It is always good to start the year with some good uplifting news and this has been no exception.
With the Prime Minister's deal likely to appear before the House of Commons in a week's time, Pravda has been in full flow, trying to convince us that a 'no deal' would be a disaster so that we all roll over and buy her deal. We are warned there are more messages to come in the next few days.
Meanwhile, with the PM now on borrowed time, it has been fun watching the leadership contenders all trying to stake out their claims to be 'the chosen one' to succeed her. The vanity of Ministers knows no bounds and many have been keen to show they are 'back at their desks', 'being active' or 'making an announcement' (generally ill-thought through). It gets them brownie points at No 10 and with the faithful. Needless to say they have mostly fallen over in the process.
Jeremy Hunt has been off to Singapore: oh the advantages of being the Foreign Secretary and therefore being allowed to travel whenever/wherever you want. Boris missed an important Heathrow vote using precisely the same trick.
His message was that the UK could become another Singapore: a view which was rather spoiled by the Prime Minister of Singapore who said their model would not work for the UK.
One suspects that the residents of Hartlepool and Bournemouth would agree with the Prime Minister if they saw the conditions in which people live, and looked into the political structure of Singapore: We decide what is right, no matter what the people think. Yes, that is just what Brexiters want.
He was keen to tell us that Britain's role after Brexit should be as an invisible chain linking together the democracies of the world ... yatter, yatter. What on earth is this meant to mean? Has he asked them if they wish to be bound by an invisible chain or has he been reading too much Harry Potter with his mince pies?
Gavin Williamson has been throwing his diminished weight around by suggesting that we could open military bases around the world. Why? Oh yes, we used to have them back when we had an empire.
Um, Gavin, the armed forces are way under strength and much smaller than they were in the past. Heavens, we cannot rustle up enough patrol vessels to manage the straits of Dover.
Has he even checked that the host countries want us?
Sajid Javid has been the most prominent, boldly cancelling his 'luxury safari holiday in a £800 a night lodge' in order to be seen managing the 'migrant' 'crisis' (it was neither) with 'swarms' (well a few) people trying to cross the straits of Dover in small boats.
Having played all the 'right tunes' to the Torygraph faithful, including questioning whether they were genuine asylum seekers anyway, he was then taken to task by the 'liberal elite' who pointed out that under international law he should not pre-judge their status.
He was also taken to task for suggesting that the way to manage migration was by working closely with European partners: precisely the people from who we were about to cut ourselves off and who would no longer have an EU duty to co-operate.
'Bold action' followed with two vessels being withdrawn from the Mediterranean where they were dealing with large numbers of boats, to bolster the defence of the homeland. It will take one of them several weeks to arrive by which time the 'crisis' will be over. What price it never actually bothers to return? The media will have moved on long before it gets here.
It did not take long for headlines to emerge suggesting that Javid and Williamson were scoring points off each other.
I suppose we should be grateful that Caroline Nokes was not left in charge.
The star of the show, as usual, has been Chris Grayling. He had two strings to his bow. He blamed the unions for the 3.1% rail price rises. Um, Chris, that sounds so terribly 1970s and how would you feel if you had been squeezed by the government into having no pay rise for years and then, when you did get one (perish the thought), the government blamed you for the price rises.
And after a year when he had manifestly cocked up the whole rail system with a series of gaffes like changing the national rail timetable and forgiving a whole host of franchisees who were patently incapable of running a railway.
Trains are still not arriving or departing on time and there are suggestions that the ones that do appear will soon be running at 200% capacity. Yes, I know the London Undergound does, but that is for short journeys, not for five and six hour ones.
But this was simply a warm-up to his explanation as to why he let a contract to a 'ferry company' that had no money, no ferries and had never actually done anything in its short life.
Only later did it emerge that the company's terms and conditions were copied and pasted from a pizza delivery company's website. And Grayling re-assured us that the 'due diligence has been thorough'.
But we can relax as he has also assured us that he is expecting the channel ports to operate normally in all Brexit circumstances. So that's all right then. There is no need to believe the government's own warnings about turning the M20 into a lorry park. JR-M was right that unicorns can nod lorries through in 6 seconds.
Honourable mentions should go to Matt Hancock who is something to do with Health who has been claiming that the NHS will be the best place in the world to have a baby. We have some way to go, apparently but that does not stop a Minister making a bold claim (with no money attached).
If we are the best place in the world to have a baby, might that not just lead to a greater demand for migration?
And to James Brokenshire, our worthy Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for so diddling the figures that the £17m extra promised to Cornwall by central government will not actually be coming to Cornwall at all but will have to be provided by Cornwall Council.
It is so good to know the government of the country is in strong, stable, safe and reliable hands.
