Valentine’s Day flowers bought at the last minute from a petrol station forecourt are better received by a beloved than flowers stolen in a panic from a graveyard, according to a survey by Bride magazine. However, the latter might be acceptable as long as they are red roses and the ‘In Sympathy’ card had been sensitively amended or better still removed.

Most Bride readers added that they preferred to receive a Valentine card with the correct postage on it, but a minority said they didn’t mind visiting their local Royal Mail Sorting Office to pay the surcharge ‘just to let people know’ they had received a Valentine card.

Last in the list of popular Valentine gifts, according to the magazine’s readership, is a box of Thornton’s chocolates wrapped by a Thornton’s shop assistant.

The popularity of daytime television has been boosted by the rise in unemployment and recent benefit cuts. ‘People can’t afford the pub, so they stay at home in the afternoon and watch the telly,’ said Joe Dewsbury, 24, a daytime television aficionado.

With daytime television watchers soon outnumbering hard working families, some analysts predict the government will ditch the Big Society concept, though others said to come back and ask them after Jeremy’s finished the DNA results. It is understood that David Cameron is preparing to soon appear on Flog It! to launch his Big Sofa idea.

‘We are warning that we will be issuing a severe weather warning soon,’ a Met Office spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said that the severe weather warning is expected to bring with it a number of coloured triangles, a ‘sprinkling’ of exclamation marks and a ‘flurry’ of numbers and arrows.

‘People should be prepared for phrases like ‘unless necessary’, ‘warm blankets, ‘ ‘take extra care’ and ‘a shovel in the boot’,’ the spokeswoman said.

The warning is expected to spread rapidly from the Met Office in Exeter and by early evening should reach every home in the UK with a television set.

Employment lawyer Adam Simons said that shaking hands with people while on holiday, collecting bouquets of flowers from children, or making one fifteen minute television broadcast a year could not count as serious employment.

‘It’s just not a proper job,’ Mr Simons said. ‘Neither is cutting ribbon, appearing at a garden party, or inspecting troops with your husband walking behind you.’

But it is understood that although the woman has never had a job in her eighty-five years, plans are still going ahead to celebrate her achievement of having done the job she’s never had for sixty years.

In an interview, the former Labour education minister said, ‘Constituents often come up to me and ask how they can prevent politicians from having daft ideas. When one lady suggested the right to smack a government minister might do the trick, I was at first pretty disparaging. But then she gave me a swift wallop just to set the boundaries, and I realised that she was absolutely right.’

Lammy has set out his support for smacking in his new book, ‘Putting the Boot In’. He argues that more physical chastisement directed against Coalition ministers could have prevented the urban riots of summer 2011. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘if people had been able to go up to David Cameron and give him a few smart slaps around the face, they’d have got all that frustration out of their system instead of having to smash windows at their local Comet and steal a couple of laptops.’

Mr Lammy, who admits to smacking his three- and five-year-old sons, said he came round to the ‘smack a minister’ idea when he realized it wouldn’t apply to him. ‘There’s no point smacking backbench opposition MPs,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got another three years left on the naughty step.’

The four bunches of red and greying carnations, wrapped in cellophane and displayed in a green plastic bucket next to a bag of coal at a Murco Garage near Amersham, have been described by Kew Gardens expert Cedric de Jong as ‘an astonishing find, particularly at this time of night.’

Garage proprietor Jim Swales claimed to have no floristic experience, but is gratified that his years of tending garage flowers had at last paid off. ‘He took the lot for a tenner, and said I deserved some kind of medal’, confirmed a chuffed Swales.

‘The art of garage flower arrangement is little understood and only really appreciated when you remember your wife’s birthday at 11.20pm’, explained de Jong. ‘Swales’ unique display should make up for me being so late back from Tring, where I’ve been attending to an unruly bush.’

‘I’d like to see how Pakistan’s spinners would do in ten feet of snow,’ said England captain Andrew Strauss. ‘England’s fantastic victory at the South Pole last week in the match to commemorate the Scott centenary, demonstrated English cricket at its finest – and all at -37 degrees.’

‘If England think they are so bloody good at playing cricket at the South Pole,’ asked Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq, ‘why don’t they challenge Norway to a match?’

The City of London Corporation yesterday won its High Court bid to have Occupy protestors removed from outside St Paul’s after lawyers argued that their presence had ‘thrust the old church onto the world stage, leading to worryingly meaningful debates about capitalism, greed and poverty’.

‘St Paul’s has the legal right to return to its normal state as a tourist attraction,’ lawyers argued, ‘and to the traditional obscurity and pointlessness of which it is rightly proud.’

The High Court concurred.