I was watching Channel4 news last night, a bit bored with all the fawning over either Tony or Gordon, when who should appear standing next to Jon Snow, but the gorgeous Alastair Campbell.

He's still stark staring mad, of course. Off he went doing the pointy thing again, and having a go at JS about how 'you people' keep concentrating on non-stories like Cherie calling Gordy a liar (well duuuur - he's a politician), and how reporters always use unattributed quotes to base a story on.

One of the things I love about Alastair is how he can completely forget that he started it. All this leaking and smearing to the press, he was the master of it. He is also totally lacking in irony, as his piece in the Timesonstrates:

AS A FREELANCE reporter on the Sunday People, I spent weeks trying to stand up a tip that a children’s charity official was a paedophile. The allegation came from a concerned colleague who pointed me to others who helped to build a very worrying picture.

This was obviously in between his other important tasks, like bugging the hell out of Cliff Richards.

Eventually I had enough to put forward a memo to the investigations editor, Laurie Manifold. “It’s 80 per cent there,” he said. “Trouble is, the missing 20 per cent is the evidence. Drop it.” The Sunday People is the kind of media organ sneered upon by the self-appointed intellectual aristocracy of TV journalism. But I wonder what Manifold would have made of the Panorama investigation into football agents and transfers, and the allegations against Sam Allardyce, the Bolton manager. I suspect he would have thought it was 20 per cent there. The missing 80 per cent was evidence.

Modern TV journalism now seems to define as a story anything that anyone says about anyone else, and which then gives reporters a chance to give their usually unwanted opinions on news programmes.

Oddly, this wasn't the refrain when the newspapers were reporting on Gordon Brown being 'psychologically flawed' or Peter Mandelson seeming 'stangely detached'.

This goes for ITV, fast becoming a televisual version of Heat magazine, and Sky, which applies “breaking news” to far too many stories that don’t merit it. But Sky and ITV are not funded by a universal tax.

With just the incoherent word of an agent to go on, Allardyce found his name over every back page, and a fair few front pages, while the BBC cross-promoted its own story in an orgy of advertising across main outlets, just as it will do with Panorama’s forthcoming films on Gordon Brown and David Mills (bet that one will be objective).

Aaaaaaah! So now we see why he's got his knickers in a twist! Someone might be about to have a pop at New Labour, and then the Tories might sneak into power! Alastair, don't worry, no one will even notice.....

I have no idea if Allardyce has ever taken a bung or not. The important point is that nor does the BBC. And yet it saw fit to broadcast the programme, and create the frenzy it has, without necessary evidence. It has achieved its aim: to make an impact. As to whether the allegations are true — clearly that can await another day.

I don't remember anything like this kind of outrage from darling Alastair when the Sun did its '45 minutes to doom' headline.

So now Allardyce is hiring lawyers. So also will the BBC, at our expense, to defend a story that didn’t pass the first test: do we know this is true? This all feels familiar. The Hutton inquiry exposed serious deficiencies in BBC reporting standards, but also in the the management handling of them. The past few days suggest little has changed.

I'm surely not the first to point out that Alastair all too obviously didn't apply the 'do we know this is true?' test to the infamous dodgy dossier. I would have thought he'd want to keep quiet about Hutton too, given that the report was most notable for damning the BBC even though what it had reported was substantially true. And IIRC, Alastair was found to be an unreliable witness in a libel trial too. Ooooh, these pots and kettles, it's so hard to keep track of them.

But Alastair has this charisma that means it is possible to completely overlook all his delusional beliefs, as Linda Grant wrote for the New Statesman in March:

I started the week on Start the Week, talking about my new book. There are certain facts that are as unalterable as, say, that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, not Nairobi. As Marlon Brando remarked: "The penis has its own agenda," and while I don't have a penis, a similar phenomenon occurred as Alastair Campbell entered the green room and I discovered that he is one of the sexiest men in Britain.

He just stood there in his combat pants and his fisherman's sweater, then walked over to sit down and lay a thigh next to mine on the BBC sofa, and I understood how he had come to dominate Downing Street. He is an alpha male, power and testosterone radiating out of him. "You and a thousand other women in the Labour Party," said a baroness. "The eyes!" cried the wife of a distinguished professor. That's it: the eyes, the size, the thighs.

The documentary-maker Nick Broomfield neatly skewered him over the use of the internet and the dodgy dossier, but the effect won't go away. I'm stuck with this knowledge for ever. Alastair Campbell, sex bomb.

And she's only just noticed.

Or has he been invented by New Labour to completely discredit Muslims everywhere?

I was fortunate enough to hear him on the Today programme on Radio4 this morning, and it was amazing: like all fundamentalists, he would have been hysterically funny if he hadn't been serious.

John Humphreys unfortunately went with the 'if you don't like Britain, why don't you leave?' line, which was a bit distracting, since AI was able quite correctly to ask why should a person have to leave a country just because it disagreed with its government. However, he then had to go on a rant about how Britain belongs to Allah and so there should be no democracy, because that is government by man, and there should be Sharia Law, which is government by Allah. He didn't go into how we get rid of democracy, but since he thinks it is wrong to participate in a political process, we get his drift.

