If Manchester City think they've got problems with Joey Barton wanting out, they're in nothing like the trouble BBC Sport might be.

The report about Barton wanting to leave on the BBC Sport website reads as follows:

[Stuart] Pearce stood by Barton after the player was sent home from City's pre-season tour of Thailand in July 2005 for an altercation with a 15-year-old Everton fan.

And the manager admitted he was disappointed with Barton's transfer request.

"I wouldn't have done what Joey did after the club stood by him in the summer," said Pearce.

[source: BBC Sport - 'Man City reject Boro's Barton bid']

But at the top of the page there's a picture of Barton, and underneath that there's a quote. It reads: "I wouldn't have done what Joey did after the club stood by him in the summer." That's a quote from Pearce as shown above, of course. Alas, someone has captioned it as being by 'Barton's agent Willie McKay'.

Can you imagine the horror when Joey Barton's agent realises the BBC have written a caption that apparently shows him openly disagreeing with his client about putting in a transfer request? It would not be a pleasant moment.

Below, is the text of a google-talk conversation between Ollie and I earlier. I was asking him why he needed to speak to someone from the London Tourist Board. I know the contents do highlight one of my blond/85k? moments, but I need to provide you all with some laughter (before Ollie does):

Amy: Why are you phoning them?
Ollie: madame tussauds
closing the planetarium
Amy: right. really?
Ollie: replacing it with the "auditorium" which will show crappy celeb things
Amy: urgh.
Amy: fish are much better
Ollie: no more universe
Amy: oh sh*t
sh*tty sh*t
Ollie: lol!
L O F**KING L
Ollie: oh you're never going to hear the end of that one
Amy: i know
Ollie: it's got PLANET in the bl**dy name!
oh dear me
Amy: shut up

How was I meant to know a planetarium wasn't an aquarium?

I've never been one to particularly respect queues at bus stops.

I don't know why this should be. At train stations, airports or in shops, I'm as steadfastly earnest and eagle-eyed in my observation of a queue as any other Brit. If there's a queue, join it. Do not dare attempt to skirt around the queue or in any way disrupt the functioning of the queue. The queue is sacred. Do not disturb it.

But this doesn't hold true for bus stops. Maybe it's because they are, by their very nature, quite open plan and approachable from all angles - a central point around which the queue of prospective passengers may circulate like a miniature solar system. Without a linear arrangement in place, you can lurk anywhere within ten yards of the bus stop itself and consider yourself to be waiting for a bus. I'll happily abandon any pretense to queuing in this situation,and, the moment a bus finally hoves into view, I'll simply make a dash for it and cannily position myself where I expect the doors to finish up.

This is a potential flashpoint when surrounded by twenty or thirty other people during the morning rush hour. You might expect it to be less immediately problematic when accompanied by one other person at 10:30pm on a chilly Monday night. Not so.

Imagine, if you will, a version of Bill Murray that has been given a London accent and then stomped on by a dinosaur a few times, so that he's quite a few inches shorter than Mr Murray himself. That's pretty much an accurate representation of the other passenger waiting at the bus stop outside Streatham Common station this evening. After five minutes, the little 'Countdown' system - which purports to tell you how long it'll be til the next bus turns up, but is really nigh on worthless - said a number 60 was on the way. I wandered out from underneath the Countdown display and positioned myself next to the bus stop sign, ready to flag the bus down.

A voice behind me piped up:
"Are you waiting for this bus?"

I turned around to find Squashed Murray looking at me. I looked over my shoulder in case he meant the bus was actually coming and I was going to miss it, but it wasn't there.

"Er, yes," I replied, a little unsure.

"Good," he said. I was glad that this appeared to satisfy him, and as he looked back down at his paper I allowed my gaze to wander off into the distance. It was dragged back to him about five seconds later:

"Only the thing is," he added, dropping an octave and with a truly harrowing look in his eye, "the queue starts behind me."

He expelled these last two words in such a menacing growl that I practically ejected the fajitas I'd consumed only hours earlier. But you know me, I'm no doormat. I waited for about a second, deliberating how to handle what was becoming an explosive situation, with no other witnesses along the road and darkness settled in for the night. His gaze did not shift from mine. I steeled myself.

"In that case," I said, slowly and deliberately, making myself big and pacing off the five or so steps towards him, until I stood with my not entirely slight frame towering over his lesser torso. "In that case," I repeated, his eyes boring into mine, our horns locked in the battle to become the alpha male of public transportation, "I shall stand behind you." And I did.

See, I knew OJ had been quiet for too long. And then slowly but surely, a few more Dayorama posts emerged from him. Coupled with Amy's usual consistency, I was horrified to find the sea of my green-tinged posts, to which I had become accustomed, turning to mauve and sky blue. But our only other indication of where he'd been all this time was the mention, in one post, of the Facebook.

For those not in the know, it's a community website where you can put a little profile up and add all of your old friends from uni to a little list on that profile. You can also create groups.

And now I know that the true master has returned to form. OJ has created an entire group dedicated to Caecilius, star of basic Latin textbooks and a source of much intrigue when we had to learn Latin at school. As I recall, Caecilius had the minor misfortune of living in Pompeii around about the time of that rather large eruption, but in the months running up to it we grew to know and love his whole family. Most of whom were then wiped out.

Still, it brought back a cherished childhood memory, and now any Facebook member from Oxford can join in the fun. As OJ writes on the group page: 'Caecilius est in horto. Caecilius in horto sedet. And don't you forget it, buddy.'

I don't see the point of the Post Office launching their own directory enquiries service. Surely after all the advertising when directory enquiries changed to 118 118 or whatever, everyone chose to remember one number and has ever since used it? Who is going to change to use this one? Is being slightly cheaper really going to affect the average customer who just wants to know one number? I think not. I just don't see the point. The market is already saturated, surely?

Having followed the fortunes of the Thames Whale (yes, it requires capitals, on a par with royalty as it appears to be) all last week, those in the know and with nothing to fill their lives are now following the progress of the watering can used during its failed rescue. The can's up for sale on eBay and, as reported earlier in the week, was at one point fetching well into six figures.

Alas, it seems the people bidding that much may - gasp - not have been entirely serious. The auction has been restarted and the current price is now far closer to, though not yet, a sensible figure: £325 at the time of writing. Only pre-approved bidders may now get involved with the sale. This may not be the first whale-related case of people artificially inflating something far beyond what was right and proper. I might add that a Valentine's cruise for two down the Thames is currently selling for only just over half the watering can's top bid, to put even that drastically reduced figure into a little context.

Now, turning to some more non-entity fixation, which after Chantelle won Celebrity Big Brother must be all the rage. Whisper it quietly, but I'm told a former editor of mine - from the days when I worked on music websites - has been unceremoniously dumped out of the Kaiser Chiefs' forthcoming book. The individual concerned is closely involved with the band and has been since their very inception, as well as running several music websites and writing for others. I resigned from my post at the websites concerned last autumn, ostensibly owing to family illness but in reality because I found him incompetent and disorganised in the extreme. With, in my opinion, all the communication skills the whale now possesses.

This may have come to the attention of the Kaiser Chiefs' management, for whom he does plenty of work. He was to have been mentioned a few times in the Chiefs' book, but I'm told management have now taken the liberty of going through it and removing all references. Draw your own conclusions - Dayorama, continuing its role as your first port of call for useless Kaiser Chiefs information.

Finally, a reminder that my own band are playing in Oxford on Wednesday night at The Wheatsheaf pub. Email me for more information, or just turn up on the night if you know where you're going. Bring plenty of friends.

Just in case I forget, somewhere between procrastination, the Facebook and a regular diet of DVDs by post, I sometimes have to read books with big words in them. In this case, it's a magazine - this month's Prospect, but there were a couple of pieces that if you're interested, you may wish to take a look at.

First is an essay by William Davies on 'Digital Exuberence'. In it, he takes into account the future of a connected Britain, and the social implications thereof. Where does the "always on" society actually go? Take a read - the full article is online. Second, there's a piece by Robert Hazell, supremo of UCL's Constitution Unit, who reviews constitutional changes since 1997. For those of us with more than a passing interest in the area, but no formal training, this is just the kind of thing I've been waiting for. It's also online, thought it costs. Still, I recommend it!

Now back to cooking and less mentally taxing tasks. (That's not to say that cooking isn't a tought mental activity. I'm know it is after a certain level, but I fear my student culinary skills are yet to reach such heights.)

Last night I went to see the musical of the The Producers. The musical, by Mel Brooks, is the stage version of the film of the same name. The plot centres around a failing Broadway producer called Max Bialystock. Bailystock's career is failing and reviews of his latest plays are disastrous. However, his accountant comes to his rescue and suggests that putting on a "failed" Broadway play is actually the way to success. The pair then set out robbing - or more appropriately, shagging - old ladies of money, finding a play which will be a guaranteed flop, and whilst enlisting the campest producer around and worst cast, they stage the play of "Springtime For Hitler". Obviously, this is a raging success, and the pair end up losing money... etc etc.

It is a wonderfully funny, laugh-a-minute production. That is, if you think jokes about sex, Hitler and gays are funny. It is in the best possible taste though. I would recommend people going to see it.

Anyway, as with many plays/musicals etc, often the most entertaining thing about the evening can be your fellow audience. To start with, the Drury Lane theatre is an incredibly strange venue. It's rather how I imagine an old Blackpool hotel to look inside. The artwork is obscure, to the point that I don't really know how to describe it, and you do get the feeling that it has never really worked out what it wants to be. Needless to say, this adds to its charm. So, back to the audience. There are just three episodes worthy of note. First, the couple sitting on my right. Throughout the first half, the lady sat and stared, rather harshly. She barely chuckled and instead complained she couldn't see. It didn't bother me, I just felt sorry for her long-suffering husband/partner. After the interval however, she was a completely changed person. She passed comment, giggled raucously and even whooped when the play finished. Such a transformation. There was definitely something in her gin! Second, was the German couple sitting on our left. All publicity for The Producers makes it clear that there are going to be a number of jokes levelled at Hitler and/or Germany. This couple sat in deadpan silence. After the Hitler-esque saluting pigeons in the first half, clearly they had seen enough and did not return for the second half! Finally, the couple at the end of the row. General opinion is that this couple were probably not Londoners. They'd come down for the day, wanted to have a "London" experience and were out at the theatre. Consequently they too were rather sloshed. The female (mid-thirties?) found the musical hilarious and her giggling could be heard throughout. It was rather amusing, and of course the volume and intensity of this laughter rose an extra layer after the alcohol-fuelled interval. When it came to leave the theatre it took quite a while for them to get themselves together and actually move. This wouldn’t usually be a problem… but they were at the end of the row. The man turned to the person I was with and said, "Sorry, we're having problems - drunk a little bit... ha ha". My companion simply smiled and told him that all he had to do was "put one foot in front of the other" and all would be OK. At this, the man turned around, grinned and shook his hand. Bizarre. They didn't manage to move any quicker though, so we turned the other way and made our escape out of another exit. It does indeed take all sorts. But, none of the audience were annoying - just everyone was simply having a very good time! Lots of fun.

P.S. It snowed (see, snow reference again) in Covent Garden last night. Lots of flakes.

Also of note today is the first Lib Dem Leadership Hustings... being held in the Novotel in Plymouth. Take from that what you will. That rubbery taste in your mouth isn't going to be chicken, fellas.

Surely it should be MOH? Actually, it sounds like an excellent idea - pretty simple, and with beneficial results all round. Proof that the Government isn't always totally loopy. Although today's Matt (you'll have to click on the link on the Telegraph site) is probably not too far from the truth.

A few days ago, Amy and I had a discussion about the future of squirrels both red and grey. The debate focused on whether it was right or not to exterminate grey squirrels to protect red ones - the policy our government is currently pursuing. The qualities the red squirrel possesses in order to enjoy this preferential treatment are: some people think they look nicer, they're smaller and less aggressive, and they die of diseases that don't affect the greys. And they were here first, of course, but have since had a good couple of centuries sharing the forest.

Into this argument I'd like to introduce Barbara Toner, writing in The Guardian today and clearly inhaling toner at the same time:

Is this fair? I don't love the grey squirrel. Some days I hate it. The gang that lives in our garden digs up our lawn and plants. Were I a killing woman, I might get a gun to them. But were I a killing woman and were the squirrels red, I'd take them out too. Discriminating on the grounds of colour has never seemed right. But is this relevant? You could argue, no. The grey squirrel not only threatens the future of the red, it also threatens the future of the dormouse and woodland birds. But I am arguing yes because it's my guess that if the red squirrel is allowed to flourish in the manner of the grey, it will behave in exactly the same way and then who's going to be looking silly?

[source: The Guardian - 'Pest control: grey squirrels and BB stars']

Read the full article to see why I think the dear lady must have been on something with a bit of a kick to it (Big Brother and bronze are all involved). But she makes a point I largely agree with, in that it is singularly not the grey squirrels' fault that we and the red squirrels have a problem with them. Cunning though they may look, I'm prepared to bet that their forebears did not put in a request to be transferred from North America to the UK all those decades ago. Their descendants living in our trees today would proibably happily get along with a red squirrel if they ever saw one, which chances are they never have. It's not their fault that red squirrels drop down dead the moment they inhale the same air as a grey squirrel - that's a design fault in red squirrels. And in my personal opinion it's a little rich for politicians and park-keepers, many of whom must look truly hideous to the squirrels, to start discriminating on the grounds that red squirrels scrub up a little better for the cameras.

Imagine - and I fear I may have recently trod this ground on Dayorama, but in any case back we go - imagine, if you will, an alien race descending on earth. They decide that it's horrific, all these humans polluting the place and generally spending the last few millennia making life a misery for the rest of the planet's inhabitants. And they all look ugly anyway. The only course of action is to cull the humans. When they come a-knocking on my door, I'm going to be terribly aggrieved that the aliens want me to die on those grounds. None of that is remotely my fault. True, I'm associated by species with some pretty terrible individuals and organisations, but making me answerable for that is extraordinarily unfair. Grey squirrels would no doubt put forth the same argument. Having probably never so much as seen a red squirrel in their lives, how can we turn up on their doorstep and obliterate the lot for the sake of a nigh-on identical rodent in a different shade of fur? Bizarre.

I've had a few replies to my request for your views on the UK energy review, mentioned here - nuclear is the clear winner. That's not necessarily a conclusion with which I agree, because I haven't looked properly at the facts yet and spoken to all the people with the right knowledge, and I'm reserving judgement until I've done that.

For now all I'd say is that nuclear waste needs to be guarded for millennia, and decommissioned nuclear plants can only be sealed off and left to slowly throb with radiation until the distant future. The relatively short lifespan of each nuclear plant means we'd be looking at a coastline pockmarked with dead and oh-so-slowly decaying nuclear tombstones for a long time to come if we embark on an expansion programme. In a similar vein, nuclear has plenty of hidden costs, not least those same waste disposal and decommissioning expenses, coupled with the outlay constructing the things in the first place. Nuclear is not at all cheap to introduce or withdraw. It takes 10 to 15 years to build a plant, from which you get a maximum of 60 to 70 years in active life. If we launch a new programme of nuclear expansion now (bearing in mind if we don't, there'll only be one plant left in operation by 2023) then by the end of the century there'll be the 20 or so current plants all lying defunct and irradiated, plus X many others dotted around, all rotting away. That's not a long-term vision for the UK by any means.

And I needn't mention the terrorism concern - Finland, which is building the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years, only gave it the go-ahead on the understanding that Finland doesn't have that same terrorist threat. Nuclear plants in the UK have some of the finest security going and take every precaution they can, in fact they're remarkably safe places to be by all accounts, but compared to the renewable options there's always that nagging, spooky sensation that something sinister's ready to break out of a nuclear installation.

The arguments against nuclear's rivals, of course, are as many and varied, ranging from the similar concerns affecting wind power (vast expense, unsightly, NIMBYism rife) to the technological advances we need to properly harness solar or nuclear fusion, to the growing instability of the fossil fuel supply (witness Russia/Ukraine). So don't understand me to be fundamentally opposed to nuclear power, I'm simply putting what I think are the most convincing reasons not to make that choice. The one thing that's already clear to me is that successive British governments have dilly-dallied on this for long enough - a choice needs to be made in the immediate aftermath of this review, or we could miss the boat entirely and plunge ourselves into a real energy crisis.

Over the course of building a short radio feature looking into the energy review, I'm hoping to talk to at least some of the following (in alphabetical order):

Dr Kevin Anderson Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research & University of Manchester Author of a clever piece on the energy debate published by the BBC, in which he argued that the wrong questions were being asked, and that we should concentrate more on reshaping our energy demands than the supply.

Alan Duncan Shadow Secretary for Trade and Industry
With David Cameron keen to present a new, green Conservative party to the voting public, how torn are the Tories between their traditional foothold as an economic powerhouse and their new responsibility to place the climate and environment near the top of the agenda?

Alan Johnson Secretary for Trade and Industry
The man ultimately responsible for the energy review as the head of the relevant department, and the man who initially announced it. What's he expecting from the review and how quickly does he think his government will be able to act on its recommendations?

Sir Digby Jones Director-General, CBI
The views of British business are central to the energy decisions our government takes. In Sir Digby's own words, 'the decision on nuclear power has been allowed to drift too long'.

Chris Llewellyn Smith Director, UKAEA Fusion Research Programme
ITER, the next-generation experimental fusion reactor, was scheduled to begin construction in March this year. This man's at the forefront of fusion research and can explain how likely it is that we'll be able to harness fusion as a power source, and whether it'll be available in time to plug the UK energy gap.

Michael Meacher Environment Minister 1997-2003
Challenged Tony Blair over the assertion that Britain needed more nuclear power stations, arguing that 'Britain needs nuclear like a hole in the head'. Outspoken and can speak with experience of the decision-making process.

Elliot Morley Climate Minister
The energy review decision's intimately tied up with government climate change policy. Problem is, Elliot Morley's part of Defra, but it's other departments like the DTI, DFT and Treasury that make decisions on levels of emissions etc, so there's the age-old dilemma of the right hand not knowing what the left hand's doing.

Sir Robert Smith Lib Dem Energy Spokesman
With other Liberal Democrats expending more than enough energy in the company of rent boys or fighting it out for the leadership, what would they do in Labour's place now?

Malcolm Wicks Leader, Energy Review
The minister who matters, the man leading the review itself and reporting back to Alan Johnson. What difficulties has the review encountered; how tough, how clear-cut, are the choices laid before the government likely to be? Is it now or never for the maintenance of a robust UK energy policy?

I can't imagine I'll get to speak to all these people, and I'll no doubt find plenty of others with valid opinions and new insights, but that's an idea of the contributors I'd like to have. When all is done and dusted by the middle of March, I'll present the finished report on Dayorama as ever.

Do you know what? It's snowing. And do you know what that means? I can go on and on about every little snowflake again. And annoy Ollie, of course. Wonderful!

... isn't it amazing to watch them fluttering around, falling out of the sky. They dance... like, well... like... snowflakes (!) just looking for somwhere to settle and rest their pretty little bottoms...

