(More: Kurds in need, Lavine Hudson, Radio 2, Carly Simon, Bananarama, 22 Top, and songs from the Mock Turtles and the Waterboys.)

Up one to 3 for Madonna's Rescue me, and no move at 2 for James's Sit down. The interestingness comes from the way James are number 1 in Scotland, the Waterboys are number 1 on the MRIB / Network chart, but Chesney Hawkes holds for a fourth week at the top of the CIN countdown. The one and only number one? No, the one and only one of three completely different number ones, and they're all cracking songs.

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When we're in doubt about a word, we ask the OED. alright: a frequent spelling of all right. First seen 1893 in the Durham University journal, and criticised by Fowler in 1926. all right is first cited in The Pickwick Papers, 1837, where Sam Weller uses it to say something is entirely correct. The adjectival phrase, the colloquial sense of approval, is not cited before 1953, while there's an 1897 citation in the Westmorland Gazette of Alright, come along. In short: research is fun, and language is in a permanent state of flux. If it weren't, it would be dead, and boring to research.

Nick Robinson proposes the complete destruction of Mr. The Soup Dragon already. He quotes one senior (but anonymous) cabinet minister as saying, the danger we face is that we are just too damaged to recover. We're reminded, of course, of the Conservative government under Joe Ninetythree; wounded, but not so blatantly obviously worse than the opposition. However, if Dave the Eager Young Space Cadet can pull a rabbit out of the hat like John Smith's One Member One Vote resolution in 1993, he's a winner. Or if Labour decides to take a leaf out of the Lib Dems' book and knife their leader in the back after about ten seconds, we may as well bring back John Redwood's Pointy Ears and be done with it.

Terrorism works, says Gary McKeone, recalling how the Esdeelpi has become almost as marginalised as the Esdipi, purely because they didn't go around firing their guns.

Ellie Levenson writes on the pros and cons of personal sponsorship. She lands on the triple bonus square by invoking Maimonides' hierachy of charity. In particular, we are rather uncomfortable about disclosing how much we give to a particular cause to any third party, for that smacks of social one-upmanship.

Eurotrib gets suspicious about the No-campaign in Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon treaty. The Libertas organisation (does that name remind anyone else of Robert Kilroy-Shaft?) appears to be funded primarily by Declan Ganley, who the Tribbers suspect could be a frontsperson for damnable Yankee interests. The opponents don't have to disclose people who contribute amounts of €4999 or less, yet only two of their donors (and they claim to have raised €1.5m) have contributed more. We reckon that Mr. Ganley is funding this project primarily from his own vanity, and for that he really should remind us of Robert Kilroy-Shaft.

As Mike Bygraves has decreed, so shall it be. News 24 dies next Monday. Long live BBC News on channel 80 (or 601 for cable viewers, or at the oh-so-memorable Astra 2A transponder 13 (11954H), 6704/5000, audio 5001.) And BBC World (Astra 1L transponder 26 (11597V), 10050/163, audio 92) will have the word News appended. That'll make its appearance on Canada's specialist news channel confusing: it will be BBC World News on CBC Newsworld. Still, judging by the CBC Newsworld website, this won't be a problem until June 2012.

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Hello, can of worms fans. In this piece, we're going to discuss the various ways one might compute the present value of an amount of money, when it was originally valued in a foreign currency. We'll propose an algorithm, and work some examples.

The transformation of money through time is well known to economists, and any decent measure of inflation can be used - retail prices, consumer prices, GDP deflator. Transforming money from one currency to another is more difficult, because it's necessary to convert between one currency and another, and the date of change can be critical. Get it wrong, and you'll have nonsensical results.

For instance, someone who believes that the USD is the industry standard would take €21m from 2005, and convert it to USD 27.5m. Increase that by three years inflation, call it USD 29m. Now take €20m to-day, we find it's valued at USD 31.7m (or whatever the exchange rate is). So, if we're to believe this metric, €20m now is more valuable than €21m three years ago. It's an answer that we find to be ridiculous.

Our preferred method is to convert between currencies only during periods where they're relatively stable. The most recent period of stability seems to have been between mid-2003 and mid-2007, when a pound bought €1.50 and USD 1.90. For more recent sums of money, we must use the conversion rate that's closest to a stable point. However, it's only in retrospect that we'll be able to determine when a stable rate was reached. Until that time, the least awkward approach is to convert at the date in question. For instance, a work of art sold for GBP 10,000 in 2005 is converted to €15 000; one sold for the same price to-day would convert at the current rate, €13 000 (or whatever it is).

