You see, the reason I’m cutting back on UK politics is that it’s all just so damned depressingly predictable all the time.

Although, it has to be said, even I was a tad surprised at the news that, first of all, the Home Office doesn’t even know how many people it employs and the Telegraph’s wonderful headline “DNA ‘should be taken from babies'”. And then, in other domestic policy news, we get the nice little story about the Pakistani grandmother, in the UK as an asylum seeker having fled an abusive husband and family, who is about to be deported despite having been honoured by both the Queen and the Prime Minister for her community work – because she’s far more valuable as a statistic.

And, naturally, if you start extrapolating from all this, then the descent into hyperbole and comparisons to less than savoury regimes from Europe’s past become very hard to avoid. Accusing your own government of creeping fascistic tendencies is itself passe and boring. And this is how they get away with it.

In other, only vaguely related news, interesting article in the New York Times on the difficulties the ex-Soviet states of Eastern Europe have had in sorting out their security services. (Quite how our dear leaders think Iraq’s going to be able to police itself just three/four years after the fall of Saddam I have no idea…)

As I say, *sigh*. Pre-Christmas, shortest days of the year depression, no doubt. All I want for Christmas is something inspirational in the news again. And by that I don’t mean an “And finally…” about a puppy who’s been dressed up a Santa Claus.