OK, OK. I'll stop now. I'll return to the window and watch the beautiful little white blobs descending from the heavens...

I've had lunch, coffee and dinner with three different sets of people today. What was one of the main topics of conversation? The Lib Dems? Why, because they are all suddenly saying they are having relationships with rent boys or gays, or they are alcoholics. I applaud the openess. But, it's just slightly so very un-English!

It was at around midday, when I was just coming on shift as a newsreader during one of our guns-blazing LCC training days, that I said to our editor it was rapidly becoming 'Galloway Day'. The boy George had greeted me when I woke that morning, sat next to Saddam's son Uday and sharing a little light banter, before winning his legal battle against The Telegraph later that morning. By the early afternoon the focus had switched to that evening's antics on Big Brother, and throughout our afternoon bulletins it was impossible to escape Galloway stories left, right and centre.

So it's heartening that I wasn't alone in my view. The Guardian also called today 'Galloway Day' on their News Blog. At 5pm I got to speak to George's agent live on our drivetime show, and was extremely disappointed to have to stick to the questions I'd been given on my script, on pain of her hanging up the phone if I strayed. This was particularly difficult when I asked her if George's short stay in the house had been A Good Thing, to which she replied that it had given him a 'chance to show he is a human being'. I sorely, sorely wanted to interrupt to the effect that George had spent more time showing himself to be a pussycat with milk on his wikkle whiskers. Alas, I was denied. Still, it was an oddly enjoyable feeling to be chatting to Mr Galloway's agent on first name terms (hers being Wendy) on such a busy day for the man.

Thanks to OJ for pointing out Andrew Marr's comments on the LCC lecture - I was disappointed that he didn't go into as much detail as I have might have hoped in the article, and gave rather an odd impression that seemed almost contrary to the one I got at the time. I suspect he may have been cornered by overeager print journalists at the drinks session following the lecture, where they'd have badgered him into admitting, under duress, that print had a future. I stick by my assertion that the picture he painted of print was enough to put anyone off ever going into it.

Finally, a spoof BBC News Online article in the exact spirit with which I approach the news story in question:

If you read it closely, you'll see the protagonist(s) had my sense of humour, and Amy's sense of spelling and grammar.

My Orange contract ends next month so I renewed it last week and chose my upgrade phone. A Nokia 6680. I just wanted a phone. You know, nothing fancy. Something to phone and text from. Well, my phone arrived this morning and I am just about getting to grips with it. It's always slightly worrying when the phone comes with three instruction manuals and a CD! It's a rather large phone and it appears to sing, dance, access the internet (3G), have two cameras on it, a radio thing and thousands of other things. Having said that, it is proving easy to use... well, despite a couple of dodgy text messages to my Mum to begin with. And the best thing? I've had Byran Adams Summer of 69 for two years on my old phone... so I couldn't part from it. Luckily I have managed to download the polyphonic version. Bryan's on my phone, and all's right with the world!

It's not that I don't want to go to my research seminar. It's just that internet quizes are often enlightening. Apparently.

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Well, perhaps not. But in his notebook in today's Telegraph, quasi-official Dayorama hero Andrew Marr gives his point of view of the lecture he delivered on Monday to Ollie and his associated radio minions. There's a couple of interesting things here. Ollie claims that Marr was both encouraging trainees to learn the skills of print journalism while also admitting that the newspaper industry was dying out. In his column, Marr notes only that:

The students, meanwhile, were deeply offended at any suggestion in my talk that papers were declining. Lunchtime O'Booze, your day may return.

Hmm. I'll side with Ollie on this; I can't honestly believe that a younger generation trainees cannot spot that new media journalism is the way forward. The papers may not die - certainly not while the great media conglomerates continue to dominate the business overall - but they are hardly the bastion of primary information anymore.

The second interesting part is Marr's view on the associated decline of the Fleet Street community, due to the wonders of technology, resutling in "hundreds of hacks marooned at their kitchen tables, wanly poking around in the fridge before e-mailing the office." Too true, but Fleet Street is hardly alone in this. Might it mean the end of mavericks such as Michael Wharton/Peter Simple (who I'll point out now was an Old Member of Lincoln)? Probably, but bear in mind the countless other changes in journalism that have happened - tabloid morality/trial by tabloid, the movement away from broadsheet formats, increase in lifestyle features, corporate tie ins etc. Alcohol won't help stop the rot, though it might make it less painful for a bit. And it's hardly as if the lunchtime and afterwork boozer is extinct. This is the age of binge drinking, of course. After all, without copious social fraternisation, how else would Ollie have got his mobile back?*

* Though the question remains - would he have lost it if he hadn't been out partying?

OK, the whale. It was in water, right? And it died of dehydration? (yes, I know it's to do with types of water and food sources, but it still makes for an amusing headline).

As you may be aware, I've got a project on my hands to come up with a five minute report on an aspect of national government, involving MPs. At the moment I'm giving thought to concentrating on the UK energy 'crisis' - how far is it a crisis, is our future supply in grave danger given the lack of fossil fuels, impracticality of renewables and closure of nuclear plants before new ones can be built, does that mean foreign imports risking the kind of situation Russia and Ukraine got into, can we really cut carbon emissions at the same time as digging ourselves out of this hole, etc etc.

I'd like to hear your views on the subject if you've got any. Either leave them in the comments or email me. How would you meet our energy needs in the decades to come, and how far do you think the Government needs to be looking ahead with the energy review it now has underway? Should it be thinking years, decades or centuries? Will we be able to reduce carbon emissions? Given that we're predicted to only generate 80% of our own energy by 2015, how much of a risk - diplomatically or otherwise - do energy imports pose?

Furthermore, who should I be talking to about this in your opinion. Not just MPs, but which industry reps, which pressure group spokespeople, which people who don't belong to any 'side' but have a good, relevant story to tell? Do you want me flown to Ukraine to ask Yushchenko about this, or three stops up the line to Battersea to look at the redundant power plant there? Let me know.

Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier - did quite well in the theory half of my law exam, which we had back today. Also had a lively chat with Glenn Del Medico, the gent in charge of our law course and a man who was - until last year - the person on the end of the phone line whenever top BBC correspondents and producers had legal issues. When he speaks, everyone listens. And today he spoke to tell me my handwriting is the second worst he has ever seen. I'm gutted to have missed out on the gold. Glenn's opinion on Sven versus News of the World: Sven hasn't got a prayer.

As opposed to 'Free Willy', you see (down, Oaten, down!). Anyway, we all know I'm entirely sick of the now-legendary Thames whale, so let's keep this brief. People on eBay are flocking in their droves to list unlikely items with bizarre connections to the whale, initially for charity and consequently with a heavy dose of irony. Observe the following, all listed as I write:

Thames Whale Collectable - 99p, 1 bid
The photo is of a banana skin. The description tells how the whale made the seller realise 'just how fragile life is'. They go on: 'I thought the skin would make a perfect memory of the moment for somebody'. There's also an empty can of Coke further down the page that bears an uncanny resemblance to this item, along with others.

London UK Thames Whale Watering Can - £441, 21 bids
Earlier in the week, the watering can used to help the whale was listed on eBay. This is not that watering can. Someone has, to date, bid over four hundred pounds for a can that is, according to the description, 'extremely similar'.

Thames Whale Cross Stitch Pattern - £3.75 Buy It Now, 10 available
Depicts the whale's head bobbing out of the water, looking cross and with stitch from all the swimming.

Thames Whale Watering Can - £1, no bids
Another ersatz watering can (I've been waiting for ages to use 'ersatz', what a word). What makes the £441 fake so special? A bargain at one four-hundred-and-forty-first of the price.

Thames Whale Commemorative T-Shirt - £10, 1 bid
Medium white t-shirt depicting a whale with a halo round its head. One person has asked a question as follows: "Talk about cashing in! It's not even a bottlenose whale!"

Thames Whale Watering Can - £9,800, 128 bids
The real deal. Surprisingly (or not, perhaps) quite far down the list.

I won't bore you or me any further, but you can also get Thames Whale hose pipe, photos, fridge magnets and mugs.

Anyway, in the New Labour spirit of burying bad news sufficiently far beneath a large whale, I've booked my driving theory test for 28 March, 2pm. In Oxford. I might turn up in subfusc (seeing as if newspaper reports are to be believed, none of the actual students will have to bother any more).

In reference to me, the "About" page on this website states, "...look out for posts... on her arch nemesis Barclays..." Well, perhaps times are about to change...

I have two current accounts. Lets call them X and Y. The X account is used for all standard transactions. The Y account deals with money transfers, cheques, odd sums of money etc. A few weeks ago I wrote a cheque, thinking it was out of the Y account and transferred the relevant sum of money into this account. However, when it was cashed a couple of days ago it was actually made out from the X account. As the relevant sum of money wasn't in this account, I went into the red by a small sum. When I spotted this, the next day, I was really angry with myself because the money was sitting there all along. I cursed Barclays for taking the £25 fine off me, but accepted it was my mistake nonetheless. In the post today I received a letter from Barclays. I quote...

"I wish to advise you that on X, you current account balance was X overdrawn... a fee of £25.00 has been applied to your account...

... in recognition of the fact that you usually keep your account in good order and have not incurred such a fee during the last 12 months, on this occasion only, we have refunded the £25.00 fee to your account..."

It then details the sanctions that will apply if I go into o/d again.

I love them, I love them, I love them!

I'm just back from hearing Andrew Marr deliver the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communication.

He spoke for about thirty minutes or so - perhaps a little less, it certainly didn't drag - on the subject of popular culture and how he interpreted the future of the media. He admitted that whilst he himself had been somewhat 'high-brow', and had consequently spent a less than successful period as editor of The Independent in the mid-90s, he felt the current preference for 'popular culture' over intellectual 'news' to be one worth defending. He made the point that whilst papers like The Mirror had Diplomatic Correspondents in the 1950s whose reports regularly made the front page, that was a different era whose hopes and fears rested on a different agenda. He defended the News of the World's publication of allegations concerning Sven-Goran Eriksson, and professed to have met 'fake sheikh' Mazher Mahmood, expressing both admiration for him and incredulity that Britain was still a nation where you could 'don a tea towel' and learn the most intimate secrets of anyone to whom you chose to speak.

Oddly, during the question and answer session that followed, he told one student that it was better to first become a print journalist rather than dive straight into broadcasting, because of the basic manipulation of words that print journalism would teach. This ran in contrast to much of his talk, which often returned to a theme of newspapers in decline - there will be no new newspapers, said Mr Marr, and younger generations pay almost no attention to them. Newspapers, he argued, are in every sense yesterday's news to anyone under the age of 20 (I'd argue 30) because these people are used to finding their news online, so it takes columnists and exclusives to sell newspapers, not news. The suggestion he made, but did not explicitly state, was that a popular newspaper has to place finding 'something extra' in the form of columns and 'popular culture' stories ahead of the day-to-day business of raw reporting.

I don't see why there is thus any attraction in becoming a print journalist. The argument would seem to be that you get taught basic skills useful as a broadcaster, whereas broadcasting doesn't teach skills you need for print. Setting aside the fact that I disagree, there's absolutely no incentive to learn those basic print journalism skills if no market exists for your services once you're done studying. In an environment where, as Mr Marr himself put it, sounds and images are taking over from the written word, it's the broadcasters who have the skills associated with the fastest-moving form of news today, not the print journos. Even if we hypothesise that news completes its leap into an online environment, broadcast journalists have the skills to add sounds and images to their written reports, print journalists do not. Broadcasting provides life and colour to each story it touches, it's what we're encouraged to do the whole time. I think the exciting developments occurring online and the progress of TV and radio news make broadcast journalism the cutting edge, regardless of the apparent induction print journalism provides. You can't treat print journalism as a step up to broadcasting if, as Andrew Marr suggests, there will shortly exist barely any step on which to find your feet.

Further to Amy's post, I remember Five Live taking apart the guy behind the 'this will be the most depressing day survey' on air a few weeks ago, so I've been taking it with a hefty pinch of salt. Or at least I was until I woke up this morning.

First of all, my housemates kept me out of the bathroom for half an hour. This is the first time ever that our three schedules have clashed, after nearly five months. So that set me back. Then I got to Balham tube station to discover that due to 'passenger action' at the next station (which turned out to be someone pulling the emergency alarm) the northbound Northern Line was suspended.

Twenty minutes later we were on our way, and I was back on schedule by the time I got into Elephant & Castle. On the front entrance doors at the LCC was a sign saying there'd been a break-in over the weekend affecting the media block - when I got upstairs to the newsroom, my course director was walking the other way and told me a server had been nicked, so none of our systems would work, from printing documents right through to editing audio and lining up audio playlists. Apparently well over ten grand's worth of equipment has gone, 'stolen to order' according to the prevailing conspiracy theories here.

This doesn't pose too many problems today, but we've got newsdays coming up on Wednesday and Thursday, when we operate as a fully functioning newsroom with hourly bulletins from 10am til 5pm. We're told it'll be three days before replacement equipment is in place, so this probably means two newsdays with none of the audio capabilities we're used to and have been trained to use, plus no internet connection to take national news clips from our provider, IRN, and no printer to print scripts to read. I'm the newsreader on Wednesday, so it looks like it's going to fall to me to bring in my laptop and printer and frantically type out handwritten copy given to me by our journalists before each bulletin; meanwhile, any audio we need will have to be saved to the desktop on each of our now-lame PCs, then transferred to minidisc and played out that way instead of using our database. That needs a lot of manpower so where we had one person doing each of the four editorial/technical jobs before, we now have at least two. So there are only going to be five or six actual reporters. In short, it's going to be chaos, and to cap it off it's the first day that we have an outside Guest Editor coming in - from Manchester's Key 103.

I've also got a cold and a sore throat, and am in the middle of waiting for six hours between 1pm (our early finish time today since we've no facilities with the equipment gone) and 7pm when Andrew Marr starts tonight's lecture here. And - now that I remember - this morning we were given four different deadlines for work this term, involving a 10 minute 'social documentary', a 5 minute 'national government' package, a 90-second Newsbeat package to hand in to Radio One's news editor if we fancy a job there, and an 'online' section of our course dedicated to journalism and the internet. So I'm inclined to give that study a little credence after all - for most of us in the newsroom, it's been a god-awful day.

Well, apparently today is meant to be the most depressing day of 2006. This was reported, naturally, in the Scotsman. Well my day hasn't been too bad at all, so if 2006 isn't going to get any more depressing, it will be a good year!

Big problems for the UK in Russia this morning after Russian journalists misheard the sentence "British intelligence centres on Iraq" for "British intelligence centres on a rock":

Not that I think British journalists are faring much better. I'm getting bored of Damian Grammaticas' half-hourly interruptions into this morning's BBC Breakfast programme about this - the scripts are not exactly daring in their originality. For example, the 7:30am script read like this:

Presenter: Damian, this is a bizarre story isn't it?
Damian: Yes, it's almost like something out of James Bond...

And at 8:00am, the script ran:

Presenter: Damian, this is almost like something out of James Bond isn't it?
Damian: Yes, it's a bizarre story...

Apparently, The West Wing has been cancelled. *sniff* And so marks a momentus change in my TV watching, last seen with the end of Buffy.

Though it's about a product I've never seen, and mentions several other things I swear I've never engaged in, this post is a brilliant example of set-piece writing: building up a situation then, with a flick of the wrist, transforming the entire thing to highly readable effect. All in just a few paragraphs. See, after a whole day listening to my Harry Potter audio book and wanting to be J. K. Rowling (to the extent that I was dabbling with the plot for my book-that'll-never-get-written again), now I've read that and want to be a world-class blogger again. Which is about as distant as the day my book gets published. Back to trainee journalism it is then.

Not content with trotting out the camera in Hyde Park yesterday, I went up to Kenwood House in north London earlier today. There's a rather grand house there as one might expect, but the grounds were the attraction - plenty of woodland and a small lake, perfect for more wildlife photos. Here's a few that I took:

One last squirrel, on the basis that a massive cull of grey squirrels was announced today. Amy and I have already had this discussion - I'm not convinced it's the fault of the grey squirrels that humanity put them in Britain and they went and threatened the existence of red squirrels here. Imagine if a higher power put humanity on the planet, then came back only to find, to its horror, that we were killing all the other animals. 'Right,' it said to itself, 'I've got to kill all the humans to save the animals.' I'd be putting my hand up when it came to kill me and enquiring if it was really my fault, just as your average grey squirrel would probably not see what it had done to deserve a swift and untimely demise. Equally, I know everyone likes red squirrels and no one wants them to die out. So I don't see an acceptable solution either way. It's sad.

Gulls aren't cute and furry so naturally everyone hates them, except old men who throw bread into lakes - as has been the case here, leading to a private little war. And below, a scene reeking of an emotion I know only too well: that feeling that comes over you when you know you've just kicked your ball somewhere from whence it ain't coming back...

In the spirit of the whale, I think it's appropriate that we mention that it has indeed died. As one reporter stated, it was "being kept like a goldfish in a bowl... it doesn't surprise me that it died". Two useful things to note from the article though - a) a group of whales is known as a "pod"; and b) when I saw the photo of the whale in the paper yesterday, I was convinced it looked like a dolphin. Well, that wasn't such a stupid thing to think because it was a bottle-nosed whale, and thus it does actually look conceivably like a dolphin.

"Prostitution Strategy A Missed Opportunity" - Oaten.

See, you leave the internet alone for all of 20 minutes while you catch an episode of Futurama and eat your dinner... and then a story like Oaten happens. Good Lord! Even though Ollie posted this first, I feel compelled to comment on it - if only because I saw his campaign launch on BBC South where he was interviewed in his house, having breakfast with his wife and two delightful children. It's a shame he's so young. If all the stories about him crossing the floor to the Tories in time for the next election are true (he has a none too healthy margin in Winchester), then he's a generation out of date. Cameron's Conservatives are squeaky clean, whereas a rent boy allegation would have fitted in nicely with 'Back to Basics'. Actually, thinking about it, I wonder what his televised denial will be: something like that of Sir Norman Fry MP, of Little Britain? Something along the lines of "I happily gave him a lift home and was leaning over to help him with his seatbelt when accidentally..." (I actually never saw an episode in the last series, but was bombarded with the press releases all over the media that I can still remember that.) And pity poor Lembit Opik - first of all, loyal to Charlie Kennedy to the last, and then manager for the failed Oaten campaign. I bet he wishes January never happened.

Brace yourselves folks, the News of the World, not satisfied with trying to wreck English World Cup chances, is now wading into the Lib Dem leadership contest. It's responsible for Mark Oaten dropping out of the leadership race over rent boy allegations, and you just know it'll all be in tomorrow's paper (with more Sven remarks from the fake sheikh tapes, of course). But I'll be buying it for the TV pull-out as ever. Honest.

By the way, I'll be sent to interview MPs on a topic of my choice for my national government assessment this term. If anyone has a specific MP (or two, or three) and a topic to recommend, be my guest to the usual address. I'll publish audio of each interview and the finished package on here for your listening pleasure.

