The Sketch: In times of grief, ignore the politicians more than usual

"Our grief is enormous," one of them finished by saying. A fatter one began: "Dealing with tragedy is never easy." Each statement was as banal as the other, but the first was more obviously untrue. Enormous grief is disabling.

It can kill you, it's certainly done so before. When politicians say their grief is enormous we should ignore them more rigorously than usual. They say it as easily as, "We're determined to safeguard the security of people in old age" and it means as little.

Handsome Jack, our man at the Foreign Office is liked by the House, and his statement there yesterday got him off any hook the Opposition was trying to hang him on. Did he have more prior warning about the Bali bomb than he published? There had been only a generic warning, he said, concerning an area covering 55 per cent of Indonesia's land mass and 40 million people.

Michael Ancram did really quite well. If your brain fell out reading that sentence let me repeat that Michael Ancram did perfectly well. He claimed there existed an "unacceptable level of uncertainty" and asked a list of questions which broadly supported his case. How can six islands out of 6,000 be construed as generic. Had not a CIA briefing two days before identified Bali as a target? Were not "clubs and places of entertainment" on the danger list? Why hadn't the Islamic group been banned after trying to blow up an embassy?

Handsome Jack dealt with the questions in the time-honoured parliamentary way (he ignored them). And then he brought in a new line of defence; he never tells us everything at once. He had been economical with his defence and he had more in reserve. American embassy staff were in Bali and some among the dead. If they hadn't felt the danger why would we? That was as close to an answer as the Commons expects. For those who feel the enormous grief of losing someone they love in a bomb attack there is no consolation outside religious faith. But the worldwide death toll from al-Qa'ida terrorism in the year after 11 September is about 250. More people than that die in a regional election in India. Middle-class thrill-killers do more personal damage than al-Qa'ida has managed in the past year.

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Andrew Smith, was pressed by his Tory shadow, David Willetts, to repudiate plans mooted to remove tax relief for higher earners on pension contributions. I can feel you ebbing away in your thousands. Pensions are so important to citizens and the economy that it is essential to conduct the discussion in as boring a way as possible otherwise people will pay attention to it. Hence Andrew Smith. He refused to repudiate the possibility, or so those left awake told me later.

Teddy Taylor, a gruff, Scots character, is a most respectable figure whatever opponents say; he advised the minister to provide more cheap room in London, if he "was interested in holding on to nurses". Holding on to nurses' what, we never found out. But it was a moment of lightness in a long day.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com