I wouldn’t normally quote from Britain’s execrable right-of-centre tabloid, the Daily Mail. Indeed, I wouldn’t even normally read it. But my mother takes the rag; and reading any newspaper lying around is a habit I’ve never been able to shrug off. Anyway, yesterday’s edition contained an article by their top polemicist, Richard Littlejohn, on the theme of waste in British town halls, on which I’d penned my own little rant on Sunday. You can read it all here but here’s one comment that sums it all up – “In Tower Hamlets, the poorest borough in London and arguably the most deprived in Britain, 58 employees have job titles which contain the words 'climate change' or 'global warming'”. Oy vey! When will the British rise up against this pillaging of their pockets?

Finally . . . I took my elder daughter and her partner to Liverpool today. On the ferry, of course. As we approached the city's glorious riverfront, I pointed out the Liver Birds on the top of one of the fine buildings there. The Three Graces, as they’re called. Whereupon my daughter asked if there were many liver birds left in the world. Seven years private secondary education and three years at Oxford. Something of a waste, apparently. Though I could be kind and say she realised that these days they’re commonly represented as cormorants. For example on the badge of the other football team in Liverpool.

Not a bad effort tonight – I’ve managed to insult two close family members in a couple of paragraphs. And I wonder why I don’t get a card on Fathers’ Day.