Bear, Woods.

Given his record as a ultra loyal supporter and apologist for Labour for over a decade isn't it a bit ridiculous for David Aaronovitch to pretend on polling day that he's a floating voter who has reluctantly decided that voting Labour is the best option?

Polly For Laureate.

I don't know much about poetry but I know what I like- none of it. Some people might see this as proof of what a heathen I am, but I say that poetry is only really popular in preliterate societies where long stories have to be put into a rhythmic pattern in order to be memorised and retold. Once you've learnt to read you can write things down and refer back to what you have written at any point so lose the need to put the words into poems.

Carol Anne Duffy has been appointed as the new Poet Laureate, but the real purpose of court poets throughout the ages has been as an official sycophant praising powers of the day & Duffy doesn't appear to be willing to do that.

Therefore I propose that either Polly Toynbee* or David Aaronovitch should replace Duffy immediately. They might not technically be poets but as I explained poetry is basically prose for the illiterate**, the real talent is churning out several hundred words of ecstatic approval for whatever New Labour do.

* Polly went off the reservation this week and attacked her Viking, Gordon Brown, but that was probably out of disappointment with being overlooked.

** I could also explain my theory that theatre is television for those without electricity & that painting is an inferior precursor of photography.

Worst Argument For A DNA Database Yet.

Is David Aaronovitch retarded? I don't wish to be abusive, but he seems to be spending a column unable to figure out the difference between 'guilty' and 'innocent'.

His argument is, and I'm not making this up, that opponents of the current practice of putting innocent people who have been convicted of no crime on the DNA database are hypocrites because they don't object to keeping convicted criminals on the database, and after all those criminals are really just differently innocent because they haven't yet committed the offences which the DNA database might help convict them of.

I'm sure he thinks he's found a very clever example of hypocrisy although if we were to follow his logic we would either have to get rid of all criminal records or give everyone a criminal record because otherwise it's completely unfair on convicts.

Because 'Progressive Thinking' Has Done So Much For Our Schools Already!

There are many reasons to be sceptical about Ed Balls and his proposals to revamp the primary school curriculum, but none of them are as damning as this claim by David Aaronovitch (or his sub editor:

The call for a new primary curriculum has met predictable opposition. But it is in a fine tradition of progressive thinking

Toad Denounces Lizards

David Aaronivitch has churned out his latest piece denouncing the "lizards" who don't believe that under Labour, tractor production is reaching heights barely believable under previous governments:

In 1996, after 17 years of Conservative government, the past six under the premiership of the cricketing Major, Great Britain went to the Atlanta Olympics and won precisely one gold medal. We ended that Games in 36th position, just behind Ethiopia and just ahead of Belarus. It wasn't just that Greece did better than us - Kazakhstan got four golds. If one were to take the Olympics as any kind of indicator of national health (and why should we not?) we would have to conclude that the past 12 years have been very well spent.

So on Aaro's reading by 1996 Britain was in a worse state than Ethiopia and Kazakhstan? I wonder how he would explain the 1988 table where the two leading countries ceased to exist by the time the next games came around, no doubt to the consternation of the East German and Soviet Aaronivitches.