In response to Ollie's Hyde Park post, I can't agree more. It was a very enjoyable and fascinating afternoon. Just what I needed: a bit of fresh air on a crisp but remarkably warm and sunny January day. I did plan to work today, but after a google talk conversation which went something like this (see below), Hyde Park was a much better option:

Amy: Need to work, but don't feel in the mood. I fancy a walk somewhere; a bit of fresh air.
Ollie: Fantastic. I want to use my camera.
Amy: Hyde Park?
Ollie: Yep. Let me have lunch first. Let's say 1.30 at Victoria. Or 1?
Amy: Or maybe 1.15?
Ollie: Haha, yes. Usual spot.
Amy: Yep. Thank you!
Ollie: Thank you too.
Amy: See you later.
Ollie: See you in a bit.

You see, that's what friends are for. Personally, I was amazed that that there was so much wildlife in the Park. I might not be quite as quick on my knowledge of wildfowl as Ollie's Mum, but I wasn't bad. Apparently. At least I knew a cormorant, coot and moorhen when I saw one. All that time as a member of the RSPB paid off! Ollie also didn't mind my persistence in trying to find Diana's memorial fountain. It was a bitch to find, but an absolute gem. Slam the critics - it's a very peaceful, fascinating and living tribute. Admittedly different to the bog-standard statue, but it certainly shouldn't have received the negative press that it did. We also managed to trot to Buckingham Palace, see Albert's Memorial statue and also try to guess the type of airlines that were flying above the City (we definitely identified Monarch, British Airways and Virgin). And now for that work...

Having not ended up going to Oxford like I thought I would, I spent this afternoon in Hyde Park with Amy instead, armed with my camera. Here's a few of the better shots:

There are squirrels everywhere in Hyde Park, from 'Psycho Squirrel Alley' opposite the Royal Albert Hall to the ones feeding on nuts in the tiny bird sanctuary at the top end of the park. This one seems to have been in mid-meal when I snapped him. (Are all squirrels 'him'? Surely not, but I can't remember anyone I know referring to a squirrel as a woman...)

The lake had plenty of swans, geese and assorted wildfowl on it, particularly since one or two slightly batty individuals had taken to the time-honoured pastime of hurling loaves of bread at them all. Further down the lake we saw this:

The original photo was just going to be the birds on the posts, but then we had an unexpected visitor on the chain in the middle. The dopey bird proceeded to scare a resident seagull away and then clamber, in ungainly fashion and as shown in a series of photos above, onto the vacant plinth.

If Oxford doesn't happen tomorrow either, I'm tempted to nip down to a local RSPB reserve and take some more photos. We'll see. There's nothing quite as deadly as me when I'm in the mood for photography.

It's official. I am a "social stereotype". In the Telegraph this morning, Mather describes the oversized bag. "Natasha is dwarfed by her object of desire... she is not now going to admit that it is too big, that baby blue is the wrong colour (particularly in January) or that lacking the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes, it is impossible to find one's keys at the bottom". What did I buy last Sunday? An oversized suede bucket of a hand bag, in baby blue. Wonderful.

Alright look, I can't take much more of this bloody whale. This is turning into some sort of media parody, the sort The Day Today or Broken News would have perhaps tried to carry off. One whale turns up in the Thames - admittedly very rare, to the tune of having happened once - and the entire nation holds its breath until the thing sorts its life out.

I didn't want to return to this topic, having nothing much to add as regards the fate of Moby Dagenham, but the news on BBC1 has just forced me. There was a full four/five minute report on the whale, detailing its movements all day long, accompanied by a narrative that turned sinister and foreboding when giving tell of the moment the whale beached itself in the afternoon. And then - you could almost hear the leap of a light-hearted flute in the background - a sighting of it near Greenwich, suggesting it was going in the right direction. Spontaneous cheering was clearly the order of the day.

And then, heaven forfend, and then - the clincher. BBC newsreader, once the report finishes, looks into camera and delivers the ultimate in news parody:

Digital viewers can see more pictures of the London whale by pressing the red button.

JESUS. H. CHRIST. Live footage of the whale on the BBC website all afternoon, a full four minute report on the whale's antics all day long on the Ten O'Clock News, and now you can press the red button for even more whale? This should be a bloody 'And Finally' story, not four minutes of 'ooh look, a whale!' further up the running order than Eriksson suing the News of the World and a report from the West Bank! As I write there's a report on the Ten O'Clock about rising sea temperatures in the Antarctic affecting sea life there - that would have been perfect to tie into the whale story, at about this stage of the bulletin. I'm all for a relaxed attitude to the news, but I do wish we'd keep things in a little perspective.

Ten days ago, I wrote a short article entitled 'Pants On Fire', which essentially lifted copy from a BBC News Online article. The BBC said a man had been found to have lied about his part in the rescue of two people from a burning light aircraft, and a quote I took from it ran as follows:

Nigel Gallimore had claimed he had rescued the pair after their plane crashed near Bournemouth Airport [but] told an inquest that his original claims in a statement were false ... Mr Gallimore admitted: "A lot of things happened and a lot was being asked."

The BBC article is here.

Three days after I'd published my short piece, a man named Paul left a comment against it:

I find it amazing that you reported your story in such a negative way. He never admitted to lying. If you read the two statements that were questioned in the hearing, you would have realised that there was only one item that was different: between pulled the person from the plane and pulled the people away from the wreckage. How can the press be so negative and nasty without reading or reporting the truth as it was presented?

It felt a little like Paul was attacking me for the BBC article, which I hadn't had any involvement with whatsoever, so I emailed him about it. He told me he was Paul Gallimore, brother of Nigel, the man who stood accused of lying. And Paul proceeded to explain their side of the story, starting with the hearing that had taken place into the death of the third person in the light aircraft. Nigel was called as a witness to the crash, having given statements to police at the time:

Nigel wrote two statements that were read out in court. The first reads along the lines of, 'We pulled the people from the plane to safety', and the second reads, 'We pulled the people away from the crash site'. The rest of the two statements were the same.

The judge asked Nigel if what was written in his first statement was correct. Nigel answered no. There was no contention as to what he had written in his second statement at all, keeping in mind that there was a small change between the two statements and everything else was the same. Can you tell me how the press can hang Nigel in the way they have over a simple word like 'no'?

When Nigel got outside the court he had no idea the press were waiting for him. He thought they were asking him about the small change in the statements - that is why he said what he did. He had no idea they were going to do this to him.

In his next email he provided some evidence. 'Winstanley' is another man at the scene, quoted in the BBC article with several derogatory comments regarding Nigel Gallimore:

Here is a link to the story that a local paper first ran after the accident. If you notice, Winstanley says: 'I could see the petrol pouring out and I thought "I have got to get them out". We realised there was another person in the plane but there was nothing we could do to get to him.' Is this the royal 'we' or does he mean himself and Nigel?!

On page 18 of the same paper today [14 Jan 06] there's a letter from a chap called Nigel Pudwell. He says 'Mr Gallimore was one of the people who aided Mr Winstanley'. There is also a photo of the scene before the emergency services arrived and Nigel's in the picture.

Finally, Paul sent me a link to a BBC News Online article dated May 2005. The title is 'Plane crash rescuer given award'.

He has a valid point when he asks me how the press can stitch someone up quite so badly. Obviously I was nowhere near the crash and don't really know what happened at all. From what I can gather Nigel may not have done exactly what he said in his first statement to police, but equally it seems wholly inappropriate for the media to haul him in front of the British public as a 'liar'. It's particularly interesting that BBC News Online were so quick to splash the 'local hero' story in May, and equally hasty to knock the man back off his pedestal some months later when his testimony was altered a little at the hearing.

To my barely-trained ears, this smacks of bored journalists at the inquest finding nothing better to write home about that Mr Gallimore's revised statement - or perhaps more likely, journalists working to a deadline and knowing they have to produce some story from the hearing. It's sad, but true, that even at my early stage of career development you feel a lot of pressure to deliver the goods come what may when you go out on a story. If it changes whilst you're there, even if it drains away in front of your very eyes and turns into the biggest non-story of a generation, as a low-paid local journalist in a fairly competitive environment you're nigh on duty bound to spin it into a story.

I've no idea how to go about changing that, and don't think I'll be able to either, crusading young, naive moral high ground or not. But hearing Paul Gallimore's side of that one news article - quite an insignificant one to most people who would have read it - taught me a valuable lesson. It hasn't yet been drummed into me on my course, and I'm not sure how far it would in a working media environment, that the stories we report on involve real, breathing people, with families to go home to, friends who read newspapers, and both livelihoods and reputations to maintain. It'd be nice to think that when I'm unleashed into a job in, say, half a year, I can avoid clambering over those people in search of any story I can find.

I'm no fashion expert. In fact, I wear a simple style of clothes - sometimes enhanced by the odd expensive top or skirt. Nothing outrageous, nothing particularly "in fashion", but just general clothes. I make an effort to look good though, and I am conscious of those little things that can make or break an outfit. I also think I know what does and does not suit me - in broad terms anyway. So, lately I've been constantly enraged by people I've seen around London, a few on my course, who really could use 5mins with Trinny and Susannah.

First. If you're a woman, you should buy a bra that fits. There is no excuse for a tight bra, and a tight top. This means that the bra squashes the skin, and then skin/fat bulges outside of the bra. This can be clearly visible under a top. Why do it? It looks horrid!! Just buy a proper bra. It's not that hard. And on the subject of bras, there is no excuse for being able to see the tip of them under a low cut top. Perhaps men think it is sexy? I don't.

Secondly, thongs. OK, so I'm known to wear them. But at least I make an effort to cover the back of my jeans. I don't want to see the entire plumbers backside of a girl sitting near me. It isn't pleasant.

And last but not least, shorts. It's fashionable at the moment to wear cropped trousers - to around the knee. These look amazing... if you are a stick insect. So if you're not, it looks bloody awful. Don't do it to yourself, just wear something that fits.

Right, that's all I have to say.

Sven-Goran Eriksson's going to sue the News of the World for breach of confidence. Good. I think he's right to do so. The News of the World went out on a 'fishing expedition' (appropriately enough given that there's a whale in the Thames right now, allegedly 'lost', although I don't know how anyone knows that - it could be perfectly on course, has anyone asked it?). They got what they wanted but had, from what I can tell, no grounds to go out 'fishing' for Eriksson's private thoughts like that. He shouldn't have divulged everything he did, but at the most basic level this is deception.

Breach of confidence came up in my revision for my law exams earlier this week. It's quite a convenient piece of legislation because it can be easily manipulated to fit a particular situation. For example, breach of confidence was used by the Attorney-General against The Observer and The Guardian in the 1980s when they published extracts from Peter Wright's tell-all book Spycatcher; but it was also used to ban newspapers from revealing the new names and whereabouts of the two killers of James Bulger upon their release from prison. It was also used by OK! magazine when Hello! magazine published hastily-taken photos of the wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas despite OK! having the (expensively acquired) exclusive rights. The wedding, and it followed the photos, were ruled to be protected by the law of confidence as a 'valuable trade asset'.

There are three 'tests' of breach of confidence:

1. Does the information have the necessary 'quality of confidence'? That is, how much of a quality of confidence does/did the information have? If it was in the public domain anyway, the case would be lost, but Eriksson's thoughts on management jobs post-England and current England players weren't.

2. Has the information been imparted in circumstances imposing an obligation of confidence? That used to mean either a contractual obligation to keep something confidential (not shared by Eriksson and NOTW) or membership of the security services (something the Spycatcher trial showed not to be the final word). But here's the paragraph from journalism law bible McNae's Essential Law for Journalists concerning breach of confidence by 'unethical behaviour':

It was once considered doubtful whether an obligation of confidence could arise because of the reprehensible means by which the information was acquired. It now seems to be established that there is an obligation of confidence on those who obtain confidential information by unethical means such as trespass, theft, listening devices, or long-range cameras.

[source: McNae's Essential Law for Journalists, p290]

Now that's interesting. The tricky the News of the World employed to lure Eriksson into saying what he said is not covered by the range of 'reprehensible means' listed above, but has a fair chance of being deemed 'unethical'.

3. Has there been unauthorised use of the information to the detriment of the party communicating it? There most certainly has - Sven didn't authorise publication and it's led him to have to 'grovel' according to the back pages of many Monday newspapers earlier this week. 'Detrimental' isn't limited to financial damage - in the Spycatcher case in the Lords, Lord Keith of Kinkel defined sufficient detriment as disclosure of the information 'to people he would prefer not to know it'. That'll be us, the general public, then.

The News of the World argues these were facts that 'fans and players had a right to know'. They'll no doubt argue the defence that this is all in the public interest, which tends to go some way toward nullifying the otherwise logical argument that if someone got the NOTW's editor to tell all about their staff on the sly, then published it to the staff, there'd be hell to pay. Personally I hope Eriksson wins.

In case you've been in a nuclear bunker all day long - which reminds me of this week's hilarious Matt cartoon, entitled "Iran removes seals from nuclear plant" and showing a man in a radiation suit shooing several circus seals out of the plant door) - there's a whale floating down the Thames.

I turned on the TV when I got in, thinking to myself how funny it would be if the BBC had interrupted its usual daytime programming to bring us uninterrupted live coverage of the whale's journey, given the reams of coverage it had been getting all morning. Alas, no - but close. On the BBC website you can watch it live! And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I want to be a journalist. Some day I, too, could be dispatched to the banks of Thames to spend my afternoon whale-watching.

Here's another audio snippet from Wednesday night at the Dana Centre. There was a demonstration at the end, a gimmicky little thing where you could emboss a strand of your hair into a piece of silver. I had a go and kept the tape running.

The audio from last night's trip to the Dana Centre can now, as promised, be played at the bottom of this post. It's only just over a minute long (you'll be glad to know) despite having almost 20 minutes of raw audio to wade through, since the rigours of operating as a commercial news station mean everything's kept as short as possible.

It was great to get back into the whole live newsroom feel of things today. I had the bone stuff going out every hour, and then ended up in charge of Ruth Kelly's speech, which meant sitting in front of it lifting audio clips whenever she said anything interesting, then scripting a two-way piece between our presenter and another reporter explaining what she'd said.

It was interesting choosing what should lead the story - the fact she'd banned sexual offenders from working near kids again, full stop, or the number of offenders that had returned to schools under Labour? I eventually chose the second one. Looking at the BBC they went for the first one, but IRN went for the second one, so it looks like either would have done. It's a lot of pressure though when the woman won't stop bloody talking and there's a 15 minute news programme coming up within half an hour!

Amy's not the only one comprehensively screwed over by that gas leak at Battersea. Happily I wasn't about to jump to terrorism-related conclusions, given big signs saying "delays due to gas leak", but even so it messed with my evening schedule quite severely.

Ain't technology great? Now, if you really want to give your loved one that special something, you can get a wedding ring made out of your own bone. Just have a wisdom tooth removed and volunteer yourself to the people heading up the project, and they'll take a bone sample from your jaw at the same time, then grow extra bone from it and carve that into a wedding ring.

That much was in today's Evening Standard, but I went down to the Dana Centre at the Science Museum in London this evening to get the story for myself (and for tomorrow's news broadcasts at the LCC, since I'm on the morning shift). Lots of luvvies mooching around between the project workers speaking about their role - a jeweller, a medical ethicist, a scientist, the project leader, the four volunteer couples undergoing the wisdom tooth treatment - and plenty of gruesome slides involving scenes of dental apocalypse. I wandered between these people grabbing interviews with attendees and speakers, including the fascinating revelation that one half of the volunteer couple pictured in the Standard (Matt Harrison) has a glass jaw, and is thereby exempt. It's his girlfriend Harriett that gets the full brunt of the treatment, but he did promise her lots of breakfast in bed and TLC. That's about even then.

Might be able to get some audio from the demonstration up on here tomorrow, I can't find my USB pen drive which may prove prohibitive but we'll see. Failing that, I will definitely try to post the other side to the Nigel Gallimore/rescuing people from a burning plane (or not) story tomorrow. I've been meaning to do that for so long and life keeps conspiring to make me do other things. I feel like Harry Potter (poor sod's busy watching some vicious bitch, who's installed herself as High Inquisitor at Hogwarts, sack a teacher for no real reason at all, in between having quite disturbing visions, at this precise point in the audio book).

I was on the train back from Kent today when we were held at Swanley for a while because of a gas leak at Battersea. Apparently no trains could pass over the bridge into Victoria. I wasn't in a rush, or meeting anyone so I didn't need to instantly reach for my mobile and dial someone. Instead, I said a silent prayer for all those I knew were somewhere in central London today. Was this a gas leak or was it something much worse? I use the tubes daily and don't give a second though to terrorism - I don't think you can. But today I did wonder whether this was something more sinister. It was a strange feeling and I doubt this would have ever happened before 7/7. Clearly a sign of the way we now live. Thankfully, it was just a gas leak and I got back safe and sound, but those people were still in my thoughts.

I was on the train from London to Kent yesterday and for about twenty minutes the peace and quiet of the carriage was disturbed by one girl, about sixteen, talking at the top of her voice on her mobile. The whole carriage couldn't escape hearing the saga between her best mate's boyfriend, and sister, and step-sister and anyone else who appeared in the conversation.

I made a mental note of just a few of her phrases - all said in the most eloquent Kentish accent, like, of course, like. There are quite a lot of * necessary, so I apologise.

- Holy mother of God (in place of "oh dear")
- I'm going to "nut" him
- I'll properly "muller" him
- I'd've "b*ggered him
- f***ing hell
- f**k me
- b****cks, no waaaaay
- you're having a sh*g (seemed to be in place of "you're having a laugh")
- X is really in the sh*t
- Oh d*ck (another "oh my God" line)

And so the language went on. This girl was getting several looks from people in the carriage, although no one plucked up the courage to tell her to shut up. I think if she hadn't have disembarked when she did though, I would have had to say something. For one, she was rude. Not only was she talking at the top of her voice but her language was clearly offensive. Really, I'm just jealous that I didn't understand half of what she meant. If there had been young children in the carriage, someone would have had to tell her to be a bit more discrete. Perhaps I'm getting old, but there really isn't the need for that sort of language. Admittedly, I swear. But not to that degree! If you use it to that extent, it becomes farcical - there's no passion or strength to the so-called "swear word". I remember the first time I said, "shit" and promptly risked being smacked by my father. So, times have changed and the common use of swear words is more acceptable. But, please. I don't want to keep hearing phrases such as the above when I am trying to read, thank you. What is society coming to? Blair. Respect? There's a long way to go.

This looks neat, if it ever works.

Bloody marvellous, Life On Mars. It's the new flagship BBC1 drama, Monday nights at 9pm, starring John Simm as DI Sam Tyler. Tyler is hit by a car in the opening scenes of the first episode and somehow thrown back from 2006 to 1973, something that has yet to be explained, but may well involve his being in a coma back in 2006.

