This is a splendid idea:

The governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday and make love instead to help boost Russia's low birth-rate. And if a woman gives birth in exactly nine months time -- on Russia's national day on June 12 -- she will qualify for a prize, perhaps even winning a new home. [...]

Regional governor Sergei Morozov told employers to contribute to a Kremlin campaign to boost the birth rate by giving couples Wednesday off to have sex. Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a high death rate boosted by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide. [...]

Prizes will extend equally to unwed women who produce children on the right day, though the biggest prizes will go to married couples. On Russia Day this year, a family won a jeep after their fourth baby was born on the holiday.

This principle could usefully be extended to these shores, I feel. Gordon's risible "British Day" would surely command far more widespread support if it became an official "Bang for Britain" holiday.

Just think how much happier we would be, as a nation, if a day was set aside for us to indulge our most grotesque desires with the official imprimatur of government behind us, and how much more productive the British worker would be with the prospect of state-sanctioned nookie on full pay just around the corner. What a fillip to flagging libidos everywhere to know that Alistair Darling is watching your slowly stiffening member with barely restrained pride! Run the Union Flag up that magnificent flagpole, sailor; England Britain expects that every man will do his duty.

The BBC could host an all-day telethon - call it Red Knob Day - with couples pledging to donate £20 to charity per orgasm (interspersed, as is traditional, with unfunny sketches from French and Saunders, or Billy Connolly earnestly wandering round soundproofed S&M dungeons that viewers' money has helped build) with the added incentive, perhaps, of Ant and Dec promising to strip off and buttfuck each other on live TV once a target sum was reached. And the day would, perhaps counter-intuitively, be tailor-made for the Tories; a tasteful photoshoot of Dave'n'Samantha gently rutting 'neath the turbines of Ovenden Moor windfarm would be a fantastic PR coup, more valuable than a thousand policy reviews, and prompt some rather nervous meetings between Ming and his press team.

Of course, in order to qualify for a day off work, you'd have to satisfy your line manager that you were actually going to be humping when you got home. Crashing out on the sofa and half-heartedly whacking off to Countdown wouldn't cut it. But for bespectacled nerds everywhere, conversely, Bang for Britain day would be a positive boon, because their bargaining position would be immeasurably improved. Who knows what tearful, mascara-stained degradations that doe-eyed girl in Accounts might be willing to undergo in return for an afternoon off shoe-shopping? And if she harbours any doubts about the wisdom of the course she has chosen, it might console her to reflect, as she gasps for breath between mouthfuls of pillow, that it is not the creepy guy that sits on the far side of the water cooler who is metronomically reaming her, but a grateful nation.

It is a sad reflection on the monocular, Puritanical joylessness of our current rulers that none of this will ever - ah, I see Countdown is about to begin. Light blogging for the rest of the day.