You never know in which direction Harriett Harman is going to pounce at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Take today. Veteran commentators, such as John Pienaar, prior to the session, were unable to predict the two topics she eventually alighted on. She’s got her own patented self-loading googly device which fires her off in any direction, leaving bystanders gasping.

Today she even did that thing one would never predict in the House of Commons. She started with a topic which brought only warm, mushy agreement with the Prime Minister – on domestic violence and the need to retain short sentences in those cases. She did manage a dig at the Lib Dems on this – that their promise isn’t going to be carried forward in this area. If you say so Harriett. Eh?

We then went down a very entertaining avenue involving: Ronnie Scotts, David Cameron’s mother, Newbury magistrates’ court, Greenham Common protesters, speculation as to whether Harriet Harperson might have been among the CND protesters dealt with by Cameron’s mother, “Listen with mother”, the fact that Ken Clarke became a MP before the Chancellor of the Exchequer was born, etc etc.

All lovely stuff. Great. Soft and gooey. Is this really what people want at PMQs when they complain about raucous exchanges? Just soft, jokey mush with no real bite?

Anyway, Harman made a good point about front-line services and the fact that Cameron would not deny that police numbers might go down. This is getting tedious. As Cameron clearly and astutely pointed out, Labour went into the election promising 5% cuts a year – this government will be cutting 6% a year. And yet, Labour have not come up with a single item they would have cut, and every item they feel like criticising just happens, by sheer coinkiy-dinky, to be in the margin between 5% and 6%. Fascinating. But tedious.

Again, Harman brought the Lib Dems into the mix. We promised 3,000 more officers on the beat but it doesn’t seem to be happening.

Harman listed a whole raft of measures which the government is taking which she said would send crime soaring to hitherto unscaled Himalayan heights. Cameron harked back to the last Labour government and listed all the crime stats that got worse under them. That takes real skill, that – choosing the right stats to fit your case while carefully ignoring whole shedloads which don’t support it. A highly paid special advisor must have been in the Commons’ library for weeks beavering away on that.

Cameron was just getting into his stride and about to mention Gordon Brown’s spin-doctor’s book when the Speaker stopped him for being out of order. Well done Speaky!

Here is a miscellany of things we learnt, or which happened, during this PMQs session:

• Somaliland (as opposed to Somalia) is a haven of democracy and has been for 20 years. You learn something new everyday.
• Dundee is a hot spot of the computer games manufacturing industry
• David Cameron gets earwigged by pilots whenever he goes onto a Hercules plane, because of the proposed move of the Hercules’ base from Lyneham to Brize Norton.
• LibDem Annette Brooke asked a question about park home owners.
• LibDem Dan Rogerson asked about the problem of people voting in two places at the same election.
• Ailton Campos was, tragically, the thirteenth teenager to be stabbed to death in London this year.
• Labour like mentioning the words “Sheffield Forgemasters”. To be fair to David Cameron, at last he seems to have a form of words ready to counter this taunt. He called SF an excellent company but questioned that it is an appropriate use of public funds to give money to a private company which could raise the same cash by diluting its shareholding. Good point. At last.
• Argentina is now lecturing us on deficit management. Apparently.
• Eric Pickles has been very busy.