One a penny, two a penny … no, chancellor, it's not another tax debate
• An urgent question, as Britain pours petrol on its pasties. Has the fuel crisis put paid to MP John Mann's generous offer – as advertised in Monday's Diary – to host chancellor Gideon over Easter in his caravan? Not at all, says the main Mann, who we must presume already has some jerry cans stockpiled. Still no RSVP from Gideon, mind. Which is a huge shame, because what a weekend Mr Mann has planned: "We'll get some cheap supermarket beer, some warm hot cross buns, and then hit the beach with a bucket and spade." Gideon likes digging holes, he argues.
• Speaking of which: to Aldwych, where the LSE is dousing one PR gaffe with another – and wasting quite scandalous levels of petrol in the process. To recap: last spring, the LSE was bashed for its links to an increasingly unfashionable Arab dynasty. To help clean up their reputation, the profs pumped alumni for nearly £80,000 – good beavering, the LSE's student paper reveals – and used the cash to pay for a PR company called Powerscourt. And what sweet company they've joined. Reputations previously massaged (or not) by Powerscourt include those of oil-spillers BP, controversial money-lenders Wonga and gun-slingers BAE. Talk about self-immolation.
• Chilling news from MI5. Britain's top spooks are opposing parts of a new EU-wide environmental directive that would see state-owned buildings become better insulated. They have "serious security issues over disclosing the location of a significant number of buildings owned by public bodies". Less opaquely: MI5 don't want their secret safe-houses renovated, lest the enemy work out where they're sited. The spies, it seems, are not yet ready to come in from the cold. Ho ho.
• Such generosity at the Foreign Office. Very sweetly, they have offered to give some free-of-charge advice to the BBC's ailing World Service. It's a touching change of heart. Just two years ago the FCO was busy slashing its direct subsidy to the network. Of course, the World Service still has no cash. But perhaps its board, the FCO kindly suggests, could yet benefit from the steadying presence of a diplomat, to steer it through these troublesome times in which it (for some bizarre reason) finds itself. "We thought about it very deeply," Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC trust, told a confidante. "For all of two seconds. And then said no." Can't think why.
• A missive from the classical community, who take umbrage with the Diary's misuse of Latin. "If you insist on using Latin tags," writes Peter Gray, "please get them right. You can plunge/dive/jump in medias res, where 'in' means 'into'. But if you begin, it has to be in mediis rebus. Ablative, not accusative." Mea culpa.
• And so to the final and nonsensical instalment of The Adventures of Eoin McKeogh, by Mr Justice Michael Peart. Readers will recall that we initially wished to publish in its entirety the single 215-word sentence that opened a recent judgment made by Judge Peart, but were consequently forced, due to its obscene length, to reproduce it in segments. With 73 words still remaining, the sentence has become so convoluted that we must abandon all attempts to summarise its previous content, save to mention that it concerns the aforementioned Eoin McKeogh, a young man wrongly accused of evading a taxi fare. And so, without further ado, and with apologies to the uninitiated reader, let us return once more to the action, which begins in mediis rebus: "... would see the appearance of a phalanx of at least a dozen lawyers before this Court for seven hours throughout yesterday for a debate of weighty issues, such as the right to privacy, the right to freedom of the press to fairly and accurately report court proceedings, and the right to an effective remedy, the combined costs of which might be sufficient to purchase a decent house in any part of the country?" Phew. The Diary will now reach for his oxygen mask.
Twitter: @PatrickKingsley