Smoking Crack

So, Michael Crichton's extinct then. I wonder if they'll clone him.

Oh shut up, I'm joking.

I was all ready to write about how Labour lost a crucial by-election in Glenrothes today. Astoundingly, I can't do that because they won. And it really is astounding, since yesterday even the Labour party were expecting to lose. I guess this means that Gordon is in better shape than anyone realised. It would be too much to hope for that a huge vote rigging scandal is now uncovered. The polls currently put Labour around nine points behind the conservatives.

Funny how yesterday the impartial, state-run BBC hardly mentioned the Glenrothes by-election when it looked like Labour would crash and burn. Today after their surprise win they seem to be headlining with it and suggesting it is a massive Labour victory. It's not a victory, they just held onto the safest labour seat in the country and they halved their majority. They also worked very hard to do it. The PM himself campaigned there and his wife, as did John Prescott.

The Ho Secretary has clearly been smoking crack or something. Apparently she's under the impression that people "can't wait for id cards". Though the comments page on the BBC website would seem to suggest otherwise. It's really quite difficult to find a comment in favour of id cards there. I've officially decided that I'm going to prison rather than register. Actually that might be a bad plan. Do they take your finger prints when you get thrown in the slammer? I may have to think of another plan. I'm not registering anyway.

I've had a note from Mr Punk about id cards. I hadn't realised that students were already having fingerprints taken on entry into the country. I assume you are here on a student visa Mr P? Although I don't see why our foreign friends should be treated like criminals, I have to concede that foreign students are something of an unknown quantity and arrive in this country without a sponsor. That can't be said about my wife.

I'll tell you something else funny. Although my wife is here quite legally, she will be fingerprinted (like a common criminal) and issued with an id card against her wishes. During the two years she's been here she has forged some links with the local Asian community. She has a few Asian friends and acquaintances who arrived here illegally, or who came illegally but then overstayed visas and are now classed as asylum seekers. These people are not going to be fingerprinted and bar-coded it seems. Funny old world isn't it?

Oh, oh, forgot tot tell you, the on-going row between Virgin Media and Sky tv appears to be over. So Sky channels will be available on Virgin and vice versa. And you know what that means - I won't have to steal episodes of Lost, series 5 with Spanish subtitles from dodgy Russian download sites in January. The dragon greeted this news with a peculiar eye-rolling expression when I told her yesterday. Not sure what it meant, but hey, I get to see Lost on the big screen downstairs instead of on the computer screen.

There has been much international speculation lately about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. Various reports suggest he has been incapacitated by a stroke, that he is paralysed, a vegetable, and even dead. The N Korean authorities have been releasing grainy pictures of the guy, which only seems to have fuelled speculation. Today however a new picture has emerged of Kim at an "artistic performance". Sounds like a euphemism for "porn show" doesn't it. Anyway, it seems that the picture shows Kim quite clearly, but with a shadow falling in a rather different direction to all the other shadows in the picture. The suggestion is that he has been Photoshopped. If I'd been doing it, I'd have had someone about Kim's size stand in the picture, then just changed his head with Photoshop, amateurs. You be the judge...



And if you're a real geek, have a look at the BBC image which seems to suggest a couple of other little issues with the image.