Who wants yesterday's news?

If you believe the song, nobody. Sorry I was too busy yesterday to bring you my incisive view of the day's comment columns. A bit late but I did want to draw your attention to Simon Heffer's piece in the Telegraph. Although only in his forties he writes like a man in his seventies who is gloomy and embittered having realised that his life is slipping away and he's neglected to find time to have any fun in it. Mr Heffer rails against the fiftysomething's now allegedly in charge of the country who he dismisses as being "still fixated by the dope-smoking, peace-and-love, hairy hippy self-indulgence for which [the 1960s] is famed". It must be hard for him now that the younger turks are apparently seizing control of the Tory party, perhaps he feels he's part of a lost generation.

In the Times Giles Coren writes about "how fed up [he is] with writing columns" (a vacancy perhaps for all those bloggers who really want a newspaper column). But don't get too excited, he's having a laugh with us. His spoof applications for jobs in each of our major parties are vaguely amusing.

Bye bye Charlie

I didn't have to be especially incisive to type "I think Charles Kennedy has had it" on Friday. But now it's official. He even gets a mention in the New York Times which notes that "Britain is a hard-drinking country, and voters generally find nothing to complain about if politicians enjoy a glass or two". Hmmm. Stand by for endless speculation in the UK press about who will be the new Liberal Democrat leader and how he'll be chosen. I hope the spotlight might also turn on the party's policies (or lack of them) and that the public might come to realise that while they sometimes 'talk the talk' in Westminster they act rather differently when in power in local government. All parties are of course coalitions of sorts but the Lib-Dems appear to me to be little more than a collection of (mostly worthy) folk quite interested in politics but lacking any coherent common agenda united mainly by their uncertainties and their dislike for one of the other parties....