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Just a possible alternative headline for this story in today's Oxfrord Mail/Times - Trap Grounds Bill Tops 159k

I've just received another electronic communication from one of our South East European candidate hopefuls. It repeats Linda Jack's recent gripe about not being able to say who they are supporting for the leadership.

Apparently this is because such an endorsement by a Euro-hopeful might be interpreted as an implicit endorsement by the relevant leadership candidate for that Euro-hopeful and thereby possibly increase their chances of selection.

If it hadn't been made up by the powers that be it would not have been a conclusion I would have leaped to, I have to say. However, given that I do support a particular leadership candidate I would like the opportunity at least to consider giving extra weight to those Euro candidates who share my opinion of what would be best for my party in the leadership. It might very well not make any difference of course.

So, let's remove the gag. It's a bonkers idea. Sure, we did not know there would be a leadership election when the Euro selection process started, but now that we have one, it could very well be another factor in whether to prioritize one candidate over another.

So an ICM poll for the Telegraph today claims that:

"Sunday's survey provides some good news for Mr Brown - 65 per cent of those questioned support his 42-day plan, with backing coming from voters across the political spectrum.

Thirty per cent think the limit should stay at 28 days, the position favoured by the Conservatives."

Now, aside from the fact that I must be in the five per cent not even mentioned there, because I support no extension on the 2 days before charging that applies for other crime, I don't think I know a single person that supports any extension on the 28 days already permitted.

In his acceptance speech when he took over the leadership, Nick Clegg suggested (and I do believe) that most people in Britain were inherently liberal. So just who are the 65% that support this gross extension of the state's ability to "disappear" people. This is not Chile of the seventies for goodness' sake.

I've asked before, and the point was made by Shami Chakrabarti on Question Time on Thursday night with some force (she really laid into the boy Milliband to my delight!) why it is the British police and prosecution services are unable to get far enough on with their investigative work within two or four times the amount of time other countries have to charge people with something that could keep the accused on remand if necessary, with the introduction if necessary, as they do in many European jurisdictions, of post charge questioning.

I don't have the prescience to know where this country is heading, but with that 65% for one of the most egregious attacks on our civil liberties - remember we're talking about effectively disappearing people for up to six weeks without even telling them why, leaving families in limbo, probably losing the victim of the disappearing their jobs and so on, but I don't like it.

I've not left this sceptered isle for about twenty years (and then it was only a work trip to the emerald one next door) having had the travel bug knocked out of me by twenty four hour journeys to Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria as a youngster. I don't even have a valid passport at the moment, and was content not getting one now that the intrusive questioning to get one has started, but I'm afraid I'm thinking that now I have to think about making plans for somewhere else to go when this country eventually becomes such an affront to civil liberties that I can no longer stomach being here.

So says Sussex University's SU President Dan Glass in: Student union bars ban Coca-Cola, about how the union has decided to remove Coke from its outlets.

So, ironic that I noted this today too Nestlé reports profit jump. That last great NUS anti-corporation target seems to have been mortally wounded by the boycott, doesn't it?

Personally, I boycott both, and a whole load of other things, and encourage others to do likewise if I get the opportunity, but banning it doesn't seem to make a jot of difference. And I'll bet the Sussex SU has lower turnover through its shops beyond just the value of the Coke it won't be selling. The losers? Their members one suspects.