I wasn't around in the 1970s to know what they were like, but the 70s on display in Life On Mars is believable enough to me. But forget that, it's just great to see a decent new cop show on telly - this is like a British Starsky & Hutch, right down to the natty cars and cardboard boxes all over the shop. Thrown in the good-cop-bad-cop leading actors leaping into action, hurdling a table like they're The Sweeney and fighting each other as often as they fight the bad guys, and you're really cooking with gas. Top it off with the time travel from Dr Who and the odd surreal he's-actually-in-a-coma moment, bring to the boil, and it's the best show I've seen on telly for ages.

If only the law operated for me, as a 21st century trainee journalist, like it does for most of the coppers you'll see in Life On Mars, where the emphasis is very much on smacking the bastards round the chops first, maybe asking questions later if they can't plant any evidence on anyone. No one gets defamed, no one claims an infringement of privacy, search warrants are anathema and the Human Rights Act an exceptionally distant dream for the poor blighters brought in for 'questioning'.

You may or may not be aware that a) David Lammy is the Minister for Culture, and b) he has launched a search for Britain's greatest cultural icon. The voting takes place on the Department of Culture's website, here. There are all sorts of nominations from telephone boxes, route master buses, cups of tea, the Angel of the North or even the King James Bible. There is also a campaign to vote for "hunting", as one of the most popular icons. Now, considering a certain fellow author, and also his Mother, I know this is a risky subject. But whatever your views on hunting, you can't get away from the fact that hunting is a part of British heritage, and perhaps a cultural icon - far more so, in my opinion than a red bus. It represents so much - history, the aristocracy, sport and a certain unique culture. Whilst it is officially illegal, there are still walls in country pubs dedicated to paintings of the sport, and I reckon that, rather like Marmite, people either say "yes" or "no" - hunting is one of those things that people do have an opinion on. So, should it be a British cultural icon? It's an interesting one.

I feel like I've been strangely absent from Dayorama over the weekend, when in reality there's been a good exchange of views in the comments to my post about animal rights protests and such; I've also had an interesting series of emails fly back and forth with the brother of Nigel Gallimore, the man accused of lying about his part in rescuing survivors from a burning plane. There'll be more on that when I have the time to do it justice.

In the mean time, here's quite a good review of The Call Of The Weird, the book by Louis Theroux, my very favourite documentary maker. It's well worth your time - you won't find anything powerful enough to shatter your universe or cause you to renounce your life up until this point, but there's a few laughs and some great 'Theroux moments' recalled. Get the DVDs of the documentary best-of as well. I aspire to create that kind of thing.

What a wonderful idea for a website. I think I shall send one in.

Of course, Amy misses the really important heritage event of the year: Benjamin Franklin's house in London, at 36 Craven Street, will finally open to the public next week after years and millions in renovation. Bravo!

There's a incredibly pleasing article in today's Observer. In their "Escape" (travel) section there is an article titled "Where to be in 2006". It claims to chart the hottest spots for the year ahead – you know the random things that are going on across the globe. With a caption stating, “fancy witnessing a total solar eclipse…. or being an inaugural guest in the first underwater hotel…” I thought, "here we go", a month by month account of all the places that I could go if, and a big if, I had the time and the money. Lots of places to be seen at, but none of them will be accessible, non will be cheap and non will be in the UK. But I was wrong. This three-page spread includes several entries for the UK.

In February, we should visit Sinatra at the London Palladium; in April we should visit the completion of the thermae spa in Bath and also the Shakespeare festival in Stratford-on-Avon; in May Jamie Oliver's third fifteen restaurant will open near Newquay; in June The Deeply Vale Festival, a legendary Seventies hippy gathering, is apparently having a come back; in July the 50th anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award will be celebrated by a series of events around the country including a two-day event in Windsor Great Park (a big plus point in my opinion that they include this since it is close to my own heart!); and then finally in September we should watch the first World Golf Championships to be held in the UK.

So, lots of things taking place in the UK, alongside the more grand in the States such as the Sky Walk 4,000ft suspended glass bridge across the Grand Canyon (June) or the football World Cup (Germany in June) and Commonwealth Games (Australia in March) or finally the chance to walk around the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania (March).

So the UK is up there. It was pleasing to read the article and think, "I could practically do some of these things, if I wanted to". A good bit of patriotism there by the Observer and a triumph in my eyes because there is nothing worse than an article that tells you lots of amazing things that you just couldn't buy or do.

Far be it from me that I should criticise another weblog (nay, two of them) with the panache, insight and verve to link to one of my posts here, but I do get a little wound up by this:

Just thought I'd point people in the direction of a wonderful selection of photos taken by Chris of animal rights activists (some may also moonlight as terrorists) in Oxford. The captions are superb:

http://photos.chriscsefalvay.com/v/ht05_alf/

But, remember children:

MilkSucks.com - it gives you cancer.

SaveTheSheep.com - because wool kills.

GoVeg.com - save the world in one easy step.

Oh, and if you like to see people running around pretending to be members of the SAS, take a look at the Animal Liberation Front's 'Online Media Centre'. And, if you prefer to see people prancing about wearing lots of cosmetic products (all tested on animals, I suspect) then check out the retarded celebrities who think animals deserve the vote. Groovy.

[source: Raw Carrot - 'Animal Rights Protests (and Idiots) in Oxford']

Right wing individuals seem to get remarkably worked up by animal rights activists, even the palpably-not-militant 85 year olds that dominate the photos linked to above. In this instance, the campaigners are staging a perfectly legal protest, policed as one might expect. Last I checked, the right to freedom of speech and legitimate protest was a bedrock of conservative thought, although so's 'some animals are more equal than others', I suppose, so I oughtn't be surprised.

What does surprise me, and did for the last three and a half years, was the extent to which this pattern of thought is engrained in so many people at Oxford. The end product, having unleashing a new bunch of 18-year-olds on one of the greatest sources and keepers of knowledge in the world each year, appears to be some sort of haughty ideological overkill, a great descent of black-and-white political theory and enough posturing to make your average man on the street vomit at the thought that this is the best we can offer. I was probably guilty of it to an extent myself and may well still be so, but not in the way that a lot of Oxford undergraduates adopt absurdly narrow-minded world views on either side of the political spectrum.

It'd be nice, in a purely hypothetical way, to think of Oxford as producing people who could all work together and at least understand different points of view without seeking the path of least resistance, a crass dismissal. I hate smoking but I can at least understand why pro-smoking groups put forward the arguments they do, even if I disagree. If they want to walk down the Streatham High Road campaigning in favour of smoking, fine - it doesn't make them retarded, it makes them passionate about what they belief whilst staying within their legal right to express that belief. I won't be criticising that, and when I criticise their beliefs I'll do it as constructively and forcefully as I can without resorting to insults.

As for the animal rights protesters 'paralysing' half of Oxford, according to one of the photo captions, I'm frankly amazed the author isn't used to that by now. The traffic system's enough to paralyse the town in the first place. What about May Day? That's an exercise grounded in greater pointlessness and futility than any animal rights campaign, but eager young students clutter up a major bridge into the city centre once a year without fail. And it's only the ones that jump off the bridge into a foot and a half of murky water that are rightly labelled idiots. A little perspective, some imagination and, perhaps - if we're really dreaming - a relaxation of crude political idiom might not go amiss sometimes.

But what Williams doesn't mention here, is that him and I are yet to meet/have coffee/have dinner at all of the London mainline train stations. We've certainly made it to Paddington on a few occasions, and today's meeting will be Victoria. Perhaps we'll have to try to make it to all of the others in future.

Gah. A fire alarm at 8.20 last night made me grumpy, being as I was in the middle of the washing up and had to trot out and wait for 10 minutes in the cold. But an alarm at 3.53 this morning? Grr.

For Guillemots in 2006. They're a band that I'm told - and having heard one track, firmly believe - will be the talk of the year. The track's called Trains To Brazil, which is useful because I was going to talk about trains anyway. Beware their website by the way, it's a bit strange but not impenetrably so.

Anyway, trains. This could get a bit anorak-y but I'll keep it brief. I reckon I completed my 'set' of London stations today, by taking the train from Nottingham to London St Pancras after the Manchester derby (City 3, United 1, yes yes yes yes yes). I've now boarded or left a train at every single one: Blackfriars, Euston, Fenchurch Street, King's Cross, London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Marylebone, Paddington, St Pancras, Victoria, Waterloo...

Nightmare. I've just discovered, to my horror, that I've not done Charing Cross. Must write that down on the 'To Do' list. Still, since I'm in this anorak mood, I did a quick check on the National Rail site to see which train companies' trains I've used:

Have travelled on these: Arriva Trains Wales, Chiltern Railways, First Great Western, First Great Western Link, GNER, Heathrow Express, Midland Mainline, Northern Rail, one, South Eastern Trains, South West Trains, Southern, Thameslink, Virgin Trains, WAGN and Wessex Trains.

But not these: c2c, Central Trains, Eurostar, First ScotRail, Gatwick Express, Heathrow Connect, Hull Trains, Island Line, Merseyrail, Silverlink and the TransPennine Express.

So I've been on more than half. But you have no reason to care, so to make it worthwhile reading this, here's some interesting and topical train-related articles. Radio 4's 'From Our Own Correspondent' programme has mentioned trains a couple of times recently. Yesterday's edition had Malcolm Billings on the hundred-year-old Hejaz Railway carrying pilgrims out of Istanbul; last week, Karen Allen ventured forth on the equally antique Lunatic Railway in Kenya.

For the real lunatics, however, look closer to home - not pilgrims, but pigeons. Wandsworth Council has threatened Network Rail with an ASBO if it doesn't stop pigeons at Queenstown Road station crapping on unsuspecting passengers below. The council took the action after a petition was received containing an almighty ten signatures. One wonders what ridiculous schemes one might be able to force through in Wandsworth with the help of nine friends...

Well, back to me wittering on about London. I went to the National Gallery today. It always amazes me how lucky we are to have such a wonderful collection of artwork on our doorstep. And it's all housed in a wonderful building too. I always find wandering round an art gallery incredibly relaxing, and today was no exception. And what of last night? The ballet of Giselle at the Royal Opera House. Just breathtaking. Well worth the strong reviews.

I'm busy ploughing through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on audio book (which I think I mentioned a week or two back). I've put it on my mobile so whenever I'm on the tube or a train, I can listen. Two thoughts:

First, when I get a phone call, the audio cuts out to allow me to take the call, obviously enough. It then restarts automatically when the call finishes, so that you need hardly do a thing except press the button to answer the call. Great. Amy rang this afternoon and I answered it, flicking the headphones out at the same time because they get in the way. We chatted for about ten minutes until my train was about to reach Victoria, at which point we said our goodbyes. And as the line went dead, but before I could put the headphones back in, Stephen Fry resumed his (quite brilliant) reading of the book, at full volume, on speakerphone. That improved my credibility with the fifty other people in the carriage no end. Must be quicker with the phones in future.

Second, these audio books would make a great present for a stoner. Each CD is broken up into about sixty tracks of just over a minute each, with neat breaks between tracks at the end of sentences. On your favourite druggie's birthday, wait for them to get comfortably high (this being their birthday, they're bound to) and then give them the audio book to listen to. When they're not looking, set their ipod or CD player or whatever to 'shuffle'. When they press play, they'll be met by a stream of one-minute Harry Potter segments in an entirely random order. See how long they'll listen before realising something is amiss.

Since we're on the subject of audio, I bought some new speakers today. Or at least I collected them, having ordered them on Monday from a little family-run Hi-Fi outlet in a nearby suburb. This being south London, the Hi-Fi shop keeps its front door locked at all times, and only opens it once the staff inside have eyed you up and are satisfied you won't rob them blind. On Monday I thought that was a good idea. Today I was less sure. It took me twenty minutes - stood outside in the cold, banging on the windows and door, and ringing their phone number - before someone let me in. SInce I had a fairly tight schedule to begin with, I was less than impressed. Still, they won brownie points on Monday for giving the speakers at a good discount, so on balance they might get a second go.

... really, really crap!

OK, so the day began with a non-alcohol induced headache. I should have gone back to bed then. I then washed and began drying my hair. And suddenly my neck went click. And I trapped a nerve. It is still trapped. My neck hurts, my back hurts. So, I went to College feeling rather sick (I also have monthly women's pains) and with a sore neck. I wasn't particularly with it, because the pain is very acute and there's not a lot you can do when you can't twist your head to the right. Do you know how hard it is to cross a road? And it was painful walking upstairs. Then I had to go to lunch. So had to be on good form. But, I had to get a friend on the LPC to brush my hair and put on my coat for me, because I couldn't bend my arm back. I rang a friend who told me which painkiller to buy, and thankfully that has numbed the pain. I've sat through lunch, and was on surprisingly good form. But now the drugs are wearing thin. And my flat is cold because I remembered only when I got home that today I left the windows really wide open as decided to "air" it. Wonderful. And it's all just a little bit too much. On the upside, I'm off to the ballet this evening, so as long as I only have to look straight in front of me, it should be OK.

It's all too much. Ballet tomorrow, things left right and centre. I need to write a things to do list of all the things I want to do in London!

I got a phone call this afternoon. There was a long pause, and then a lady telling me she was calling from FIFA (in India, naturally) asked me if I "had any children aged 11-16" or something. I said no. And then she rang off. Most bizarre.

It's not been a good couple of days for liars.

First we had the news that a man had lied about rescuing two people from an aircraft; now someone else has been jailed for pretending to have lost a daughter in the 2004 tsunami. From the BBC:

Philip Bosson, 39, told officers his daughter Kayleigh had been killed and followed it up with a string of lies. But three months later, after an international search at a cost of thousands of pounds, police found "Kayleigh" never existed.

Police only became suspicious when he started to be unhelpful and abusive and changed the spelling of Kayleigh's name. Officers traced his first girlfriend Michelle Dillon who revealed that Bosson had picked the name Kayleigh from a favourite Marillion hit of the 1980s.

[source: BBC News - 'Tsunami death lie father jailed']

To quote an apt line from Marillion's 'Kayleigh': "I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end."

Remember Kula Shaker? Well either this is a very silly hoax or they're back.

You can now watch the BBC's "Power of Nightmares" documentary for free and in full on Google Video, reports Ben Metcalfe. "As far as I know," he says, "this is an official release from the BBC (rather than someone uploading it unofficially)."

Well, I'm not so sure. A quick look at "More from this user" on Google Video seems to show a mish-mash of various videos, BBC or otherwise, not many of which look particularly official. I'd be far more inclined to feel that it's an unofficial upload by someone with the whole documentary to hand. For example, another video apparently from the same user is "Police State III: Total Enslavement", a two-and-a-half-hour epic which promises to show a "desperately wicked New World Order clan" using the events of 9/11 to "transform earth into a prison planet". I missed that episode of Newsnight.

From BBC News:

There could be a free vote of MPs on having a complete ban on smoking in public places in England. Ministers told Labour MPs they were considering the idea after an amendment was tabled calling for the total ban.

Many backbenchers are angry that the Health Bill, as it stands, would allow smoking to continue in private clubs and pubs which do not serve food.

Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay told BBC News 24: "If backbenchers get a free vote... there will be a total ban."

[source: BBC News - 'Free vote "possible" on smoke ban']

To put it in the vernacular, get in there. The sooner smoking is banned anywhere that some ignorant shite can breathe their fumes into my face, the better. As some of you will know I've been fiercely, fiercely opposed to smoking for many years indeed, so every little step closer to its eradication brings great joy. The article continues:

Some Conservative and Lib Dem MPs are thought to oppose a total smoking ban for fear it could undermine civil liberties.

These are the same Conservative and Lib Dem MPs who would no doubt condemn anti-social behaviour, in the same way Labour launched their 'Respect' agenda today aimed at curing society's ills. Well smoking is fundamentally anti-social, in that it unpleasantly affects everyone in the same environment. Imagine a faux-Burberry clad 19 year old stood in a pub swearing loudly and spitting now and again. To me, cigarette smoke's often every bit as offensive and insensitive to others around you. Why should I not be able to stand on a station platform and wait for a train without the person next to me sending foul smelling smoke into my face? Why should the onus in that situation be on the innocent party to get out of the way of the smoke? (Admittedly train stations are usually private property so may not qualify under this legislation, but you get my drift.) Get smoking banned from public places and we're on the right track.

The Respect party. A far left-wing party, commonly known the party that was strongly opposed to the war in Iraq.

George Galloway. Sole MP for the Respect Party. A quite controversial party.

George Galloway. Currently hitting the headlines for, rather controversially, being in Celebrity Big Brother.

Blair today announces his new "respect" action plan. A way to tackle anti-social behaviour apparently.

I'm sorry, but when I read the headline "Blair's respect plan" or something along those lines in the paper this morning, I immediately thought of Galloway. Isn't Blair's use of the word "respect", slightly dodgy? Where is his press officer?

A man has admitted lying about his part in the rescue of two people from a burning aircraft in 2004 - a lie which earned him the Queen's Commendation for Bravery:

Nigel Gallimore had claimed he had rescued the pair after their plane crashed near Bournemouth Airport [but] told an inquest that his original claims in a statement were false ... Mr Gallimore admitted: "A lot of things happened and a lot was being asked."

Wait for it... quote of the year so far, bearing in mind the context...

"In the heat of the moment I probably said things that didn't happen."

[source: BBC News - 'Crash "rescuer" admits fake story']

In actuality, a former corporal by the name of Michael Winstanley did help the pair to escape the aircraft, unlike Mr Gallimore.

I think we've mentioned before how cool it is to be at Oxford. Fantastic buildings, amazing tutors and the rest. As Americanists know, Oxford is the best place to study America outside of the country herself. And Dayorama could always use more lashings of American history. So I point you to this programme on Radio 4, The Great Debates, which pits Hamilton and Jefferson against each other over the U.S. Constitution. Defending Jefferson is Dr. Peter Thompson, my supervisor. I told you Oxford was cool. Although it is weird to hear Jefferson and Hamilton with voices; I have always imagined that Hamilton was far squeakier.

(And if you still can't bring yourself to listen to it, think of it as National Treasure without the gaping plot holes...)

So, what's the Conservative position on the new European GPS system, dubbed Galileo, whose first satellite tentatively snuck into space the other day? Over to our political astronomy correspondent Oliver Wooding:

The Galileo project is not a competitor to GPS; rather it complements it. The public has shown that they are interested in accurate satellite navigation for their own uses, as have Governments for theirs. This is not political brinksmanship, rather we should be proud of what the EU has managed to achieve.

[source: Conservative Future - 'Political positioning']

I don't know why OJ doesn't mention his Conservative Future articles on here more often, considering what well-written little summaries of current issues they are. He should be like Boris and 'lift' his own articles from CF into Dayorama, just as Mr Johnson MP reproduces newspaper articles on his blog. By contrast, anyone would think OJ's ashamed to be associated with the party... But fear not, I'll be outing them as routinely as I can find them. I just got a text from him complimenting me on picking this one out as his, since there's no author credit on it. Perhaps he's forgotten he told me about it on Sunday.

