For all the thousands who lined the procession route on Friday and will queue to file past the coffin today and tomorrow, there will be many more who have no interest at all. About 200 Labour MPs stayed away from Wednesday's session of Parliament, and not just because they didn't want to interrupt their Easter break. Some of them felt, rightly, that it was offensive for the House of Commons to assemble merely to pay sentimental tributes to a former Queen when a horrifying war threatens to engulf the Middle East.The response to the fact that the country is not united in grief has been little short of hysterical. Of course, there is another agenda here, with some newspapers, notably the Daily Mail, using the occasion for a bout of BBC-bashing. The Government has responded nervously, issuing advice to schools that children should be allowed to watch the funeral on TV if they want to do so and closing most of the country's courts for the day.

But that is a long way from a whole-hearted endorsement of a period of national mourning. And it is fascinating to observe the unthinking fury – perhaps I should call it royal rage – of right-wing commentators who have suddenly realised they no longer speak for the whole country. The very people who habitually use political correctness as a cheap jibe against the left are now displaying their own version of it; it is possible to laugh at the shrill demand that newsreaders should have immediately donned black ties, but what lies behind it is an unpleasant outbreak of emotional correctness.Millions of people heard the news last weekend, sympathised with the Queen on the loss of her sister and mother, but continued with their arrangements for the Easter holiday as planned. No doubt hundreds of thousands will line the streets on Tuesday, but many millions more will go to work as usual. About a third of us would like to see the monarchy abolished and all the hot air last week about duty, service and dedication – actually a licence for the privileged few to enjoy wealth, servants and unbridled hedonism – has probably advanced the cause.

But even those who don't have strong feelings have been offended by the sense of entitlement displayed by the people who used to run this country. The death of the Queen Mother has prompted a wide range of feelings, from genuine grief to a complete lack of interest This is as it should be in a modern, pluralistic society. No one can bully us into displaying feelings we don't have, and many of us are carrying on with our lives with complete equanimity.* * * We are currently celebrating, if that is the right word, the 20th anniversary of the Falklands war. Events barely happen these days before they are publicly commemorated, the most recent example being the half-anniversary, if that is the right term, of the 11 September suicide attacks on the US. Whether it is sensible to treat recent events in this way is another matter, for a space alien arriving in Britain this week might easily get the impression that the Falklands conflict was a turning point in the nation's history.I recall it as a short campaign to seize back islands most of us couldn't have identified on a map, a relic of the British Empire that hardly seemed worth the expenditure of so many lives on both sides. Its real significance, I suspect, lies in the way a nasty Latin American junta unintentionally changed the fortunes of a deeply unpopular British prime minister. We got the Falklands back but we also got another eight years of Lady Thatcher, which doesn't strike me as anything to celebrate.* * * Our current prime minister is a great Our Prime Minister is a supporter of small businesses, so I'm sure he is delighted to discover that the management of a Chinese restaurant in Egypt has made him the star of its new advertising campaign.

Posters for the China Garden restaurant in Sharm el-Sheikh show Tony Blair posing with staff, relaxing with his family and "enjoying the view" during his Christmas holiday. I suppose that helping a local company was the least he could do in return for accepting free accommodation and internal flights for himself and his family. The Blairs spent six nights in two private villas at the New Tower Hotel as guests of the Egyptian government, suggesting that the boundaries between the family's public and private life are more fluid than they would like us to think.There are bizarre aspects to this story. One is that MPs are required to reveal instances of hospitality in the House of Commons Register of Members' Interests, as the Prime Minister has just done, so there was never any hope of keeping it quiet.