Yet More Sheep

Daughter was away with the school, canoeing, rafting and general outdoorsy type stuff. And while she was away having fun we were at home discovering exactly how much difference one child makes to the general dynamics of a home. Youngest was quieter as well proving the equation that the product of two children is different from the sum.

To add to this general air of melancholy was the fact that China Crisis quietly moved their appearance at the local village festival to Saturday without anyone actually finding out until after they had been and gone. My wife was most upset and is considering a stiff letter to be despatched to Crisis Central - somewhere in the middle of the Gobi Desert I believe it is.

So just exactly what do we do about the MPs and their expenses? Maybe we should exchange the process by which parliamentary expenses are dished out with the one which supplies the army with essential equipment like boots and stuff. Seems that both are in need of a shake up.

Submarine - one - for the maintenance of

I wonder how long it has taken the board/bean counters/shadowy group of public schoolboys at the BBC to realise that hiring a helicopter to fly between the country piles of various Tory MPs in order to expose their profligate and slightly unethical claims on expenses seems slightly hypocritical when you realise that both the chopper and the swimming pools are paid for by us poor taxpayers? Of course it may be that the BBC actually have a helicopter of their own and I suppose it might actually be cost-effective to keep it in the air in pursuit of the national interest instead of flying execs between cocktail parties - but I doubt it. The recent BBC coverage of the pigs in troughs has seemed slightly over-zealous in light of the corp's own drains on the public purse. Not biased perhaps but certainly worth a raised eyebrow.