Abandon hope, ye who are already here...

42 days. Yes, you know what I'm talking about. 42 days.

All right, so the request has to be cleared by a court of law, but still...

All right, I believe the police and security services are honest in their support, but still...

The Lord Advocate in Scotland opposes the measure as being unnecessary; the Attorney General and the Solicitor General in England and Wales have both expressed severe doubts over the need or desirability of the measure.

In the end, there isn't any chance to properly debate the issue, because good ole Gordy makes it into a vote of confidence in his premiership. Vote for the Act or lose your job. And, even with this amount of arm-twisting, the Government only just scrapes in, with the help of a small number of Ulster Unionists who, any fool could tell you, would never need any bribing to vote for a security measure.

I've had it with Gordy, and I hope he notices.

By the way, if you're a fed-up UK motorist, remember that it is unwise to vote for someone who doesn't drive (not to mention someone who has a demonstrable inability to understand the consequences of their actions).

Gordon is a smart guy, so what is the problem here? I suspect he has spent so much time at the Treasury that something quite unique has happened - he's gone native. We've heard of this happening many times now, since the days of The Blessed Margaret, in respect of Civil Servants, impartiality and the impossible separation of politics and state. It's supposed to happen the other way around, of course, with permanent under-secretaries turning into party spin-doctors and so on.

But here we have an example of a once-great politician, an intellectual revolutionary, a modern socialist colossus, seemingly subsiding beneath the surface scum of spin, taking on the typically bureaucratic approach to decision-making and generally losing the ability to converse normally and relate to other human beings.

Yes.

Gordon has, I fear, become a Mandarin.