Interesting hunting ground to find Islam’s Mr Right

The English Defence League, which is a sort of BNP-lite, has sprung from nowhere to stage a series of aggressive protests against “militant” Islam. So it’s rather a surprise to visit the league’s web forum and find an advert for Muslima International Muslim Matrimonials, which offers the chance to meet “1,000s of Muslim singles” from all over the world.

Muslima is no doubt hoping to reach out to young men who wear St George cross T-shirts and join rowdy demonstrations against radical Islam, but who yearn to settle down with a traditional Muslim bride, non-smoker and gsoh inshallah.

Now that’s what I call niche advertising.

According to the best available medical advice, there is only one thing worse for your blood pressure than smoking. It’s reading this: MPs are to have a smoking shelter built outside the Commons at a cost of £49,000. Why, for that sort of money you could clean 22 MP’s moats and still have enough to pay the gardener.

The perfect pad for disgrace and sexual favours

The government, whose ambition frequently outstrips its ability, is currently trying to sell the Tote bookmakers and the Dartford crossing. Yet they can’t even shift a six-bedroom house in Belgravia.

Apparently 78 people have trooped around the grace-and-favour residence in South Eaton Place, once official bolt hole to the home secretary. But there’s not been a sniff of a deal since the sale was first mooted nearly 18 months ago. Back then it was valued at £5m. Now anything over £3m will probably do. “The property is a development opportunity,” says one estate agent. “By that I mean that it needs a lot of work.”

The house has been empty since David Blunkett canoodled there with his married lover, and is so warm and welcoming that Jacqui Smith preferred the spare room at her sister’s house.

Tell you what, make a decent offer and the government might throw in the Dartford crossing at no extra charge.

Even the Queen has given up on Royal Mail

As the postal strike really starts to bite, it seems that even the royals have lost faith in Royal Mail. For anything that’s urgent, the Queen has been using DHL.

DHL, which is owned by the German postal service Deutsche Post, has a warrant to deliver express parcels for the Queen, even though Royal Mail offers a same-day service. “DHL are used a very great deal by the royal household,” says Pippa Dutton from the Royal Warrant Holders Association. “They use them like you and I do. If it’s something that’s got to get there quickly and you want to guarantee delivery, who else?” (Well, the title “Royal” Mail would be the clue there.) A Royal Mail spokesman sighs: “The sector is particularly competitive. Obviously ours offers the best value for money and the best service.”

And if you’re a particularly valued customer, they’ll even put your face on their stamps.

Lion king Vince ended up in the wrong jungle

If poor Vince Cable had followed his childhood ambition, he wouldn’t now be facing the daily burden of life as Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. He’d have been a big game warden instead (and this is what he’d look like). “I was very excited by all the films and pictures of big animals,” he says.

You can now see why he joined the scattered herd of Lib Dem MPs, grazing on the great plains of Westminster. He just wanted to help a rare and endangered species.

We are familiar with Boris Johnson, comedian and entertainer. We have grown accustomed to Boris Johnson, man of affairs. Now let me introduce Boris Johnson, athlete. “The 100-metre sprint was the only thing I was remotely good at in school,” the London mayor tells Sport magazine. “I was surprisingly fast — 11 seconds something or other.”

Or was that Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson?

What an achievement to have children sitting in the Commons for the first time at Friday’s UK youth parliament. Especially as Speaker John Bercow, MPs, and anybody that caught the merest sight of the young delegates must have been rigorously checked by the Criminal Records Bureau. They were, surely? Or is that just for the rest of us?

If you thought engaging stakeholders was a pointless job, Ofsted — the schools inspection organisation — has gone one further. It is advertising for a stakeholder database and engagement officer (up to £30,842) to “develop, monitor and advise on stakeholder engagement”. Not even engaging stakeholders, you notice, but advising and monitoring the people who do. Give it a couple of years and the people who monitor stakeholder engagement will themselves need to be regulated. Nice work if you can get it.

Little Britain

An effigy of the prime minister will be burned at the bonfire night and fireworks celebrations in Ripon this week. The organisers, Ripon Gunpowder Plot, decided to make a giant Gordon Brown figure after consulting sponsors and members of the public. Organising committee member John Richmond said: “We want it to be a very big, fun event.”

— Ripon Gazette

Students are to get health and safety training before going on drunken binges. They are getting advice on how to run drunken initiation rituals and fill in risk assessments before leading freshers on nude antics. Older undergraduates leading new arrivals through initiations at the universities of Sussex and Brighton have to detail what they are planning.

— Brighton Argus

Katie Corcoran got an early Hallowe’en shock when she came face to face with a ghoulish crisp resembling Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. Mum-of-one Katie, 40, of Brierley Road East, Swinton, said: “With it being near Hallowe’en, I wondered if it was some sort of promotion but when I looked at the other crisps, they were just normal. I was a bit spooked at first but it is quite funny.”

— Manchester Evening News

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