Inflation should be applied at the appropriate rate for the currency that is being counted at a particular date. If the money is in pounds, use UK inflation; if it's in euro, use euro-zone inflation, and so on. The best rate of inflation is a difficult decision: retail prices are an approximation of how much a given currency will buy, while GDP / GNP deflators will approximate to how much of the economy's growth is due to changes in prices. Our preference is to use GDP / GNP deflators where they are easily available, and RPI or national equivalent where not. Usually, GDP deflators for the UK and certain other countries are implicitly available, including explicit figures for the eurozone.

Eventually, one has to make a decision as to which currency to be the currency of record. This is a nakedly political decision: our preference is for the euro, as the nascent international reserve currency.

(More: The algorithm, and some worked examples)

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Before we begin, a link to the planet's most boring podcasts: the manifestos by the various candidates for Mayor of London. Yes, you too can wander round Regents' Park, listening to what the candidates propose to do about it.

Once more around for the local elections, this time plotting parties on the economic / social axes proposed by Political Compass. The principal UK parties have been plotted, but not all of them. Besides, we think it's easier to put the various parties in their European Parliament boxes, and divvy up the compass into regions, a bit like a stained-glass window.

Those European Groups in Full

• EPP-ED European People's Party - European Democrats, contains the traditional rightist parties, including the Conservatives and Fine Gael.
• PES Party of European Socialists, contains the traditional leftist parties, including Labour from the UK and Ireland, and the SDLP.
• ELDR-EDP European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party - European Democratic Party, contains the centrists, including the Lib Dems.
• UEN = Europe for the Nations, a mostly nationalist grouping including such characters as the Northern League (Italy), Law and Justice (Poland), but also Fianna Fáil (Ireland).
• GUE/NGL = European United Left / Nordic Green Left, includes former communist parties from across the continent, and Sinn Féin.
• EG-EFA = European Greens - European Free Alliance, includes the Greens from outside Scandinavia and groups seeking independence from their countries, including the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
• ID = Independence and Democracy, basically the UIP and sundry hangers-on.

MEPs who do not wish to join any of these groups are described as Non-Inscrit. They appear to be spread across the political spectrum.

During 2007, there was a short-lived Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) group consisting of the Front National (France), Vlaams Block (Belgium: Flanders), and sundry others including Ashley Mote (UK Jailbird). This group collapsed for reasons that made even less sense than its policies. For the purposes of illustration, we propose to let it continue.

(More: Mapping the London election candidates to these EU parties, and divvying up the Electoral Compass map into their territories.)

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Duffy's Mercy is the new number 1 in the Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. France is led by Ch'ti DJ's He, biloute! monte l'son! hein!, ahead of Zaho's C'est chelou. Defending French Idle Christope Willem's Disco is in at 9.

Scraping in are Brit and Alex with Let it go (75) and Portishead's Machine gun (73). Download bubblers from Little Wayne Lollipop (70) and Lykie Blankcanvas In my arms (69) are joined by Simple Plan's Your love is a lie (67), Robyn's Who's that girl (66), and Ben's Brother with Stuttering (kiss me again) (62), and the Hoosiers's Cops and robbers (64). Jordin Sparks is new at 58 with Chris Brown on No air duet with chris brown and up 6 to 50 with Tattoo. For no adequately-explored reason, Scooter re-enter at 49 with The question is what is the question? Dubious cover alert: Fall Out Bore and John Major interpret Beat it at 46, still a place ahead of Queen's Don't stop me now.

New at 39 for Nelly's Party people, which (sadly) isn't a cover of The 911's top five hit from 1997. Skins throws its considerable weight around the charts for one last time: Adele got a top 40 re-entry last week, now MGMT's Time to pretend belatedly becomes a chart hit. It had originally made number 49 over Easter, and was falling away gently until it turned up in the final minutes of the series closer last Monday, and stormed back up to number 35. Deserves to be a few dozen places higher, but anthems only become anthems by becoming popular second time around.

Another record we thought we'd lost, but haven't, comes from Gabriella Cilmi; Sweet about me made 38 over Easter, spent three intervening weeks just outside the top 40, and now moves back up 11 to a new peak at 34. Elliot Minor's plunge is limited to 10 places, but that owes more to the quietness of the week than any sudden extension to their fanbase. Cahill climb 6 to 31 with Tripping on you. Kayne West's Flashing lights is up 12 to 29. Panic At The Disco have a non-mover at 28, and that's almost a career best - only a three-place bounce for I write sins not tragedies over Christmas 2006 was better.

