Another good week. Finally feels like things are back on an even keel. Like old times. Tories having a pop at scroungers, interest rates unchanged, even the Hain thing is showing up in our polling as a: “Yeah, I thought this was the kind of thing they all did anyway so, no, won’t change my voting intentions.” Think the Stephen Carter appointment will play well, too. Everyone here is looking forward to having someone new to boss us around. Think Damian in particular will enjoy being told what to do more often.

Re his office: One creative thought we had about keeping him totally in the loop on everything was, could he go in with the photocopier and Natalie the work assistant girl? This, after all, is the real hub of the operation. Everything goes through there. Nothing will get photocopied without his say-so. That’s gatekeeping. What do you think?

Talking tactics, obviously the big story recently has been Hillary and the Diner Cry. We need to have a massive think about this. Clearly we don’t want to look like we’re doing copycat crying. On the other hand, in presentational terms, you do share some issues with the ice maiden, who has a policy review where her heart should be. Think therefore that eventually we should probably definitely go for it.

What we need to decide is when and where we should deploy your weeping. Think we’d all feel more comfortable if we could get your outpouring on the grid and work towards the sexy poll spike that will follow.

One question: would it be wasteful to pull out the blub before the election? Or should we save it for the campaign? Having mulled it over, what we favour is a series of outbursts of different intensities over the next two years. From a sniffle following any forthcoming difficult PMQs to a full-blown, snot-and-red-eye, honking breakdown on or around polling day.

If you’re content to go with this then we should look at some Weeping Arenas. We could go for:

General crying: Set up a visit to an estate and just get a shot of you weeping at the pity of it all? Maybe in long-shot? Black and white?

Targeted crying: Talking to a kid who looks weedy (but not malnourished, don’t want this to rebound!). And cry about him/her?

Career cry: Could do a Clinton and just cry about how much you don’t want to lose the next election. We wouldn’t have predicted that crying about not wanting to lose would be so effective. Guess people often misinterpret self-interest for deep caring (viz: Gazza in 1990).

Job cry: Next time you’re asked if you enjoy being PM, you could start to weep? Like it’s all a massive burden and you can barely take it any more? Might have a positive effect. Might not. Be interesting, if quite dangerous, to see how it played.

Let us know your thoughts.