A long time ago, back when I was at school, I was given some rather good advice about putting forward an argument: always state your assumptions. Now, I'm not sure where the current crop of junior Home Office Ministers went to school, and I'm loth to point fingers at his former employer, but it looks as if Liam Byrne didn't learn this lesson, or promptly forgot it when he entered politics.

For Liam has seen the polling on the cost of ID cards and has come up with a whizzo scheme for reducing the cost from the likely £300 a skull: let's just glue together the existing data the Government holds.

Shame it's the very definition of a house built on sand, eh?

Togged up..., originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

It's amazing how the time flies, but today is Morgan's 1st day at school. Wasn't he only just born the other day..? Seems like it.

As I'm sure you know, I spend more time away from home than I'd really like, which means I don't get to do my fair share of bedtimes. Now Morgan & Ruaridh both love bedtime stories, so I wanted to give them the Daddy experience while I'm away.

Last year I bought a low end microphone that records straight onto my iPod with the intention of recording some stories for them. But I never had time until now. And I thought I'd share them with everyone, so I now have a Bedtime Stories Podcast for your delectation and delight.

Reading Blair's extended answer to ChickYog's question (my emphasis):

I am quite sure, based on the experience I have had in government, you cannot solve some of these law and order problems unless you are prepared, quite profoundly, to change and rebalance the system of criminal justice so that you have more summary justice, more summary powers, more ability for quick and effective action to be taken, even if it will cross the line that most people normally think of as there in terms of civil liberties. And my view is that you can decide that you are not going to do it for civil liberty reasons, decide it, but then don’t say to the politicians and all the rest of it, you have got to deal with this problem, because you cannot deal with it in my view by the normal processes of the law, you just can’t do it. The way the world has changed means that the only, and this is why we only started to get any action on antisocial behaviour when we introduced the power to get Antisocial Behaviour Orders, summary powers for the police, and the ability to take swift action.

rang a few bells with me. It took me a while to work out what they were. I thought about examples of societies changing from ones where decisions were made with thought and care, taking multiple views into account, to ones where frustration with the time this takes leads to demands for summary action without the nicities of getting the edge cases right, and an example popped into mind:

ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.

PADMÉ: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.

ANAKIN: Then they should be made to.

PADMÉ: By whom? Who's going to make them?

ANAKIN: I don't know. Someone.

PADMÉ: You?

ANAKIN: Of course not me.

PADMÉ: But someone.

ANAKIN: Someone wise.

PADMÉ: That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.

ANAKIN: Well, if it works...

This is exactly what Blair is proposing. The I'm right; I know what needs to be done, and will do it no matter the casualties along the way school of thought. I'm guessing that Il Duce's commitments to targets in train punctuality is all part of this.

I realise incidentally that I'm running the risk of invoking Godwin's Law here, but consider The 14 defining Characteristics of Fascism — I'm counting 10 out of 14 at present.

It had to happen. But we never expected it so soon. Morgan apparently has a girlfriend. The other week, he and his friend Molly spent about an hour sitting together, arm-in-arm, gazing into each other's eyes, in our local soft play centre. On the way home, Lucy asked Morgan about Molly, and he answered I really lo...like her.

Now yesterday, we were at the park, and so was Molly. When I called Morgan to go, he was sat apparently on her lap, with her arms round him on a wee roundabout, which was being pushed round by their mutual friend Maya.

Awww, bless.

Overheard from a guy coming out of the cinema the other night — at the Metro Centre, hence the Geordie Accent:

That Mission wasn't Impossible, just Reeeeaaally Hooooooaaarrd.

Morgan and adventure Ted, originally uploaded by Pollianicus.

Morgan made a decision last night: today he will take his Teddy Higgins into preschool, carrying him in a sling. As long-standing sling users ourselves, we have a small size sling for Morgan so he can join in.

Morgan starts in P1 (ie 'real' school) in August. How long will our bright, enthusiastic, caring little boy feel confident taking a Teddy into school? How long until the Lord of the Flies society that is boys' peer pressure drums it into him that this is not cool, not hard and not acceptable? This is a precious, short window where he can behave as he wants to, not how his mates tell him he ought to.