Points to ponder:

I'm starting to think the world's going to hell in a handbasket...

A restaurant in Baghdad - a favourite of secrity staff and police - has been blown up by a suicide bomber. Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but havent the security services and police been particularly targetted for some months now? How many have to die before they start not hanging around in one place and offering the perfect target?

****

Tony Blair's facing his "blackest day" according to the press.

I know this'll make me sound like the biggest Blair apologist on the planet, but bollocks!

Every government gets its motions defeated sometimes. That it's taken eight years to come around says more about the bullying tactics enforced by the whips and the size of Labour's majority than any measure of faith in their glorious leader.

Imagine, perhaps, that someone had decided that this was to be a "vote of confidence" and left Blair no option but to step aside. There'd be a leadership election. Effective immediately, Two-Jags would be in charge. Then, after a very perfuncory leadership contest, Gordon Brown would become our unelected leader.

Last time that happened, John Major proceeded to run the country and the Tory party into the ground.

Consider why this was not called as a Vote of Confidence then. Should be obvious, shouldn't it?

Consider now what this defeat means in real terms. It means that a few disgruntled backbenchers sidestepped the whips and the rampaging cabinet and stepped to the other side of the hall. It means that the public and the commons will happily accept a doubling of the period one can be imprisoned without trial without so much as a nod of the head.

I've done it a million times. Ask for more than anyone's likely to give you and let them dictate the maximum you can have. Bartering, in short.

You've all been conned, but nobody's noticed.

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The government is to announce that "alternative" fuel sources should account for 5% of production in the UK within five years. Most of this new fuel will come from the burning of imported cane sugar.

Will this sugar be traded fairly, with the suppliers earning a good, western equivalent wage for their goods? Will the government use this necessary import as a part of their commitment to reduce world poverty?

What makes me think of the word Bollocks again, here?

And I can't help wondering how the sugar will be getting here. They won't by any chance be putting it on cargo planes will they, thus defeating the whole object of trying to create greener fuel production methods?

And in a country on the gulfstream and with thousands of miles of coastline, how come the financial and legislative infrastructure isn't in place to research, develop and implement environmentally friendly power production methods?

I have to go ignore NaNoWriMo so that I can cobble together a pathetic excuse for a Business Plan.

Is there anyone out there?

Hello?