One too many 'rathers' in that last paragraph by the way, OJ. Or are they compulsory on a Tory website to maintain that party look and feel?

Considering my own political naivety and inability to formulate anything particularly worthwhile above linking to other people's articles, I'm delegating some of my political warbling to another weblog. A satirical one, at that. But it's a secret for now until I either a) get bored in a week's time and delete it or b) decide it's going well enough to let you all know. Of course, if you really want to find out about it... tough monkeys.

Good morning, and would Zoe Williams please wake up and smell the coffee, or some old socks, or something. In The Guardian she's written a piece complaining that George Galloway is more "sinned against than sinning", accusing Channel 4 of censorship:

Channel 4, while it denies having any agenda, manifestly intends to excise Galloway's political views. Since day one, when it cut several of the contestants agreeing with the MP about the Iraq war, the Big Brother edited highlights have yet to show him saying anything about politics. And in E4's round-the-clock version, the MP is repeatedly bleeped.

Is he going on about sex and using coarse language? Or is he being censored in a more serious way? Precisely because he claims to have principles, they are deemed worthy of less respect than those of someone who slept with Sven Goran Eriksson.

[source: The Guardian - 'No respect in the house']

As explained yesterday, Channel 4 can't give George Galloway the freedom to yak on about Iraq and whatever else the crackpot believes in, because then it is duty bound to Ofcom to give equal airtime to someone with opposing political views, which it doesn't want to do. True, it could do that in Channel 4 News and not Big Brother and still satisfy Ofcom, but it's hardly an ideal position for the channel to be in, having to alter its plans to account for the mouthing off one of its contestants indulges in.

Even if Channel 4 weren't bound by Ofcom regulations, would it really air any old opinion George comes up with? Mr Galloway is about as close to being an extremist as any elected politician in this country gets. I'd imagine very few Big Brother viewers want to hear his opinions, even if media luvvies and political hacks do, and I'd imagine Channel 4 are hardly keen to foist him on the audience unnecessarily.

Anyway, enough, I'm bored of him. The Mirror claims an 'exclusive' about Galloway being annoyed at censorship. It's about as exclusive as Clapham Common. Happily the newspaper redeems itself with a nice little summary of new entries into Who's Who, most notably (as far as it's concerned) Frank Skinner. Graeme Souness also made it in. Why? Is consistent near-failure at football management grounds for inclusion? Because I'm crap on Football Manager 2006, and I'd love to be in it.

Finally, back to The Guardian and Slavoj Zizek discussing the 'lie' of the TV series 24, which is:

That it is not only possible to retain human dignity in performing acts of terror, but that if an honest person performs such an act as a grave duty, it confers on him a tragic-ethical grandeur. The parallel between the agents' and the terrorists' behaviour serves this lie.

[source: The Guardian - 'The depraved hereos of 24 are the Himmlers of Hollywood']

He goes on to use this examination of 24 to question why we're suddenly learning so much about US methods of torture:

Some argue that at least the US is now more open and less hypocritical about its behaviour towards terrorist suspects. To this, one should reply: "If US representatives mean only this, why are they telling us? Why don't they silently go on doing it, as they did it until now?" What is proper to human speech is the gap between the enunciated content and its act of enunciation. Imagine a couple who have a tacit agreement that they can have discreet extramarital affairs; if, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an affair, she would have good reason to wonder why he was telling her. The act of publicly revealing something is never neutral; it affects the reported content itself.

The same goes for the US's recent admission that it is using torture. When we hear people such as Dick Cheney making statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask ourselves why he has decided to make a public statement about it. The question to be raised is: what is there in this statement that made the speaker decide to enunciate it? This is 24's real problem: not the content itself but the fact that we are being told openly about it. And that is a sad indication of a deep change in our ethical and political standards.

And on a personal note, I'm off to the newsroom for the first time this year to have a potter about and perhaps even do some serious revision. Bought some new pillowcases yesterday. I now have the single worst clashing bedroom ever. Sheet pale pink, duvet red and orange, pillows 2 black, 2 sheet-pink and 1 garish pink. Add the beige beanbag into the equation and it's a decor disaster.

One hates to risk bursting the cosy bubble we seem to have only recently formed with The Observer, but I fear they may need to pay as much attention to their digital edition as they have the relaunched paper one. If you turn to page five of the digital edition - which you ought to be able to do by clicking here - you will see, on the left, a graphic of how page five looked in reality on Sunday. You have the news in brief in the bottom left hand corner, 'Kelly faces sex offender row' dominating the top half of the page, and in the bottom right, an article entitled 'Labour peer Banks critically ill after stroke'.

Now look at the right hand side of the browser window. You will see there are three links to click. When you click them, they allow you to read the article in question as shown in the preview on the left hand side. You have the Ruth Kelly story, then the news in brief, and then... ah. The third link, which should read something similar to the Tony Banks headline above, actually reads:

dghfghdfdfdfhdfdfdfhfghfghfghfgh

Obviously the subs have been far too busy burning the midnight oil on the new look to worry about replacing their mash-the-keyboard holding text online...

God, it's good to watch someone fervently denying the existence of God. Richard Dawkins, you star. Bringing challenging, controversial debate to the television in a way that I've not seen for quite some time, calling God "the most vindictive character in all fiction" with his final words of tonight's first instalment.

One very simple moment caught my eye - when one of Richard's Muslim interviewees told him to sort out how he and his society dress their women, only for Richard to respond, quite indignantly, that the women of course dress themselves. I'm in full support of the arguments made on this programme. I'm not going to go into those arguments myself because I'm thoroughly incapable of expressing them as eloquently and I'll only confuse myself, but please do yourself a favour and watch the second part, from 8pm this coming Monday on Channel 4.

Since dear George is my MP, perhaps I should sign this website. Surely this constituency, more than most, needs a representative MP?

Cergis, a London-based e-business outfit, have knocked up a webpage counting the cost of George Galloway's stay in the Big Brother house to his taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the Respect party are apparently complaining to Channel 4 that George's appearances are being censored to remove his political views. Channel 4 says Ofcom regulations mean they must be impartial, so they need to do this or else they'd have to screen balancing views from other parties, something that wouldn't go down well. Your average Big Brother viewer would be spewing into their treble Red Bull and vodka to see Jack Straw and William Hague turn up for a rousing discussion on Iraq at 9pm tonight.

With the coming of the FA Cup last weekend, BBC Sport's Virtual Replay service returned to action. Doing what it says on the tin, it provides virtual replays of a selection of the weekend's goals, using 3D graphics only a little less slick than what you might expect from EA's FIFA franchise of console games. Actual footage from the matches is taken and transformed to provide a virtual pitch you can wheel around through 360 degrees and a variety of camera angles.

One of the things the service can do is put certain decisions beyond doubt. After Leicester's surprise 3-2 victory over Spurs last night, a key talking point was the last-minute Leicester goal that won them the game, and whether the player who scored it had been offside. The BBC pundits talked us through three different camera angles, none of which were entirely conclusive. But with BBC Sport's Virtual Replay I've been able to stop the action at the exact moment the ball is played to the striker, spin around 360 degrees and prove to myself conclusively that the player was offside and the goal should not have stood. Now can we please give this technology to the officials?

I like to see what's going on at Somerset Sound in my absence, and tonight regular presenter Adam Thomas is launching a one-man crusade on the BBC's Inside Out West regional TV series. He wants to banish Avon.

"But it's already dead!" I hear you cry. You silly old thing, you. Yes, it was done away with as an actual proper county or whatever it was a good decade or so ago, but it still lives on. The Avon & Somerset Police, for example, have yet to do away with it, ditto the local fire service and many postal addresses. Adam Thomas has had enough. Visit this article to see him in full Say No To Avon regalia and read more.

Whilst you're at it, enjoy this article from 2004 in which the EU threatens to revive Avon in its entirety, dividing Weston-Super-Mare between Somerset and itself. But I warn you, all may not be as it seems...

It's alright Ollie, other peple have been working on the question too. And since you like buying your clothes online... (Note also the range of shirts available for all the potential candidates, so you needn't ruin your political impartiality.)

Good news! The collision that created the moon however many squillion years ago was, quote, 'relatively mild'! You'd have thought it might have been noisy, sleep-disturbing, perhaps even a bit scary, but no - mild. That's according to research reported by New Scientist, which adds that in the more violent simulations undertaken, "most of the impactor is vaporised and no moon is formed". So gently does it next time we need one.

Now, speaking of collisions, here's one with a greatly reduced impact - the Lib Dem leadership contest. As if a great God Of Base Comedy clicked his fingers this morning, suddenly everyone has realised that Sir Menzies Campbell's first name is pronounced funny and means you can make puns involving 'Ming'. BBC News Online have put a tiny sum of taxpayers' money towards one person's afternoon's work, coming up with all things Ming:

Should Sir Menzies Campbell become Liberal Democrat leader, it will be a gift to Westminster gossips and sketch writers everywhere. The fact that his first name is not pronounced the way it is spelt only gives more room for manoeuvre.

There are those whose grasp of popular culture, particularly of the camp variety, means they have already christened him Ming the Merciless after the villain in the Flash Gordon shows. So would that make his followers the Merciless Ones? Possibly fitting after what it is claimed they got up to in their alleged campaign to remove Charles Kennedy. Or should they be the Mongos after the inhabitants of Ming's evil planet Mongo?

Or - and here's a thought that, once entertained, will never be dispelled - could they simply be the Mingers?

[source: BBC News - 'What to call Ming's backers?']

Nick Robinson recalls an interview with the Chief Minger himself back in September 2000, when he said he'd not stood for the leadership in 1999 because he'd "seen the kind of demands that leadership of the third political party in the United Kingdom makes", and presumably couldn't afford the resulting bar bill.

Finally, revenge for the downtrodden rodents of our world. When New Mexico resident Luciano Mares caught a mouse in his home, he decided to get rid of it by tossing it on a bonfire in his garden. Alas, the mouse wasn't done yet. Rising like a tiny, furry phoenix from the embers, the now-burning critter dashed back into the house, setting it alight and razing it to the ground in the process [BBC News - 'Blazing mouse sets fire to house']. Possibly the greatest giantkilling act of all this FA Cup weekend.

Sigh. I suppose part of Oxford's timeless charm is the fact that things happen again and again. For example, the Vere Harmsworth Library will be shut this Saturday due to another animal rights protest. And, after Brasenose Lane finally reappeared after 18 months of building work, I saw scaffolders constructing another monster outside the Rector's house. What goes around...

Forget whatever the Proclaimers said about walking 500 miles and then walking 500 more. I've walked at least 5km today and I'm knackered. I know I enjoy walking - but that's when I'm in walking boots and in the countryside, not traipsing around London. I've measured the distance I walked to get to and from College, and it equals about 5km. That doesn’t include the walking done generally around College, or up and down escalators, or around M+S in Oxford St. My feet are well and truly singing the halleluiah chorus. Stupid tube strike.

All things considered, the tube strike didn't really inconvenience me. OK, so out of the few stations closed, Bow Road was amongst these, but that doesn't matter really because I could at least walk to Mile End. That was fine at 7.30am, but I was less enthusiastic returning home tonight. It seemed so much further. I was so tempted to get a taxi… there were two looking so tempting at the rank. But I resisted. When I did get to Mile End this morning, the Central Line train never moved from the platform. A defective door. Sometimes these things sort themselves out quickly, sometimes they take ages. I wasn't in the mood to hang around in the crowds. Especially as the whole train had to disembark, coupled with all the usual Mile End + Bow Road commuters. The next few trains would be packed. So I got on the District line train and got off at Blackfriars. I therefore had to walk from Blackfriars to College. Everyone seemed to walk further this morning... friends who got fed up with the crowds at Bank just walked from there to Chancery Lane. It just shows how lazy we all are on an everyday basis, and how far we can walk if we have to. I can't complain - even if my feet are. The most important thing is that I didn't need to catch a bus!

Christ, it's always depressing when a national newspaper needs Dayorama to soothe its fragile ego in the wake of a relaunch. Yes, The Observer Blog's Rafael Behr has picked up on Amy's praise for the new look yesterday, which he says was 'good enough for the modest appetite of the Observer Blog'. Amy will be pleased. Although if you look at the rest of the post and the comments, there's room for healthy debate on the issue.

Sounds like a particularly violent form of diarrhoea, doesn't it.

But I actually mean the other side of spam and blogging: when the blogs are spouting the spam. We have enough trouble getting rid of spam comments and trackbacks to Dayorama, but you can also get blogs set up by mischievous types purely to spam blog search engines. Now there's a splog (spam blog) that's making great mileage out of RSS in cunning fashion, as discovered by this Canadian journalist:

Andrew Scheer, Conservative MP for Regina Qu'Appelle, used to keep a Blogspot blog. I subscribed to the RSS feed, but it's long been dormant. Today, it popped back to life. With this. It's a spam blog, set up at the same address (and therefore with an RSS feed that was exactly where my RSS reader went looking for it) and filled with cribbed text from elsewhere. It's intended to drive traffic to porn sites. Either that or Andrew Scheer has some 'splainin to do.

[source: Fine Young Journalist - 'Attention, blogging politicians...']

I also note with interest that David Cameron has backtracked spectacularly on education this morning. Very little seems to have been made out of this. How it can be below a story about Paddy Ashdown supporting Sir Menzies Campbell in the Lib Dem leadership election on the BBC News front page is beyond me. The man has abandoned a Conservative stance which gave the electorate a clear choice on student fees, in favour of what may just amount to a carbon copy Blairite policy. To think The Mirror spent this morning accusing Tony Blair of muddying the waters (see last post)...

Welcome to a brand new week, and there'll have been a smug David Cameron munching through breakfast this morning. The Mirror has bought the whole "throw a wedge between Labour and the PM over education" trick hook, line and sinker. Here's one of their leaders in today's paper:

Tony Blair is muddying what should be clear blue water between a Labour government and Tory opposition over selection in schools. The Premier's qualified support for cherry-picking of pupils according to how heads guess they'll perform smacks of the dreaded 11-plus.

His distinction between selection on academic ability, as measured by an exam, and showing an aptitude for a subject, possibly gauged by other exam, is disingenuous. Blair should champion good local secondaries for all kids and expose the Tories as a divisive force harking back to the bad days when most pupils were branded failures before their teens.

[source: The Mirror - 'His-tory lesson']

I'm surprised that's worked quite so easily. Meanwhile across the political divide, The Telegraph is also having a dig at our Tone, demanding to know why the Government has spent £1m on a website which asks people to nominate national icons. The Telegraph's first nomination is foxhunting, which is why I don't generally read The Telegraph.

Elsewhere in the news, a Somerset man finds himself competing for Russia in a trans-Atlantic boat race, having previously had to be rescued from that very same ocean when trying to cross it using kite power. There is no hope for some people. Closer to what is currently home, in London, the National Portrait Gallery is employing front-of-house staff to smile at visitors, thereby preventing terrorism. The Londonist:

According to the press, the welcome means that anyone entering the gallery who has a "malevolent purpose," will now immediately "realise they have been recognised," by the chirpy, headset-sporting gap year student on the door.

As international art thieves are undoubtedly too clever to walk in through the front door, and Banksy probably doesn't warrant such high levels of security, we can only imagine that "malevolent purpose" is a euphemism for terrorism.

[source: The Londonist - 'Welcome to the NPG - unless you're a terrorist']

Ollie wouldn't let me post about the rain on the way back from Oxford. He said it was crap. And too similar to continual posting about snowflakes. Probably accurate.

Anyway, the new Berliner Observer. Colourful. Readable. A hefty news section with interesting comment and analysis. An improved colour magazine and a new monthly "woman's magazine". Good stuff. I may start to wear sandals and hug trees yet.

One of the joys of going home is that I get freshly brewed filter coffee. Proper coffee, the good stuff, call it what you will - it's fantastic. At Oxford, my choice is rather more limited. There are plenty of coffee shops in the city; we host three Starbucks, two Neros and one apiece of Costa and Coffee Republic, as well as all the smaller bars and coffee shops. However, it's only Starbucks that do filter coffee. In fact, Nero does the better latte, but it's Starbucks that you go for the straight stuff. This has, however, thrown up two problems. First, a regular coffee habit at Starbucks, even if you're only having filter coffee, which is one of their cheaper products, can add up if you're a regular drinker. Second, for the last two months, the choice at Starbucks has stunk. They typically offer two blends, a current favourite, and the Fairtrade option. The Fairtrade option, whatever you think of the ethical value, is a mediocre choice. It's not offensive, slightly perky and not too heavy. But it's hardly setting the tastebuds alight. The current favourite is usually the better choice. Unfortunately, even though it's January, Starbucks continue to offer their Christmas blend. I think I may have mentioned it on here before, but that doesn't mean I can't repeat myself. Their Christmas blend is just awful, like drinking mud. And for crying out loud, Christmas is over. I used to like the firm's enthusiasm for Christmas, which they get into from the very beginning of December (because "It only happens once a year!") but clearly they have to do something if they want me to come back. You see, yesterday I went to Debenhams and bought a half price cafetiere and some half price mugs to go with it. And then I went to Sainsbury's to buy some very good coffee. Now I can make my own! My first attempts were delicious made more so when I enjoyed the virtue of saving money from Starbucks. Of course, I'll still patronise their establishments; where else other than the Starbucks in Borders can you sit and drink in comfort while perusing Sports Illustrated and Private Eye for free? Otherwise, though, all hail the cafetiere of savings and caffeine addiction.

Now, I hope that our many readers have enjoyed the new site. What's that I hear you say? It still looks the same? Well, it doesn't. Half the apostrophes and other symbols are all mucked up, and I'm still not sure why. Basically, we've upgraded to MT 3.2, and Ollie will be soon fine tuning some of the templates. There aren't many front side changes, but we've finally got a way to deal with all the comment spam and trackbacks we get. Even if it isn't working properly, it is a start.

I'm sure Ollie and Amy will post separately - no doubt from the bus back to London with Ollie's laptop - but I will mention that we just enjoyed a delicious meal in the Mitre here at Oxford, and generally humiliated each other. I won the award for most crimson person, while Amy was laughed at by the waiter, which is a new (or should that be knew?) one on us. Ollie came off rather lightly, drastic haircut aside, and was a very generous man indeed. Certainly that should make him more attractive to women than grabbing the wine list and dropping his voice an octave.

It's 0th Week again. Bugger. That went by quickly.

Safestyle UK. You know the adverts. A burly bloke struts around a selection of windows screaming 'YOU BUY ONE, YOU GET ONE FREE!' over and over again until you relent and decide your industrial-sized greenhouse needed re-doing anyway. Well, folks, I'm here to present a dramatic revelation to you.

Wait for it...

That man is the tannoy announcer at Burnley FC.

This was revealed to me by a gentleman asking to be identified only as Etienne De Cracy, but who in actual fact is my mate Rhys. His friend's auntie is going out with Mr Safestyle himself (real name Jeff Brown, which is a shame, as I was thinking of writing to Mr Safestyle and seeing if it worked the same as writing to Santa). What a career that man has! Half his time spent aggressively parading a selection of glasswork for television, the other half entertaining a few thousand Lancastrians with nothing better to do than watch Burnley.

