Organic Veg Bed I, originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

Yeah, it's only 3 veg beds, but it still makes me feel like a farmer.

...in times gone by, you have asked my opinion on which computer to buy. Regardless of your previous experience with malware of many and varied kinds, and your need for easily configured systems which rarely if ever go wrong, you have consistently and steadfastly ignored my considered opinion of Buy a Mac, usually citing a need to keep some ridiculously outdated piece of software (Wordstar for DOS? Hello?) and retain access to your old files.

Now, leaving aside that there are plenty of Mac solutions that read old WP formats, or even run Windows programs (albeit a bit slowly), these were always just the excuses of the fearful.

So to these fearful friends and relatives, if you really need the comfort blanket of Windows, its security holes, its virii, its botnets, its rootkits and so on, you can now wean yourself off it slowly. Buy a new MacMini.

But what about my Spyware? I hear you cry? Well worry not - if you really want to run Windows XP on that shiny Intel Mac, you now can, with BootCamp.

OK, now that the Lords and Tories have caved, and given in on the worst aspect of the ID Card scheme (guys, we told you all along: it's the Register that's worrying, not the cards), we start thinking about the next step.

Naturally, the best thing to do is to simply refuse to be registered. But if you want to have foreign holidays (and my job means that keeping a passport is not optional), this won't work forever. My current passport runs out in January 2010 — just after compulsion for both Register and Card comes into force. So I'm currently debating whether it's better to hold out entirely until then, or 'arrange' a little accident for my passport earlier, even if that means being entered onto the Register.

However, what we could (and probably should) do is remember the lessons of the Poll Tax campaign. Leaving aside all the cost and technology arguments for a moment, registering the entire adult population by 2010 is going to be fearsomely difficult to actually implement. It's just too many people to get through a relatively small number of centres. Not only are there new registrations, but if you move house, get married/divorced, change appearance significantly or lose/damage your Card, you'll need to register that change.

So let's 'help'.

45 Minutes Old, originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

Born this morning at 11:10, weighing 3740g (8lb 4oz in Old Money).

Everyone's doing just fine - Morgan's very, very excited. Ruaridh's a bit more nonchalant so far. Lucy's relaxing, and I'm on paternity leave!

If you're in a present-buying mood (well, a bloke's got to try, eh?), see Lucy's Gift List.

Listening to the recent debates about party funding, there seem to be two camps emerging:

1. Let's leave all the funding limits in place, and just make it more transparent
2. Let's further limit the amounts individuals and/or corporate bodies can give/lend to political parties, and make up the gap with state funding that won't come with the taint of political favour for sale.

Now let's be clear - I think that people should be allowed to give money to promote their political beliefs. Parties are at their heart voluntary associations, and should be allowed to rely on their membership to fund them.

However, both of the above camps make the same assumption — that parties should be allowed (no, sorry, encouraged) to maintain their current spending levels, particularly in election season. But I have two very good reasons why this is a false assumption:

1. Campaigns should be fought on the basis of who has the best ideas and policies, not who spent the most on advertising. Does anyone really actually believe that the national poster campaigns make a valid contribution to that debate? The Devil Eyes poster? The Fagin poster? Are you thinking what we're thinking? At least we don't have paid-for political TV ads here...
2. If a party can't muster a mass membership that can fund its activities, doesn't that suggest that they're not connecting with the electorate? If one or two large donations can outweigh the entire membership fees and donations of the party membership, then of course it's going to bring undue influence with it, whether that's for good old fashioned pork barrel, or fittings for ermine.

HMG have been swearing blind for ages now that a main reason why we absolutely must have ID Cards and the National Identity Register is to ensure that we comply with the new International Civil Aviation Organisation passport standards, and remain in the US Visa Waiver Scheme.

The work involved in this would therefore increase the cost of passports to £93 (HMG figures, disputed by the LSE amongst others).

Well paint me pink and call me Nancy, the Home Office has managed to do it sooner, cheaper, and without all the ID Cards/NIR nonsense. On Monday it announced it would issue its first Biometric, ICAO-compliant passports this week. Home Office minister Andy Burnham was quick to point out that the passports would confirm the identity of the individual.

So, all the benefits of ID Cards and the NIR, for the cost of .... (wait for it...) £53, or a supplement of just £11 on current prices.

As HMG is an entirely logical beast, with the interests of the country at heart, we can expect an announcement from the Safety Elephant in the next few days declaring that the ID Cards/NIR objectives met, and the rest of the scheme being abandoned.

Oh, wait...

Like our previous two, this baby will (hopefully) be born at home, in water.

This time, though, we've bought a pool rather than renting one. But either way, you still want to do a test run a few weeks in advance of the date, so this was ours.

I don't expect this to be the final location - that's planned to be the dining room. However, if Lucy changes her mind...