The Sweeney rides again

You really couldn't make it up. Just days after my Where Are They Now? profile of former Tory MP Walter Sweeney appears in the launch issue of Total Politics, the bugger decides to make a political comeback. He's one of 25 candidates standing against David Davis in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election on July 10 - but as an independent, not as a Conservative.

I just wonder if Sweeney read Total Politics and decided it was a bit early for people (ie, me) to be writing his political obituary?

A more likely explanation is that it's a revenge match against DD for having masterminded the notorious whipping operation on the Maastricht Bill in 1992 that ended with Sweeney being locked in a House of Commons toilet.

It is also surely significant that Haltemprice and Howden is Sweeney's local consituency. As I pointed out in my Total Politics piece, nowadays he is a local solicitor in the village of North Cave, near Hull.

All the week's journalism news

This blog's main business may be politics, but journalism news and issues have always featured strongly as I obviously have more than a passing acquaintance with and interest in the newspaper industry.

I'm currently looking after the HoldtheFrontPage journalism website and I've launched a new feature today called Journalism News Digest which rounds up the main stories of the week. Anyone who is interested can read it HERE.

And now for something completely different

An old friend of mine recently made me very envious by taking a three-month sabbatical from his job and using some of the time to drive across the United States. I was delighted to discover he has also started a blog in which he shares his experiences of the journey.

It's an anonymous blog so I won't use his name here, but he is in fact the Anglican vicar who married Gill and I nearly seven years ago, someone who has been one of the greatest and most positive influences on me in my Christian life over the past decade or so.

The blog, entitled Honk If You're Lonely, is part travelogue, part spiritual diary, and is as fascinating and inspirational as its author's perfectly-crafted sermons. If you're into that sort of thing, you can read it HERE.