I wonder if he ever gets it wrong. Maybe that'll make out-take TV one day, seeing as Carol Thatcher's wee on I'm A Celeb never will. Mr Safestyle lunging at the camera and screaming "THE FOURTH OFFICIAL HAS INDICATED THERE WILL BE TWO MINUTES OF ADDED TIME". Therapy may well be called for in later life. And that's just the viewers.

Watching Match Of The Day, it occurs to me that - more often than not - it's the goalkeepers who really perform during FA Cup outings.

I may be biased. I'm a goalkeeper myself (or at least I was the last time I played, in the dim and distant past) and it's usually a thankless task. No one really notices when you play well, everyone can tell when you make a howler because a goal against your side is the inevitable end result. You have to have a bit of a masochistic and/or insane streak, which explains how people like Bruce Grobbelaar are compelled to join the profession.

Anyhow, all the top performances by lowly sides in today's games were aided and abetted by stunning shows of goalkeeping. The Luton Town keeper Marlon Beresford saved a penalty in the game against Liverpool, which very nearly turned into the upset I had earlier predicted, with Luton leading 3-1 at one point (final score: 3-5). The Tamworth keeper was highlighted by the studio panel on MOTD for a string of fine saves and some heroic bravery against Stoke, and the Nuneaton keeper was heralded as 'magnificent' by Middlesbrough boss Steve McClaren.

At the other end of the pitch, these sides were usually offering little or nothing. Tamworth had a few chances but nothing special, and Nuneaton needed a penalty (albeit a coolly taken one) to get on the scoresheet.

It's not just the minnows whose goalkeepers deserve a pat on the back tonight, either. Birmingham's Maik Taylor spared his side's blushes with a series of great saves against tiny Torquay during their 0-0 draw. Which serves as a reminder that the heroics may not be over yet - Nuneaton, Tamworth and Birmingham are all going to be in action a week on Tuesday in the replays of their drawn matches.

Finally, if I were a Colchester United fan tonight, I'd be upset. They pulled off the only 'proper' upset of the day, defeating highflying second tier outfit Sheffield United away from home by two goals to one, only to be shoehorned unceremoniously into the back end of MOTD whilst the show focused on nil-nil draws at Torquay and Stoke. If the coverage had been entirely true to the giantkilling spirit of the day, Colchester deserved to be right up there at the start. But I'm not a Colchester fan. So I'm not upset.

Further to my London Calling post, I did go somewhere different today. The friend I met suggested we visit Sir John Soane's Museum. Incidentally, she was the third person to mention that I should visit it in a matter of weeks. So, off we went.

One of the leaflet's describes the museum as, "perhaps the most idiosyncratic of all London's museums". And I couldn't agree more. But it is fabulous in all its wonder. Soane was one of England’s greatest architects, responsible for the Bank of England, the interior of No. 10 and various other buildings. He left his house and collection to the public in 1837, and what a collection. The museum is rather like the Pitt Rivers, but on a smaller and more personal scale. But just as strange.

The atmosphere of the museum begins when you stand on the front steps of this rather distinctive building overlooking Lincoln's Inn Fields and you ring the doorbell. An elderly gentleman, dressed impeccably, invites you in and you are then free to tour at leisure. The house itself is rather tiny, but this makes it all the more mysterious as you wander around it's tiny passageways, looking every-which-way at the strange things displayed on the walls. One of the curators tactfully stated that Soane merely "acquired" things throughout his life. Basically, he stole things or was given others by feats of wonderful good luck and opportunism. There's a Sarcophagus for instance dating from 1300 BC, right next to a portrait of his wife's treasured dog, Fanny (see, I said it was like the Pitt Rivers). Just look at the list of collections on the website. For me however, the most interesting room was the "Dome Area" which houses numerous stone plaques, sculptures and urns. An incredibly higgledy-piggledy mix of intrigue. So it’s well worth a visit. If only to see the use of teasels on the antique chairs, rather than the usual piece of rope, preventing people from sitting on them.

Earlier today I gave my views on what might or might not happen in this afternoon's FA Cup 3rd Round ties. In particular, I had this to say:

Yes, pity us Manchester City fans, hoping against hope that we might turn over Scunthorpe. It'll never happen. Last year we contrived to lose to Oldham on one of the windiest days in the history of mankind, at the coldest football ground in the history of mankind. Today the weather may be (marginally) kinder, but you can bet your bottom dollar Lady Luck won't be.

Well it's odd that I should have mentioned betting and Lady Luck. As it turned out, City beat Scunthorpe 3-1 having made an atrocious start, going in 1-0 down at half time to a goal from a young Scunthorpe forward by the name of Keogh. Before the match, I had filled out a Ladbrokes coupon on the match as I usually do, spending £5 on a small selection of bets. £2 of that was placed on a combined bet of Manchester City to win the game 3-1, but with a Scunthorpe player picked at random - one Mr Keogh - to score first. The odds on that happening were 200 to 1. It happened. I'm £400 richer.

Moving on - he said, allowing the alcohol to settle in his stomach and with a smile etched into his face - and let's see how those prospective giantlkillers fared this afternoon. My prediction had been that Manchester United and Chelsea wouldn't suffer, but Aston Villa, Liverpool and Newcastle United might have cause for concern. I also felt it was a near certainty that City would lose to Scunthorpe, which happily was not the case. Of those predictions, Manchester United play Burton Albion tomorrow, but Chelsea saw off Huddersfield 2-1, a closer result than I might have imagined. Interestingly, this time last year, it was Chelsea playing Scunthorpe and Chelsea who beat them 3-1 after having conceded first. so Scunthorpe must be getting used to that. Hull lost to Aston Villa but only by the one goal, Newcastle snuck past Mansfield by the same margin thanks to a fairly late Shearer goal, and as I write Liverpool have just conceded an equaliser to Luton Town. So it's been close.

Oddly, though, for this round, there've been very few proper upsets. The nearest we can get, in fact, is a series of improbable draws: Nuneaton's last minute penalty against Middlesbrough, Tamworth's goalless draw away at Stoke, and Torquay holding Birmingham to a draw. So it was nice of Ladbrokes to relieve the tedium. Cheers!

No, sorry to disappoint you all, I'm not quitting. Kennedy has quit as Lib Dem leader. Here's Nick Assinder's view of events. Ollie thinks I've gone soft in the head, but I feel sorry for him, I genuinely do.

It's that glorious day, the FA Cup 3rd Round Saturday, where a bunch of no-hopers turn up at a big stadium absurdly hopeful of getting an entirely unexpected win, only to come back down to earth with a heavy drubbing. Yes, pity us Manchester City fans, hoping against hope that we might turn over Scunthorpe. It'll never happen. Last year we contrived to lose to Oldham on one of the windiest days in the history of mankind, at the coldest football ground in the history of mankind. Today the weather may be (marginally) kinder, but you can bet your bottom dollar Lady Luck won't be.

So, which other top flight knights in shining armour might suffer at the tiny paws of lesser minnows? Manchester United are not going to lose to Burton Albion, so let's rule that one out, glorious though such a result would be. Huddersfield might briefly threaten Chelsea but that won't happen either. Hull have got a decent chance against Aston Villa though, and Luton have occasionally sprung upsets on teams before (e.g. City) so who knows, Liverpool have to trip up eventually, they might as well do it spectacularly.

But my best tip for an upset: Mansfield at Newcastle. Imagine the scenes if that one happens. Souness will be out of the club before you can say "auf wiedersehen, pet". Newcastle are in disarray at the moment, Mansfield will be up for it in a cauldron of atmosphere the likes of which most of their players will never have seen before. All they need is to nick one goal from a set piece or penalty and then defend like it's Rourke's Drift for the other 89 minutes. And let's hope Torquay beat Birmingham, the first time they've ever faced a top flight outfit. The rate Birmingham are going, the two sides will be meeting more regularly soon anyway.

Anyone who is susceptible to the old food fad from time to time will probably appreciate this article.

The organisers of this year's Brit Awards are in secret talks with Kate Bush to get her back on stage for the first time since 1979 - you heard it here first. If you didn't read The Mirror this morning. Madonna to open it, Coldplay to perform live, Take That (minus my namesake) to present an award. Me to apply for a job at xfm.

What I'm about to say is slightly dangerous since I know that Ollie disagrees with it to an extent before I've even started, but here goes anyway. Why do people eat on the tube? I don't mind the tube, but it is undoubtedly hot, full of dirty, smelly air and hardly the most hygienic place in the world. So why chose to eat your Boots meal deal there? Last night, about 11pm, there were a couple eating some pasta box thing. It smelt absolutely disgusting and in the heat, smells of stale smoke and alcohol, it made me want to retch. I take Williams' argument that if you are in a rush, then the tube may well be the only place to eat. Fair enough. That's excusable. But some people look as though they are about to pull out the hamper and the tartan rug and settle down for a good old picnic. Disgusting.

Simon Barnes, in Saturday's edition of The Times:

We read in The Times this week that a small group of Manchester City supporters have written an open letter to others of their kind. They are making the suggestion that they all stop taunting Manchester United supporters about the Munich air crash of 1958, in which 23 people, including eight United players, were killed. But it's not the stopping that is intriguing, it is that they started in the first place.

[source: The Times - 'Divisive power of crowds fuels supporters' baffling culture of violence']

Simon goes on to discuss 'vileness' in football and other sports, concluding that sport appears to demand it from people, that it has become 'routine'. But at one point he almost touches on what I think is the right explanation for the above example:

The sporting crowd is not an individual, but an individual can speak through the machinery of the crowd, so it doesn't really count. Sociologists talk about "deindividuation", the loss of self-awareness and personal identity that happens to someone subsumed in a crowd ... In a crowd you are not only safe, you are a different person.

That's right. Let me put the Manchester City chants in question into their full context. The Munich air crash also claimed the life of a City player turned journalist, Frank Swift, as has been pointed out by the supporters' clubs who wrote the letter. The letter did not suggest that they all stop taunting Manchester United with it, as far from all supporters do so. You'll find a small minority at home games, and the vocal numbskulls who travel en masse to away games and get drunk, are the main culprits. The chants do not refer explicitly to the air crash itself (though one which is now not sung used to, so this is not a recent problem), but refer to United supporters as 'Munichs'. For example, one chant to team other than United is "You're just a town full of Munichs", implying that most of the town supports Manchester United (usually true enough).

I reckon I can guarantee that 99% of the supporters using 'Munich' in their chants never give a thought to the source of the word, the air crash in question. They do not sing it with specific reference to the air crash, they do not intend its first effect to be reminding Manchester United supporters of that crash. Most Manchester City fans prepared to use the term are far too ill-educated to have a clue about what actually happened, and have none of the empathy or compassion required to fully comprehend the act of death itself. Believe me, I've sat through enough away matches in the company of drugged and drunk nutters to know that this is no pre-meditated summoning of the annals of history to taunt their opponents.

Instead, 'Munich' is a form of shorthand. You try coming up with a chant involving 'Manchester United fan', 'Man United fan' or if you're lucky 'United fan' that scans properly and is easily memorable. Because for many of these people going to a game is all about chanting, and all about getting drunk. This is why it is seen as a badge of honour if your set of fans is the loudest - football for them is not about turning up to enjoy a game, it's a tribal event where the tribe that shouts loudest, wins. I don't agree with that at all but I know that is how they perceive it. These people need their chants to identify them, to be short and to be memorable. When City fans want to refer to their United counterparts, they use' Munich' because it means 'Manchester United fan' and it fits nicely into most of their songs. The way it's used, you'd be better off spelling it 'MU-nik'.

Now please don't take any of that to be a defence of the term or of the mindless people who use it (and I call them mindless for many reasons, not just this one). The Munich reference must at some point have originated from the air crash, thanks to some group of sick individuals. But don't be under the illusion that the majority of young men singing that word represent people intentionally calling to memory the deaths of so many young men half a century ago in order to taunt others. The people who sing these songs are, sadly, too closed-minded to be that intellectually cruel.

The BBC reports that 25 out of the 62 Liberal Democrat MPs have signed a letter saying they will no longer work for Charles Kennedy. 19 of the signatories are members of the Lib Dem front bench.

So, how will the Lib Dem shadow cabinet look come Monday if Charlie is still leader? Perhaps a little something like this:

Charles Kennedy
Leader

Menzies Campbell
Shadow Foreign, Home, Defence, International Development and Scottish Secretary

Don Foster
Shadow Transport, Environment, Rural Affairs, Culture, Media & Sport Spokesperson, & Attorney General

Lembit Opik
Shadow Wales, Northern Ireland, Work, Pensions, Trade, Industry, Education & Skills Secretary

Michael Moore
Chancellor, Health Secretary, Local Government & Communities Spokesperson, & Minister for Women

It's not just because we share the same surname that I feel sorry for Charles Kennedy. Usually no one gives a flying monkeys about the leader of the Lib Dems. In fact, no one really cares about the Lib Dems. Suddenly though, their leader admits something very personal, and the British media launch upon him like a ton of bricks (well, apart from the ones who are still reeling over Galloway entering BB). But, why? Just leave the poor guy alone. I know it's January and you don't have anything better to write about, but is it really necessary for the BBC News front page to carry links such as, "What we reporter's new about Kennedy's drinking - and when". Oh yes, the supportive nation strikes again. Sure, run articles about who will be the next leader, or when he will resign etc, but just lay off the rest. And don't blame him for not telling the world earlier. With the response he's received today, would you blame him?

Ollie and I were in Paddington yesterday, as one of my posts stated. It was an amusing coffee, compounded by the fact that when the barrista asked us whether we wanted any cakes, pastries or muffins I just looked at him, glanced at Ollie and said, "No, thank you. He's on a diet". I haven't seen Ollie so gob smacked for a while (and for reasons known to a few, Ollie will never retaliate with a comment on that subject). Anyway, Ollie and I did venture into a couple of shops, notably Monsoon where the girl on the door yelped in such glee when she saw Ollie had a MCFC bag. It turns out that the girl in question was from Manchester. Big deal, this is a train station luv, surely lots of people here have a connection with Manchester? Oh well, life's full of strange people. So, Ollie didn't like the the idea of shopping with a "girl", despite his apparent straightness and the fact I have been shopping with him enough times. But today, we got it sorted. Our google conversation (like MSN but different) earlier went something along the lines of:

Amy: I've just been shopping in Ox St. Now skint. 1 skirt, 2 tops and a handbag you'll be pleased to know.
Ollie: I bought 4 t-shirts online.

Clearly the way ahead for man and women to both shop at the same time, albeit not together.

Fox News has produced a piece about energy consumption, specifically referring to US attempts to exploit oil and gas reserves in places like Alaska. It is worth reading if only for its unique use of the word 'environmentalist' to mean 'global terrorist intent on destroying our economy at all costs':

Environmentalists are doing everything in their power to ensure that whatever energy is available will be more expensive ... In a Dec. 15 column, columnist George Will recently commented that "environmentalism is collectivism in drag." The primary purpose of environmentalism is to create and use scarcity to "enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives," he observed.

[source: Fox News - 'Energy, a potent political weapon']

Oh yes. Because in America, the greatest danger of government supervision of your life comes from people trying to protect an Alaskan nature reserve. And not from your president, who happily authorises spying on US citizens without bothering to let anyone else know. This part was quite good as well:

Ready access to affordable energy is the lifeblood of modern economies. Vladimir Putin understands this principle quite well, although his application of it was quite rudimentary. Environmentalists have much more experience wielding energy as a weapon than Putin.

Meanwhile there may be no gas trouble in Britain, but the foul smell of decay is starting to waft around Charles Kennedy's nose. The leading articles this morning were many and varied in tone. For example, The Mirror was entirely unforgiving:

Alcoholics often refuse to accept they have a problem but that does not excuse Charles Kennedy's months of denials. He is not just another person who drinks too much. He is the leader of the country's third political party. Time after time, he was asked if there was a problem and on each occasion he lied. Only telling the truth when he was about to be exposed on television. Now he insists he will stand in a leadership election. If he cares about his party, he should not.

[source: The Mirror - 'On the rocks']

The Mail mixed sympathy with suspicion, labelling his statement an 'exercise in damage limitation':

It certainly takes courage for anybody - never mind a political leader - to bare his soul in public, as Charles Kennedy did last night. It takes steely determination to confront a drink problem and seriously seek professional help. And the instinctive human response to his statement must, of course, be one of sympathy. Yet this extraordinary moment in politics isn't just about Mr Kennedy. It affects the future of the Liberal Democrats too. And while his dignity under pressure must be acknowledged, it has to be asked whether his candour and openness are quite what they seem. After all, for two years, he denied he had any problem with alcohol - even though senior colleagues confronted him when he failed to show up for the Budget debate in 2004. In short, he has lied to the public, the media and party members.

[source: The Mail - 'A last, desperate throw of the dice']

It concludes that Kennedy could still 'go with dignity, his head held high'. The Guardian largely agrees, but suggests that the open rebellion occurring in the Lib Dem ranks is 'a product not of his past drinking but his own wider failings as a leader'. It also isn't so sure any dignity remains:

He has challenged his party to suppress its desire to change leader not in defence of any great cause but because departing would be an embarrassment to him. His only strength is not that his colleagues want him to stay but that they cannot unite behind one person to challenge him.

[source: The Guardian - 'Drink is not the real problem']

I think, for once in his life, that my Dad had the worthiest insight into this. He simply made the point that we live in a society that will not elect an outed alcoholic, reformed or otherwise, as Prime Minister. And despite the Lib Dems' third party status, their leader has to be PM material for them to be taken seriously, something Charles Kennedy didn't look like before or after yesterday's revelations.

Very finally for this supersized post, two interesting things from the Oxford University Press weblog. Steve Rivkin's written about the 'Six Deadly Sins' of naming a business, and Ben Keene's penned a Geographical Review of 2005. In it he discusses all the changes that have had to be made to maps throughout the last year, from the renaming of Pretoria to the effects of the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

Celebrity Big Brother has landed once again with a new crop of celebrities. One of them isn't actually a celebrity, although I defy you to pick the right one, even once Channel 4 have told you. Here's the list of contestants, and here's an idea of what might happen on the first day...

It's Day One in the Big Brother house, and Pete Burns, star of 80s group Dead Or Alive, lies face down in the swimming pool with that question no longer in doubt. A nervous Michael Barrymore sits as far away from the pool as he can possibly be without appearing conspicuously far away from the pool, and is thus seated at the breakfast bar, next to Maggot, rapper with Goldie Lookin' Chain.

"It wasn't me this time," says Barrymore, allowing himself a second too long to look at the pool before snapping his gaze back to the middle distance of the kitchen work surface. "And that doesn't mean it was me last time either. Because it wasn't. As I've said. But it wasn't me this time and there's cameras everywhere to prove it."
"You knows it," concurs Maggot. "Those fu-", and there the viewers leave the conversation for ten minutes of audio from the chicken coop as Maggot delivers his opinions. Eventually we return. "Safe," he concludes.

