The death of satire

Sometimes reality just comes along and kicks an old cynic like me in the head until such time as I am unconscious and unable to separate fact from fiction....

The government's wine cellar includes stocks of alcohol worth nearly £800,000, a minister has disclosed.

In a parliamentary answer, Foreign Office minister Gillian Merron said it holds 39,500 bottles of wine, spirits and liqueurs valued at around £792,000

That's £20 per bottle, which isn't that much really if you are entertaining heads of state, but assuming that 50 bottles per week are consumed by the ambassador and the charge d'affairs, you ar still carrying 15 years of stock.

Discount this number for the ancient bottles of really good quality claret that you bought in the 3-for-2 offer at Tesco and come out one in a blue moon and you still have a picture of startlingly large quantities.

Perhaps Alasdair Darling took one look at the Budget background and is on 50 bottles a day, but even then the next Government is going to find a huge carry-out stashed behind the sofa in No 11.

The next question is: how much of the wine is drunk by civil servants and how much by politicians.....