Beware The Activities Of The Furniture Spooks.

This is probably going to be a bit garbled, as I'm not exactly thinking straight. God knows what possessed me to go to bed so early last night.

Not only did I miss the chance to snoop out of the window to see if anyone else got out of the car when Max finally arrived home, but I also missed my opportunity to phone Sam and pretend I needed to speak to Max. Now it's too late to pull that one.

I wish I could find the Valium that Dad left here. I could really do with something to calm me down. Whoever said knowledge is power was absolutely bloody right, and Max is even more uninformative than usual today.

If he worked for MI5 or 6 I'd understand it, but I can't see someone who works in the furniture industry being privy to many state secrets. Unless one of them is the exact amount by which the public sector is routinely charged over-the-odds for desks and filing cabinets.

When we get up this morning, I decide to act normal and see what I can find out that way.

"How was your weekend?" I ask.

"Oh, okay."

I wait a bit, in case Max is just pausing for breath, but when nothing else is forthcoming, I have another try:

"So what did you guys get up to?"

"Not much," he says. "Do you want to use the shower first?"

This international man of mystery stuff is so annoying. God knows whether Max was staying at Sam's, or shagging Ellen in public somewhere - I just can't tell. Which is pathetic, given how good I am at detecting when other people are lying.

I knew that Lucas North was no good right from the first episode of Spooks. In fact, Max and I had an argument about it, when I forgot my promise to stop telling him what I think's going to happen next, and now he says I ruined the rest of the series.

My honesty detector might be malfunctioning when it comes to getting a reading from my husband, but it's back on form once I arrive at the office. I know Greg's lying as soon as he says he jogged to work, for example.

"How do you know that?" he says. "You been stalking me?"

"No," I say. "Didn't need to. You must have put those on in the lobby."

I point at his feet, and Greg looks incredulous, until he notices my shoes. They are soaked, whereas his trainers are bone dry. And it's pissing down outside.

"Oh, well," he says. "It was worth a try. I wanted to encourage you to get fit in readiness for our little jaunt to check on the loonies of Florence Road. Can't afford any passengers on such a dangerous mission, and I'm the only one with youth on my side, after all."

Luckily for him, the phones start ringing before I can reply. They don't stop until mid-afternoon, when Greg rushes out to buy himself "a healthy snack." I don't have an excuse to go out as my so-called lunch is waiting for me in the staff kitchen. More's the pity.

Marie-Louise calls while I'm trying to force myself to drink yet another mug of bloody Complan.

"What is going on, Molly?" she says.

That's what I'd like to know, too - though I hope Marie and I aren't talking about the same thing. I don't think she's even met Max, although anything's possible, I suppose.

"What d'you mean?" I say.

"Why are so many appointments going missing from the diary? Andrew has given me a verbal warning this morning - or, at least, that's what I think it was. In amongst the swearing."

"I don't know, Marie. Greg and I wondered that while you were off sick. We thought it wasn't you."

"I can't prove that, though - can I? I am the Diary Secretary, after all."

Marie sounds as if she's on the verge of tears - again - although she calms down a bit when I suggest she should print a copy of the diary every time she makes a change, as a half-soaked insurance policy.

After she has promised me not to resign, and has rung off, I fill Greg in on what has happened.

"Well, there's nothing else that we can to do to help today," he says. "Seeing as our prime suspect hasn't come to work again."

"If it is Vicky, how are we going to catch her out?" I say. "Assuming she doesn't drop dead of her self-inflicted hair-flicking injury?"

"Self-inflickted. Good one," says Greg. "And, in answer to your question: slowly, slowly, catchee monkey."

God knows what he's on about, but I'm pretty sure he's attempting a Burmese accent. Aung San Suu Kyi's release has gone right to his head.

He offers me a fortune cookie.

"These are your healthy snack?" I say.

"Brain food," he says. "Maybe they'll give us a clue as to what's really going on."

"I don't think I want to risk it," I say. "Just in case the cookie thinks I'm curious about something else."

The last thing I want to know is that I'm married to the Lucas North of Northwick, after all. "Bunkbed emergency" does sound a bit like code, now I come to think of it.

More Muddled Political Analysis From An Insider. (Mirthless Laugh.)

God, I do wish I'd had flu this week. Or taken a day off yesterday. It's so unfair to expect constituency staff to react to major policy announcements when they haven't any time to watch the news, PMQs or even to read the papers during their working day.

I'm still trying to make sense of the Spending Review now - though that's a pretty tall order, given the breadth of its reach. The detail is impossible to understand - probably deliberately, if my long-held suspicion of statistics is anything to go by.

I gather Georgina* is being accused of playing fast and loose with some of the numbers, as The Boss nearly had a stroke over some of the stuff he said George had pinched from Labour.

My head's hurting and I just want to go and lie down quietly in a darkened room. Maybe if I took the economy with me, we might both feel better by tomorrow.

I need to get away from Max yelling at the public sector representatives on the TV, too. Every time one of them comes on, and claims that the public sector is taking the sole hit for the bankers' failures, he goes mad.

Part of me can't blame him - they do rather talk as if the private sector hasn't been feeling any pain whatsoever. Do they only socialise with others who work in the same field, I wonder? Surely they must know someone who doesn't even have a pension, or has already taken a pay cut or lost a job this year? You wouldn't think so from the rhetoric - though don't tell Max that. I really don't want to encourage him.

The worst thing about all this is that the most vulnerable are - again - the most terrified by what's going on. The expert claimants can probably afford to be phlegmatic about cuts to the welfare system - they'll just work out new ways to get around it. I just wish that, for once, attention would be paid to ensuring that it's not reducing the numbers claiming that is the focus, but ensuring that you do pay those who are genuinely in need.

So often I see people with severe disabilities and terminal illnesses struggle to get DLA, while those who have a bad back that recovers miraculously at the thought of a rugby match or a night out get the higher levels of everything going. As usual, those who are the most ingenious survive, while those who are the most honest seem to go under.

Take Pat's new boyfriend. Well, that's a bit of a misnomer, actually - as he's fifty if he's a day. DLA, Incapacity Benefit, full Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. He hasn't worked a day in his life since he left art school thirty years ago. And how has he done it? By virtue of some very creative thinking indeed.

He sees aliens. Well, that's what he tells the Benefits Agency, anyway. Disprove that, if you can. His visitors from outer space don't stop him sub-letting his council flat, taking trips to Spain to sell the stuff he buys at car boot sales, or dealing in cannabis. (His long-term fondness for drugs may, of course, have something to do with his "illness.")

When she pops into the office today, Pat's full of how wonderful he is, even though she does squirm a bit when Greg starts ranting about having to pay for "this scrounger" out of his taxes - along with shell-suits and fat-mobiles, of course.

She looks even less happy when I ask her whether she thinks her boyfriend's mad.

"Um, no," she says.

I'm in a really bad mood so I press on. Forget elephants, I'm a bull in a china shop today.

"So, if you think he's telling the truth, isn't that even more worrying?" I say.

"How d'you mean?" Pat's getting a bit twitchy now.

"Well, if he really does get visits from aliens who do unpleasant things to his bottom and his mind, aren't you a bit worried they'll come round to yours one night to get him? You know, when he 's staying with you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," she says. She looks as if she wishes I hadn't, either. You can't say I don't have a forensic mind, however incompetent at statistics I may be.

*Georgina: George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Georgina is the name by which he is affectionately known to The Boss. He has an increasing problem with millionaires telling constituents that we're all in it together.

Come Back, Norman Tebbit: Worryingly, All Is Apparently Forgiven.

Oh my God. When are politicians going to learn to recognise shades of grey? I despair, really I do. And I have no idea what is happening to my politics.

Today I manage to fall out with Pete Carew, the deputy leader of Northwick Council. I do wish he wouldn't sneak into the office like that. I've just got off the phone to one of the council officers, who has made a major cock-up by revealing the name of a noise nuisance complainant to the perpetrator.

This was despite the fact that the complainant had been assured his identity would be protected in future because, last time he complained, he was subjected to death threats and vandalism, which the Police are actually treating very seriously.

The council officer is so defensive about his stupid error, that I almost lose my temper during the conversation. When he's not making pathetic excuses, he resorts to monosyllabic responses to very straight questions. It's like trying to get blood out of a stone.

As soon as I've hung up, I shout through to Greg's office:

"God almighty, Greg. When are the Council going to get some bloody competent staff? Some of this lot wouldn't last five minutes in the private sector."

"Hey, Molly," says Pete. "What's with all the public sector bashing? It's the bankers' fault, as well you know."

"God - where did you come from?" I say. "I didn't know you were here. And anyway, I'm not bashing the public sector. Not as a whole."

"Well, it sounded like it to me," says Pete. "I've worked in it for thirty-five years and I'm bloody proud of what I've done."

"Well, you work hard, Pete," I say.

That's where I should end the conversation, but for some insane reason I don't. Instead, I continue:

"But I can't help thinking it'd be bloody refreshing if someone in the Party would acknowledge - just for once - that not everyone who works in the public sector does a good job in return for taxpayer's money. Or has an essential job. Constituents know that's not the case."

"Humph," is Pete's considered reply.

Honestly, when will people learn that trying to defend the indefensible really pisses the public off? And me, actually. I worry a lot about the dangers to the economic recovery of cutting jobs, (especially as Max is much more likely to lose his job than is Pete), but I don't see how pretending that every bloody job is essential, or being done well, helps to protect anyone.

There follows a predictably ill-tempered argument, which ends up with Pete asking me how on earth I can say any of this when I work for a Labour MP; and me saying that that is precisely the reason why I am saying it - due to the fact that I am exposed to constituents' often well-founded complaints about incompetence within the public sector on a daily basis.

But I'm apparently supposed to believe that there are no public sector jobs which could be cut without negatively affecting the public. I can think of one council officer who wouldn't be missed, straight off the top of my head, but this doesn't go down well at all when I mention it. In fact, I'm sure Pete mutters "fascist" under his breath as he takes his leave.

Greg has been mouthing "shut up" at me throughout, the bloody hypocrite. He's suddenly become very party political since he found out he was the one going to conference this year. Usually he takes the view that you could sack half the public sector and never notice the difference, and he's always reading out stupid public sector job titles, and ranting about the salaries.

Now it'll be me that the local party is moaning about, rather than The Boss, for a change. I shall have to pour oil on troubled waters once I've calmed down - but that's going to take a while. "Fascist" was completely uncalled-for. I'm no fan of the bankers, as our bank manager would be only too happy to confirm.

I'm still in a foul mood when I get home, and am quite likely to lose my temper with Josh or Max, especially if they say anything flippant about PMT - so I decide it's safer to stay out of the way once we've finished dinner. I'll read the papers in bed before QT* starts. (I'm still trying to catch up on everything I missed during our so-called holiday anyway.)

Imagine my horror when I come across this article, and find I agree with almost everything in it. Not content with turning into the bearded lady, I now seem to be becoming Norman Tebbit, of all people. I can't bear it - I used to despise him almost more than anyone else in Thatch's cabinet, especially for that "On your bike" thing.

It's a good job I'm not going to conference this year. I'd probably get lynched. I wonder if there's a link between fascism and sexual frustration?

*QT - BBC Question Time. Essential viewing for MPs' staff, as the usual suspects all watch and want to discuss the next day. They obviously have nothing better to do, either.