Britain actually belongs to the Scutters, and heaven help anyone who tries to take our booze and celeb-porn away from us.

In the course of my cleaning work, I end up listening to all sorts of radio I wouldn't normally hear, as I don't like to mess with people's radios, but I like a bit of company. So this morning I found myself listening to talksport radio, or something like that. First hour was dreary, with some dull discussion of the top six footie clubs in England, with West Ham getting hardly amention despite the huge support they get even in the face of a cmparatively empty trophy cupboard. After that though, it turns out Jon Gaunt is doing a phone in about the John Reid thing.

It was hideous to hear. I don't think the extremist guy was right in all he said, but the way it has been reframed so that he's supposed ot have been practically declaring a Muslim no-go area is really out of order. My interpretation of it was that it was more of a 'how dare you come here to an area where predominantly Muslim people live, when it is your policies that are terrorising them.' Whether he's right or wrong, he's not declared an independent Muslim State, which you'd have thought to be the case listening to the programme.

Then there were all the callers who were outright racist. I think it is safe to assume that if you ever find yourself prefacing what you are about to say with 'I'm not a racist but...,' then in fact you are.

One of the favourite lines was that fundamentalists like him should go and live in a country where there was Sharia Law. My problem with this is that it's exactly what used to be said about socialists - 'why don't they go and live in the Russia.' It's all part of the way those in power fire up the unthinking masses. Don't think, just mouth the words. There's always got to be an enemy.

And of course there was all the mouthing off about 'why don't the moderate Muslims do more?' The implication being that they secretly believe exactly the same. Well what are they supposed to do? How come we don't get calls for 'moderate Christians' to condemn those who kill gays (or invade other countries for spurious reasons)?

Gaunt himself was the only one to make an interesting point, which kind of ties in with the Pope thing. As soon as he saw the protester, he recognised him and said to himself 'he's trouble.' So, he said, how come (in an invited audience) the security services let this guy in?

No one really picked up on this point, but if the government wanted to encourage a stereotypical view of Muslims in its electorate, wouldn't allowing a known radical, who was bound to kick off, into the room be a great way of doing it? Just like if you wanted to precipitate a 'clash of civilisations', having a religious leader take a pop at Islam seems like a really good idea too.

New Labour has a long track record of pronouncing on things it knows nothing about (and that's just Patricia Hewitt), so it shouldn't have come as a surprise that John Reid decided to spout off about Islam when he plainly knows nothing about religion.

From: Guardian Unlimited

Mr Reid told the audience in Leytonstone to be vigilant in looking for the "telltale signs" of brainwashing in their children.

The home secretary denied that efforts to tackle Islamist terrorism amounted to a war against Islam.

He said the battle against extremism was not a conflict of religion but one between terrorists and most modern civilised societies, adding that many Muslims had been victims of terrorism.

Mr Reid told the audience that terrorist fanatics were on the hunt for vulnerable young people to recruit to their cause.

"There is no nice way of saying this," he said. "These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings. Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.

"Look for the telltale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever. In protecting our families, we are protecting our community."

Just what signs are these parents supposed to be looking for?

It is the nature of young people to look for certainty in their faiths, and those who rediscover their faith in their teens and early twenties are the ones really likely to become fundamentalists - that is true for Islam or Christianity. Yet it will now be quite acceptable for a Christian youth to be a fundamentalist, whereas a Muslim one will be suspected of being a terrorist. That sounds a bit like a war on Islam to me.

And what does John Reid think parents are going to do? They're hardly going to turn in a child who has abandoned his drinking and turned to God. No parent truly believes their child would become a terrorist, surely? And even if they suspect that their child has fallen in with a bad crowd (in the religious sense), what can they do? We know how much young people listen to their parents. Added to that, both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists don't consider other Christians and Muslims as being true believers, so it's not likely they'll listen to them. To argue with them is just to push them into an even more radical position.

So well done John Reid. Great way to spend your time.

I have no problem with Islam: well, no more so than I have with Christianity. Both faiths seem fine so long as you ignore a fairly large portion of what their holy books say - but those who do that aren't recognised as true believers by those who believe their books to be the literal word of God.

When people insult a particular faith, it is just words. We are all like little children to the One: (S)he is so far beyond anything we are capable of imagining that our insults are as meaningless as the thoughts of ants are to us. It's like a child calling me a whore: I know I'm not, everyone else knows I'm not, and he's not quite grown up yet, so why would it bother me?

The problem I have with fundamentalists of any religion is their conviction that only they are right, and everyone else must believe the same, and no one has the right to criticise or mock: especially if that criticism has an element of truth in it.

So the reaction to the Pope seems a bit crazy. 'The Pope says Islam is a violent religion, so let's torch some churches, shoot a nun and call for his execution.' Given this resonse, rather than an apology, the Pope would appear to be justified in saying, 'I told you so.'

And that might have been his intention all along.

One thing I don't understand is why the New Labour government is so prone to being called a nanny state. Surely there must be a better term for it?

