Tonier than thou

As part of his plan to have his own career mirror the rise of Tony Blair, David Cameron has now reached his very own "Clause Four" moment. Remembering how Tony Blair faced down the unions, Cameron now has his very own dinosaurs of the 1922 Committee to vanquish - proving himself not only a man for change, but a strong leader.

The parallels are striking - The Labour Party never came anywhere near to enacting "public ownership of the means of production", any more than a Conservative government has built any grammar schools in the last 30 years. Yet each clings to its unenacted policy more out of a sense of identity than anything else: "if we don't stand for this, then what do we stand for?" No doubt the answer will dawn now as it did then: "whatever it takes to get elected."

I just hope he stops before he reaches his equivalent of the Iraq war.

The Middle East Roadmap: park and ride

Exciting developments in the war on terror, as the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Ramallah has been detained by Israeli security officials.

Apparently he was arrested while having sex in a car just a few hundred feet from late PLO leader Yasser Arafat's grave. My friend Phil reckons this could be the terrorist who has been dogging the peace process for some time, but of course Hofflimits would never stoop to make such a joke.

Given Mossad's record of using "honey traps" in the past, it is perhaps surprising such captures are not more widespread. The alternative is that this warrior from the frontline of Palestinian resistance can bring mayhem and destruction down upon the enemies of Islam, but is still too embarrassed to bring girls home to his parents' house.

Might this suggest it's worth sending women agents into Afghanistan to approach Osama Bin Laden with the promise of a snog round the back of the Tora Bora mountains?

Do as I say, not as I do

Sometimes being successful isn't enough - you want respect too. So McDonald's this week launched a campaign to remove the term "McJob" from the Oxford English Dictionary, claiming that the term is insulting to the thousands of staff working in the service sector. First invented 20 years ago by Douglas Copeland, McJob has moved from its original coinage of a "slacker job" to come to mean the more general: "unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector".

If this sounds a little Big Brother-ish for you, here's another Orwellian concept McDonald's seems to have mastered: doublethink. Check out this website offering a challenging career in fast-food retail that is "so much more than a McJob". That's a career with, er, McDonald's. Posted on their own website.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ - click on "careers"

I guess you could call that McHumbug.

Shoot: the messenger

Ronaldo, Andriy Shevchenko, Steven Gerrard, David Beckham and Phil Neville. Not an odd one out contest, but just some of the footballers who have taken a stand against the kidnap of Madeline McCann.

Astonishingly, their no doubt heartfelt pleas at recent football matches have failed to reveal her whereabouts. When criminals stop listening to our footballers, then you know the world has truly become a rotten place.

Listen with interest

Senator John Edwards is probably best know for two things: not becoming the Vice president of the USA in 2004, and for not going to be President in 2008. Given that this also applies to 5,999,999,998 other people, he must have some other quality that makes people at the University of California want to hear him speak.

Sen. Edwards was at UC Davis to talk about poverty - apparently, he's against it. So strongly against it, it seems, he insisted on getting paid $55,000 as a precautionary measure, to prevent any outbreak of poverty affecting him personally. In case you may have missed that last point, that's $55,000 for talking about poverty, not curing it.

Defending its decision, UC Davis officials pointed out that Edwards was a "speaker of interest that people in the community were clearly interested in" [sic]. Given that he racked up nearly $300k last year from just nine speeches at US colleges, Sen. Edwards is cetainly a speaker of considerable interest: at least $10,000 a year, I'd guess.