What can explain the turmoil and catastrophe caused by the Irish no vote on the European Union’s treaty of Lisbon? Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, was asked this pertinent question last week. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips and said bitterly: “Mandelson.” And across the continent, from Cadiz to Tromso, people nodded their heads in immediate understanding.

It has been a long-held thesis of mine that almost all the ills of the world are in some way the consequence of Peter Mandelson – earthquakes, tornadoes, the credit crunch, bush fires in the Kalahari, swarms of killer bees in Brazil. Most people I talk to consider this a lunatic notion, based entirely upon my obsessive loathing of the man, so it is cheering to have such an eminent statesman confirm my suspicions. I bet Merkel and Berlusconi think the same, privately. We know Gordon Brown does.

The EU trade commissioner has enjoyed a supernaturally gilded career, gliding from debacle to debacle, yet from lucrative job to ever more lucrative job. Westminster denizens, however, still consider him in some way “brilliant” as a politician, despite all evidence to the contrary: forced to resign (twice, remarkably) from the British cabinet and now busy estranging the leaders of Europe. What, exactly, is it that he is so good at (apart from obtaining favourable loans to subsidise his sybaritic lifestyle): making enemies and alienating people?

To be fair, there was a certain whiff of self-interest in Sarkozy’s comments: “A child dies of starvation every 30 seconds and the commissioner [that’s Mandy] wants to reduce EU agricultural production by 21%.” This was a lopsided defence of France’s magnificent, incompetent farming practices, I suppose. But Sarkozy’s remarks hold true and not least with the EU’s trade policy towards Burma.

Under Mandelson’s auspices the EU continued to invest heavily in that benighted country long after the United States had called a halt. As Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned dissident, put it: “The European Union has provided much of the investment that has buttressed Burma’s dictatorship.” Some $4 billion worth in 14 years.

In the wake of the Burmese floods, the EU finally signed up to sanctions – but not those which will affect Burma’s economy, say its dissidents. Unlike the US sanctions, the EU’s have no teeth. In public Mandelson talked tough – but when it came to action he allowed Burma to take part in free trade talks with the EU even as the students were rioting on the streets of Rangoon.

The truth is that Mandelson is too much the politician; he would not know a principle if it accosted him in a Brazilian nightclub wearing a G-string and a handlebar moustache. That is perhaps why nobody likes him.

- According to guidelines from the British Standards Institute, every tree in the country should be inspected every three years by a “trained person” to ensure that it does not pose a danger to the public – perhaps by suddenly jumping out at people or subjecting them to some sort of hate crime.

Not just trees, either; I believe the guidelines also apply to large bushes, although not shrubberies and plants. Yet.

So, if you see a tree that looks as though it might be about to attack someone, or is merely hanging around the entrance to a park with a few of its friends late at night, looking a bit shifty and maybe rustling its leaves in a menacing manner – then give the BSI a ring and tip them off.

Or you could just start hacking at the tree yourself, or punch it while shouting antitree abuse. It’s the only language they understand, trees.

I promise you that I did not make this up. It is just one of the 27,000 guidelines which the standards institute has issued since its inception.

Hard hats off to an organisation busily going about the vital job of keeping us all safe and sound.

Go ahead, Naomi, you let fly

The ageing supermodel Naomi Campbell luckily escaped jail for “kicking, hitting and spitting at” police officers at Heathrow airport – quite possibly because the presiding magistrate knows exactly what Heathrow’s like. Naomi was told her luggage had been lost as she waited to take off for Los Angeles.

When various sententious officials started to explain to her what her “options” were, she responded thus: “F*** you. How dare you tell me what my options are . . . you’re not leaving until you find my f****** bags.” The aircrew, in another burst of unnecessary officiousness, called the rozzers, whom Campbell proceeded to “attack”.

Good for her. Telling people what their options are is consumer-relations speak for making the poor customer complicit in the company’s typical incompetence – as if losing the bags were an act of God and not someone’s responsibility. I’ve had the same treatment and it’s even more irritating than losing the luggage. I always say you can judge how ghastly a place is by the number of signs telling you not to lamp the staff. At Heathrow there’s one every few yards. Campbell, to her credit, ignored them.

The latest additions to that slang dictionary

Linguists are creating an “alternative” English dictionary, full of extremely contemporary words which are not acceptable to the usual guardians of our mother tongue. The English Project is looking at “street” slang – so that soon, with luck, we will have an officially recognised list of 48 different words for “stab”, just as the Eskimos are supposed to have for “snow”. Here’s a few more the experts might want to include:

- Sugar-rush (n), (vb): A state of fury. To advance rapidly upon a pugnacious, nononsense bearded businessman and beat him over the head with a shovel.

- Whinehouse (n): An expensive sanatorium. A retreat within which celebrities have their imagined problems assuaged through the expenditure of a lot of money.

- Bonobo (n): An endangered species of monkey excessively concerned about Third World debt.

- Corenation (n): The mysterious process by which television producers always end up with someone banal and irritating to present their shows.

- Chakrabarti (n), (adj): Pertaining to the male menopause. To cast aside a promising career and throw one’s life into turmoil, apparently on a whim and to the mystery of all. “David’s a lovely, principled, bloke – but he’s got a touch of the Chakrabartis at the moment.”

- Mosqueito (n): Flying, biting, Muslim fundamentalists. “We had a lovely holiday in Giza, thank you – except for the bloody mosqueitoes, of course.”

- Referendum (n), (vb): A rhetorical question to which there is only one allowable answer.

- Ecolyte (n): A follower of fatuous green fashions. “James and Arabella have become ecolytes, I’m afraid. There’s a wind turbine on their roof which will generate enough electricity to boil a kettle. By the year 2158.”

Croquet Monsieur (n): Mid-morning snack taken while playing a bourgeois game in the garden. Later regurgitated behind the potting shed.

Times Recommends

• Snow brings out the inner Tory in all of us
• Hail, Britain’s Indiana Jones of the Amazon
• Hewitt and Hoon – two rabbits, one hat