Go, Davis, Go.

Hurrah for David Davis. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have been seething about the abuse of our civil liberties for ages.

The insidious poisoning of our basic freedom with the virus of CCTV cameras, largely installed under the false premise as an antidote to crime, is at the forefront of my anger. We have all rolled over and allowed it to happen. I can think of no other European country that would have been so pliant.

Now, at last, someone has taken a stand and Davis should be applauded. The swathe of support he is already enjoying is at last the voice of the great silent majority exercising weary vocal chords that have been muted for too long.

Let Davis speak. And prepare to hear the loudest echo imaginable across the country.

Is it cuz I'm white?

Congratulations to Barack Obama, a worthy winner of the Democrat nomination in the US presidential election - which he will lose to the man with the G-force face (botox, or tuck?).

Obama is a gust of much-needed fresh air in a country gasping for life beneath the bloodied stench created by Bush. He'd get my vote.

Every newspaper and media organisation around the world today proclaim Obama as "the first black presidential nominee". Have I missed something? Or am I colour blind?

Obama's dad is black. His mum is white. He is mixed race, or whatever other politically correct term you prefer to use - except, of course, that shocking pre-1990s gaff "half caste".

So, rock star Obama is as much white as he is black, yet the world is in thrall of his black 50%, while ignoring his white heritage. Imagine if it was the other way round. I suspect there would be hell to pay. And would the world's media rejoice in the same way if, say, a white looking politician - of an even 50-50 mixed background - suddenly ascended to rule an African country? I doubt it.

So, isn't this all a bit of medium-rare inverted racism? Or am I only thinking this cuz I'm white?

It makes no odds anyway: a bloke like me - a "whitey" as Obama's wife likes to call us on the sly - can't play the race card. To the world and its media, racism is only ever dealt one way. And it ain't to white people, innit.

Obama has always deftly avoided the race issue, but maybe he should take a leaf out of Tiger Woods's book. When the media was reaching for the cliche tin and trying to label him the first black golfing legend, he flicked it back with a swoop of his driver and intellect. He said he is not in fact black, but is proud to be mixed race: part black, part Thai, plus a watered down percentage of other races from his bloodline. In fact, Woods revealed to Oprah Winfrey that he had his own classification - "Cablinasian", as in Caucasian-black-Indian-Asian. A stroke of stunning and admirable individuality.

I'll come back to you when I have thought of a name that might suit the politically correct world of Barack Obama.



Ps: Just a thought - if Obama becomes President, will he make his mark and decorate his new home...so he can live in the Black House? Relax, it's a joke. Call it a bit of black humour.

One way idea

I bet Daniel Moylan, the pin-stripe suited deputy leader of Kensington & Chelsea council, could hardly believe the media coverage he got for his little idea about letting cyclists go the wrong way up a one way street. He is testing a handful of streets, yet it makes the news on everything from the Today programme to acres of newsprint in the nationals.

A great idea? Of course not. Just wait until the first kid is killed in a head-on collision during the dark of winter and the police prepare to lock up the distraught driver for causing death by reckless driving...because - wait for it - he was driving the right way up a one way street.

There's only one way for this idea to go: right down the pan.

Turn back Times, too

There has been much talk - and criticism - in the media and beyond about the redesign of The Times. I have had a few days to chew it over and I'm afraid, like others, I think it is a dog's dinner and a disaster.

I could go through various aspects bit by bit, but it is simpler to look no further than Times2, the focus of my principal grumble: all that white space and headlines in italics make it look like a stinking pile of vacuous advertorial features. What a way to project some fine journlaistic work.

As for all those new colour picture bylines throughout the paper; they may well have dragged some hacks into the modern age from the safety of flattering black and white, but unfortunatley it has revealed many (no names) to be tubbier and, ahem, a little ruddier in the face.

Big Boring Burchill

Wow, if ever you needed a laugh, check out the rambling, repetitive and confused piece by the "retired" Julie Burchill in The Sun today defending Big Brother. It runs to an unbelievably bloated 1,301 words. Talk about play to the crowd. Why on earth is this nonsensical, cliched tripe a centre spread in the Currant?

Burchill - who declares that she is "old and rich" in the article - rails against people who do not like Big Brother. She writes: "...hating Big Brother says far more about the hater than it does about the hated. BB-haters, in no particular order, hate the young. They hate the working-class. They hate gays and trannies. They hate people who have sex more than once a fortnight. And as with a lot of unfounded, ungrounded hate, envy is in there somewhere..."

Well, I hate Big Brother because it is boring, crap TV. Simple as. And I hate that article for the same reasons. It should have been five pars max - in the Brighton Evening Argus letters page - not the marquee spread in The Sun.