Peter Crouch, eat your heart out

No matter how much body-popping robotic dancing England striker Peter Crouch manages over the next few weeks, this will surely never be beaten as the greatest England goal celebration of all time.


PS Advance warning to fellow politicos - this blog may well feature more footie-related stuff between now and July 9!

Catherine Bennett: A response

If I were to write a piece on this blog saying that women used to meet up in coffee shops whenever they wanted to get away from "the hubby" and swap smutty jokes, but now they just text eachother on their mobiles, I would probably be regarded as a bit of a misogynist.

So why is writer Catherine Bennett allowed to get away with this sort of thing in today's Guardian?

I think this piece highlights what some of us have suspected for a while: that while the Guardian is clearly fascinated with the political blogosphere - some think it pays us far too much attention - it is a fascination that is mixed with contempt.

In this context, I am still not quite sure what to make of the Comment is Free uber-blog. Is it really about pluralism and free speech, or is it just an attempt to put the rest of us out of business?

If the latter, it seems to have failed spectacularly. As Ms Bennett herself notes, the comments section of CiF has already been largely annexed by what she charmingly terms "the virtual men's room."

So what if men are more inclined to take up political blogging than women? After all, it's surely healthier than drinking, less harmful to animals than fishing, more constructive than wanking, and more interesting than reading The Guardian.

Police mergers: Time to stop this anti-democratic nonsense

Sometimes, governments have to do things which are unpopular because they are necessary. Gordon Brown's decision to raise national insurance by 1p in 2001 to free up resources for the NHS and schools comes to mind.

But the plan to create regional police forces across England and Wales strikes me as neither popular nor necessary. In fact, for a government already in deep political trouble in other areas, it strikes me as potty.

I have written on this before in the Derby Evening Telgraph, one of many local papers who have campaigned against a proposal which appears to have very little public support.

Now, it seems, Labour MPs are cottoning-on to the fact that this is a certain vote-loser and urging the new Home Secretary, John Reid, to ditch the plan.

If he has any sense, he'll do what they ask. Reid's reputation as Home Secretary - and as a potential future leadership candidate - will rest on how far he succeeds in tackling the chaos of the immigration system and clamping down on violent crime, not whether he can successfully reorganise the police service.

The Government's argument that bigger forces are required to tackle major organised crime and counter-terrorism is a complete red herring.

We already have a new national agency for dealing with organised crime, and there is no reason why we could not bring back the old Regional Crime Squads to deal with other major cross-border investigations.

But 99pc of policing is local, not national or regional. That is why the present structure of locally-based forces, accountable to local people, should stay.