Highest new entry honours go to Goldfrapp, Happiness is in at 25. It's surprising to realise that this is their 11th hit since breaking through in 2003. Surprise of the week as Black Kids slump 11-20. It's an anthem in the making, by the definition we proposed two paragraphs back. William's Heartbreaker is up 11 to 18, and Birtney's Pears climbs 8 to 23 with Break the ice. It only needs a two-place climb to tie I love rock 'n' roll as her smallest hit. Scouting for Girls put Heartbeat up 5 to 14. Out of the top 10 goes Leona Lewis (8-12) and Chris Brown (10-11).

The Kooks drop three to 10, and the fastest climber is up 15 to 9 as there's a physical release of the Last Shadow Puppets's The age of the understatement. Duffy drops a couple to 8, and Mariargh Cantsing is down two to 7. Usher's up eight to 6 with Love in this club, and September is up five to 4 with Cry for you. Flo Rida's down one to 4, Sam Sparro dips to 3, and Estelle is down to 2. Does this mean that we have a decent number one? Not likely! Justin Numberwang and 49-year-old-mother-of-two Madonna lift themselves three places to the top.

On the album chart, Duffy's reign is over. Konk from the Kooks comes in at 1, and Mariargh Cantsing's E=MC2 is new, but only at number 3. Behind Leona Lewis. And surely it should be E²=MC? Anyway, Elliot Minor come in at 6, and Sarah Brightman's Symphony enters at 13. If this is classical, we'll eat our hats. Good climbs for Jack Johnson (38-24), Birtney's Pears (43-25), and Mark Ronson (45-27) after their inclusion in sales. In at 29 comes Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus with Best of Both Worlds the concert; it's one person using two names, which is just greedy. Children of Bodom put Blooddrunk in at 44 and Blood Red Shoes put Box of Secrets at 47. Lower down come Alvin and the Chipmunks (61) and the B52s first new album since 1992, Funplex (73). Portishead re-enter at 64, and MGMT at 63.

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This week, we've been watching and hearing...

The Italian election was won by Sr. Berlusconi and his Tax-dodger's party. Sr. Berlusconi, the television-to-football magnate, precipitated the election by bringing down Sr. Prodi's administration, then refusing to take part in talks to find a democratic voting system. His confidence was well-placed, and he plans to use power to cut immigration and taxes. His assumption of absolute power depends on the support of The Northern League, an isolationist group that would rather the north of the country break away and form its own separate state, and refuses to have anything to do with the south of the country, which (according to the Northern League) includes anything south of Northallerton.

Nepal's election gave a majority to the former Maoist rebels. They will begin to govern the country under their own rules, which will be obvious to anyone with half a brain.

There are still no results from the Zimbabwe election. Mr. Tsvangerai of the opposition MDC has rather lost patience: he wants a new international mediator to replace Mr. Mbeki of South Africa. It is unlikely that former British prime minister Mister Tony Blair would be acceptable, even though previous evidence is that he'll never visit. By the end of the week, the civil service had begin retrospectively fixing recounting papers, while even South Africa was beginning to lose patience: president-nominate Jacob Zuma expressed his personal displeasure at the mess, and threatened to call in the Pools Panel.

Ciaran Cannon has been voted the new leader of the Progressive Democrats.

The NHL season came to a conclusion, with Tipperary beating Galway by 3-18 to 3-16.

We regret to report the death of Edward Lorenz, inventor of chaos theory; and of Gwyneth Dunwoody, long-serving MP.

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An easterly wind was the dominant feature this week, keeping temperatures surprisingly low for the time of year. On Friday morning, there was a noticeable pong on the wind; prime suspects are farmers in the Hamburg area, who traditionally spread pig and horse manure on their fields at this time of year. The forecast is for warmer and more settled weather, particularly in the south, so do wrap up.

14 Mo sunny spells       3/11
15 Tu sun, rain pm      -3/11, 3.5
16 We fog to sun        -2/ 9, 3.5
17 Th sun                3/10
18 Fr clouds, wind       2/10
19 Sa cloud, showers pm  6/10, 0.5
20 Su mist, drizzle      6/ 8, 1.0

Rainfall in April: 22mm; monthly average: 53mm

Degree heating days: 762
2006-7: 491/499
2005-6: 683/684
2004-5: 555½/556
2003-4: 744/754

According to this metric, this winter has been colder than any of the last four.

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