Sweet Nothings

7:35pm Here we go again. Tonight’s third and final Prime Ministerial debate is centered around the economy, so there will likely be much emphasis by each man on how they won’t make crippling cuts vital services, and few if any categorical assertions as to what will actually be getting cut, and how deeply. You could say each will be anxious to paint themselves as “less parsimonious than thou”. Parsimonious, by the way, is a great word. One synonym is “niggardly”, another great word but one which I don’t expect anyone to be pulling out of the hat this evening (unless Griffin turns up unexpectedly). Although it would make for a fine act of political suicide. Speaking of which... Yes, sadly the economy is threatening to be overshadowed this evening by the dreaded Bigotgate debacle. I won’t go into this in detail because it makes me too angry, suffice to say that Mrs Duffy’s comments, such as “all these Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?” (um, Easte

Welcome back. So, where were we? 8:42pm Oh, so apparently that's the end of the international affairs portion. Next question: (asked by a bit of a hottie, hello Mary) why should anyone trust any of you ever again? Clegg refers to the "old parties" again, and does his bit for voting reform. Dave is keen for none of this nasty expenses-fiddling stuff to ever happen again. Lots of closing of stable doors long after the horse has legged it here, methinks. Nick sounds like he's coming onto Mary. Hands off! Gordon is making a fair point about the significance of politics, but of course it's the politicians who are the problem rather than politics itself. Dave reminds us we are all in this mess. Gordon is emphasising that things must become more transparent, but he pronounces it "trans-pear-ant" which is most distracting. 8:54pm Grace has brought up 5 children for most of her life. Well done love, what do you want, a medal? Oh, a better pension, I se

7:30pm I’d love to say I deliberately waited until the second live leaders’ debate before blogging on the subject so that I could analyse the debate whilst making penetrative and insightful comparisons with the first one. Obviously the truth is I was just too lazy to bother, but things have worked out rather well as I could never have foreseen how huge the impact of ITV’s vaguely Kraftwerkian extravaganza would be. As a natural Lib Dem voter I was rooting for Nick Clegg from the off, and my own opinion on him or any of the parties hasn’t really changed. He didn’t appear to put in a masterly, Obama-esque - certainly not a Bartlett-esque - performance, although it was interesting to note just how much freedom he was given to expound on his own views whilst Dave and Gordon concentrated on bickering amongst themselves. Gradually you did get the sense of "the big two" realising what was happening as they started to challenge Clegg, or in Brown’s case agree with him on pretty

Amazing that all UK airports are still closed due to the gigantic mass of volcanic ash currently being spewed forth from Iceland. The fact that neither terrorist strikes nor union strikes can ground every single flight in the country just goes to prove that the earth can fuck up human stuff far more than we ourselves ever could. Unfortunately this does add more fuel to the anti-climate change fire. If natural events can cause this level of disruption, the sceptics will say, then what difference does humanity possible make in the great scheme of things? Well, while it's undoubtedly true that the earth doesn’t need our help to mess about with its climate, that doesn’t mean we aren’t playing a significant role in climate change either, or that it's not worth spending money and changing elements of our culture to try and minimize these changes. Mind you, it is a pretty sobering to think that  supervolcanoes  such as the one in Jellystone Park (oh alright, Yellowstone Park), who

I wouldn't call it a midlife crisis, exactly (hopefully not, because otherwise I would be popping my clogs at 60). But when I was about to hit the 30-year milestone last summer it was inevitable that I would do some evaluating of my life, and this resulted in the setting of a few targets for general self-improvement. I needed to go on holiday more. I needed to be somewhat more positive and proactive at work, pushing myself out of my comfort zone from time to time. And I pledged to start going running, often, in an effort to halt the continuing expansion of my gut. So far I've been to New York and will embark upon a lunatic South African World Cup odyssey in a few short weeks' time. I've tried to take on new responsibilities in the office, despite the extreme comfiness of my comfort zone, hopefully becoming that bit better at my job. The running thing, however, has had somewhat more mixed results. By following an established training plan, I slowly built up my stamin