When £10 costs 9 pence.

The Countess is trying to persuade me that the cost of a main Soviet battle tank, The T-72, is a bargain for the school run. The nub of her argument seems to be that £10 costs only nine pence. This is an argument I would dearly like her to win with the increasingly insolent tax man and bank manager: even the Count would countenance given them nine pence out of every £10 they demand.

To back her case up, the Countess produced her credit card statement. It took several shots of vodka to recover from the numbers in the botom right hand corner of the statement. To add insult to injury, the card company was inviting the Countess to condolidate all her debts into one easy payment every month, of just nine pence per £10 or £9 per £1,000.

At first glance, this seems to be too good to be true. At second galnce after another shot of vodka, everything becomes very clear: it is too good to be true. They only want their nine pence paid every month. If you do that for 25 years, you will have paid the credit card company £27, and you will still owe them the original £10.

The deal does not seem quite so good now: I will give you £10 and in return you will pay me £27 and still owe me the original £10. Then we all scratch our heads and wonder how the banks make so much money.

Then they make it even easier, and let you roll the debt up. At this point, the Count runs out of fingers to do the sums. But my ever faithful retainer, Digdog, assures me that for every £1 borrowed at nine pence per month interest, rolled up for 25 years becomes an intersting £14.70. So the bargain second hand T-72 at £100,000 becomes a ruinous £1.47 million. The T-72 may not have done much damage to the enemy, but it probably wrecked the Soviet Union financially. When the true history of the collapse of the Soviet Union is written, an accountant will probably discover its true cause: some blockhead in gosplan went and bought 1000 T-72s, a few nuclear submarines and a fleet of aircraft and put them all on the plastic to make that years numbers look OK and to avoid a long holiday in a Siberian salt mine. For a while the debt looked after itself, until the local friendly bank manager started threatening to repossess a few nukes. At that point, the solids truly hit the air conditioning.

At this point it becomes clear that the private sector are at least as dangerous as the public sector when it comes to creating bullshit "cost of" calculations. I am inclining to believe that the only solution is to contact Vladimir and ask if he can supply the Count with a fleet of well armed tanks. That, as any hoodie on the street knows, is the way to command respect. No one's going start dissin' the Count when he is pointing a 128mm canon at them.

A horse, a tank or a load of *******

The Countess has got it into her head that she needs to buy a T-72. When she announced this, the Count did what husbands have done down the millenia: I muttered "yes dear" and then quietly hid the credit card. I innocently thought that a T-72 was a camera, or new designer label.

I then got called by Vladimir, who has both got me into and out of more scrapes than I care to count. He was very happy. Besides being a fixer, a bounder and a second hand car salesman he also has an interesting side line in military equipment. It turns out that a T-72 is a main battle tank from the old Soviet Union. Those which were not destroyed by Uncle Sam in Iraq are now being flogged off for the odd crate of vodka or greenback to the likes of Vladimir. The new Russia has a new tank, the T-90 and wants to get rid of the old lot. It appears he had worked his dubious charms on the Countess who was now set on a T-72.

I diplomatically asked the Countess why she needed a Soviet battle tank in central London.

"School run. Safest option" She said. The she gave it away "Anyway, I am not going to be looked down on by those dreadful jumped-up Abramovichs in their fleet of ugly cars."

The Count then made a fatal error. I tried fighting social competitiveness, masquerading as safety, with logic. I had to hand a bullshit study by the Lampl foundation which showed that the cost of the school run was £580 million a year, and for a mere £120 million year the government could eliminate this cost. Not only that it would reduce social exclusion, save the environment and we would all live happily after. Tears came to the Count's eyes as he read the report. When he had finally finished laughing and wiped away the tears he did the Count's three step dance on the report:

Step One: the illogical start. Start by claiming an implausible cost of a problem. The £580 million saving is based on the idea that instead of doing the school run, all the "hard working mothers" (to quote our hard working chancellor) will be working hard earning money. Casual observation of the Countess would indicate that stopping the school run would not save money: it would cost money. The Countess would be let loose on the shops for two more prime shopping hours every day. The thought fills the Count with dread.

Step two: the implausible cost of the solution. The solution proposed by the Lampl foundation is that Britain should convert en masse to yellow school buses which will only cost £120 million a year. Except that this nets off existing transport subsidies of £60 million a year, so in practice the real cost is £180 million a year. And that is probably as reliable an estimate as the cost estimates for the Channel Tunnel, Wembley Stadium, the Jubilee Line and the Olympics. Like all dodgy builders, these pressure groups put in a low estimate and once the buyer is committed, the price suddenly and inexorably rises out of all recognition.

Step three: the daft outcome. At the end of this, the government can be sure it will be spending another £180 million (£280m, £380m??) The savings will have vanished faster than a bottle of vodka in the hands of mad Uncle Vanya. And the Countess will still be insisting on buying a Soviet battle tank, for just the same reasons as everyone else wants a 4x4 in central London. At least the Countess will have no problems parking: at 41 tons the tank will crush any vehicle in the way; it will be totally safe; she can look down on all her neighbours; any pesky traffic wardens can be dealt with by the 7.62mm machine gun, or by a quick blast of the exhaust fumes. At a steady 75kph it goes significantly faster than a Ferrari: Ferraris have to stop for other traffic, a T-72 simply goes over the top of other traffic.

The Count tried all this logic on the Countess: the response was frostier than Moscow in February. At this point, the Count had yet another stroke of genius, and summonsed up his cossack breeding and heritage.

