Today's parliamentary sketch:

MPs always like to take their medicine with a dollop of sugar, ideally well-mixed with a slather of school-boy sneers and jeers. The public, on the other hand, won’t swallow anything but the bitterest pill when it comes to bad news.

So after a casual slap-around at PMQs, only an avalanche of the worst possible tidings would settle the bullies’ playground that is parliament.

“It is unavoidable,” Osborne thundered – or would have, if he had the voice for it. Time to take an ice pick to “the interest on the interest on the interest of the debts”, he declared: honourable gentlemen, think of the children!

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