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If the world is a more dangerous place, it's as much because of people like Richard Armitage: US threatened to bomb Pakistan as it is because of people like Bin Laden.

I hope personally that we will choose to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Commonwealth brothers and sisters who have provided us with many of our residents and not a few friends and colleagues than a regime that even remotely thinks it's acceptable to make such threats.

Interestingly though, this is a similar phrase to one that was alleged to have been used as an ultimatum to the Taliban themselves, BEFORE 9/11, two months before, when they were stalling in talks over a Unocal pipeline from the central asian republics to the Arabian Sea coast.

If you threaten what to most of us seemed like a basket case state and their friends respond with a 9/11, would you really want to threaten a more sophisticated populous and relatively much more influential military one with nukes, even small ones, like Pakistan?

There used to be a rather insulting saying about PR systems that "if the Irish could understand it why shouldn't we". The Times' leader article today proves they still can't:

Vote of No Confidence -Times Online:

This is the nub of the issue. The current electoral system has the drawback of giving the largest single minority at Westminster an extremely large share of political power. Yet proportional representation would mean that much smaller minorities would wield undue influence, as without them it would not be possible to form a stable administration. Would this constitute progress?

It is not surprising, therefore, that the official Review of Voting Systems could not work up any enthusiasm for overhauling the current system. What is more intriguing is why the 110-page report has not seen the light of day until this morning. There has to be the suspicion that Labour, aware that at some point it might need the assistance of the Liberal Democrats to survive in office, is unwilling to offend its potential partners by publishing a document which is so damning of their pet project. Sustaining a dubious deal at a later date is surely the worst argument for PR.

Drawback? Drawback? It's a fecking democratic outrage, that's what it is! How can anyone vest so much power in an individual like a Blair, a Brown, a Cameron or, one day again, a Campbell on the mandate, at the last count, of just a quarter of the voting age population? It's almost as repugnant as that other scenario that sees a Chavez, Mugabe or Hussein elected on huge rigged votes. Come to think about it, even Mugabe is more sophisticated than that, allowing his opposition to win seats in parliament but reserving a presidential right to appoint as many more as will give him a decent majority (but then Blair had his peers I suppose, just to make sure). No, I take it back, Mugabe would just love the British system.

As to whether any particular form of PR would produce a situation in which "much smaller minorities would wield undue influence" that's so much tommy rot too. They cite Scotland's teething problems with PR, but it hasn't prevented a minority government being formed at Holyrood, and looking abroad, is Germany some unstable state? The Netherlands? Or that economic powerhouse of the EU, Ireland? Or any of the other big democracies that use fairer voting systems? Italy is corrupt from top to bottom it seems and Israel's very birth as a state almost made sure that certain minorities would hold undue influence.

Let's not forget that when "we" had the opportunity to sit down and draw up constitutions and electoral systems for two effectively new countries after the war, Japan and Germany, we didn't choose to foist our decrepit system on them, and look at how they have by and large shone since then.

But for me, the irony of this sort of whining from organs like the Times is that surely they would normally be crying out for less government. If PR delivers a legislature in which little can be done wouldn't that be a good thing, especially for lovers of the status quo? No more far reaching change wreaked by a minority party with a huge majority in the legislature and total control of the executive. A situation where all parties would need to agree in order to do anything significant - that's real democracy, surely.

For me, there is the tantalizing prospect, most of all, that we would see the bigger parties dissolve into their constituent parts - Cameron Tories and the Libertarian Right, Old and New Labour, Orange Liberals and Social Democrats and we would all get a chance to prioritize the traits we want in individual candidates. Of course I simply loathe Westminster and the overbearing presence it has in our lives, but for me, second only to dissolving Westminster and Whitehall altogether would be a system that makes it as hamstrung and impotent as possible, only able to do something when all our various persuasions of politicians actually agree on it.

Anyone see Spooks tonight? I know "M" doesn't think too highly of it, but it's fascinating viewing for me. The imaginative conspiracy theories of BBC script writers and all that.

Tonight, the last in the current series, is about some environmental activists, "Divine Earth" threatening to stop the Thames barrier being lifted to stop a spring tide surge that will carry a 6m wall of water up into central London.

They are doing so in order to have a top secret government plan exposed that sets out their alternative to the Stern report's recommendations...that the UK and US have decided that climate change is inevitable and unstoppable. That instead of tinkering we should go into partnership to rampage across the globe forcibly taking control of as many carbon energy sources as possible, cornering the market so we can remain vaguely comfortable as 25-35% of the world's population is wiped out by the effects of climate change, and that we develop full scale nuclear weapons replacements to arm ourselves for the inevitable "war to end all wars".

Who knows, huh?

What a bugger. San Pellegrino belongs to Nestle. Did you know that? Are they proud enough to put their logo on the bottle? Are they bollox. Indeed even their original bottled water, Vittel, is only discoverable as a Nestle product by the tiniest of tiny small print on the bottle. But San Pellegrino drinkers do not even get that warning.

Now, this is not a Nestle rant. There are lots of reasons why I try not to consume Nestle products as is my right as a consumer. And I'm not trying to force people to do likewise, merely exercising that consumer right on my own behalf.

So, I know Volvic and Buxton are Coke; Perrier, Vittel and San Pellegrino now are Nestle; Highland Spring is the Makhtoums' I understand. And I steer clear as a result of all of them. The stuff that comes out of my tap is owned by German investors who are about to flog it to whoever wants it, but not the people it belongs to.

Water, water everywhere but not an ethical drop to drink.

I need a friend with a borehole or the Duke of Marlborough to do some better marketing so Blenheim water is on some shop shelves rather than just corporate sales. Otherwise I am utterly dependent on global multi-brands for the very stuff of life.

So, we're going to get to hear later today what Dave means by "localism":

BBC NEWS | Politics | Tories offer votes on council tax:

Councils should hold referendums if they want to bring in "high" council tax increases, Tory leader David Cameron is due to say. If people voted against a rise, they would get a rebate the following year, he will add in a speech in east London. This would replace the current system of central government "capping" bills in England and Wales...Mr Cameron is expected to say he wants to improve "democratic accountability".

Under the plan, there would be a "trigger threshold", above which councils would have to hold a referendum. In England this would be set by Parliament, with the Welsh National Assembly deciding the level for Wales. Bills sent out to households would ask whether they supported any "excessive" increase, with a referendum form attached. In his speech in east London, Mr Cameron will say: "All politicians in opposition talk about giving more power to local councils. But all governments seem to end up centralising power.

Right - so how are we going to reverse that, I wonder? Oh yes, we'll decide at Westminster what's excessive and force local government to hold a referendum. Like that's decentralizing? Not only that, but a post hoc referendum which will, it appears, do nothing to tell a local authority what it ought and ought not to be spending money on, and after the budget is set.

It seems to me that this is a man making a bid for power on behalf of his party. Power which, in this country, will allow him more or less to do as he pleases with local government. And yet not only is he not making any visible attempt actually to do something about what he describes as and the Taxpayers' Alliance found in summer polling to be the most hated tax, but he's taking the current system and adding another layer of Westminster control over it.

Dave, it's this simple - you cannot make local government more accountable without making it raise more of its own money. The very fact that your Westminster cronies set the levels of central funding that goes to councils means that council up and down the country have to make up for shortfalls with disproportionate council tax changes. If you want to set them, and local people, free, you need to trust them to raise their money and trust local people to boot them out of power at local elections on the whole of their record.

This has got to be one of the most inept, unimaginative, populist policy pronouncements yet from Dave, displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of something he has repeatedly said is at the centre of Tory policy - localism. I do hope the speech is better than the press release.