Ramble 5- Robin Hood and Clare Short

Two people who you seriously wouldn't imagine together. Imagine Clare Short as one of the Merry Men- sorry they're the Outlaws now.

Which brings us nicely onto Robin Hood. After two death-free episodes, we get eight in 45 minutes, which makes Taggart look positively peaceful. They're milking the war on terror analogy for all it's worth. The series is still reasonable, but Jonas Armstrong seems a bit young to be Robin Hood.

Clare Short has resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party. I wasn't surprised and in fact am quite pleased. The woman should have been thrown out for blatant disloyalty. It should be remembered that this woman has always been on the left of the party (resigning from the front bench over the first Gulf War and supporting Irish reunification) and is not representative of most of it.

Due to a dodgy Internet connection, I'm a bit behind on The Zone, my NS news column. It's bi-weekly ATM for personal reasons.

I've only seen one episode of The Unit, but it's reasonably good. Dennis Haysbert's a great actor.

Edited to remove the word "still" from the Jonas Armstrong sentence.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding to renewal!

Saw the second episode of Robin Hood this evening. Not quite as good as the first episode, which made me think the Beeb had a hit on their hands. They may still do.

Some points here. I'm not sure about Jonas Armstrong's Robin. He's not what I expected of Robin Hood (but then again, the only Robin Hood I saw prior to this was Prince of Thieves).

The 'war on terror' analogy is very noticeable here.

Oh, and no-one's died yet.

What on earth?

I saw General Dannatt's interview with BBC Breakfast this morning. He mentioned that Des Browne had authorised his statement. He also sounded like he was backpedalling furiously.

Now the government is saying that he was reflecting policy.

This can mean a number of things:

1. Some serious wires have got crossed in the Ministry of Defence press office.
2. Dannatt is just stating the government's view in a way that can be misinterpreted.
3. We're preparing for a major U-turn on Iraq.

By the way, I believe things will be even worse if we pull out prematurely.

North Korea

So North Korea has officially joined the nuclear club, by setting off a nuclear bomb in an underground mineshaft. It's not a good thing that a dictator like Kim Jong-Il has nuclear weapons.

This development, while alarming, was not exactly surprising. It's been suspected for a while that the DPRK has nuclear weapons.

However, there are a couple of signs that we shouldn't panic just yet. Firstly, we have no idea whether the test was successful. It seems that the explosion was smaller than that of the Hiroshima bomb (which seems to the standard by which nuclear weapons are measured. That's not particulary successful. Secondly, the North is still years away from being able to put a bomb on a missile. Thirdly, their missiles aren't the most effective things.

What we do have to worry about is North Korea's conventional weaponry- most particularly the capacity of their artillery to devastate Seoul. Sadly, this makes a liberation of North Korea a non-starter.

A setback for world peace, yes. A rephrensible act, yes. A sign of imminent Armageddon, no.

Jack Straw's comments

I am personally a bit of fan of the Leader of Commons. I think he generally says the right thing at the right time.

I do not believe he is infallible, as in this case. I do not think that Jack Straw is right that it would be better for community relations if they did not wear veils. If they want to wear veils, that is their choice. They should not be asked to do something that they do not wish to do because of what someone else wants, at least not in this case. I don't believe that it harms community relations at all. What harms community relations is this sort of thing.

Comments are welcome.

Edited to be more accurate.