What the World Has Learned This Week

David Cameron's government has received considerable criticism for its jauntily unorthodox fomenting of a non-existent crisis. The British public heroically responded to the absent threat by springing into inaction and doing what it has always done best - needlessly queuing.

1. Panic buying could save the global economy.

David Cameron's government has received considerable criticism for its jauntily unorthodox fomenting of a non-existent crisis. The British public heroically responded to the absent threat by springing into inaction and doing what it has always done best - needlessly queuing. It was like the Blitz all over again. But different.

Economic history is studded with glorious examples of panic causing havoc, with generally negative results. In this case, panic bumped up fuel revenues in the final days of an economic quarter, which was good news both for the government, incorrigible economics fans that they are, and for the beleaguered oil companies (please explain how there are only five or six 'supermajor' oil companies left in the wild, yet it is the thousands of tigers who are the ones who are supposedly endangered).

Panic needs to be harnessed more proactively by governments. A few carefully targeted rumours and off-hand quips could dig the world out of its financial funk within weeks. Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude was ahead of the curve with his controversial "keep flammable substances in tins in your house" suggestion. He then reportedly had to be physically restrained from following it up with a warning that people should stockpile coffins due to the inevitability of the Grim Reaper paying them a visit at some point in the next 100 years or so.

Maude was last seen charging around Westminster on a horse shouting into a loud-haler that scientists have calculated that the sun is scheduled to run out of fire in around five billion years' time, hoping to spark a welcome surge in the sales of fan heaters and high-wattage light bulbs.

2. The Prime Minister is a professional-level soothsayer

Early in 2010, David Cameron, then plotting his ultimately successful campaign to lose that year's general election by slightly less than the Labour Party would lose it, predicted that lobbying was "the next big scandal waiting to happen", that the issue had "tainted our politics for too long", and that it "exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money". He was bang on the money. Having a Prime Minister with such a penetrating insight into of the future is a precious asset for this nation, whether or not he had insider knowledge.

3. Allowing a nudist beach within 50 miles of a Princess is tantamount to retrospectively awarding the Cold War victory to the Soviet Union.

Amongst the several stories to shake Britain to its core last week, perhaps the most shocking was the revelation that nudists could soon be prancing around on an Anglesey beach within, and I quote, "a few miles" of where Prince William, the future Overlord of the British Empire, and his wife, Duchess Catherine Of Cambridge and Fairyland, sometimes live.

Has Britain no respect for royalty anymore? Catherine is married to a prince, and therefore, scientifically, a princess. She can feel a pea under a pile of mattresses. Anyone who thinks she is therefore unlikely to be discombobulated by some nudey danglers flubbering around on a nearby beach is, frankly, deluding themselves. And even if that is not the case, what if she or the Prince accidentally slips over, lands with their eyeball on a telescope, and inadvertently sees the distant nakedists clotheslessly larking a few miles away? Is this what we fought all those world wars for?

On the plus side, it is to be hoped that Prince William takes the opportunity to go to the nudey beach, fully starkers but for his obligatory crown, and says: "What the hell is going on? You're all wearing the same suit as me. I was supposed to have an exclusivity deal with those weavers. Those guys are toast."

Andy Zaltzman is one half of the worldwide hit satirical podcast The Bugle, alongside John Oliver from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Andy is touring the UK with Armchair Revolutionary and Political Animal at the Soho Theatre.

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