Cheek by Jowell!!!

[Banquo's Ghost]

I have got very cynical in my old age, yet I am trying to believe that she wouldn't go to the extreme of staging a separation for the sake of her career.

In any case, I don't think it materially alters her problem. It was her responsibility to ensure that her spouse told her about any dealings that might need to be registered. Since she did know that her husband was involved in the Berlusconi trial, and she is Minister for Culture and Sport, she should have insisted on disclosure of any payments that might conceivably been from the media magnate or his affiliates.

Amazingly, the Prime Minister has allowed the defence of ignorance to stand, which means any old crook can simply claim that they didn't know of a deal that should have been registered. That drives a coach and horses through the Register of Interests.

I greatly admire those who have made money through hard work and innovation, creating something. But there's a revolutionary part of me that finds a labour politician married to a media lawyer flashing third-of-a-million quid mortgages around with gay abandon somehow nauseating.

If she didn't ask any questions at all about signing off £350,000 of her home for an investment opportunity, and none at all about how it was miraculously repaid four months later, it really makes you wonder what she does with the information in her despatch boxes.

Cut to Department of Culture, Media and Sport (yes, it's that unwieldy a title) meeting, agenda; Olympics: "Don't bother me with sums, they're hard. Whatever. Look, I signed it, didn't I? Oooh, pretty sparkles..."