ONCE upon a time when gunboat diplomacy was in vogue, accusing someone's prime minister of "mediocrity bordering on stupidity" would have had everyone hurriedly pulling on their tin hats.

To follow that by accusing Britain of being "a crude colonial power in decline" would have guaranteed someone was left eating a metaphorical mixture of words and teeth.

But while Galtieri and his generals badly miscalculated when they chanced their arm in 1982, titian-haired Cristina Kirchner knew exactly what she was doing last week when, paving the way towards her second term as Argentinian President, she purred those eloquent insults at our Dave.

She certainly needed no encouragement from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, who was probably stating the bleeding obvious when he warned that military operations in Libya cannot be sustained for another three months without making massive cuts elsewhere.

Good on him for mentioning it, because his fellow brass hats don't usually pluck up the courage to publicly state even the bleeding obvious until the pension's safely pouched and it's time to attract a blaze of publicity for the memoirs.

But with the National Debt set to reach £1.1 trillion this year and the annual interest on it an eye-watering £43 billion, set against the human cost as the British death toll in Afghanistan edges inexorably towards 400, even Dave's stupidity looks mediocre.

With Falkland islanders already swapping their British passports for Argentinian ID cards, Senora Kirchner must feel pretty confident that this time when the boats land from Buenos Aires it will be a case of: Bienvenido a las Islas Malvinas!

THE WAY the BBC insisted on reporting last Thursday that Al-Qaeda had "appointed" a new leader was almost twee.

Did Ayman al-Zawahri submit his CV and references, with samples of his work? Was there a series of psychological tests? Was he shortlisted by a selection panel for the final interview? Presumably he wasn't head hunted. Yet.

MANY folk south of the Irish border understandably still bear a grudge over French footballer Thierry Henry's blatant handball which helped deprive their team of a place in last summer's World Cup in South Africa.

How interesting then that, of all people, the examiners for Ireland's Leaving Certificate managed to see the funny side of it. Last week they included in the French exam a question on refereeing standards in sport, asking students to argue the case for introducing video technology.