Meanwhile, on the lounge sofa, unknown entrant Chantelle is attempting to fulfil her brief and fill indie rocker Samuel Preston's briefs by convincing him, or at least his erogenous zones, that she is indeed a famous person. "I'm an It Girl dahhhling," she purrs into her microphone, enunciating the 'It' with enough cut glass to furnish the entire transparent bathroom provided. "You must have seen me. I'm an A-lister!"
"You can't be," says Preston, seeing through her disguise like he'll see through the bathroom wall when she's in the shower later. "After all you're in here, aren't you?"

In the diary room, George Galloway is receiving a grilling from Davina McCall via the studio link-up, over rumours that Oona King was supposed to be entering the house instead of him.
"Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women famous and unemployed enough to want to come on the show?"
"What a preposterous question," he retorts." Wouldn't you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational eviction results in modern history?"
"But George, we haven't had an eviction yet-"
"Move on to your next question, Davina, I've got a lot of other people who want to speak to me."
"George, no one else in there wants to speak to you, that's why you've sat in the diary room all day. We've had the microphone turned off for the last four hours to give the producers a rest. Now are you proud-"
"If you ask that question again, I'm going, I warn you."
"Going where, exactly, George? The next Jack Dee, are we? Tony Banks was sitting here five minutes ago, and he said that you were behaving inexcusably, that you had deliberately chosen to go to that part of the house and to exploit the leather armchair there."
This was enough for George. "You are actually conducting one of the most - even by your standards - one of the most boring interviews I have ever participated in. I have just won an eviction. Can you find it within yourself to recognise that fact? To recognise the fact that the people of Britain chose me this evening. Why are you insulting them? Can't you find it within yourself even to congratulate me on this victory?"
"Congratulations, Mr Galloway. Now please go and join Mr Burns."

Why do zebras have stripes? Peter Stothard, for The Times:

Black and white stripes? Camouflage to hide from lions? Were Zebra Crossings designed so that the driver couln't see them? I didn't think so ... This week I've been having close natural encounters with zebras - on the ground beneath the bird-filled skies of southern Africa.

In the bush of Madikwe my childhood zebra scepticism is reinforced. The beasts stand out from their surroundings barely less well than the luminous kit of the night cyclist. Further south in the Namibian desert the Attenborough party scores more strongly. The stripes disappear in an early morning swirl of sand and reflection.

The latest zebra lore suggests that scepticism about the camouflage purpose may have been the right course all along. Zoological researchers, it is said, have carefully blacked out the white stripes and whited out the black ones of randomly elected zebra. The result? A hundred times as many nasty biting tsetse flies on the mono-coloured flanks. Those much-debated stripes? Naturally selected insect repellant. Hiding from lions is nothing as to hiding from flies - as any visitor to Africa will attest.

[source: The Times - 'Why the stripes?']

I really like the idea of stripes as nature's fly spray. There are a couple of other theories I can find, though. One is that the stripes help the animals to blur into one when they travel in a herd, causing all kinds of problems for predators, who presumably have to have a good sit down and rub their eyes after ten minutes to get their depth perception back. Equally, the markings might be of more importance to other zebra than other animals, acting as a visual cue for all sorts of courtship purposes, like the plumage of a bird for example.

It's also pointed out in the book Wild Ways, by Peter Apps, that camouflage seems unlikely due to the way zebra move, and the fact that most predators have no trouble at all nailing a few at a time. So if there's any lessons to be learnt, it's that you should wear a Newcastle shirt to protect against insects in Africa, but in such cases, do beware lions.

Finally, to return to Peter's line: "Zoological researchers ... have carefully blacked out the white stripes and whited out the black ones of randomly elected zebra." One hopes, for the validity of their study, that it was not the same zebra.

My ten-year-old sister had her first visit from a personal tutor yesterday. She's perfectly bright, able and alert, gets very good reports at school and isn't behind in anything. But a tutor is still very much a necessity.

That's because of the Eleven Plus exam in Buckinghamshire. It's an exam that's died out across most of the country, but it's still employed in a few counties like Bucks and Kent. The idea, for those who may not know, is that it determines entry into state grammar schools, which tend to provide a very good education at no cost to parents.

The reason my sister needs a tutor to help her through her Eleven Plus - to be sat this autumn - is that her school will offer her no help. That's because it's a public school (i.e. not state funded, paid for by parents). It is not in her current school's interests to provide any form of Eleven Plus tuition, because if she succeeds in the exam she will gain entry to a grammar school, and the old school will lose her 'business'. So students at the public school are taught as though the Eleven Plus, with its specific exam rubric and requirements, did not exist, a decision very much commercially governed.

Which is, of course, as depressing as it is understandable. Of course the school doesn't want to lose the four-figure incomes it generates from each pupil, so it won't offer help to take the exam. But equally, that means the school could be said to be crippling its young students' education for commercial gain, and this is not a public school with a particularly strong academic reputation. Though I have no exact figures in front of me, I'm of the belief that the school has produced one Oxbridge entrant in the last decade. My old school, also a public school, produced four or five a year, which whilst not outstanding is a solid enough performance for a school whose reputation, like my sister's, barely extends beyond its locality.

The irony is that my sister's school regularly beats my old school in the academic league tables. By offering what some might unkindly deem 'Mickey Mouse' disciplines at A Level, as opposed to old standards like arts and humanities, the school is able to secure a higher proportion of top grades and thereby leapfrog other institutions. This explains its league table performance versus its all but non-existent Oxbridge record. Further evidence for the attitudes prevalent at the school may be obtained by a speech made by its Chairman of Governers at a prize day several years ago. In it, she encouraged her (entirely female) charges to place marriage ahead of academic achievement in their list of priorities, asserting that a good marriage triumphed over a good career. Traditional value that that may be, it still very nearly caused me to publicly raise my objection.

So needless to say, my opinion of my sister's school isn't great. Having taken the decision to ignore the existence of the Eleven Plus - an understandable one, I do concede, given their commercial position - they're effectively attempting to entrap their students in an environment more conducive to success on the stage than in the classroom. That's as much a critical influence at the age of eleven as the Eleven Plus itself ever was.

Lib Dem leadership contest ahoy!

(Sound of coughing.)

Er, is this thing on? (Tap, tap.) Lib Dem leadership contest everyone!

(Not even coughing.)

Alright fine. It's about as gripping and relevant as Henry Blofeld in full pigeon-spotting mode, minus the hilarity. But Big Charlie, the man every tabloid sub-editor wishes had been the party leader with the cocaine allegations, has instead admitted to his drink problem and called a leadership election.

Nick Robinson's BBC weblog, fast becoming required reading for anyone with a vague interest in politics, lists a few previous Kennedy denials, although you should also read the comments for some strong balancing viewpoints from Robinson's audience.

Always a good read, Nick's blog, primarily because it's kept short and simple, so that people like me - fairweather political pundits who don't follow all the stories all the time - can dip in and out. It also includes transcripts of some of his broadcast and written BBC articles, which are useful, and an idea of what it's like to appear on Children In Need and University Challenge, and be humiliated on both.

I grabbed the one politically-awakened contact online on my MSN list for a Lib Dem contest quote, and this was it: "Everyone always knew he was a derrruunk. and a tw*t for not filling the GAPING HOLE during the election battle." Can't argue.

And so we inevitably turn to the question of who might replace (Oh My God They Killed) Kenny as leader. None of the three expected candidates have gone near the job with a bargepole, so we have to turn our attention elsewhere. To Oliver Smith, in fact.

Who's Oliver Smith? He's the 12 year old who just took over as President of Amber Valley Lib Dems, and I was going to do a sketch all about his forthcoming campaign and expected policies. But woe betide the blogger caught at an evening meal when big news breaks - by the time I got home, Deadbrain had been there and done that. Ollie should certainly avoid the alcohol problem for a few years, and he'll get to go for a kickaround on general election polling day since he can hardly be filmed casting his vote, can he?

Meanwhile, as the planet slowly recovers from Charles Kennedy's bombshell:
- the Axis of Evil starts up its very own 'Reuters of repression' to combat the Western media. [source: Journalism.co.uk]

- Channel 4's viewer-driven FourDocs initiative gains a series of short films about OJ's birthplace, Grimsby. [source: FourDocs]

- And the US develops a stealth lie detector that works without the subject knowing it's there. Great news for journalists who get hold of one, bad news for all future Charles Kennedys. 'Are you drunk, Charlie?' '*hic* Nooo.' BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. [source: New Scientist]

I have just been browsing various websites providing "things to do in London". I don't want to get into the trap of always going to the same places, or doing the same thing. A friend asked me to suggest where we met up for lunch or coffee on Saturday. Predictably I said either Covent Garden or the British Museum. And where am I going for dinner on Friday? Covent Garden. And where am I meeting a friend for coffee on Wednesday? Covent Garden (well Embankment, but it's the same thing). Admittedly the dinner and coffee venues weren't chosen by me, and the latter is influenced by where my friend works, but it is always the same place. What about Ollie and I? Well we always meet in Chancery Lane or Paddington because they are convenient. Where do I do my shopping? Oxford St, Canary Wharf or Covent Garden area. It is always the same places, generally because they require little or no effort or imagination on my part. Maybe I should add another New Year's resolution to my list (which includes using Calgon in my washing machine…) and decide to be more adventurous. I suppose you could assume that because I always go to the same places, that I know them very well. This could be seen as better than knowing lots of places, but not very well. But I don't do I? I always end up at the same coffee shop or down the same street. London may geographically be very large, but in reality it can be as small or as large as you want it to be. Why don't I ring some changes? Hmm. I think this definitely has to be a resolution. Anyway, scanning various websites I can across this one that I particularly liked. The LondonTourist. It isn't the smoothest of websites, but it has a lot of accessible, useful and comprehensive information. The other was everyone's favourite lastminute.com. I've never really bothered to look at this site in much depth before, but it has really grown over the past few years and is very comprehensive. I wish I'd thought about it before Christmas… I may have found slightly more inspiration with some of my gifts. I'll definitely use it in future, if only as a reference point for good ideas or things to do in London. Oh and it has made me realise that I really must go on the London Eye.

So now back to my day. What am I doing? Oh yes, shopping in Oxford St before meeting Ollie in Paddington. Bugger.

Take some wild speculation about the future of the financial markets, mostly involving football and a company called 'AmazonBay'. Give it a flash movie with a black background. Use lots of moving company logos because you have no other footage, overlaid by an ultra-serious narrative packed with buzzwords. Use photo negatives of groups of corporate executives and traders to make them look scarier. The result? DrKW's Revolution 2015. Serious? Or spoof? You decide.

Elsewhere this morning, abject panic on both sides of the political spectrum. The Guardian says 2006 will be the 'most tumultuous year for Labour since 1994'. According to Neal Lawson:

In a desperate panic to win we gambled on power over principle rather than seeing them correctly as two sides of the same coin. Ever since, we have been papering over the cracks of this shortcut to office. Without a discernibly left philosophy of governance, we were always going to run into the sand at some stage. That point has come.

[source: The Guardian - 'Labour has run into the sand']

Meanwhile, over at The Telegraph, Cameron fatigue is setting in. David Green:

For a brief period, it looked as if David Cameron was going to inaugurate a revival of classical-liberal and conservative thought. But he has spent the past few days shutting down options before his promised policy commissions have even been appointed.

[source: The Telegraph - 'Daddy Cameron knows what's best']

In the same paper Boris Johnson complains that no one ever tries to bribe him, in relation to the case of Jack Abramoff, something that probably won't raise too many heads in the UK but still warrants a mention.

Johnson discuss Abramoff's ability to rip off native American Indians whilst representing their gambling interests. For readers of The Mirror, for whom only two books exist - those written by Dan Brown and those written by JK Rowling - a story closer to home. Beware the Da Vinci pendant. According to the article, nearly five million people in the UK have fallen victim to one scam or another. Now, what's the combined circulation of The Sun (3.2m) and The Mirror (1.7m)...

An apostrophe from word: ‘

An apostrophe typed directly: '

Will Amy be forced to use a dictionary to spell check?

Did you know that you can’t just get original caffeine or decaffeinated Nescafe coffee anymore, but you can also get half-caff. I was confused. Apparently…

Nestle original is the full works; the decaff has no caffeine and the half-caff has half of the caffeine of the original.

For goodness sake. What will it be next? Half-caffeine diet coke? You either want the caffeine coffee, or you don’t. Or you just drink half the quantity of “normal” coffee. Why go for half-caff. Mad.

I'm not convinced by the new range that Air Wick are advertising at the moment. I appreciate their seasonal "mulled wine and festive spice" air freshner or whatever it was, but how can you have something or other and green tea? Does green tea have a smell? And if it does, why do you want your home to smell of it?

Well, my day began as all my finals began. To the tune of Belinda and In Too Deep. Where would I be without her?

I had two accounts exams today: a solicitors accounts and a business accounts exam. The first exam was quite crap actually, but the business exam was wonderful. My balance sheet balanced and I was done quickly.

So what’s it like having an exam not wearing sub-fusc and without receiving a carnation? The exam venue was the Bishopsgate Institute (Liverpool St) - go to Hall Hire and then Upper Hall for pictures of my exam venue.

It’s a surprisingly nice and old building from the outside, so it isn’t a world apart from Schools! Inside it’s pretty scummy though… paint peeling, damp and blue-tak blobs everywhere. Lovely. The building also houses a public library, which was useful for the break between exams… but there were some rather shady characters in it!

That’s about all really.

How many RSS feeds is enough?

That's a question I always wonder about and never seem to know the answer to. I'm subscribed to around 50 different feeds on the basis that it'll guarantee something worth reading each day, leaving it up to me to wade through things that don't interest me to get to the good stuff. Some of those feeds will only provide new content every two or three days, some will cough up ten or twelve articles per day. Since no technology is yet good enough at sorting the wheat from the chaff, it still leaves a burden on me to find needles in my RSS haystack.

Maybe 50 is too many, then. Or is it too few? Should I saturate myself with RSS feeds from every blog I've ever thought looked worthwhile, and just allow myself ten minutes to pick my way down a list of articles each day, picking out the quality? Or should I accept that some good articles will sink to the bottom, and just pick up the top articles in my RSS reader whenever I get the chance? Or should I only have 10 or 15 feeds, so that I never miss a thing from sites I know I'll love? But can you think of a site whose posts you know - one hundred per cent - you'll read each time? There aren't that many. I personally would rather pick and choose from a wide variety than rely on a shortlist to constantly come good for me. The alternative is to sit through the bland stuff in the hope that it'll expand my knowledge if nothing else, but that seems hardly the point of RSS.

So, if anyone else reads this (presuming you haven't skipped over it in your RSS reader...), I want to know how many, if any, RSS feeds you're subscribed to. Why that number, and what's the theory behind the subscriptions you have? What drives you to subscribe to something, is it one very good post, a series of consistently good articles, or just the topic areas under discussion there? Answers on a postcard, or in the comments, please.

Manchester City fans are used to being robbed, but using the logical argument that fans' payments for tickets help fund players' wages, now they've been well and truly left out of pocket. A report I've just heard on Five Live claims two bank employees in Manchester have been found guilty of syphoning off funds from the bank accounts of three players.

Of course there's no real surprise there. If you're a crooked bank employee then footballers are probably the number one target. Your average Premiership player isn't going to miss a small slice of their five-figure weekly pay packet. What I found amusing was the targets themselves - I expect most City fans would respond with 'who?' if told the names. One was Daniel Van Buyten, a defender who spent a couple of months on loan two years ago before going back to join Hamburg. Another was Djamel Belmadi, also a loan signing before Van Buyten, who featured in at best a handful of games. The third player, Vicente Vuoso, was signed by Kevin Keegan for £3,500,000 and sold for pennies three years later, having never played for the first team and spent most of his time back out on loan in South America.

These are players who weren't necessarily bad - Van Buyten was a good player and a lot of fans hoped we'd sign him permanently - but they're by no means identified with the club now. Which suggests, of course, that the bank employees knew what they were doing, targeting foreign loan signings who were only going to be in Britain for a short period of time. They'd be unlikely to keep a close eye on what happened to their bank accounts. That's more the responsibility of a club employee who takes all the players' bills, accounts and other matters of admin, and keeps on top of them, freeing the players to worry about the football. So the players themselves will leave their accounts in the hands of the club, particularly if they're foreign and only here in the short term. But the club won't really understand precisely what's going on in each account, and they're unlikely to question some (comparatively) small transactions each month. It's the perfect breeding ground for fraud.

I've just found an online version of the report at This Is London (it seems to hardly have been reported online thus far, perhaps Five Live were onto it very early), and some of the figures are astonishing. When Belmadi left the club he also left £230,000 in his English account. That's a stunning amount of cash for a player who was at very best average. Vuoso's fate, being signed for so much money and never playing for the team, means he's regarded with particularly mixed emotions by fans - I wouldn't be surprised if some people want a statue of the bank workers put up in their honour for stealing some cash back!

Also in the news, a number 153 bus went out of control in London last night, ploughing into Borders and Sainsbury's in Islington. Looks like a bendy bus from the photo. Would never have happened on a Routemaster - it'd have gone right through Borders instead of, to quote the Channel 4 News report, 'rebounding'.

Meanwhile, there's a shark being jumped over in the US. The Simpsons' production team apparently want Ricky Gervais, who's just penned a show for them, back as a regular character. I sense the bitter scent of overexposure on the horizon (Extras having been no showstopping success, if we're honest). I'm particularly concerned that Catherine 'entirely unfunny' Tate and Little Britain are also wanted by Simpsons' creator Matt Groening as future guest stars. The consensus seems to be that Little Britain's third series is mere shadow of its former self; introducing them to The Simpsons feels too much like a marriage of tired formats, like blowing on a burnt-out match to make it glow again.

Adriana Lukas on her blog, Tuesday morning:

This morning I found an email from Dennis Howlett whom I finally got to meet at Les Blogs 2.0 last month, recommending something called goowy as a new email client. The invitation was to set up an account and then let him know what I think.

...

When you sign up, you get to import all your contacts from your main email client. I use gmail and the import was smooth and effortless. Too effortless in fact, as I was clicking through the steps, there was a line at the bottom of the (visible) screen with a box checked, which only flashed before my eyes, as I was clicking 'continue'. It said 'send invitation to goowy to your contacts' or words to that effect. With horror I watched as responses (mostly out of office replies) started piling in into my new shiny inbox. You may say that I should have been more careful about proceeding to the next stage in the set up but you'd be wrong. I was setting up a simple email client, which is something I do all the time, when testing various new applications coming out of the blogosphere.

[source: Media Influencer - 'Goowy spam faux pas']

I had two invites (from the same person) to sign up for Goowy. Then I got six more from another person.

The so-called service (no, I'm not linking to it) handles contacts, calendar, email, rss etc etc.

I replied to the first writer that I don't like trusting personal information to unknown outsiders.

Bless my soul if the first thing Goowy does when it receives your contact list is to write to all your contacts inviting them to sign up.

