The Dodger does it again - neither here nor there

HOW refreshing to be led by a politician who has no opinions on anything.

Nicola said his answer was reminiscent of the catchphrase oft attributed to the never knowingly eloquent footer player, Kenny Dalglish: "Mebbes aye, mebbes naw." She added: "Isn't it reasonable for the people of Scotland to know which side of the fence the First Minister is on?" Which planet, more like.

Jack replied: "There is only a certain amount of times you can answer a question with the same answer. And I will do so again." And he did. He said he believed "very strongly" that the matter would have to be addressed. Honestly, we didn't pay good money to hear this bilge. If Jack were a Batman character, he'd be The Dodger.

Annabel Goldie, democratic duchess, darling of the doily set and leader of the Tory sect, didn't fare much better. She asked the gormless galoot why he wasn't dishing out doubloons to tell sick people they could be treated abroad, where they have hospitals and everything.

Jack replied instantly and confidently: "I'm not sure off the top of my head." Imagine a Simpsons cartoon. Jack is Homer. He stands there with a glaikit expression. We move to the inside of his bonce, where a clump of tumbleweed is blown across a deserted dusty yard, and a wicker gate flaps open and shut in the breeze. Nearby, a rickety wooden sign says: "Jacksville. Population: gone. Twinned with Uranus."

Interestingly, or indeed otherwise, Jack only came alive when telling the Scotch to stop greetin' aboot independence. Campbell Martin (Ind) called for a debate on the subject, which was just up Jack's street. "That would be a pleasure," he said. Yes, he could use the debate to express his strongly held belief that there should be a debate.

Dad's doing the sex and Gran's doing the drugs ...

IN PARLIAMENT yesterday, Jack told Duncan "Disorderly" McNeil (Lab) that grandparents should play a greater role in keeping kids off drugs.

Then he told Nanette "Housewife" Milne (Con) parents should be more involved in sex education.

So, if Dad's doing the sex, and Gran's doing the drugs, who's doing the rock and roll?

Sir Leigh Teabing? - conclusive proof that The Code isn't what it's cracked up to be

THIS Dan Brown stuff is starting to do my nut in. The Da Vinci Codswallop is just a work of fiction, but theologists have clambered on to their high horses to bung Bibles at each other and declare the heretic must be burned or, at least, given community service.

There was tittering in Cannes when the film was shown to the press, which means it's probably quite good, since these johnnies never like anything unless it's all in foreign and has Oriental people jumping 40 feet in the air.

Of the book itself, folk keep trotting out the apparent truism that it's badly written, but I suspect many of them are just trying to disguise the fact that they use a thumbprint where it says "signature". A case, methinks, of the kettle calling the potboiler black. Now, proving it's a black-and-white matter, albinos have got in on the act, complaining because the bad guy is one of them.

Honestly, you couldn't make it up. Brown, meanwhile, couldn't make up credible names for his characters. Sir Leigh Teabing: who the hell is called Teabing? It makes the reader think of teabags. Some of his other characters aren't much better: Lady Penelope Decaff; Jemima Tetley; Lord Horatio Pumpbottom; Bernard Plumbing-Inspector; Arthur O'Hatstand. It's difficult to willingly suspend one's disbelief with names like that.

Never mind Britishness: do it the Scottish way

OH, TO be in Britain, now that spring is here. Compulsory classes on Britishness, and how to avoid catching it, could be put on the "national" curriculum, according to newspapers in Londonshire. When they say "national", of course, they don't mean us, which is a relief. But it's not as if we haven't had any input. Gordie Broon's aides claimed the Chancellor had inspired the idea. Readers will recall his recent injunction that everyone should wear Union flag pants and fly the St George's cross in their gardens and window-boxes.

The compulsory classes scam has caught the wildly revolving eye of leading intellectual, Roger Scruton, who says the only way out of the Britishness crisis is to send young Muslims to private schools of the Bunter variety. But it's not just Muslims he wants to punish. Scrotum complains that "Celtic bias and class resentment" have brought Britain to its knees, citing as evidence the ban on what he regards as the most quintessential of English-style British activities: fox-mangling. Funnily enough, just over the page from Scrotum's ravings a news report tells of a leading Essex fox-mangler hitting two protesters with a riding crop and spitting blood at a policeman. A fine instance of the "toleration and respect" that Scrotum adduces in his paean to English supremacism. What's really needed is for Scottish values to be taught throughout the UK. Subjects would include: buying your round (St John ambulance crew to be on hand in southern England); the frying pan - an introduction; headbutting for pleasure and profit; correct pronunciation of words ending in -er (better is better than bettah), and the joys of defeat.

It's a hellfire of a row over those pants

MORE on the Saudi Arabian pants crisis. Top loonies in the oil-rich kingdom have reacted angrily to plans that would see male sales assistants in women's pants shops replaced by burdz.

As noted previously, women felt awkward in Saudi shops when they had to buy their pants from men. King Abdallah's government then decreed that, henceforth, chaps would be barred from lingerie shops, and that burd would sell unto burd.

However, religious intellectuals, such as the Grand Mufti Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, have been doing their nuts about the move, seeing it as a cunning plan to get women into the workplace. His Muftiness was quick to denounce the pants initiative as "a step towards immorality and hellfire".

Hmm, sounds serious. It's particularly serious for Ghazi Algosaibi. A former ambassador to infidel-style Britain, he's behind the pants strategy.

Osama bin Laden, the Grand Overall Loonjob, denounced Ghazi as a heretic who should be killed. (Honestly, wouldn't it just be easier for Osama to list all the people who were not to be killed?)

In China, meanwhile, the government wants to ban the film Mission Impossible III, which controversially shows pants flapping on a Shanghai washing line.

With countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran taking such extreme stances, dividing east from west on undergarment grounds, war is inevitable. How tragic if the world is to end after a nuclear conflict about pants.