I hope, probably pointlessly, that the pasting the Lib Dems will get in the May 5 local elections will persuade Dave to cut and run for a general election. Who is to say, given the state of Labour, that he wouldn't win it? When I heard Nick Clegg, who knows as much about business as Liz Taylor did about spinsterhood, say in his unpleasantly querulous tone that the oil companies should stop whingeing because the raid on their profits was a "good deal", I realised the level of breathtaking bovinity with which poor old Dave must deal every day. The Coalition now prevents our economic recovery. If Dave and George really want growth, they will need to take full control of getting it.  When life bowls you a bouncer  It wasn’t so long ago that cricketers went on tour for six months, but one cannot imagine Fred Trueman going home early to be with his family because of depression. That, though, is what Michael Yardy, the Sussex bowler, has done, leaving England's world cup team. He has been upbraided by cricket’s hard man “Sir” Geoffrey Boycott, who claims he’s “depressed” because he hasn’t that much talent. However, professional cricket has had an alarmingly high suicide rate: one of the more recent and tragic was Geoffrey's team-mate David Bairstow. I wish Yardy well. If I had to spend my life in the increasingly charmless, corrupt, vacuous and money-obsessed world of professional cricket, I’d be pretty depressed too.  The great Dame should have done a Garbo  Dame Elizabeth Taylor was a great actress, though the two best films I recall seeing were from an age ago: Butterfield 8, for which she won an Oscar, and her nicely understated and convincing role as Rock Hudson’s wife (that took some doing) in the magnificent epic Giant. I know that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf has its admirers – I found it rather noisy and tiring – but to my mind Dame Elizabeth went off seriously with Cleopatra, which I suspect was when she started to believe her own publicity. Just imagine how much greater her legend would have been had she done a Garbo, and retired before it all became a bit silly.  Why must we fill Portugal’s begging bowl?  I am at a loss about two aspects of the long-awaited Portuguese debt crisis. I agree with my friend Peter Oborne, who said here yesterday that it will hasten the end of the euro. But why, therefore, is this rigged basket-case of a currency still rising on the international markets? As I write it is above 88p, an insane overvaluation given the precarious nature of the eurozone. No doubt the markets still bank on Germany’s giving endless support to third-world European countries. However, a kicking for Angela Merkel in tomorrow’s local elections could end that. Also, how does our Government think the British people would respond to our giving financial guarantees about the payment of Portuguese debt? This is nothing to do with us. What is happening in Portugal isn’t our fault and, even if it were, we have no money to help out. Dave had better get on the blower to Brussels and tell them to expect nothing from us, however much of a hissy fit our masters there throw.  Hard cheese on the rollers  In a move that will leave a gap in our cultural heritage, the organisers of the semi-legendary Gloucester Cheese-Rolling competition have called it off. This is partly for health and safety reasons – apparently three times as many people as is “safe” tried to watch it last year – but there were also incidences of abuse and bad behaviour. Having for years led the world in sports violence, how refreshing that we should provide the first example of cheese hooliganism. One marvels at the notion of aggressive consumers of dairy products, fuelled by Stilton rather than anything so boring as alcohol, wading in to fights over the relative downhill speed of truckles. Can’t we get it a grant, and put it in the Olympics?
George Osborne has shown himself completely unequal to the task of fixing the    nation's economy, writes Simon Heffer.