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Now, I don't subscribe to everything that appears on IndyMedia but it's often useful for local alerts about things going on around Oxford as they have an Oxford based group and server. So I was interested to see:

UK Indymedia - Cargo Plane with Hebrew markings at RAF Brize Norton:

Are our government, apparently wanting but not wanting a ceasefire, now routing weapons to Israel from the US or elsewhere via RAF bases?

I think we should be told.

Have a look at the artist's impression below as reproduced in the Oxford Mail story on tonight's planning debate at Oxford City Council over the proposals to extend the Westgate shopping centre:

See how the road, Queen Street, has people milling around in safety and nice surroundings? There's not a bus in sight, is there? That's because we have been led to believe for the last six years and more that any redevelopment of the Westgate Centre would be contingent on finding a route for eastbound buses through the new centre that would finally get them out of this cluttered and frankly downright dangerous street.

Well guess what. The plan, approved tonight, has welched on that. Buses will continue there after all. What is the point of spending thousands of pounds doing up Bonn Square if you can't stand back and marvel it without a No 7 knocking you down - and I don't mean a lady hawking Boots' makeup.

Whilst the original plan which Prescott refused on call-in and the city got through on appeal to the High Court did have its flaws, there are two distinct problems that to my mind make this application inestimably worse. Failure to get the buses out of Queen Street (which the original did) and expansion across Norfolk Street resulting in the demolition of a community of flats and houses built only a couple of decades ago primarily for disabled residents (which the original plan did not).

This latter is a particularly pernicious piece of corporate greed on the part of the Westgate Partnership and the City Council which stands to gain millions from the development, most of which is on their land. I hope the residents are well advised about their rights in holding out for the best price - it seems to me that they have effectively a ransom on this development.

Yes, we all want to see a John Lewis in Oxford I'm sure, but I wonder how that workers' partnership would view the idea of kicking a bunch of vulnerable people out of their homes? If any understand the benefits of personal ownership of capital assets it should be them.

The City Council should look to its other assets. The jewel in its crown is the Covered Market, and although it will remain a unique feature of Oxford's city centre it is now effectively marginalized on the eastern fringe of the main shopping area, together with other vulnerable sites in areas like Broad Street. One might expect that whole area east of Cornmarket to become merely a tourist curiosity, with trinket shops and eateries.

In turn, those businesses, predominantly small local independent shops, that currently just about cling on there and who will, let's face it, be unable to compete for space in and around the new Westgate, will face an uncertain future as our new primary shopping area becomes even more blanded by brands.

I've not been too much involved with this application - I was on the Planning Committee when the last one happened and voted against that one too for all sorts of reasons - but my gut feeling is that this one is wrong on so many levels. I find myself in the extremely odd and slightly uncomfortable position of hoping that Ruth Kelly won't like it either. I normally hate the idea of central government taking local decisions away from local people. But in this case I think the local people have made a mistake, and one that will change significantly the Oxford millions know and love for many years to come. If such can't be dealt with by a local referendum, then someone else has got to be able to take a view outside the obvious conflict of interest involved in a council granting planning permission for its land in which it stands to make a small fortune.

Sorry chaps. But I had to say it! There's one way you can make up for this, since you're in the game of rearranging your significant property assets - let's set up a Community Land Partnership, pooling the freeholds of the area to the east of Cornmarket and St Aldate's and including the Town Hall and the Covered Market, creating a body that can act as one with the financial muscle to counter the effect of the inevitable westward shift of the city centre.

PS - come to think of it, if you really want to do away with Oxford's most brutal piece of architecture (pace Jeremy Dixon's new blot on the mound which I fear is there for a good while yet) the whole thing should wait until we discover whether Oxford will become a Unitary Authority (God forbid!) and knock County Hall down instead of peoples' homes.

The Guardian on Thursday presages a Downing Street Press-fest at which Tony Blair will apparently claim that we've all "misunderstood me over the Middle East".

