Long way round

I had to come to work the long way this morning. It's a long story, but here goes. The lift that takes cars to the basement parking area of our building broke down last night. My father in law couldn't get his gar out, so he borrowed the dragon's motorbike. This morning, although the lift was working again, the motorbike wasn't there and I had no way to get to Muzha station. Instead I had to walk to Zhi Chung station, go to Taipei main station, change to the Bannan line, go to Xung Xiao Fuxing station, change to the Muzha line, go to Zhong Shan staion and get on the bus to work. Now that sounds really complicated, but actually, it's really easy and only took me about 1 hour, about the same as usual. I arrived early.

There's a story on the BBC news site today about an ice cream salesman who has run into problems with the Assets Recovery Agency in Northern Ireland. The agency claims his lifestyle could not possibly be sustained by the income from his fairly modest ice cream business and they have seized his assets including houses worth 1.5 million pounds. It is alleged that he has been selling smuggled tobabcco. The story is not very interesting. Though I have to comment that, if guitly, it's a victimless crime. I would also love to know how the hell the Asset Recovery Agency has access to the sort of information that led them to this conclusion. However, the most entertaining element of this story is the headline, "Ice cream man has assets frozen". I was almost afraid to read the story in case it lost it's apppeal.

Dr Tony Wright, Labour MP made a most interesting point in Prime Minister's question time this week. Apparently 3 billion people in the world today have an income of less then $2 per day. Each cow in Europe is given $2.50 in subsidies paid for by European tax payers. And Chirac says that the CAP is not negotiable. I seldom find myself in any sort of agreement with any member of the Labour party, but I have to hand it to Dr Wright, that was a worthy observation.

I was only really listening to PM's questions because I had heard that Dawn Primarola, one time (and possibly still?) MP for my old home town of Swindon, was given a hard time via the PM. Dawn is now the paymaster general, and as such finds herself responsible, in no small way, for the absolutely disasterous tax credit system. Dawn and Tony were both givena sound thrashing by Michael Howard and Dawn was esentially accused of lying to the house.

While I'm having a political day, Geoff Hoon, ex defence secretary and current Leader of the House, has been accused of trying to avoid embarrassing debate on the frightening ID card scheme by scheduling the first vote for Tuesday, a day when many MPS will be attending events to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar. It has been suggested that the debate will be a half hearted effort since many will be absent and that media coverage of the Trafalgar celebrations will overshadow anything the government would rather not see go too public. Given this governemnt's record for taking advantage of big events, including the death of the Princess of Wales, to bury bad news, I would agree that it's probably the case. But it's good to see them running scared.

OK, bed time.