‘US ready to return to moon’ claimed a Daily Telegraph headline this afternoon GMT. I was thrilled by the news, as it suggested an imminent departure from the Planet FedObarmy might be in order. After such a long trip, surely the hop from Moon to Earth should be a cinch.

If only the same could be said of the insurance sector, where scandal-hit RSA has hired the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Stephen Hester to run its operation, they having discovered a £200m black hole in the Irish business. Forgive me, but this strikes me as akin to offering Bernie Madoff the job of cleaning up Newscorp. Mr Hester presided over an RBS regime that saw endless “glitches” in its northern Irish business, record defrauding of UK small businesses, and a hole as black as the one he inherited. Mind you, were he to negotiate a merger between the two organisations, we could call it BARS….which is what Hester should’ve been behind years ago.

And talking of f**king up retirements, UK energy minister Greg Barker says those approaching retirement should consider putting some of their savings into solar panels, because these will deliver “a better financial return than a pension”. I regard this as a refreshing but astonishing outbreak of honesty from the political class: if you live in Britain, investing in a solar panel sitting largely below clouds and being pissed on by cold rain represents a better bet than your pension. Yep, that nails it for me.

But if that pension won’t fill the gap in what you need to survive after retirement, then at least you can be certain that Water cannon will fill the gap in the armoury of police keen to ensure that you don’t get uppity about it. Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, wants us all to know that “water cannon could act as an effective deterrent to stop protests gaining momentum…..What it does is buy you space, it keeps people apart, and people at distance.” I suspect here that we hearing an unconscious echo of Sir Hugh’s (Orde)rs from on high: KEEP THE PEOPLE DIVIDED, AND AT A DISTANCE.

However, if you’re looking for some kind of explanation as to why the British Establishment contains more than its fair share of oafish sadists, then the only correlation you need is that between the public school system and consistent attainment of the very highest political leadership positions. A pupil at the £30,000-a-year Oratory School in Oxfordshire stoned wild birds, skinned live cats and humiliated younger boys, a tribunal heard yesterday. Rachel Ashley, a former housemistress at this fine educational centre, told the tribunal how these sociopathic japes were condoned by the headmaster of the school on the basis of “boys will be boys.”

Jawohl! Ze boyc vill ze boyc be, ve must let zem let off ze steam, und dann können sie unser Herrenvolk sein.

Words like Bullingdon, Osborne, Johnson, Cameron, and Raubritter spring to mind.

Earlier at The Slog: Man who cheated NHS in shock appointment as NHS watchdog