As the credit crunch sinks its spiky gnashers ever deeper into Britain's single remaining financial buttock, the Government and its loyal Opposition have been pondering whether to spend or save our way out of their trouble.

The Conservatives' efforts to make political headway through the economic swamp have resembled the incompetent thrashings of a congenital non-swimmer. Not only have they failed to shoot the sitting duck that is the Brown regime, but they now appear to have stood the duck up, lent it a Kalashnikov, placed its wing on the trigger and aimed it at their own kneecaps.

Gordon Brown has brazenly flouted received political wisdom by scoring better in the polls the worse his situation has become - how James Callaghan must have wished for some of what Mr Brown has been killing and eating for his breakfast.

At some point, cuts in public spending will have to be made, either imminently or, preferably, after we are all dead when they affect us less grievously. This could be achieved by selling some of the nation's less productive counties to Russian oil billionaires, by privatising the monarchy or by postponing the kind of futuristic but unnecessary projects with which governments become so jigglingly excited (for example, monitoring where people drive via a complex satellite tracking system, rather than simply installing a gate and a special bucket on some busy stretches of road; or electronically tagging all 6.7 billion potential asylum seekers at present roaming the world, to give us early warning of when they start massing on our watery borders).

The Bugle recommends one simple means of freeing up an elephantine trunk of public funds - stop paying teachers' wages. Don't merely freeze or cut them. Cancel them entirely.

Britain has always been sceptical about teachers being paid. Whenever the issue rears its annually thwacked head, the view seems to be: why should teachers get more than me, when I didn't pay any attention to them when I was at school? And if these self-styled guardians of our national future are truly as busy as they claim to be, they should need no money at all, given that they have no time in which to spend it.

More importantly, teaching is both reputed to be, and marketed as, spiritually rewarding - why then sully it with money? Teachers debase the purity of their profession by demanding adequate recompense for their labours. The satisfaction of seeing errant students learn how to endure an entire lesson without throwing an object or attempting to photograph their own genitals should be more than sufficient incentive.

Teachers occupy a similar position to our Armed Forces - they operate in difficult conditions, with little support from the Government, lack adequate equipment and funding, and often face hostile resistance, leaving many mentally scarred for life. If the Armed Forces can cope with their disparagingly minimal wages, it is not too much to ask teachers to manage with no wages at all. If they don't want to accept this deal, The Bugle is confident that Wikipedia can educate our youngsters to a perfectly acceptable level of semi-knowledge.

Handy excuse

The most touching sight of the week was, without question, that of Scottish football supporters thanking Diego Maradona for his half-cheat, half-genius role in knocking England out of a now 22-year-old football tournament. The display of Caledonio-Argentiniac gratitude was, however, typical of the narrow-mindedness displayed by lovers of the beautiful game - and not because of any gratuitous anti-English sentiment. Unfriendly sporting banter is, after all, one of the coagulating joys of this intermittently united kingdom.

Rather, it is because more broad-minded corporals in the Tartan Army rightly vilify Maradona not for his reprehensible sharp practice, but because his two goals denied Scotland the chance to see England suffer the even greater humiliation of losing to Belgium in the semi-final.

Even if England had proceeded to the final, this would have raised the tantalising possibility of the ultimate Scottish footballing superdream - Germany beating England in a World Cup final.

These were the self-same Germans against whom Scotland had taken a 1-0 lead in a group match in the same tournament. Thus Maradona's hand of God, far from providing Scotland with one of the greatest moments in its proud sporting history, unwittingly prevented the Scots, not for the first time, becoming de facto world champions.

Andy Zaltzman is the author of Does Anything Eat Bankers? And 53 Other Indispensible Questions for the Credit Crunched (Old Street Publishing)

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone