which control the matrix signs on the freeways. They've changed them to read '"Zombies ahead". Now hacking into a computer system must require a huge amount of cleverness and ingenuity. So why, having got their mits on the controls, do they come up with such an unimaginative and childish thing to write on the signs? Couldn't such clever people find a clever slogan?

You - "Don't forget the USAsians actually believe in Zombies. It might seem puerile to you and me but to them it's something to inflict genuine terror on the USAsian motorist."

You're quite right of course. I take it all back.

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According to a report I've just read "A recent survey by Help the Aged revealed that 4.5 million pensioners plan to live in one room this winter because they can't afford to pay their fuel bills." I suppose overcrowding is one way to keep warm.

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I saw a sign beside a service station on the M5 the other day. "Costa Coffee Inside 24 hours." Didn't stop - damned if I'd want to wait that long.

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TV chappie 'Andrew Marr' to chancellor fellow 'Darling, Alastair' on doubling income tax for the poor:

Q - "Did you come into politics to make poor people pay more tax?"

A - "No, I came into politics to encourage people to work harder."

Interesting answer. Most politicians mumble conventional replies to that question about wanting to help their fellow man and put the world to rights. I can imagine the Darling child looking out at the world and saying, "I see the evils of want and idleness. I know my destiny. I shall become a Labour politician, I shall increase taxes on low earners and make prices of basic commodities go up. That'll make the blighters work!"

Incidentally, why are members of parliament so stupid? When Gordon Brown said "I'm reducing basic rate from 22p to 20p and abolishing the 10p band everyone cheered, despite it being obvious even to a dimwit like me that that meant a tax increase first and a decrease only for the better off. Yet our MPs didn't notice until the change actually happened. We should pay them less.

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I saw this headline to a government press release. "New Deal helps someone find work every three minutes." Seems to me whoever this person is they also need telling how to keep a job.

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My current wife doesn't take much interest in current affairs. She recently asked me where "that nice Mr Blair" had gone. I spluttered something about him having passed on or gone to meet his maker or some such. "So who's in the government now then," she said. "Brown Balls Darling" said I. "Don't mind if I do," she said. Funny woman.

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Q. With a large pinch of what healthy commodity should prognostications by experts telling us what to eat be taken?

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It has come to my notice that reporters from the Sunday Telegraph are stealing material from this Spot. This is not allowed, though of course gentlemen from The Times may extract whatever they wish.

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So the government thinks the middle classes drink too much. This is impossible. An acceptable level of consumption is, by definition, that which is consumpted by the middle classes. An unacceptable level of consumption is that which is consumpted by the lower classes. This applies even if the former level exceeds the latter. The upper classes are generally too drunk to understand the concept of an acceptable level of consumption. Quite right too.

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In this country we're rightly proud of our democratic systems, which, like the Health Service and the National Football Team, are the envy of the world. Less primitive nations can only look on in wonder and awe. I was in Mbongoland when King Aethelbert the Second passed on. In accordance with tradition his successor King Aethelbert the Third sent messengers to all the tribal chiefs saying he was going to hold a megapowow. We were all very excited at this. The chiefs all came to the capital expecting the twenty-one days of feasting and debauchery which tradition demands precede the choice of a new king. Although everyone in Mbongoland gets to vote for the new king, only the votes of individuals from selected villages count. After only three days of drunkenness the new king announced that since he was king anyway the vote was a waste of time, and with the rising price of debauchery he was stopping the process and sending everyone home.

Naturally the chiefs and tribespeople got very upset and Aethelbert was suspended from a Boomagong tree until he dried out. Poor chap.

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Ex-England manager Graham Taylor on Chelsea manager Avram Grant on the wireless this morning. "He's literally in a no-win situation - unless he wins." Good to see football managers are as penetrating and decisive as ever.

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I see through a whisky haze that the Tories want to abolish inheritance. Damned good idea. There's too many fifty-something so-called "children" waiting for parents to pop off so they can get their grubby hands on the loot. I've already taken steps (to the off-license) to make sure none of the multitudinous and worthless Groppling breed get hold of any part of my estate. Spend everything, my friends, and leave nothing if you want to get to heaven. Make the blighters work for their living like I had to when I was alive. If anyone is idiotic enough to die rich let Mr Brown take the lot. Then he can reduce the extortionate price of fuel.

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I propose a celebrity tax. Celebrities are graded as A-list, B-list and C-list. A-list celebrities will pay £3m a year, B-list £2m and C-list £1m. A strict meeja blackout will be imposed on anyone refusing to pay, together with removal from the list and total decelebritisation, the details of which should be too ghastly to mention.

Anyone wishing to be a celebrity can do so on payment of the appropriate fee. As with the idiotic process of paying huge amounts of dosh for a car numberplate that spells your name, there will be plenty of lunatics only too willing to pay. Mr Brown can then remove some of that extortionate tax burden on petrol, and the country will be a better place.

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For forty years Burma has had an authoritarian regime which, in good authoritarian regime tradition, has suppressed dissent, killed off democrats, ignored elections, made itself rich whilst the people of the country are impoverished, bought arms from the rest of the world, and all the rest of it. Now the rest of the world is saying "Something must be done." Why is it saying this? Because the natives happen to be having a revolt just now, that's why. If the natives weren't revolting, no-one would be taking any notice. So the moral, for anyone thinking of starting up a ruthless dictatorship, is that you must suppress your natives so much that they show no sign or hint of revolting. That way the rest of the world will take no notice of you, especially if you buy their weapons to do your suppressing with.

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What's the difference between David Cameron and a traffic light? One changes colour every few seconds and the other is a damned nuisance when I'm driving.

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It seems from the news that everyone who has used their telephone to call the television using so-called premium rate numbers to enter competitions has had their money stolen. What I, poor soul that I am, don't understand is this. If I put my fingers into someone's pocket and extract their money, or sell them something which I say is of value but which is in fact worthless, then I would, if caught, be sent to Her Majesty's prison. Quite right too. So why are these 'meeja' people allowed to steal without any sanction apart from piffling fines? Does being meeja put one above the law?

Or has Mr Brown decided that the dictum that 'a fool and his money are soon parted' should become part of the law of the land, and the foolish victims of these thefts deserve all they get? Or don't get, to be more accurate.