The Sketch: The fiery depths of hell will be sweet relief after this

The New Testament has some unwelcome things in it for people like me. The Sermon on the Mount tells us that one of the consequences of being a parliamentary sketchwriter is eternal damnation.

I'm not asking for sympathy, it's all well reflected in the salary package. The Sermon says that whoever uses the words "thou fool" to his brother shall be in danger of hellfire. Ah, but you say I'm not their brother? That's quibbling worthy of Tony Blair himself.

But it's impossible not to sit through Treasury questions without at least thinking these fateful words.

One side says: "Isn't it true that everything you've done is completely useless." The reply comes: "No, everything we've done has been brilliant.

"However, everything you did was useless. And actually, we're so brilliant even you admit we're brilliant when you're talking to people outside this chamber. You admit you're useless and you admit that we're brilliant." And the counter-reply comes: "No, it's you who are useless. We are brilliant.

"Unlike you, because you're useless."

Economic growth. Inflation. The New Deal. Tax credits. Industrial productivity. Poverty. They all fall into this format. The fools, the fools.

Arrgghhh! (Writer falls through fire for a billion years.)

It is very pleasing that the self-appointed spokesman for Abu Hamza should be Greg Hands. He had a question down for a new Treasury device for controlling terrorist funds. Ed Balls has got an "asset-freezing unit" designed to stop money going to al-Qa'ida. How likely is that, do we think?

Mr Hands told us that the Treasury's record on this sort of thing is mixed. That is, poor. Or pathetic.

We had the hook-handed cleric in chokey on terror-related charges and yet we continued to pay him housing benefit and income support and allowed him to sign over his £200,000 house to his son so it couldn't be seized.

Would this new device be any better, Mr Hands asked, given that the Criminal Assets Recovery Unit has just been closed down for failing to recover any criminal assets. If the seizing didn't work would the freezing be any better?

Ed Balls gave us the most testicular reply of the year. He was being asked why he was useless, and how his asset freezing would be anything other than useless, and why had all this uselessness been allowed to happen at such enormous expense. He replied: "I have answered these questions before!"

But he went on anyway. "The actions that we took were consistent with UN, EU and UK law." Mm-hm? "It is a state-of-the-art document that shows that we are acting in the national interest to tackle these issues." Anything else?

"I wish that we could have a bit more maturity in this debate and a bit more of a cross-party consensus."

What useless brilliance! What brilliant uselessness! It almost makes damnation worthwhile.

sketch@simoncarr.co.uk

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