Prime Minister Baburo Ram has been quick to take umbrage at the British government's detention of our Colonel and has demanded his immediate release. Unfortunately, there are no indications that the Brits are listening. It is therefore time to up the ante, and enhance our bargaining position. Not that the Ass has been asked for advice by Balu Water, but if it had, here are my 10 Brit-bashing tips for the PM:

1. Suspend diplomatic relations with the Court of St James, and if that doesn't do the trick ...
2. ... declare war on Great Britain and resume hostilities from where we left off in 1816
3. Terminate Gurkha recruitment by GB, offer Gurkhas to the Argies
4. Boycott British goods, drink only fake Red Label from Khasa
5. Nepal deployed deadly leather cannons to defeat the Angrez in 1814, restore our leather cannon assembly line in Chhauni
6. Retaliate by supporting Scotland's secession in 2014
7. Give military training to RIM
8. Suspend visa on arrival for Brits
9. Fast-track Nepal's clandestine program to enrich plutonium at a
top-secret underground facility in Gathhaghar
10. Return to London medals like the OBE and the Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath conferred to our hereditary prime ministers

Businessmen are so sick and tired of extortion by the Dash Baddies that they got the FNCCI to speak up. The money was being raised to set up welcome arches and to feed and house hundreds of delegates from the districts who have congregated in Kathmandu this week to warn that they will resume murder and mayhem. So to summarise, the Dashies are forcing the Nepali people to fork out money so that they can kill them. It fell upon the FNCCI's Suraj Vaidya to say enough is enough, but only after all the extortion was over and the Dash Convention had begun. Vaidya: 0, Baidya: 1. Instead of spending all that energy on extorting the living daylights out of everyone in town, Kiran Kaka's loyalists should have forged an alliance with the royalists. They'd have gladly bankrolled him, and announced the alliance by inviting ex-Majesty Gyan Dai up on the stage at the Khula Munch on Wednesday. Mandalays and Maobaddies were always one and the same.

Even the baddest of the Baddies have bad days, but one Baddie is having it badder than the rest and that is none other than Herr Fuhrer himself who is being hounded by his own gorillas. Brother Number One has stopped going to Paris Hillock and stays within the heavily guarded confines of his Lajimpat villa. He doesn't want to face the wrath of UNMIN-disqualified Mau Mau minors who are now full-blown adults, and have gheraoed HQ to raise slogans against the chairman every time he stops by. But what really spooked PKD was BRB threatening him face-to-face at a closed door meeting that he may have to be prepared for a hastened departure into the after life. Red Flag hasn't forgiven Lotus Flower for hatching a conspiracy to remove him when he'd flown off to Mugu last month in the company of the
C-in-C. The reason Baburam needs the army brass on his side is not so much to checkmate the president, but as a deterrence against his own chairman.

The reign of His Serene Majesty Baburam Bhattarai is a d�j� vu of the Panchayat years, and like the last Shah king the man seems to be his own worst enemy. Last year, he sacked the head of the government's own national television for not covering him in favourable light, and last month heads rolled in Radio Nepal when a studio guest was allowed to wax eloquent about the prime minister being in India's pocket. Then he shoots himself in the foot by opposing the investigation into the murderers of a journalist. Now, his Minister for Disinformation and Miscommunication has anointed a crony for the top job at state radio. Handing him the appointment letter, the minister who is also a self-appointed MJF Chairman, gave him a one line TOR and said: "Make me more popular than Baburam." Or words to that effect.