This is how to deal with the Prime Minister

I always wonder who has to give consent before some scumbag politician descends on your hospital bed for some cheap publicity. Imagine having Cameron's sausage face leaning over you while you're trying to come to terms with cancer…

This time, the doctor in charge is having none of it (and the bow tie implies he's a Doctor Who fan) and the Prime Minister is unceremoniously booted out:



And while we're in the mood, here's Michael Gove falling flat on his arse. It's a metaphor.

A simple test of character for Mr Uppal

There's a very simple Bill being presented to Parliament on Friday, the Public Bodies (Sustainable Food) Bill.

A Labour MP is proposing that hospital food conform to minimum health standards (I know, isn't it amazing that it doesn't already?). Joan Walley is being supported by MPs from all parties. The catering suppliers say it won't cost any more than the swill they serve now (I'm not sure why they aren't already providing healthy food if that's true). At the moment, children can be given food which would be illegal if provided in schools - low on vitamins, high on fats.

It's a Private Member's Bill - i.e. they're rarely given time for discussion, and a single MP can end the whole process by shouting 'object'.

Let's see if Paul Uppal lends his support, or even bothers turning up. Who knows, perhaps he'll be the government lackey told to object'.

I'm back. How I wish I wasn't.

My friends, Norway is awful. Never go there.

OK, it isn't. It's wonderful in so many ways that I don't think I can express them sufficiently. I just don't think that we're worthy. Perhaps other Scandinavians might make the grade, but the rest of us would just mess it up with our fat guts and junk food and linguistic failings and reactionary tendencies etc. etc. etc.

Coming back to the UK was like being expelled from Paradise. Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden with a lighter heart than James, Neal and I did on Saturday. I can't even be coherent about it - just everything was better. Many of them even support Stoke City, because it was a top club when British football matches started to be shown in Norway during the 70s.

I suspect that most of my posts today are going to be 'another great thing I've just remembered about Norway', and I'll post a few pictures.

One of the big things we all noticed is that Norwegians believe in using government to do big things - transport, opera houses, stunning cities that are actually brilliant to live in and get around. They undertake big projects at government expense and get them right. It's such a huge contrast to this place. Here, we wonder about doing something, then decide that if it's got to be done, better some consortium of lying thieving bankers should make money off it, and then wonder why it's shit. I refer you, of course, to 'NHS' hospitals and schools built on the PFI principle. If you don't know what that is, it involves faking the maths to make it look better to get a private company to own and run a hospital or school, renting it to the government for 30/40 years at a massive profit. It doesn't work. The hospitals are rubbish, smaller, dirtier - read this if you don't believe me.

Norway seems to be a confident, bright, caring country. The population seem to actually like and care about each other, which makes them happy to get together for the public good. We live in a selfish, atomised society in which we actually don't want to take responsibility for each other. Sure, we'd like clean hospitals and decent schools, and trains which run on time and cities you'd actually want to live in/walk around/be proud of - but we certainly don't want to pay for it. We'd rather get our kids into private schools, and get private medicine (over-rated, by the way), buy more plasma screens and generally turn away from public space, towards private, short-term pleasure.

It's embarrassing. If you haven't been to Germany, Denmark or Norway, you probably think Britain's a first-world nation. You'd be wrong.

I'm sorry. I'm in a bad mood because I've returned to litter and pollution and filth and poor architecture and an office in which some of my artwork has been smashed. Glass everywhere.