After a couple of weeks in sunnier climes – stuffing myself on steak, sushi and overly fizzy beer – I return to find it’s business as usual:

Charles Clarke is still planning on acting illegally, there are still questions which may never be answered about the Stockwell shooting which seems to be getting more unjustified by the day, and there’s still a spat over the 21st July bomb suspect held in Italy.

Elsewhere the US is continuing its attempts to undermine the UN, with Bush’s appointee John Bolton trying to get the organisation to spend less time trying to alleviate poverty and scrap plans for rich nations to spend 0.7% of their national income on helping the poorest countries (the US currently gives 0.2%).

Over in Iraq, everything looks set to go tits up again, in Iran there’s still no progress over their nuclear programme, while Africa’s still screwed and, following dickwad preacher Pat Robertson’s calls for the assassination of a democratically-elected leader the US doesn’t like, a dictator the US does like is about to execute people who allegedly wanted to assassinate him.

In all, nothing’s changed in the slightest. Even the cricket’s continuing in much the same vein, with England doing well but not well enough to be uncatchable. I should go on holiday more often.