Interesting obituary being carried by the BBC on the death of Democrat Senator Robert Byrd.

We learn he was 92...that he was the longest serving Senator in Congress....that he was suffering from bad health. Oh - and nine paragraphs later that he was a senior member of the Klu Klux Klan ...although this was a youthful indiscretion....could have happened to anyone.....

The world is not, in fact, a stage, where the corpses get up after the play, and go for a drink and a laugh. It is a world of cruelty and blood, fire and war, hunger and slavery, loss and pain, where death is real, corpses rot in fly-infested heaps, the vaults of national banks are emptied of their gold by the enemy's army, wounds do not always heal and the dead stay forever dead, where great and famous cities and cultures centuries old can be dissolved and plundered to nothing in a week, where defeated millions can be marched off in chains to exhaustion and death, loving families torn apart forever in a minute of horror, happy homes reduced in seconds to blackened charnel houses full of screams, and civilised and gentle empires replaced in the twinkling of an eye by evil and rapacious successors or by chaos - a world in which the rulers of nations can by a single incautious false move, done often through bravado or wounded self-regard, lose forever the safety and peace of those whom they govern, and whose safety is their chief concern.

It is however true that the British belief, that we fought Hitler because of the vileness of his regime and because of his Judophobic fury, is not justified by the facts. Hitler's extermination of the Jews began some time after we declared war. I will not here go into the suggestion that he might not have attempted it without the cover of the war, but there are those who believe this to be true. We had endured his persecution of the Jews of Germany and then of Austria for six years without major complaint until 1939, signed treaties with him, communed with him and his henchmen at the highest level and in convivial occasions, and we took part in his awful 1936 Olympic Games without protest, and did precious little to provide refuge for his victims.

Our war with Hitler never had anything to do with the internal character of his regime. This justification was invented afterwards. If we had chosen our allies on the basis of their goodness, and our enemies on the basis of their badness, then we could hardly have been allied with Stalin for four hard years. In which case, why exactly did we fight Hitler's Germany and about what? And more especially, why did we fight it when and where we did?

Ed Balls' wife is looking dog rough lately, I reckon she's sleeping on the couch just to avoid him.

Why is Shami annoying? I guess it’s hard to explain if you can’t already see it. Just think: head girl, teacher’s pet, Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes, the Mother Teresa of British politics, that sort of thing. An unbelievably sanctimonious and tiresome lady.

Mystery mozzi how I hear you buzzing, waiting, watching, hungry and sad, but tonight sweet mozzi i must confess, I've laid a trap to end distress...beware my friend, soft slipper awaits, fly away free and never return.....bzzzbbzzzzzzbbzzzzz.....

Doubtless it’s too much to hope that this Prime Minister would be motivated by principle to defend the interests of his country (even though BP is certainly to be criticised). But one might have thought that even he might have noticed by now that Obama has morphed from Jesus to Icarus, and has plunged to earth with wings clogged with oil as the American public registers its fury with the way he has mishandled the crisis. Now that the Mail has blown a gasket and gone for Cameron, he may alter his tone. But at present, Britain’s Prime Minister and Britain’s interests are not on the same page.

I share the thought that the American revolution was a struggle between English gentleman and the German mercenaries of a German King. I have always thought that the great British mistake of that era was not to have created a United Kingdom Of Great Britain and America with its capital in New York. That could have changed the world!

As for the Heathrow runway, the prospects of Paris, Amsterdam and other continental airports taking business from our airports were bad enough already as BA continues to inflict self harm, but they are now quite alarming. Preventing passengers from flying to London will not prevent many of them from flying. They will just fly to continental airports on continental airlines instead.

Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the lunatics have stopped writing about the asylum and have actually taken it over.

Anyone with a mind to contend timidly that liberty is indivisible, that the life of a human being has the same value everywhere, that amputating a thief’s hand or stoning an adulteress is intolerable everywhere, is duly arraigned in the name of the necessary equality of cultures. As a result, we can turn a blind eye to how others live and suffer once they’ve been parked in the ghetto of their particularity. Enthusing about their inviolable differentness alleviates us from having to worry about their condition. However it is one thing to recognise the convictions and rites of fellow citizens of different origins, and another to give one’s blessing to hostile insular communities that throw up ramparts between themselves and the rest of society. How can we bless this difference if it excludes humanity instead of welcoming it? This is the paradox of multiculturalism: it accords the same treatment to all communities, but not to the people who form them, denying them the freedom to liberate themselves from their own traditions. Instead: recognition of the group, oppression of the individual. The past is valued over the wills of those who wish to leave custom and the family behind...