George Bush leads us into the world of Kafka.

Confirms my view that only an idiot would ever use electronic voting machines of any sort - they are just too vunerable to attack.Call me a luddite but I like marking a cross on a ballot paper with a pencil like we do over here.

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Even though I didn't vote for Labour (remember we don't vote for the Prime Minister directly) the sad truth at the last election was that the opposition parties were still unelectable. No matter what people thought of Iraq, sleeze, the suppression of civil liberties and so on the alternatives were perceived to be worse.The Tories might have rebuilt themselves enough by the time of the next election. The Liberal Democrats will still be completely unelectable.

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No offense taken since I didn't say anything to suggest it did^[1].I merely pointed out my opinion that no matter what happened in Iraq New Labour was going to win the last General Election, just the same as no matter how badly Margaret Thatcher screwed up she essentially couldn't lose her second and third General Elections because Labour was an unelectable mess.Just as an aside: Actually no.This has been much in the news this last week or so with the never-ending 'when will Tony step down for Gordon' story. The Tories have a straightforward mechanism for replacing a leader pretty much any time - which is how Mrs. T bit the dust. The Labour Party rules, on the other hand, make it more or less impossible for the Party to jetison a leader midstream.^[1]Or at least I didn't mean to. Apologies if my language wasn't precise enough.

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You're joking right?The US dictates policies to the point of toppling governments it doesn't like.There is also the following comment from the President of Pakistan which will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday: "Do what we want or we bomb you back to the Stone Age" isn't dicating the policies of another nation?Having said that I recognise Tony Blair didn't need any persuading to join Bush. It has been reported here that Bush gave Blair the chance to back out of the Iraq invasion if he thought it could lead to him losing power in the UK but Blair declined the offer.

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And cooking. And cleaning. Oh and don't forget the laundry...The scariest thing is that in the last couple of years I've seen interviews on TV over here with groups who actually do advocate this. Mostly they were Christian groups in the US, although there were a couple of Islamic groups as well.

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