Today on the Steve Wright Show on BBC Radio Two Chris Patten referred to the Thatcher Poll Tax debacle as ‘the biggest cock-up since the Black Death.’ He should know. He was Environment Minister at the time charged with its implementation. He also remarked in passing that Harold Macmillan’s collective noun for a group of ex-prime ministers was a lack of principles…think of a shoal of fish or a pride of lions if you wonder about collective nouns.

After a very soggy May, temperatures are creeping up into the mid twenties. Climate descriptions can be remarkably accurate…with hindsight. Here is what happened. The May rain came from a procession of depressions sweeping off the Atlantic. These were directed overhead by the jet stream…a ribbon of fast winds several miles high beloved by round-the-world balloonists. Then the track of the jet stream began to buckle causing high pressure to gradually build up and drying out the rain clouds. As the high pressure grew stronger the jet stream looped even further around it.

I doubt whether very much of this gets incorporated into those five million year climate forecasting models that tell us we will be hit by tsunamis, inundated by rising sea levels and overwhelmed by droughts and hurricanes. Think of the flow of water round a boulder in a river. This weather pattern blocked out the Atlantic westerlies leaving us with warm sunny weather and gentle balmy breezes. The slow high pressure build-up suggests the anticyclone will be around for some time and may mean there’s a heat wave on the way. Perhaps Ryesingers will perform their Mozart Concert on Saturday 17th June in the Gungardens…strawberries and cream courtesy of the Women’s Institute.

And finally here is the Met’s long-term…two week…Fantasy Forecast. As the anticyclone drifts across Europe it will sweep up hot air from the Sahara. As it passes through Spain and France more humid air will get bottled in underneath and explode into big thunderstorms. So Her Majesty’s Meteorology Office…note the meteor…are predicting dry hot and sunny weather for England’s opening World Cup match against Paraguay on Saturday.

Dave and Tony are vying for the Stunt of the Year Prize. Dave’s ahead at the moment with his Husky Sledging in Norway. But Tony has hit back with Prime Minister’s Question Time…without the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. This latest stunt from New Labour’s Backroom Boys does away with nasty questions from Westminster MPs and vicious remarks…masquerading as questions…from Lobby Journalists and replaces them with real questions from real people. Our Tony Meets The People Online. Whoops! Big mistake! PR Heads will roll for this.

My journalistic heart-throb Sarah Sands had the fascinating job of sorting the e-mails for questions to ask Our Great Leader. But lo and behold the questions real people want answered turn out to be the same ones that fascinate journalists and politicians. This may be no more than a reflection of the fact that all three groups read the same newspapers, listen to the same John Humphries on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and watch or listen to the same Jonathan Dimbleby on Any Questions and Any Answers each week. But this is neither here nor there. Sarah noticed one crucial difference. Real people use more robust language than journalists. Here is one of Sarah’s examples.

‘Whilst I considered asking the Prime Minister if it was politically expedient to think of packing it in, a man sent in a question by e-mail that asked why leaders who have lost the confidence of the people they are supposed to lead prefer to cling to power damaging their party and their country rather than resign?’ Nice one! Obviously this cyber-initiative should go the same way as frog-marching yobbos to cash machines. But don’t hold your breath. Reports suggest that the boys in Cherie’s kitchen cabinet thought it went down rather well with the Great Unwashed. Oh dear!

Trains are very public places. Mobile phone calls can be heard by everyone. Being reminded that you are on the train has its uses. One can forget. But while mobile phone calls are seldom memorable, conversations can be. On my way to Ashford a farmer’s wife from Rye fell into conversation with a Tax Person from Brighton. It seems that Gordon Brown's Inland Revenue has a fiendish plan to recover the billions of pounds showered indiscriminately upon hard-working carers and entrepreneurs (76.66%), poverty-stricken single mothers (23.33%) and identity thieving racketeers from Estonia, Nigeria and Cheznia (0.01%). Clerks are being dragged kicking and screaming from behind their desks and sent to the far-flung corners of the realm to discover why people are not repaying their Working Tax Credit. Here’s the answer. I heard it on the train. The reason is the break-up of households following a breakdown of relationships caused by an inability to repay Working Tax Credit and lots of other debts. Now there’s a surprise.

Britain’s energy future has been transformed by the discovery of an astonishing new fuel, which can be put to a whole range of uses, from heating homes to generating electricity in power stations. A top government scientist explained, ‘It’s black, it comes out of the ground and Britain has billions of tons of the stuff...enough to keep us warm for hundreds of years. What’s more,’ he went on, ‘compared to oil, nuclear power or wind farms this miracle substance is very cheap. ‘We’ve decided to call it coal. It will be extracted from deep holes in the ground by teams of men who will be known as miners.’ I read that in Private Eye so it must be true.