Former minister Margaret Hodge has finally found her vocation: making life a misery for civil servants who don't pull their weight. Oliver Wright meets Whitehall's nemesis

Westminster Abbey is to honour two former prime ministers from the 1970s with memorial stones.

Any fears that the ninth Tindersticks album would be as lazy as its title (as though they couldn't be bothered to think of a suitable adjective) are dispelled immediately by the stunning nine-minute opener "Chocolate", a spoken-word memoir about student bedsit life and falling in love.

Taking over as producer of one of television's most memorable spy dramas, Callan, presented Reginald Collin with an enviable dilemma. "Our problem is that this latest series has been fantastically successful," he told TV Times in 1969. "A year ago, we felt that this would be the last of it. Now we are not so sure."

In the UK, referendums are rarely held. Quite a few are offered at some distant point in the future, but governments only call them when they are confident they will win. This is what makes the drama over a referendum for Scottish independence so explosive. Referendums here are not about leaders discovering a sudden passion for direct forms of democracy. Usually they are about leaders seizing control of controversial policies.

Nothing brightens a gloomy Sabbath morn like Danny Alexander, and the Treasury's Chief Secretary was on cracking form when chatting with Superinjunction Marr's stand-in Jeremy Vine on BBC1. For all that, I was alarmed by Danny's thoughts on contributing up to £40bn to the IMF. What we credulous halfwits should know, explained Danny (I paraphrase a soupçon), is that this wouldn't mean actually handing over any cash.

Nick Clegg has been making free with his witticisms. He's not the first politician to fancy himself as a comedian, says Andy McSmith

As if he were not under enough pressure already, George Osborne is now being widely tipped in Tory circles as the next party leader, with William Hague effectively out of the running and no other obvious contenders in sight. Making the step up from Chancellor to Prime Minister is not easy – if the economy is in good shape, there is probably no reason for the PM to leave office and, if it is in a mess, the Chancellor must share the blame. But some have made the transition. There have also been some notable failures.

The Alternative Vote is silly. No wonder no one is a great enthusiast including those leading the campaign

In phobia terms, Reaktion's terrific animal series has reached the king of beasts. Arachnophobia, the Miss Muffet syndrome, is "now counted among the most interesting human neuroses".

In a peculiarly British way, the result usually reflects the consensus in the country

Trevor Lloyd-Hughes was the Prime Minister's influential press secretary from 1964 to 1969. He once recounted to me how he got the job, and the circumstances speak volumes. He had been the lobby correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post for 14 years, and had written political columns for the Sunday Express anonymously, and had also, under his own name, established himself as a writer on wines – he was later to become a driving force in the Circle of Wine Writers.

Stuart A Staples is a man whose distinctive nasal Nottingham mumble merges with that of Harold Wilson with every new Tindersticks record. Falling Down a Mountain, remains on familiar Nashville-on-Trent ground.

The Security Service MI5 kept a secret file on Harold Wilson throughout his years as an MP and prime minister, it was disclosed today.