There's not many nannies who on the one hand tell their children not to drink alcohol and on the other become cosy best mates with a brewer. Or who encourage their children to eat healthy food and then ensure that junk food manufacturers can sponsor school activities.

The nanny state is obviously not working particularly well: its charges are more drunken, drugged and pregnant in their teens than ever before. Things like the Bernie Ecclestone affair showed from an early stage where New Labour's loyalties really lay. If there's a choice to be made between the health of the nation and the health of Labour donor's bank balances (and thus Labour Party Funds), our Dear Leader will grit his teeth and do the right thing for his friends. The situation has become even worse in recent years, with NHS funds being diverted from the seriously to ill to those with less serious complaints: complaints which, 'coincidentally', are more suitable for treatment at the private clinics which now work in partnership with the NHS and are funded by it.

Initially I was all for extended pub opening hours: I didn't think it would make any difference to drunkeness and it would be more convenient. But I think I'm changin my mind. This is purely anecdotal, but we live on a quiet road a little way from a pub. Until this year, we've had no trouble with drunks, but this year it has been terrible. If we leave our windows open at night it is a certainty we will be woken many times by drunken people wending their way home. I'm sure those people are putting more money in the brewery coffers than before the changes. I know I am.

Nannies usually do their job out of the love of it. For New Labour, the bottom line is the money.

I never thought that Charlotte Church would be the sort of person to articulate my thoughts. She apparently described America as 'wallowing in it' when it came to 9/11. Yesterday I really felt like I agreed with her.

Seeing George Bush speaking, with his 'concerned and caring' face on, and hearing all the usual crap about the 'War on Terror' and the usual conflation of Afghanistan and Iraq so that we won't notice Iraq was nothing to do with 9/11, I felt so annoyed. How come Americans can't see right through this lying git? How many times is he going to repeat that mantra of how 'the enemy hates us because we love freedom' (especially in our secret prisons)? When are they going to realise that people hate the West because white men keep on interfering in, raping and wrecking other people's countries, and those people bear a grudge?

But no, let's not question. Let's carry on as we have before and thus get back the same as we got before. Let's not for one minute acknowledge what we've done in revenge.

Two buildings destroyed and just under 3,000 innocent people dead. Iraq should be so lucky.

So there I am just driving through the Shropshire countryside on my way to a patient, and I realise that there's no one about: no cars, no people, nothing. Which is a bit odd, it being mid morning.

Then I drive into Sheriffhales, and again, no-one around. Just a spooky Robin Hood scarecrow on someone's drive. And two spooky scarecrows sitting on a bench next door. And a spooky fairyscarecrow scene a couple of doors down, and so on and so on. The Horror! Talk about the Wicker Man: Sherifhales people have been turned into scarecrows

It's not really something you can sanely inform the Police of either, is it? Especially not in Sheriffhales itself. I don't wanna see no spooky Policescarecrow!

I only managed one book in August, but it was a big one.

W Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage
This one was one of those reads you find slips its way into your life. You spend so long reading it, it becomes this comfortable little world that runs in parallel with your own. I really did wonder what I would do when I finished it (I found another, totally different, massive book).

In a way, it is a bit of a wake up call. You go thorugh your life thinking how special and unique you are, but here is your life, written down, and how the heck did he know that happened to me? There were so many moments when I thought, 'bloody hell, that happened to me too, just like that.'

It also has one of the best 'heroines' in literature, I reckon. She's like Chandler's Janice in Friends. When she's there, she drives you mad, and you want to hit her, and shake the hero and ask him what the heck he thinks he's playing at. Then when she's not there, you're dying for her to come back, because the book just isn't the same without her.

The only bit I didn't like was the 'happy family' that appears later in the book. BORING. But apart from that, it was a book I'd highly recommend.

(86/100)

Well Little 'Un is back at school, so I'm back to normal after six weeks of not thinking about much at all. So to ease myself in, I'll be reading everyone else's blogs today and catching up: I've seen some of the posts so I'm really excited to be back.

But a little story of the holidays first.

From about the second week of the school holidays, every so often there'd be this terrible noise shaking the house - it would last for about a minute, then stop, sometimes repeatedly. At first we thought nothing of it, as next door are renovating and we thought it must be them. Then it started happening at weird times, like 11pm, when they'd been quiet all day. Husband was all for going around and setting them straight, but they've been good neighbours (apart from their mad barky dog), so he didn't. I wasn't even convinced it was coming from them, but Husband said it must be, because if he went outside he couldn't hear it.

Then they went away on holiday. Little 'Un and I were at home alone one day and I heard the noise. I knew it couldn't be next door. It wasn't outside. It stopped.

Later I was upstairs and it started. It was so loud it frightened the cat out of our bedroom - it was coming FROM our bedroom!!! Little 'Un was downstairs watching Dr Who. All alone I crept into the bedroom to investigate the supernatural machiney noise, I was totally creeped out. It was coming from the junk cupboard. I went inside, and the whole thing was shaking, all the junk. Then it stopped. Then I realised: I hunted down through the pile of guitars, box files, clarinets, videos etc, and there, at the bottom, in an old sports bag, lay my long-forgotten vibrator.