UPDATE: It’s a spoof. Ignore the rest of this blog! Here is Paul Waugh on how the whole media were fooled. Glad I’m not alone. (Although David Cameron and Gordon Brown have both come out to express their condolences this morning.)

FURTHER UPDATE:

Now Miliband has now said that the death is “sad” news. You could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Glad to see that David Miliband has an opinion on the death of Michael Jackson:

“Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael” was the foreign secretary’s Twitter message last night.

Perhaps I was wrong to suggest last year that Miliband didn’t have the common touch.

In terms of New Labour populism, however, surely no one can ever beat Tony Blair’s attempts to get Deirdre from Coronation Street (the soap opera) out of “jail”.

A jubilant taxpayer approaches Sir Rodrick Whitehall after hearing that Gordon Brown has abandoned plans to increase the public contribution to the MPs’ pension pot.

Tim Taxpayer: Hoorah! At last. They’ve seen sense. Even venal MPs realise the public wouldn’t accept stumping up more cash to feather the Westminster pension scheme. We’re making progress!

Sir Roderick Whitehall: I’m pleased you think so.

TT: So how much will this save?

RW: Well. It depends what you mean by “save”.

TT: Do we put in less money into the MPs’ pension pot?

RW: The contribution will be capped.

TT: So now the MPs will have to either contribute more from their salaries or make the scheme less generous. I can already hear the pips squeaking! If they don’t do that the scheme’s deficit would balloon and they’d be unable to fund those lavish retirement benefits. Poor MPs. Isn’t life hard.

RW: Indeed. But this is awfully complex. MPs have said they will look at ways of making up for the cap in the taxpayer contribution. But of course it will take some time to decide how to proceed.

TT: Well, that’s fine by me. It’s their scheme. They can gamble with their futures and starve the pension pot if they want to. Frankly I hope scheme collapses under the weight of their greed.

RW: Ah, well, that would be impossible of course.

TT: What do you mean?

RW: The scheme is guaranteed.

TT: What?

RW: Yes the scheme is guaranteed by the taxpayer. Even if it had no money left in the pot and a deficit the size of…well, a significant overexposure, retired MPs would still be paid from public funds.

TT: So what difference does reducing the taxpayer contribution make?

RW: That is a good question. I like to see it as a sign of intent. And, of course, the MPs would have had a dashed difficult vote today if they had kept the same motion.

TT: Hang on a minute. You mean they expect me to be pleased by the “sacrifice” of not making us pay more money into their scheme? It means nothing! We’re still on the hook for the whole lot.

RW: No need to be so cynical about it. This way is far less painful.

When it comes to bookshelves, I’m unashamedly nosy. So as Ed Balls gave a briefing on Neet statistics last week, I concentrated on jotting down the books he kept in his office. The results were interesting enough for us to launch an occasional series — “on the bookshelf” — devoted to snooping into politician’s libraries.

Balls is unlikely to be impressed at being our first victim. But he shouldn’t worry. His office collection, for the most part, stands to his credit. There are a couple of odd choices (Gerald Ronson’s autobigraphy?). But the quality is generally high (particularly for an office) and there are no embarrassing texts on “Great Chancellors”. Indeed, I probably regard Balls more highly after having taken a peek into his library. See what you think.

There is an obligatory Churchill section: Gilbert’s Churchill a Life and Churchill Speaks. A smartly bound three volume work on John F Kennedy takes up the top shelf, but I couldn’t make out the author. No sign of Robert Caro’s masterpiece on LBJ (at home?).

There’s lots of history: Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley – a breathtaking survey of the 1930s, the “low dishonest decade”. Also spotted Democracy in Europe by Larry Sidentop.

Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy makes an appearance. This is on my bookshelf too — a compelling take on statesmanship from Metternich to Truman to, uh, Kissinger.

The American pollsters take up space. Stan Greenberg a veteran pollster and hired gun for the Labour party gallops though his political battles in Dispatches from the War Room. Placed nearby is Mark Penn’s Microtrends: all you need to know about “mom-fluentials” and “office park dads”. Probably one of the best guides available for finding the endangered species of “Labour loyalists”.

What’s the strangest book he owns? It has to be Gerald Ronson’s autobiography Leading from the Front. The former jailbird and property tycoon explains how “he fought his way to the top of the business ladder, lost everything twice, then clawed his way back up again”. Just what an education secretary needs.

There is something resembling an SDP section. It includes biography of Hugh Gaitskell, the original Labour moderniser and mentor to the SDP, and Edmund Dell’s A Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain.

On policy? Over to You, Mr Brown — Anthony Giddens tells us “how Labour can win again”. (He suggests a thoroughly uninspiring campaign slogan of “Safer with Labour”.) Also Instruction to Deliver, Michael Barber’s shrewd take on public service reform.

There was one mystery: a book called “The New Capitalism”. No luck finding it on Amazon. But wait. Could it be Robert Peston’s latest book, which is released in 2010? Surely Balls wasn’t given a sneak peek?

Don’t forget the joys of food, God, art and a crisply written thriller. Balls owns a cookery book called “Grow, Cook, Eat”, the Tanakh, the Big Book of Art, and Tom Bradby’s Blood Money.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you a bit about our bookshelf in the FT Commons office. I’m afraid to say it is stacked to the gills with duds. Highlights include a Turkish translation of Olli Rehn’s book on enlargement, Hilary Clinton’s It takes a Village, and Jimmy Carter’s attempt at a novel: The Hornet’s Nest.)

McBride is a listed company which acts as a “supplier of own-brand products to supermarkets”. Fascinating.

But what is curious is that its share price fell sharply in mid-April just as the fortunes of Westminster’s Damian McBride slumped. (He quit on April 11). A weird co-incidence?

Anyway, the share price of McBride the company seems to be on the up; does this herald the return of McBride the spin doctor (as the Tories seem to think)?

Before lawyers start picking up the phone: No, Damian McBride has nothing to do with McBride the company. I hope that’s clear.

Anyone hoping that John Bercow would fall flat in his first session of prime minister’s questions (Tory MPs, for example) would have been disappointed.

He didn’t hesitate to put down unruly MPs. Or warn them that the public didn’t like rowdy behaviour: “There is simply far too much noise. The public doesn’t like it and neither do I.”

At one point he silenced Tory MP Michael Fabricant: “Mr Fabricant, you must calm yourself; it’s not good for your health.”

After the session Bercow set out his stall, ordering ministers to make more snappy statements and so on. He said he was unhappy with policy statements being released to the media before the House of Commons.

This will be a key test of his powers – and whether the office of Speaker is more toothless than some presume. For the last decade it has been common practice for hacks to get wind of policy changes before the Commons (and no I’m not complaining). Will Bercow really prevent this? And if so, how?

UPDATE

If you didn’t see it, here is the less agreeable side of Bercow, as seen in an interview with ITN’s Tom Bradby.