PERHAPS it’s the after-effects of the 13-and-a-half-hour shift when covering the dramatic denouement of the European Referendum.

Or maybe it’s the twin sonic booms of the currency falling off a cliff and the stock market going bungee jumping.

What else could explain the rank stupidity of the bemusingly popular parliamentary petition to re-run the whole EU question.

Like I acknowledged last week in these very pages, I’ve been firmly in the Remain camp, albeit reluctantly and without much fervour.

However eminently punchable Michael Gove might be, it was a democratic vote, with a turnout most General Elections would kill for, so to speak.

So throwing a sulk and demanding it be overturned because the Brexiteers are too old or too poor/dumb/racist appears to Podium to be the worst kind of sneering lefty condescension.

If all of us earnest Remainers were ever-so-clever then why could we not win over the masses with our shiny rhetoric, from the heady heights of the moral high ground?

(Incidentally where was this new wave of right-thinking browbeaters when that other large vote took place last year? You know, the one which would have swerved the need for an in-out EU vote? The Tories won 36.9 per cent of a 66.1 per cent turnout so tens of thousands of people should be looking at their feet right now.) Those angst-ridden petitioners might want to be very wary of giving Parliamentarians carte blanche to begin ignoring votes, a dangerous game in the extreme.

Online petitions to Parliament are perfect for our instant gratification digital world but it’s surely grown-up debate time now.

If your impassioned heart so desires, concentrate on ways of ensuring another Old Etonian doesn’t seize the reins of power.

Or if Blowhard Boris gets in, give him hell. Just don’t set up a whiny petition while you’re doing it.

  •  Not since a brief flirtation with their first album has anything involving Coldplay registered on your correspondent’s radar.

This was cemented by their too-clever-by-half sophomore effort. But that’s hardly the point after Glastonbury.

For all Chris Martin might resemble the aural equivalent of beige, his gesture in covering the Viola Beach single Boys That Sing, simply oozes class by the bucketload.

And to give up time backstage to the boys’ families, before urging possibly the largest musical audience in the UK to restore their effort to the charts might even cause people to forget he was involved in bringing ‘conscious uncoupling’ into the public lexicon.

If last month’s Style Rocks festival showed anything, Warrington is quite well blessed with sonic talent, so hopefully it won’t be too long before a deserving outfit is treading the same path to Wiltshire.

  •  One old Guardian story flickered back into Podium’s consciousness in the wee small hours the other night, when insomnia once again proved the enemy of sanity.

Just four councillors turned up at the civic prayer service for incoming mayor Cllr Faisal Rashid. And only 11 attended a follow-up gathering.

And this offended the sensibilities of Cllr Sheila Woodyatt, who attended along with Cllrs Kath Buckley, Bob Barr and Rebecca Knowles.

Because even though you may not agree with Sheila’s politics, she still has that rare commodity among WBC devotees. A little bit of class.

It’s all very well preaching the value of community cohesion but then failing to follow up on the sentiment in what should be a setpiece event for the borough.

There’s not many times I’m ashamed of my home town but this episode gives me pause for thought.