During my last interview I ended up talking about spanking. Don’t ask me why.

This morning, while waiting to go in to the interview, I was joking with the colleague who was due to be interviewed after me about appropriate methods for bribing the panel.

I suggested a £50 note subtly placed between the pages of my portfolio. She upped the ante with a blatant offer of chocolate. I was not going to be outdone.

I said I would offer the panel sex.

A man who was signing in at reception paused, turned and looked at me, and then disappeared down the corridor. And can you guess where he was sitting when I was taken in to meet the interview panel…?

I got the job – but I don’t know what it is going to cost me.

…is the massive number of journalists, media luvvies and other desperately self-important hacks who think it is brilliant.

5th September 2002
“Intelligence also indicates that from forward-deployed storage sites, chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 45 minutes.”

20th January 2006
“We have found no evidence of detainees being rendered through the UK or overseas territory since 11 September 2001.” (Jack Straw, then foreign secretary.)

I don’t want anyone to think that the above quotes contributed to the erosion of my trust in the Government. That occurred years ago. These quotes only reinforce my opinion even further – that the Government is lying through its teeth, and has been doing so for many, many years.

Meanwhile, regarding Diego Garcia, where these extraordinary rendition flights landed. I do hope that legal action will be taken against the USA for the utter contempt it has shown for the terms of its contract with the United Kingdom to use our sovereign territory as a military base. But I doubt it.

The whole point of having a poodle is the absolute certainty that you will never be bitten by it.

So the original draft of the “Dodgy Dossier” (the one before the New Labour Spin Doctors got their hands on it) has finally been published, the one written by the experts, and Lo! It had no reference to Saddam Hussein’s WMDs being “deployable within 45 minutes of an order being given.”

Meanwhile, the nationalisation of a UK bank, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer once agreed would “lead to a slow lingering death for the jobs of the Northern Rock workers, its assets and Britain’s reputation as a major financial services centre” will be voted on in the Commons tomorrow – with that very same Chancellor’s full support.

And the author of a report by a leading education think tank has actually had the nerve to stand up at a conference and condemn the Cult of Management Consultancy that has dominated the British education system for the past decade. No more Orwellian Newspeak in Education .

[Rapturous applause] Standing ovation [/Rapturous applause]

I think that Britain’s thrall with New Labour has come to an end.

I almost missed this – The Angel of the North is 10 Years Old!

It was just sixth months after Little Madam was born (doesn’t time fly?) and I remember saying, shortly afterwards, to a friend that while I loved the idea of the angel, I did think they could have made a more visually appealing sculpture. It didn’t take long for me to change that opinion – I adore it now.

I spent the next two years driving past it twice a day. It took less than six months for it to be adopted as the new icon for the region.

Geordies have every right to be proud of their Angel – it is beautiful. And I miss it. I don’t regret moving to York (much) but the Angel reminds me of everything I miss about Geordieland.

Have you seen this YouTube video?

A couple of facts to ponder:
The US Government is now spending more money in Iraq than it is in any of the 50 US states (incidentally making Iraq more dollar rich than 13 states – a quarter of the country) and there are more US military personnel in Iraq alone than most other countries possess globally.

I was banned from watching it when I was a kid. Nice middle class families just didn’t talk to each other like that, and didn’t expose their children to that sort of role model.

Inevitably, that made it seem more exciting than it was – and by the time I got round to watching it the hype and expectation had built it up to an impossibly high standard.

Actually, by the time I got round to watching it I was a teacher in exactly the sort of inner-city school that the series tried to portray – complete with metal detectors on the doors and a police helicopter hovering overhead at the end of every school day.

And even the kids in the school agreed, Grange Hill just wasn’t real.

It was sexed-up. It dealt with ‘gritty realities’ in a way that safe, secure middle class kids thought was exciting – and their parents thought was unacceptable.

It was never a mirror on real life. It was real life through a prism designed to entice a very carefully selected audience.

This is what happens to your ‘Recommended titles’ list when you give your wife free access to your Amazon account:

This lunchtime, in the middle of pretending to do some work and generally messing about on message boards and with emails, the “Y” and “6″ keys on my laptop stopped working. Which is less annoying than it could have been because I don’t know any swearwords that use those keys.

However, there is absolutely no reason why they should have stopped working. Nothing has been spilled on this laptop, the children haven’t touched it, and – most curiously of all – they worked all morning. And then stopped. I know that they were working because they are important keys for my game. I was using them while writing my presentation for tomorrow’ meeting…

Anyway, now we get to see just how good Apple Support really is. And, meanwhile, I have nicked the plug-in keyboard from Little Madam’s Mac Mini (she only uses it to watch High School Musical anyway…)

Watch this space.