Have you heard the news?

No? During my hiatus there's hardly been any of note. So the news media have had to puff up trivia as though it were vital to our very survival. Nick Robinson's ongoing obsession with Tony Blair in general and his relationship with Gordon Brown in particular is symptomatic. It's rather pathetic that the BBC's chief political correspondent, who enjoys the privilege of asking the first question at news conferences, can come up with nothing more interesting than 'when are you going' to direct at our Prime Minister. His predecessor, Andrew Marr, was an intellectual heavyweight equally at home on Radio Four's Start the Week programme as he was on BBC4 TV's regrettably short-lived Talk Show or in the Central Lobby of the Palace of Westminster. No one could accuse Mr Robinson of being an intellectual.

The price we pay for an efficient government is a bored political class and voter apathy. If we want to increase election turnout perhaps we need less stability! My daughter's economics teacher complains that, now that Britain’s economy is under control, his graphs, which used to yo-yo dramatically in the good old days of boom and bust, are now more or less straight lines and he has less to talk about.

No wonder celebrity gossip magazines sell vastly more copies than do political ones. Perhaps that explains Nick Robinson's approach; maybe he's after a job at 'Heat'.