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Well, David Cameron’s really in trouble now. Tony Blair’s offered him support. I suppose it could be worse for Dave – he could have kicked a ballboy – but not by much.

Such a shame for Dave – it had been a great week for him. His deeply cynical promise of a referendum may have caused difficulties for our businesses and their trading partners in Europe, but it certainly – and much more importantly – helped the Conservative Party by spiking the UKIP guns at a stroke. Oh, and there was the small matter of giving the public what lots of people say the public want.

What will the ubiquitous Nigel Farage do now? He can hardly sell his party as the only out-of-Europe option, now that those Tories who breath heavily through their mouths can say they too offer an out-of-Europe option through Dave’s referendum.

There was a further benefit for Dave: for once, Ed Milliband stood up and spoke with passion and conviction and complete clarity. And then his party promptly took it back, making him look very silly indeed. Or should that be even sillier. Perhaps he’ll soon be offering his support to Dave.

Well, I will too, if you like. That’ll finish him off. You see,  I’d like the chance to vote ‘no’ to a Europe dominated by faith in the unregulated free market, by banks and financiers, by employers and the wealthy, by a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy creaming billions off the overburdened taxpayer.

It’s always been a great irony of the European debate that hard left and far right agree they’re against it; their differing reasons are rarely properly explored, I think, because then the irony becomes richer. In Europe the hard left sees the very things dearest to the far right – the unfettered free market with its own layer of irony, its inbuilt deeply protectionist levers and mechanisms that protect the rich from the creators of their wealth. And in Europe the far right sees those things they think dearest to the hard left: state regulation in order to deliver unearned handouts like education, health and food to the undeserving poor.

Sadly Dave and I would have to part company in the end. Because ultimately I would want to vote for a Europe that, for example, creates societies that protect all workers from being forced to labour more than a reasonable number of hours per week; societies that enshrine democracy; societies that protect the human rights of their populations; societies that enable employment and creation; societies with equality and education and health for all. Europe has been, and could continue to be, one pathway for a more equitable distribution of wealth and privilege, a deliverer of social justice.

So I can’t help but view the Euro-Neanderthals of the UK-right in the same light as I view the joyless suits muttering and complaining about schools closing down last week in the snow.

Oh, sod off. Let the kids have a day off. Let everybody have a day off. If any single one of these snivelling killjoys got their precious shrivel-dicked executive saloon scratched by a harassed mum on the school run slithering in the snow, they’d be the first on the Jeremy Vine Show or writing to the Daily Mail ranting about inconsiderate schools.

Schools that close do something vital in times of travel difficulty: at a stroke they half the traffic on the road. That’s a great thing. They do something else at a stroke: teach children that there are things in life just as important as work, like having a sneaky good time. That’s an even greater thing.

But on and on the killjoys snivel: “everybody else can manage in the snow”, they whine – “but one snowflake and we give up”.

No, we don’t. We stop. Wisely. Other countries have a well-funded public sector to cope with snow; they are richly equipped; drivers have to use proper tyres; schools are provided with salt and people to spread it, who are paid wages; rail transport systems are in public ownership and properly provided for; road networks are scrupulously maintained. But we – we have been prepared for decades to let a few well-off politicians and businessmen cream off billions for their foreign-domiciled shareholders rather than insist on putting the country’s people and facilities and infrastructure before the god of the free market, and now we have the gall to complain about the consequences? It’s like people who complain about heating bills or phone service or water bills – what the jiggerypokering blue blazes did any of them honestly for a single split second expect?

But no! There’s more joy to kill: “Health and safety gone mad”, they grumble. “Can’t open a school in case one of the little darlings slips over. We used to walk 300 miles to school over freezing snowdrifts during t’summer holidays and it never did us no harm, ‘cepting they forgot to teach us to protect the country’s assets and services from the vicissitudes of a private market that would lead us to this chao…. erm…. where were we….. ah yes, 300 miles over t’freezing snowdrifts and that were August. August! Etc. What’s wrong with them? Eh?”

Well, nothing. I never grumble about health and safety gone mad.

For example, my father and lots of boys of his Depression generation scraped asbestos off walls and boilers and ceilings and floors with no protection, though employers had known since the turn of the century that this was not safe. A few bits of health and safety gone mad would have spared Dad and his mates lives of disability and a slow painful death.

For another example, I know somebody who worked at a school where, through nobody’s fault or failing, a small girl broke an arm badly. Just an accident. But the poor child’s screams of pain stayed with this somebody, who ever since has been vigorously determined to make sure whatever protection is available to children is afforded to them.

D’you know what? I really don’t have a great deal of time for people who hark back to the good old days. Yes, they had much to recommend them. But they also had food banks and mass poverty and people who couldn’t afford to heat their homes and xenophobia and rich bankers creaming off profit while children went hungry and old folk queued for medicines they couldn’t afford and ….

Oh.

Now, where were we?

I was the innocent victim of a drive-by ranting last week, but the silver lining is that next week we welcome Brother Hamster’s guest blog to this place as a result. He wore a circle in the floor as he paced and ranted while I typed it all up. You have been warned. Meanwhile I gather that something on rural shops is in the oven, and Sister Wizard Woman is busy with the knitting needles. Which will be bad news for somebody.

Not that any of you gives a flying hoot, of course, but let the record show that I dealt with catching both boys’ winter colds at the same time in my usual stoic manner last week. Snot, coughing, shivers and shakes – pah! You wouldn’t have heard me complaining, oh no.

Until Management took pity on me and decided to help. By doing the shopping. And the cooking.

Management is a fine woman, talented, intelligent, beautiful, passionately committed to the happiness of the children in her care. But by Christ she is the worst cook in the world. I’ll tell you how bad it is. When she reaches into the cupboard for a frying pan I can hear the metallic clacking from the cellar as the rats throw themselves on the traps. When I pour the dog’s dried food, unadulterated, into her bowls she wags her tail, licks her lips and tucks in. When Management does it, the dog ignores the food and takes to her bed, turning her back on the world.

Tell you what, though. Management’s cooking doesn’t half cure a cold. I’m back at the stove today.