Net price

Inconvenient realities of the aid industry, no. 587: sometimes the stuff you give away suffers the usual fate of unwanted presents.

Note the standard stonewalling tactics from the people who make a comfortable living from spending our money. Step one: accuse the NAO of not giving the full picture because it's only looked at four countries (and it's not like Nigeria is a country of any great size or importance, is it?). Step two: rebut the charge that the programme isn't working by citing stats from Ghana and, er, well, what about Ghana, eh?

Why should they worry? They know they'll get away with it. Business as usual, folks!

Beebthink

Britain has some of the highest childcare costs in the world, with many mothers with two or more children saying it does not make financial sense to work.

What the writer is trying to say is not that the Swedish system has driven costs down by having one carer per five hundred kids and paying the carers just enough to subsist on bread and water. He/she is complaining that the British state does not pick up as much of the tab as others do. Because when the state pays, there is no cost to any actual people, right?

Just like the free-at-the-point-of-use BBC, come to think of it. With an outfit like this forming voters' opinions, is it any wonder that Gordon Brown spent like there was no tomorrow and Cameron and Osborne dare not cut as if yesterday really happened?

"O what a tangled web we weave..."

It didn't take many webby tangles to entrap this lady. Conversing with the dead on Facebook is likely to get you noticed - and particularly by people who have seen you orating about their tragic deaths on the telly.

Don't underestimate her, though.

Ms Gordon is now working on a campaign calling for the government to give more money to community activists who tackle gun and knife crime.

You bet she is. Lacking as her grasp of social media security may be, she seems to have an excellent understanding of the role of moral blackmail in the relationship between what we laughingly call the voluntary sector and the state. There is no problem - what are you thinking of, wash your mouth out, Grumpy, issue - so appalling that a bit of overwrought exaggeration won't help you get your snout ahead in the rush to the trough.

Naturally Big Charity is much more sophisticated than Ms Gordon and woudn't dream of telling porkies; who needs lies when you have statistics? So she has some learning to do, but she is young and will go far.

Afterthought: insofar as her conference speech portrayed "a British city with a death toll of Saving Private Ryan" (to quote the Dumb One), you could pretty much paraphrase it as "Enoch was right". And for this she got a standing ovation from Labour's brightest and best. Funny old world, isn't it?