Mostly boring, but there is a picture

The Henley by-election took place yesterday. I was thinking it would make bigger headlines. I wasn't even aware it had happened until this morning. The Tories won with a huge majority, but they were always going to in that area. They increased their share of the vote to 57%, up 3.5% on the last election. The turnout was only about 50%, but that's probably about average for a mid-term bi-election. The Labour party did spectacularly badly, finishing in 5th place with a 3% share. They were beaten by the Greens and the British National Party and lost their deposit. They did manage to beat the UKIP, Monster Raving Loonies, the English Democrats, the Miss Great Britain party, the Common Good party, and the Fur Play party. Though the combined vote share of those trailing seven candidates was only 4.77%. I quite like the idea of the Fur Play party. Apparently their candidate was called Harry Bear.

The next bi-election will be on 10 July in Haltemprice and Howden. The election was forced by David Davis' resignation in protest at the 42 day detention plan legislation getting through parliament. He is going to stand again and make civil liberties an election issue. The Lib Dems have said they won't enter a candidate against Davis because they agree with him. The Labour party has also decided not to enter a candidate because they don't agree with him?! The more cynical among us might think they are scared of losing another by-election.

We have been informed today that the monarchy costs us all 66p a year. That's a nice way of looking at it. In fact it means that the government gives the monarchy 66p for every man, woman, and child in the country. So the tax payers pay for all those who don't pay tax, as well as themselves. They also conveniently forget to include security costs, or costs for military ceremonies. I'd personally rather have the 66p anyway. At least I could buy a newspaper, a bar of chocolate, or about a teaspoon of petrol.

There was an interesting story today of a lady who went to a big supermarket and asked them to make a cake for her son's 21st birthday. The supermarket apparently offers a service whereby a photo can be printed on their cakes. The lady gave them a photo to print on the cake, but the supermarket refused to print it because the picture was of her son, naked, aged 5 months. Eventually they agreed to print the picture with a star over the child's bottom. I've read several reports, and they don't exactly tally, but it would seem that the supermarket did make a statement saying that they had a strict no nudity policy and it covered baby pictures. Most media reports seemed to infer that the picture was considered pornographic by the supermarket.

I don't want to say much about the story itself. I think you can guess my own feelings. I'm all for more nudity, but someone on one of the comment pages made a very good point I think:

So now, perhaps we can have a few thoughts from the I.D card fans who tell us "if we have nothing to hide.....".

Because you can bet your bottom dollar, THIS is the sort of thing that will go STRAIGHT onto the "little chip" in your pocket.

Then EVERY one can read that you attempted to have "child pornography" printed at Asda.

That comment was made on the Telegraph website by Ragnar Vagmornasson von Brandenburg-Preussen on June 27, 2008 7:41 AM.

And here's the pictures for the beautiful baby thing: