Friday Thinking Points

With Ron Ford Golightly and Tim Massingberd James

Thank Jesus Christ it's Friday. Some thoughts from the IIPBA to take you into the weekend:

• How much longer can Steve "The Rasputin" Hilton carry on being ever so slightly delusional? Jeremy Heywood is said to favour the old "roll him up into a carpet and throw him into the Moskva" strategy following yet another week in which Hilton bemoaned the "uncreative" and "inefficient" bureaucrats of Whitehall. It's the freaking Civil Service you moron.

• China now owns all of Europe, and we must worship Wen Jiabao
• Wee Douglas Alexander, attack dog, shadow regular airport visitor and all round small man, turned 44 years old this week. Happy birthday Dougie.
• No one but no one is surprised to hear that John Prescott likes food, and can eat a lot of it. You should see him eating a full english. Horrific.
• Nicholas Sarkozy will no longer look David Cameron in the eye when shaking his hand, and would prefer not to shake it at all, complaining it "smells of ham".
• Amongst other things, the media managed to get people really scared for 5 minutes about the world population reaching 7 billion before the years out. The IIPBA is pretty relaxed about the "Malthusian" scaremongerers given the fact that we seem to be coping reasonably well at the moment with 6.9 billion people.
• Nigel Farage is an idiot.
• Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe. Europe. Merkel. War with Germany. And £1.4 trillion squid or something.