Forecast for Lisbon: sunny with a spell of stormy Tebbit

I bring terrifying news for the people of Lisbon. Lock up your doors and windows, clear the streets of children and small dogs: Norman Tebbit is threatening to visit you for his next holiday. And he won’t be in a very good mood.

The trip would be a protest over the Lisbon treaty, which was recently ratified fully by the European Union.

“I think I might go to Lisbon — just to burn the treaty,” says the former Tory cabinet minister with his customary menacing scowl.

Still, at least it’s sunny in Lisbon. Would Lord Tebbit have been quite so keen to stage an on-the-spot burning of a Tromso treaty?

The dunderheaded thinking behind that 93-page manual for police cyclists (how to stop bad men shooting at your stabilisers — that sort of thing) is nothing new. In 1943 the US army issued a manual on military skiing that was nothing if not comprehensive. “The current camouflage uniform of the ski troop,” it advised, “is white.”

Secondhand robes — first choice for their lordships

If Labour ever manages to scrap the remaining 92 hereditary members of the House of Lords, there will be an unexpected consequence — an unseemly scramble for secondhand robes.

Members of the Lords are required to wear robes for the state opening of parliament, which takes place again this Wednesday. But a new set can cost £8,000, and secondhand robes are in short supply.

Crossbencher Baroness Murphy of Aldgate tried to hire from Ede & Ravenscroft, the London robemakers, last week, only to find they’d run out. “But they had a cancellation, so I will go to the party after all,” says the former psychiatric professor. She paid £124, but there’s one problem: she doesn’t yet know if the robes are her size.

There’s one life peer, of course, who doesn’t have this problem. Peter Mandelson has the air of a man who has maintained a full set of robes since his early teens. And possibly a coronet too.

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