Apparently...he will "face down his critics today over his controversial handling of the Middle East crisis by insisting that he has been working throughout for a ceasefire in Lebanon and that his position has been misunderstood. He will argue at a Downing Street press conference that he wanted a ceasefire, but only if it was coupled with a clear understanding that the Hizbullah militia would be disarmed."

So that'll be a "no" then Tony, we've understood you perfectly well. You don't actually give a stuff about the real people whose lives have been cut short and homes and livelihoods torn apart by what's been happening (actually on both sides but since Israel has all the responsibilities and moral capacity of a democratic nation state they bear most of the blame).

You're happiest with your seven good buddies tucked up in some posh hotel like prep schoolers playing that great game of Diplomacy or like the crowned heads posturing in the pier ballroom on "Oh what a lovely war!". You want a ceasefire but only once 20% of a country has been displaced or left utterly destitute. Can you imagine not wanting a ceasefire until after London and the South East region had been evacuated, bulldozed and occupied? No.

The "rules of war" and human rights were established to prevent a recurrence of razing villages, treating civilian areas as battle grounds to target your artillery at. I actually have more respect for what Israel are now doing - starting on the eyeball to eyeball anti-guerilla fighting on the ground - than the softening up and remote control village clearances by artillery and bombing (now acknowledged by Israel to have been completely intentional all along as some of us predicted).

You'd rather condone human rights abuses and war crimes when they're being carried out by the lot on "our side" (apparently) than stick up for what is right - the defense of the innocents (also on both sides). Presumably your party is worried that they'll never be allowed into International Labour Organization meetings ever again having surrendered any claim to being the champions of ordinary people.

I don't believe anyone can really talk properly about what happens in the future until the guns have fallen silent. The difference between that happening two weeks ago and next week will only have been that "our ally" achieved most of its illegal and immoral military aims before you made them stop with hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. And I have no doubt Hezbullah is now stronger by a few village butchers, bankers and undertakers because nobody else was going to help them fight for their homes, lands and livelihoods.

While governments are pushing options round tables thousands of miles away, hundreds of thousands of lives are being uprooted and devastated. The poor and excluded are always the victims of war.

The BBC says that Blair delays holiday over Mid-East crisis.

Now I am something of an expert when it comes to procrastination eating into my annual leave, so I can reasonably confidently suggest to our glorious leader that if he had started three weeks ago when most of us wanted him to, he'd probably be enjoying his R&R by now...:)

Just so you know, when I was eleven, at prep school, I used to have two knives.

One, a "Swiss Army Knife" was a thing of pride - everyone vied to get one with as many different gadgets on as they could. That one I used to carry in my pocket all the time; you just never knew when you would come across a pencil that had not been turned into "pencil cricket" or a desk with a screw that could do with being removed for the delectation of watching the next occupants of it have it collapse on them...:)

The other was one of those "Ray Mears" type things - it folded its four inch blade, kept razor sharp (because there wasn't much else to do with it and one of those sharpening blocks), into its wooden handle. It was meant for whittling my woggle with or whatever it was that we Scouts did, but it occasionally came in handy for cutting up sticky-backed plastic or something like that!

Come to think of it I must have had another one as well - one that had a fixed blade and was worn in its scabbard on my belt whenever I was in uniform. Oh, and if I recall, I bought them all, with my saved up pocket money, myself, and whilst I may well look a decade older than I am now, I did not, I assure you, at eleven!

And the most memorable book I read at school that year?  The Cross and the Switchblade .

I don't remember anyone, ever, getting stabbed, except perhaps by accident when their woggle was whittled too much. We soon grew out of them, when we graduated to the CCF and started playing with guns instead! But I do recall some of the Duke of Edinburgh types remained loyal to their knives. So, blame the Duke of Edinburgh maybe, or Peter Duncan definitely, but the knife itself - what a useful piece of equipment!

Don't they have pencil cricket or woggles that need whittled, any more?

Oh, and I still have a fold-away thing for my pipe that has a blade and a stiletto type poker thing on it - am I going to gaol?