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I don't really have anything to say about the death of Nestor Kirchner and nor, it seems, do the analysts consulted by the New York Times: His death could either bolster or hurt Mrs. Kirchner’s political prospects, analysts said. Well that clears that up. On the one hand this is typical of the he-said, she-said approach that bedeveils American newspapers; on the other it's a welcome and sadly all-too-unusual admission that, actually, most of the time most people don't know anything and the most honest answer to most political questions is Who the Hell Can Tell?

I'm reading Keith Jeffrey's history of the Secret Intelligence Service at the moment. There's plenty of good stuff in it. Including Our Man in Moscow's account of the death of Rasputin which, Samuel Hoare explained, was "a question...so sensational that one cannot describe it as one would if it were an ordinary episode of the war." Accordingly he wrote his report "in the style of the Daily Mail": 1st January, 1917. In the early morning of Saturday, December 30th, there was enacted in Petrograd one of those crimes which by their magnitude blur the well-defined rules of ethics and by their results change the history of a generation.

Top spot by Amol Rajan: Daily Mail, p5:  “Being slim ‘makes a woman happier than any man could’”. Daily Mail, p11: “Having a big bottom and thighs could shape up to a longer life, claim researchers”. As Amol says, living long and being happy ain't necessarily the same. But what this means, I think, is that the Daily Mail  has a high opinion of its readers (at least its female readers anyway) since it expects them to satisfy Scott Fitzgerald's definition of a first-rate intelligence, namely "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." To wit: I must be slim and I must be curvy. Each in moderation, of course.

There's lots of good stuff in Peter Oborne's* Dispatches programme on the News of the World phone-hacking story even if, in the end and like many TV documentaries it over-reaches and tries too hard to build too large a conspiracy when simply laying out the established facts would seem enough. Nevertheless, it certainly deserves your time. Peter probably makes too much of the Murdoch-Downing Street relationship (and he should certainly have pointed out that Lord Puttnam is a Labour peer). Much worse from the perspective of Joe Public who kind of feels as though celebrities and politicians are some kind of fair game, was the story of "Sam" - the victim in a sexual assault case whose phone was apparently hacked by P.I Mulcaire, presumably at the request of someone on Fleet Street.

Yup. This is a news website article about a scientific paper  In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding? In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges". If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

This so-called story is fast becoming an ideal case study for any student of politcs and the British press. Neither party comes out of it looking especially good. I'm sure James is correct: the press wins (or loses, if that's how you view it) either way. If Hague ignores the innuendo then it's fodder for bloggers and diarists (and eventually columnists) and if he addresses the matter then that means that it's "officially" a story fit for public discussion. Heads gossip wins, tails Hague loses. If the rumours about Hague's relationship with his young and now-former SpAd were true then, yes indeed, you'd have a scandal that would cost the Foreign Secretary his job. But as best one can see there's no evidence that there's any truth to the rumours at all.

From today's Telegraph letters page: Comparatively ungallant nickname for a military hero SIR – Those with experience of the old Stock Exchange floor will readily recall some of the nicknames (Letters, August 22) bestowed upon its habitués. Among them were two brothers, both with highly distinguished military careers and both winners of the Military Cross, one with bar and one without. The latter acquired the sobriquet of “The Coward”. Quentin Smith, Dunley, Hampshire [Many thanks to AH for the tip.

Meanwhile, in other Glasgow news the city's evening paper makes its readers an offer they can't refuse. I believe this exhausts my annual quota of posts making gentle fun of Glaswegians.

But not because of the argument Iain Dale makes here: Just a thought on the graduate tax. We already have a graduate tax. It's called income tax at 40 per cent. This is an off-hand comment, sure, but it would also be a better argument if it were true. There are about 31.7 million taxpayers in Britain; only 3.8 million of them pay any tax at 40%. I'm all for widening tax bands to take some people out of higher tax rates but there are millions of graduates who don't earn enough to pay higher rates of tax. Nevertheless, the belief that everyone pays tax at 40% is a constant feature of press and metropolitan opinion.

Obviously it's from Western Nevada County, California: SWAT Team Requested for Violent Midgets Details, alas, remain sketchy but here's what we have so far: At 12:32 p.m., a caller from West McKnight Way reported steroid-using body-builders from Reno had beaten up the caller's son and might have killed him. Midgets from Fulton Avenue had been following and trying to poison the caller. The body-builder and the lead female midget, who the caller reported as being “really violent,” allegedly had been driving the caller's truck. The caller wanted the Nevada County Sheriff's Office to activate the SWAT team. God bless America.