[source: David Tebbutt - 'Goowy: don't']

And finally, Ben Metcalfe:

I've had a few of these sent to me this morning, and a few of my friends have emailed me to say how peeved and slightly embarrassed they are about it. I agree with their sentiment - I think it's a really arrogant thing for Goowy to have done ... Thanks Goowy for showing the world how not to launch a website!

[source: Ben Metcalfe - 'Don't sign up for goowy.com']

And what do you know, Goowy have a blog of their own. And what do you know, here's their entry for Tuesday:

We thought we did a good job of making it clear (the text was large and red to let people know) that if you clicked "import" and had the invite box checked that it would invite your contacts and you were doing so willingly. This was not at all intended as a malicious way to spam a user's contacts.

Since a few people have made this mistake we are removing the check from the check box. If you want to help goowy grow and invite your contacts please check it manually.

[source: Goowy Blog - 'Correction for import/invite of contacts']

The power of blogging versus the power of a less than thoroughly disguised viral email campaign, and a pretty convincing win for the bloggers there. Goowy insist they are 'sincerely very sorry for any problems this may have caused and want you to know that this was not our intent'. Draw your own conclusions and follow the source material to find out more.

It amazes me how few weblogs there are devoted to football, considering its mass market appeal. Maybe newspapers and TV have such a monopoly on punditry that no one else has the creativity or determination left to write up what they think somewhere else - certainly that's the case with me. I just can't build up the enthusiasm to really decide what I think about things that happen on a football pitch once everyone else has had their say, let alone write that down on here.

The reason I bring this up is that earlier today, Manchester City signed Espanyol midfielder Albert Riera on loan until the end of the season, with a view to a permanent move. I was interested to see what people thought about this so I put his name into Google Blog Search. The only real result of interest was Danny at Bitter and Blue, who wrote this:

Coupled with the availability of Tuomas Haapala (whose contract commenced January 1st), it throws doubt on the long-term future of Kiki Musampa who has seen himself out of favour in recent times and Riera's arrival in particular will have done him no favours. With the size of the squad currently though, it is unlikely Musampa will be sent back to Atletico Madrid before the end of the season but it looks a certainty that he will not be back next season.

Granted, for those of you who don't follow City, that may not make much sense. But from my relatively informed perspective that's a good point, well made. Danny takes a matter-of-fact approach to his analysis, a bit like a mildly subjective version of BBC Sport, even earning praise from Spurs fans for his preview of the match coming up tonight, so it's a blog lacking most of the irrational sentiment you might expect from a football fan. On first glance, at least (there might be a few Munich songs lurking in the archive, who knows...).

It's just surprising that there aren't more sites like Bitter and Blue out there. I did check out one other supposed City weblog, mcfcblog, that was linked to from Danny's site, but the last post there was for 27 November. Like I said I have difficulty sustaining football arguments on paper - people have tried to cajole me into writing for a City fanzine recently and I'd love to but can think of nothing worthwhile to say. So in some respects I can understand why there aren't more City blogs around. But equally, I'd have thought there are people who can wax as lyrical about City out there as I can about, say, hurricanes, news or everyday incidents on Dayorama. Perhaps the literate City fans have exhausted their opinions elsewhere, i.e. the pub.

So, is this where OJ has been hiding?

Please?

We're going to try to upgrade the website to a new version of Movable Type. And we're hopefully going to avoid breaking anything in the process. But if we do, you know where to find us.

Wahey! An article about New Year's detox diets had an illustration of one of those bags of satsumas next to it on the BBC News front page. Having wolfed my way through four of the things yesterday in an attempt to avoid what remained of the New Year party food, I'll treat that as an example of my intuitive dieting knowledge (ha ha). And oh my, a diet is well and truly needed.

So yes, apologies for going quiet yesterday but we had a few technical issues - not my fault for once. We didn't miss the day out though. We set up a backup weblog and all the posts from it have been restored to this site, so you can now catch up on what we said yesterday. There's a poem thrown into the bargain as well.

Oh, and if we run out of gas due to those pesky Russians, you can always rely on BioWillie. Everyone can benefit from a little BioWillie in their lives. To quote AdPulp, which pointed it out:

Man, I'd love to work on this advertising account. It would be always on my mind.

Whilst we did use Dayorama Backup - aka Flamingorama due to the pinkness of the website design - on 2nd January, there were no direct entries made on this site. And after all I have done to keep these two men posting daily! I'm going to cry!

When I was studying history, a thought always used to occur to me - just the one, I wasn't very good at history. That thought was: how will future archaeologists perceive my generation?

My forays into the history and archaeology of the Anglo-Saxons brought that thought to the fore. I remember one discussion with my tutor about a cattle enclosure in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. There used to exist a royal palace in that kingdom (as it once was) at a place called Yeavering. At the time you'd have found a succession of comparatively grand wooden halls there, along with a small wooden amphitheatre, what was probably a chapel, and some interesting, indeed unusual, examples of burial. You'd have also found this cattle enclosure. But was it a cattle enclosure? Who knows. It ran from one end of the site to the other, a set of trenches that might have held a fence or some such, providing what certainly looked like a walkway leading into a roughly circular fenced enclosure. It might have been a stable.

In any case, my tutor and I discussed what we thought its purpose could have been. The likelihood is that the Anglo-Saxons and their British subjects would have held a market at such a prestigious location, so the evidence does lead us to the market/cattle enclosure conclusion. But then there existed a smaller circle of archaeological debris running inside the enclosure, parallel to its outer border. What could that be? That's the question my tutor asked me, and I said I thought it was a viewing platform, tracing the edge of the enclosure so that traders and buyers could stand and peruse the animal goods on offer below. He said it was a suggestion that hadn't occurred to me before, and the reason I remember this exchange so vividly is the rarity with which I ever elicited that sort of response out of a tutor.

Around thirteen hundred years after the enclosure was lost in a fire, and historians don't really know what went on there. They can only vaguely get an idea of its outline, let alone an understanding of its precise function. So how will our culture be interpreted when it's all inevitably reduced to ruins at some (hopefully distant) point? Take, for example, the Millennium Dome. What will future archaeologists make of that? I was pondering this earlier and tried to imagine myself discussing it with my tutor, and what I'd say. A giant aquarium, maybe, or perhaps an artificial ski slope.

Then my thinking progressed - what if I somehow ended up the only survivor from my age, talking face to face with the archaeologists and historians of the dim and distant future? (I don't know precisely how that eventuality would have come to pass, but trivial issues like the hows and whys of a situation tend not to bother me when I'm having a good think). There'd probably be some difficulties of language and interpretation, but assuming we had a decent enough mutual grasp of communication, they'd be asking me what this great big structure was. It was a Dome, I'd say, and they'd probably accept that much. But imagine the looks of horror and confusion on their faces when I say it became a white elephant! Unfamiliar with the expression as it exists today, they'd be awestruck at our possession of the technology to transmute architecture into wildlife, and before I realised the error it'd have caused a thorough re-evaluation of the historical accuracy of Transformers: Robots In Disguise.

Bed time.

[Originally posted on our backup blog when we broke the main one...]

Welcome to the Dayorama backup then, which we shan't hopefully be using for long. Hopefully for OJ at any rate, because if I'm not reunited with my beloved normal Dayorama soon, there is going to be trouble. OJ didn't quite clarify this enough for me in his first post here so allow me to elaborate - it was all his fault. He has destroyed my back end, so to speak. Forgiveness, at this moment in time, is some distance off.

In the mean time I'm going to treat you to a poem. Logging in to Blogger with what I hoped would be a username/password combination I'd already registered, I discovered about three weblogs I'd set up at some point in the past two or three years. One of them included a poem I'd written about a year and a half ago, and had long since forgotten. It's called Dead Fly and it goes like this:

You are just a dead fly
That's all that you are now
No more buzzing around me
No more feeding off a cow
You had it all before you
It might have lasted forever
Feeding off our leftovers
In stifling summer weather

Yet pride comes before a fall
Or a squish, as it was in your case
There's only so much I can stand
Of you pissing about in my face
You should have seen it coming
You faeces-thieving crook
But now you're just a smear
On the back page of my book

Life is full of little ironies
And now I've added another
The book was all about the life
Of David Attenborough
So much for Zoo Quest and Life On Earth
Or even Tribal Eye
He won't study you, that's for sure
You are one very dead fly

I thank you.

[Originally posted to our backup blog after we broke this one...]

Or so it seems. I'm just seeing if I have the ability to post or not. I'm now back in the land of London. My flat hasn't burnt down, my beloved avocado is still alive and I'm watching Teachers as a distraction from unpacking.

[Originally posted to our backup blog after we broke this one...]

Hello there. If you've made it to this site, then I'm rather impressed. This is the the brand new backup site for Dayorama. If you're having to read posts on this site, then it means that one of us has somehow screwed the main Dayorama site up. Or the hosting service is broken. In this case, it was my fault; somehow, during a fairly routine attempt to backup the site, I managed to break something that means the database is now unrecognisible. I don't know why. But - we do have men working on it to get the problem fixed. Until that time (and I have no idea how long it will take - the problem we have is quite common, but I've yet to hear from our hosts, and despite apparently having 365 day tech support, today is a bank holiday) please enjoy our posts on this backup site.

P.S.: Sorry again!

I don�t profess to know a lot about football. The offside rule? Not a chance. So, when the headline on the sports section of the Guardian yesterday read �What football taught us in 2005�, I was intrigued enough to read on and find out exactly what contribution football had made to the year. It turns out that the article is about �how old certainties lost out in the old year�. OK, I�m with this so far. Then it states, �the FA Cup is alive and well and so is the Northern Ireland team�. I�m lost there. So now to the first thing that �remember the title � football taught us in 2005; Michael Owen will go to any lengths to add to his goal tally (some 3,600 mile flight he took for the second match of some English tour in May). I understand that this is what something which emerged from football in 2005, but I�m unconvinced that the fact Michael own got on a plane �taught us something�. Anyway, number three; you have a better chance of becoming a manager than you thought, but there�s little chance of keeping the job. This fact stems from the number of opportunities and dismissals from clubs between 1997-2002. I suppose that is teaching us something. I�m not quite sure what though. Number five is that having all that money does not guarantee security. There is then a picture of Michael Jackson. This is more like it. When the title stated �what football taught us�, I was expecting profound statements, backed up by football references. This is good. But why then is there a picture of Michael Jackson? Apparently the statement has something to do with the money clubs did have and their standings now. Apparently Wimbledon no longer exists unless you believe in reincarnation. Whatever. Anyway, I think that makes sense. It is teaching us something. But why the picture of Michael Jackson. Number eight is that there is no place for English footballers in English football (classic) and nine is that Northern Ireland aren�t rubbish at all.

I�m sure for the more football-literate, this article makes perfect sense. But I just thought it was thoroughly confused and the title sounds so profound and yet is totally irrelevant to the content of the article. A potentially amusing article under a mis-guided title.

And in other newsprint, as from next Sunday the Observer will be following the Guardian and adopting the Berliner format. The first colour Sunday newspaper. The history of the Observer is quite interesting; it�s certainly been through some ups and downs since it was first published in 1791. I for one have enjoyed the Berliner Guardian, so I look forward to the Observer.

Oh and finally, just to mention one last thing about the Guardian: the combination of Alexander Chancellor and Zo� Williams on the first page of the magazine is wonderful. Cynical, left wing and jolly good read.

I was listening to Five Live yesterday when it was suggested that roughly 30 million Britons make New Year's resolutions each year. Contrast that with this IFA Promotions survey:

Nearly 7 million British adults will make a New Year�s resolution for 2006.

Either 23 million British children (out of an estimated total of 14 million in the country) have been making themselves promises for 2006, or a large number of people who normally make a New Year's resolution just thought 'sod it' this year on the back of a crappy 2005. Or someone's figures are wrong.

Welcome to 2006 then, and off we go with a trio of Telegraph articles worth reading this morning.

First up, OJ's role model Niall Ferguson presents a set of eight (occasionally tenuous) reasons why Scotland should cease to exist as a separate entity:

It's over. Over the way countries are sometimes just over. Over the way Prussia is over. Over the way Piedmont is over. Over the way the Papal States are over. Or, if you prefer, over the way General Motors will soon be over.

My modest proposal for 2006 is quite simple. The country hitherto known as Scotland should go into liquidation. The assets, such as they are, should be broken up, sold off and the proceeds (which won't fetch much) distributed to the creditors and, if anything remains, to the shareholders.

The Scottish Parliament should be wound up and its ridiculous building turned into a multiplex cinema or a shopping mall. The Scottish Football Association should be taken over by its English counterpart and Rangers and Celtic should go where they belong, which is pretty near the bottom of the Premier League.

[source: Telegraph - 'Happy Hogmanay, and to celebrate, let's put Scotland into liquidation']

Second, Matthew D'Ancona decides Bob Geldof donating a generous three hours to Big Davey Boy Cameron (TM) next year is a sign of how much respect he has for the Conservatives, and uses the term 'Cameron Project' in a way that makes the Tory leadership sound like an oversized gardening exhibition somewhere in Cornwall:

It cannot be said often enough that the Cameron Project has nothing to do with "political correctness", or woolly liberalism. It is all about recasting Tory values to suit the contemporary world, so that people feel good about voting Conservative. Nothing could represent a greater threat to New Labour's electoral hegemony, its monopoly of hope, and its copyright on the future. No wonder Bob Geldof is hedging his bets.

[source: Telegraph - 'Geldof gives Cameron his Clause Poor']

And finally for the Telegraph, Oliver Pritchett presents a just slightly satirical analysis of how we refer to our Mum and Dad (I, evidently, use 'Mum' and 'Dad'):

Mumsy has baffled our researchers. When data was first recorded, back in 1953, Mumsy was in second place and it was assumed that this was due to what is known as the Posh Soppy Factor - or PSF.

There has undoubtedly been a decline in PSF over recent years, but this is not reflected in the position of Mumsy in the table. Anecdotal evidence suggests an unusually high proportion of murderers call their mothers Mumsy and this may offer a clue. More research is called for.

Incidentally, Dr Bernard Kneesworth, head of this research project and director of Parent Appellation Studies at Nuneaton University, addresses his own mother as Old Thing - or Old Stick in 26 per cent of instances. Dr Kneesworth has no children to call him anything.

[source: Telegraph - 'Oh dear... what can the Mater be?']

If you're feeling adventurous then nip over to The Independent [EDIT: it's not, it's The Times, bloody RSS feeds, don't know whether I'm coming or going] to read about restaurants for vultures (and a nice poem about them). Scottish vultures in fact - they should be worried. The Independent was also carrying, when I looked, a nice advert for Eurostar. It had a little train running round in circles above the word 'Paris' and the phrase '14 revolutions a day'. The French have cut back on them, then...

Here�s to a year of interesting and correctly spelt and punctuated posts! Ha. Happy New Year!

Right then, so here's the deal for 2005. All the stats, facts and figures that no one but Amy, OJ and myself cares about.

Starting with the number of posts. There have now been 1,294 posts to Dayorama. At the start of the year, there had been 494. That means a nice round figure of 800 posts for the year, this being the first full year in which we've functioned. For reference, there had been 365 posts in 2004, 68 in 2003 and 61 in 2002. So 2005 has been a bumper year with an average of just over two posts a day.

On to the charts. Here's the all time posting record since we started in 2002:

That reinforces the point that 2005 has been Dayorama's first full year as a full-time weblog - we didn't skip a day throughout the whole year. Here's the breakdown for the year itself, starting on the running totals as they were at the end of 2004:

That shows the ebb and flow of posting - most notably the increase in my own posting frequency since May - but it doesn't tell the whole story. This is a bit more helpful:

So you can see my quiet start in the first four months was dwarfed by my posting record over the summer. I certainly wasn't top of the consistency charts. Amy only dropped below 20 posts in one month (19 in March), whilst I did so five times, OJ in all but two months (20 in April, 21 in October). But to compensate for that I made 101 posts in June and July, compared to Amy's 58 and OJ's 28. July was in fact our best month with 96 posts between us, as this chart shows:

The first quarter of the year was very quiet, as, for some reason, was November (extended birthday hangover?). But over the exam period and its immediate aftermath our procrastination reached record levels.

On to our individual posting records, a hotly contested area given Amy's recent declaration of a 'posting war'. When Amy joined Dayorama in spring 2004, I had made 66 posts and OJ 63, so you can take those two figures to be the head starts we had over her. By the end of 2004 Amy had 145 posts to her name, just three behind OJ's 148 and 56 behind my 201. By 22 January 2005 - the same day my dog Toby moved to my Dad's house, although I suspect that didn't have much influence - Amy had surpassed OJ. On 9 May 2005 she had 244 posts to my 243 and 'took the lead', albeit just for the one day. By the time of our last update, 25 September 2005, I had 428 posts, 51 ahead of Amy's 377 with OJ trailing on 265.

Mmm. My goodness, that's some good New Year's pavlova. Where was I? Ah yes, right, so down to the real business. Where do we stand now? Well, at the chiming of Big Ben to herald 2006, I had 525 posts. Amy had 460. That places me 65 posts ahead. Amy has therefore gained one post on me since she joined Dayorama, a slight improvement for me on last year and a drastic one since May, given that Amy briefly led the chart. For OJ it's a different story. He has 309 posts, 151 behind Amy and a full 215 behind me. It would take him all his posts from 9 September 2004 until the end of 2005 again, without me adding anything new, for him to catch up.

The totals for the year are as follows: me 324, Amy 315 (a close run thing) and OJ 161 (less so).

On to the posts themselves and our five most popular posts of 2005 according to the number of hits they received. This is a category potentially affected by hits from comment spammers (automated hits to our site to add 'junk mail' comments, of which we get a lot), but since I can't separate spam hits from normal hits I've had to assume that the spambots affect each post in a roughly similar fashion. So, here are the top five most-accessed posts of 2005, in reverse order:

5. Kaiser Chiefs: 'Oh My God' Lyrics - Ollie, 8 Nov 04, 717 hits

4. Google Doesn't Realise I'm Talking Rubbish - Ollie, 11 Sep 03, 730 hits

3. A Rare Occurrence - Ollie, 29 Jul 03, 975 hits

2. Su Doku - Amy, 1 Dec 04, 1,048 hits

1. Network Wail - Ollie, 12 Sep 03, 1,821 hits

Of course, none of those were actually posted in 2005. Of those posted in the year just gone, the top three in reverse order were:

3. Damn, They've Twigged - Ollie, 6 Jun 05, 101 hits (23rd overall)

2. Library Working - OJ, 25 Jan 05, 316 hits (8th overall)

1. Everything Sounded Better In The 60s - Ollie, 29 May 05, 685 hits (6th overall)

Very finally, a New Year's resolution. Posting to this weblog shouldn't be about volume and post counts, even though I personally think they're fun to do from time to time. It's about making it interesting for you lot to read. I've been trying to work on that recently and my personal resolution is to carry that on into 2006 and make it worth your while. Thanks for reading!