If you're in many parts of the Commonwealth (although not Scotland), Happy Easter Monday. If you're in many parts of Europe, Happy Vízbevető, Happy Śmigus-dyngus Happy Velikonoční pondělí or Happy Veľkonočný pondelok, according to taste. If you're in the United States, Happy First Day of Just Another Working Week. In the Catholic quarters of Mitteleuropa, this is the day when the boys spank the girls on their legs and buttocks with gaily decorated branches in order to keep them healthy, comely and fecund through the coming year. It's always worked for me.

So, on this post-Easter holiday, I thought you might enjoy a brief glimpse of life aboard the Mark Steyn Cruise courtesy of The Ann & Phelim Scoop with Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer - plus special appearance by Allison Pearson.

Arguing about whether London or Dublin is degenerating the faster is, per Dr Johnson, debating the precedence of a louse and a flea, but the UK is now a land where violent criminals have to be released from the country's overcrowded gaols to make way for Starmer's political prisoners. Trump and Vance were right to call him out in the Oval Office for his assault on free speech, but wrong not to kick him to the carpet and beat the crap out of the bastard. In a land where paedophile rapists walk free, an admirable woman, the survivor of personal tragedy, sits in prison for a tweet - having been sentenced to eight months' confinement for every hour said tweet was visible to the public. Allison discusses the case and other matters below:

If you'd like to read Allison's report on Lucy Connolly's case, you can find it here. Since publication, His Majesty's Prison Service is reported to have further retaliated against Mrs Connolly for the additional crime of speaking to Ms Pearson, and the UK's Ofcom-regulated search-engines seem to be doing their best to suppress the piece. So I withdraw my suggestion above that Trump should just kick the crap out of Starmer in the White House: it may be time for a surgical drone-strike on Number Ten.

~We had a very busy Easter weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's thoughts on a decadent king's de-Christing of Easter and the re-opening of a Paris landmark. We followed that with a movie double-bill: Steyn on The Passion of the Christ, and Rick McGinnis on Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation. Saturday brought a semi-Easter/semi-Shakespeare edition of Mark's weekend music show, as well as his audio adaptation of Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris. For Easter morn, we re-aired Steyn's Easter entry to his anthology of video poetry - T S Eliot and East Coker - after which Mark rounded out the seasonal observances with the only Easter standard in the American songbook.

If you were too busy trying to work out what gender your Easter bunny was assigned at birth, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.