The Minister is unwell.  This morning I forgot my work badge and desk keys, briefly fell asleep at the wheel while on the A1(M) and then spilt my cup of tea all over the car park floor.  Something has to give.  At this rate it might well be the central reservation barrier.

The Minister’s car, dishwasher and central heating are also unwell.

It’s not easy being the Minister at the moment.

The Minister and his wife were delighted to spend much of the weekend slaloming around the nation’s motorway-and-cone network in order to do the 370-mile round trip to attend Beared Baby’s wedding in the middle of fucking nowhere in a God-forsaken hole of a hamlet outside Driffield (henceforth to be referred to as “Fuckingdriffield”) that, I am reliably informed, didn’t have a sewerage system until earlier this year and is in a county that doesn’t even exist (Humberside).

The northbound M18 possesses possibly the most depressing motorway sign in the country, heralding as it does the imminent proximity of that quadruple threat, Goole, Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Hull.  It doesn’t get much better when you hit the eastbound M62 and the signs start menacing you with Bridlington.

Still, there was the mild amusement of passing through Skidby and the “Please drive carefully” sign at its town limits.

And the enjoyment of remembering that heating systems in Yorkshire, like the people, have just two settings – “cloying sauna” and “frosty igloo”.

And at 104.9p per litre, the weekend set a new record for the price paid by the Minister for petrol.  Salt of the earth, though, Yorkshire people – they never fail to smile as they bleed you dry.

Roadworks, natives and signage aside, it was a “grand do” as the peasants say in the north.  It was particularly lovely to hear an almost entirely spherical female priest banging on in church about the importance of procreation in marriage when her companion to the reception appeared to be a fellow woman in comfortable shoes.  Square that circle, if you can, and I’ll attend the Alpha Course.

The Lancastrian groom may have thought the jibes in his speech about the locals’ accents went down reasonably well (and indeed they did with his family and friends), but the Minister’s Wife reports that the table containing his new brothers-in-law are very much looking forward to welcoming the newest member of their family just as soon as he dares to cross the county boundary once more.  “It’ll be lonely this Christmas without you…”

The repetitive thudding of massive potholes and the rhythmic snoring of the Minister’s Wife as the Minister drove EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 370 MILES provided an opportunity to muse on life, the universe and everything.

In summary, life sucks.  And the universe and everything aren’t in much better shape.

In a rare attempt to give credit where its due, I should say that Steve McLaren handled his final England press conference with a good degree of dignity and grace.  Speaking as an expert in leaving jobs, that takes some doing, however big the pay off.

But it’s the pay off that still narks me.  McLaren clearly would not resign because he knew that to do so would cause him to kiss goodbye to a reported £2½m.  It seems not to matter that he must therefore have already earned over £1½m in his 16 months in the job – £100,000 per match!  He has already been amply rewarded for failure – rewarded to the tune of more than half a century’s worth of national average salary.  By refusing to resign despite “taking responsibility”, he has been rewarded for failure twice over.

There was an appalling discussion on the risible Jeff Randall’s dreadful Weekend Business programme on BBC Radio Five Barely Alive last night in which the only example Randall and his guests could recall of an “honourable” resignation in business was, er, Gerald Corbett’s “resignation” as Railtrack Chief Executive in 2000.

Now forgive me for splitting hairs, but (a) Corbett’s resignation offer was not initially accepted by his “board”, (b) it only came after the third fatal rail disaster on his watch (the combined 38 dead at Southall and Paddington wasn’t enough; it took a further 4 cadavers at Hatfield to tip the scales), (c) he only “resigned” for a second time in a month because the government made him, and (d) the cunt still walked away with a full year’s salary (£400k) and £900k in pension benefits.

There is no accountability in British public life anymore, and while it’s obviously not the most pressing issue in 21st century Britain it is certainly one of the most depressing things.

The last person I can recall resigning without being pushed was Estelle Morris a full five years ago - and she still managed to bag a lesser ministerial role, a life peerage and a sheaf of private sector directorships into the bargain.  Before that and you’re back to 1982 and Peter Carington, the last British minister to resign voluntarily in response to a departmental failure.  So an entire quarter of a century has gone by without public life demonstrating to the great unwashed that there should be consequences to mistakes, incompetence and failure.

HM Revenue & Customs may be an independent body, but the taxman works for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The two Chancellors of the past decade bear ultimate responsibility for this unprecendented mess and for them to have allowed the HMRC head to take the blame is cowardly.

I’ll concede that it’s still too early to write off the Brown premiership – That Bloody Woman and Big Johnny Major would have given at least a limb apiece to be just 5% adrift in the polls at the halfway stage of a Parliament and with a Leader of the Opposition as derisory as Posh Boy Dave (actually, thinking about it, they did: Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock…) – but the most disappointing aspect to this sorry fiasco is that it could happen at all after a decade of Labour government, in particular the managerialist administrations of Blair and Brown.

Lacking any pretence of ideology, Blair and Brown have proffered nothing but managerialism for 13 years; if they have lost that (and the runes are not auspicious) The Project is all washed up.

Vitriol spent, the Minister and his wife send the new Mr. and Mrs. Baby much love and congratulations, a thank you for the invitation, and hope they are enjoying themselves on a three-week honeymoon to South America.  The gits.