With the politicians off for Easter, some might imagine Britain has been granted some respite from international self-embarrassment. Well, think again.
We might be enjoying a couple of weeks without our MPs but that image of a rudderless, incompetent country is now being ably maintained by, among other things, a pink yacht, currently parked across one of London's most famous intersections, and the transformation of one of the capital's most important bridges into a yoga mat.
Now entering Day Four, the so-called 'Extinction Rebellion' is settling down nicely as our new national joke.
Between them, a handful of earnest, peaceful and impressively organised eco-warriors have managed to bring the capital to a standstill while the police make inconsequential arrests and the other 99.9 per cent of the population are left asking: who, exactly, is in charge here?
Among yesterday's highlights were one group who shut down the Docklands Light Railway and a quartet who glued themselves to Jeremy Corbyn's house (though they later unglued themselves and said they were very sorry). Today, we are promised widespread chaos on the Tube network.
Who decided that people should be allowed to enjoy an extended camping holiday at central London landmarks?
Who gave permission for a musical stage to be erected indefinitely across both carriageways on Waterloo Bridge, not to mention a skateboarding ramp?
Who decided that people should be allowed to enjoy an extended camping holiday at central London landmarks?
Who agreed that people should be allowed to build plywood lavatory cubicles in the middle of London's Oxford Street? They are not even public ones, it transpires, but only available to those with the key.
Who said that more than 50 bus routes should be blocked with impunity? Who gave permission for a musical stage to be erected indefinitely across both carriageways on Waterloo Bridge, not to mention a skateboarding ramp?
London has seen protests of every stripe over the years, some of them violent. However, they have tended to come and go in the course of a day or two.
This one, which, it must be said, remains peaceful, is now settling in for the long haul. The organisers say that they are preparing for an open-ended stand-off with the police until the Government agrees to their core demands.
Since these include replacing Parliament with a 'citizens' assembly' and the end of capitalism, it might be a very long wait. Yet how much longer is London prepared to have some of its most important thoroughfares sealed off to traffic by a self-appointed cadre of we-know-best activists?
I arrive at Oxford Circus – the crossroads of Britain's two best-known shopping thoroughfares, Oxford Street and Regent's Street – to find a 20-foot bright pink sailing boat on a trailer parked in the middle.
Around 20 recumbent protesters are chained to its trailer. A couple of hundred others stand around it swaying to tunes played by a grey-bearded disc jockey who has set up his sound system in the boat's cockpit.
Who agreed that people should be allowed to build plywood lavatory cubicles in the middle of London's Oxford Street?
He fires off revolutionary slogans in between his Radio 2-style repertoire of hits from the Seventies and Eighties. 'We're here to tell the politicians: F*** you!' he shouts, to a few lame cheers.
It is the middle of the afternoon. It's wholly inappropriate on a road junction next to the world's largest toy shop, Hamley's, as a steady stream of children pass by.
But the police do not bat an eyelid. Most
