RANDOM THOUGHTS-----TWO DAYS OLD (Well, I didn't want to waste it)

Mr Cameron is desperate to get troops home from Afghanistan, as I am sure most of us are.

However, it is rather worrying that he is telling military chiefs that he wants the drawdown to being almost immediately, despite their worries that the whole mission could be put at risk if too many troops are withdrawn too quickly.

However, although the military chiefs were only happy for 200 to leave, Mr Cameron has insisted that 450 be ready to go. According to the Telegraph, he will clear the final numbers with President Obama when he makes a state visit to England next month. In any case, the paper reports Mr Cameron wants all troops home by 2014, in time for the next election, a surprising admission for a Tory leaning newspaper.


Elsewhere in the Telegraph, I was bemused to read that Mrs Parker Bowles professed staunch support for the freedom of the press at all levels of British society. I had to blink and pinch myself when I read that, as I reminded myself that parliament recently passed a law removing her “husband”, his son and his mother from any FoI requests, even if they are in the public interest. So clearly what she means when she says ‘freedom of the press for everyone at all levels of British society’ is ‘freedom of the press for everyone at all levels of British society (except her “husband’s”)’.

She also talked of Willie’s and Kate’s wedding saying that she was sure it made everyone feel proud to be British. Well, call me strange if you will, but I’m wondering how, in all seriousness, two people who are youngish, and probably fond of each other (“in love, whatever that means”) getting married can make us proud to be British. I mean people may love the romanticism of a wedding, the spectacle of a golden coach and crowns and all that fairy tale stuff, and some people clearly made a lot of money out of it (mainly in China), but why would that make you proud?

I wondered too, if by Mrs P-B’s logic, the divorces of Margaret, Charlie, Andy, Anne, and Katherine (of Kent), made people ashamed to be British, or did they, by some strange quirk, make us proud too?

What nonsense people talk!


David Cameron had been hoping that David Laws would soon be back in government. Mr Laws who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury for 17 short days before he was found to have been fiddling expenses, and was perhaps at the point where he could do a Peter Mandelson and return from the naughty step, put the Dark Lord to shame, by falling foul of the authorities BEFORE returning to a position of responsibility. He has been suspended from the Commons for 7 days and will have to pay back tens of thousands of pounds stolen from the taxpayer.

But it has to be said that the matters leading to this are the same ones that cost him his Cabinet post 11 months ago. The breaches were investigated, initially by the police, but then passed to John Lyon, the standards commissioner, for an investigation which has thrown up the extent of Mr Law’s illegal claims.

Poor Mr Cameron; he has very little real talent at his finger tips and Mr Laws is reputed to be very clever... Clever enough to avoid the fate of poor wee Jim Devine, although clearly not clever enough to avoid this ignominy!