There is a far better solution than either the Countess or the sad anoraks at the Lampl foundation who dream up bad answers to bad problems supported by bad numbers. Like all good cossacks, children should be obliged to go to school on horseback (or walk barefoot if they can not afford the horse, stables and servants to look after the horses). This is a solution our Mayor should approve of greatly. In his naive and mistaken view, horses are zero emission vehicles, so they escape the congestion charge and we get to save the planet. On a decent horse, you also get to look down on 4x4 owners physically, socially, ecologically and morally.

The Curse of the Count: the Count counts himself a winner

Good breeding always shines through in the end.

On this occasion, it has taken less than 24 hours for the Curse of the Count to take its toll on the lowlife that pretend to be our masters: politicians.

Yesterday, the Count had the temerity to suggest that Mr Andy Burnham, a nonentity that has crawled out out of a hole and into a home office ministerial limousine, was a slimeball who acquaintance with truth, integrity or honesty was about as strong as the Count's acquaintance with financial solvency. A short conversation with any of the financial institutions from whom the Count has obtained large amounts of unrepayable money will establish just how distant such an acquaintance is.

The Count's avenging angels came in the unlikely form of APACs. These worthy citizens are, by all accounts, bean counters who spend their days shoveling mountains of money from one financial institution to another. If any of you know of any way of helping APACs reduce this mountain by diverting some of it into the bottomless pit of the Count's bank account, you will be assured of a friendly welcome at any of the Count's estates in Siberia.

Take a deep breath while we try to disentangle the battle of the bean counters.

In the Red Corner, the Home Office claimed that ID fraud costs £1.7 billion a year. This a a very convenient figure at a convenient time: just before ID cards are debated in Parliament, they produce figures to show that ID fraud is greater than the cost of ID cards. Within that number, they included £504 million for ID fraud using plastic cards.

In the Blue Corner, APACs, which actually has the numbers says that plastic card ID fraud is less than £37 million. The £504 million realtes to total losses on plastic cards which come from all sorts of sources. Oh well, the Red Corner has only inflated reality thirteen fold. Surely more reality is better than less, so what's wrong with inflating the numbers thirteen fold?

Back to the Red Corner. They included £395 million, which is the total cost of all money laundering. Again, at most 10% of money laundering relies on ID fraud.

Faced with an unwlecome dose of reality, the Home Office (not Mr Andy Burnham who appears incapable of defending his own numbers in case he gets associated with bad news, ie with himself) has said their numbers were "for illustrative purposes".

What was the Home Office trying to illustrate? That they can not be trusted with the truth? That they are lying scumbags?

At this point, we can hear the howls of anguish from politicians who complain about loss of respect for authority (ie themselves). And they wonder why this has come about. Most of the population can put two and two together. Ask a politician to add two and two together and he will ask "what do you want the answer to be? What answer will generate the best headline for tomorrow? What answer will best advance my career?"

So the Count will now progress from Counting to multiplication. We will start with a simple lesson for Mr Andy Burnham. What is two times two? Too difficult. OK. Try this one: If politicians lie what happens to trust in politicians? Drrrrrr........

I'm a politician, I'm here to help

Feeling a bit down? Got the winter blues? Headaches? Tough to shift stains on your underpants? Teeth falling out? Crooked bananas? Can't figure out how to sit in front of a VDU?

Dont worry. Help is at hand. A politician near you will sort out all your troubles. Just give him your vote and half your income and you can hear him make any promise you want. And then he will take your money and go to war withIraq.

The latest saviour of the human race is called Andy Burnham. Never heard of him? Think he has crawled out of a rock somewhere? He is going to save us all from.......ah yes, today's headline for the gullible press is fraud.

The easiest way to save the world from fraud is to shoot all the politicians. This is a simple idea which appears not to have crossed the mind of the wonderful Mr Burnham.

Mr Burnham has been slaving away in the bowels of the Home Office with his ministerial calculator and home office meadow mayonnaise machine and the result is that he has today declared that the cost of ID fraud is £1.7 billion a year.

Only a cynic would ask why he is banging on about fraud, and why today. So Count Kostov is asking why the cost of fraud is suddenly tugging at the heart strings of Mr Burnham. It appears that Mr Burnham has a little problem (he may have several, but only one of which he admits to in public): he is responsible for foisting ID cards onto the British public. And he has a problem right now: next week he has to introduce the unpopular ID card bill to Parliament.

As it happens, he has suddenly discovered that the cost of ID fraud is greater than the cost of the ID cards. Bingo! ID cards all round.

What he fails to mention is that:
a) his £1.7 billion figure is probably a gross over estimate: the Home office website itself claims that it is only £1.3 billion, and they provide precisely zero back up for their estimate of 100,000 people a year suffering ID theft.
b) ID fraud will continue, and probably even grow, despite ID cards
c) the cost of ID cards will not be the Home Office estimate, but nearly ten times as much if we are to believe the estimates produced independently by the London School of Economics.

Mr Burnham is absolutely right to identify the problem of fraud and fraudsters. He could make an immediate start on reducing the amount of fraud by going into his office, locking the door, pouring himself a stiff whisky and doing the honourable thing with the loaded revolver which the Count is happy to lend him.

Alternatively, we might be able to rely on our dear Prime Minister to walk out of Parliament at the crucial moment, fail to vote and thereby defeat his own bill, as he did with the Religious Hatred Bill last week. Duh. Not so much a case of pointing revolver at head, more a case of pointing revolver at his own foot. This is the same government that spent seven years in a hue and cry over hunting, eventually passed a bill banning hunting with the result that hunting is now more popular and just as legal as ever. Never mind, they want to assure us that they are deeply competent (even when their CSA costs £1.85 for every £1 it collects) and that ID cards will be a roaring success. Laugh? I nearly died.