Old jokes revisited volume umpteen

Lazing in bed at the weekend with the radio on; a couple of oldies but goodies about living under a repressive regime got an airing. After watching Dr Zhivago, they seem particularly relevant.

Why do secret policemen always go around in threes?

They need one who can read, one who can write and one to keep an eye on the other two dangerous intellectuals.

Imagine the scene: there is a herd of escaped elephants destroying crops in Russia, no one has been able to catch them. The president decides that the only way to catch them is to call in the KGB.

"I need to you to catch the rogue elephants at once," ordered the president.

"But we have no experience of such matters," protests the head of the KGB. "Give us something smaller to work on first, and we'll see what we can do."

So the president gives the head of the KGB a rabbit, telling him that the training period had better be short - the elephants must be caught.

"Give us just a week," says the KGB head honcho. "We'll have your elephants."

One week later, the president goes to KGB headquarters to check on progress.

He is shown into a darkened room.

In the corner of the room with just one spotlight on him is a rabbit, front paws in the air and squealing "I'm an elephant! I'm an elephant!"

Grim humour - sometimes it's all you have left. Don't forget Brown and his soviet want you to carry a compulsory ID card so they can track your every movement. Bush, in the Land of the "Free", is in contravention of the ninth article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile"- think Guantanamo Bay. Putin is quite probably criminally implicated in murder.

I'm obviously not in one of those jolly moods today.