Alex Massie

The cricket season has begun which is, as usual, a cause for celebration and an occasion to lament the guarantee that the first month of the new innings will be ruined by rain. Commercial considerations - that is, the need to stuff the calendar with as many limited overs fixtures as possible during the prime summer months - demand the further marginalisation of the venerable County Championship. Nearly a quarter of the fixtures will be played by the end of May, with others just as liable to be afflicted by poor weather as the season staggers to a close at the end of September. Times change, of course, and even traditionalists have to accept that.

Here's an interesting - and, for once, encouraging - development. Motherwell College (soon to be moving to a new campus on the site of the old Ravenscraig steel mill) is going to offer students the chance to study for the International Baccalaureate, rather than Scottish Highers. That's a small, but significant victory for school choice, as teenagers at high schools in Lanarkshire will now have the chance to apply for one of the places on an IB course that has, until now, only been available in the private sector in Scotland. (Indeed, fewer than 150 schools across Britain offer the IB at present, though that number will grow as A-Levels and Highers continue t lose their value.

Commenting on this post about the Damian McBride Affair, Shippers makes an excellent point: things are just as bad, if not worse, on the other side of the Atlantic. Consider this example, culled from Politico's daily Playbook: The WashPost's First Dog exclusive - which the WP says the First Lady's office offered in March to stave off a premature story about the White House vegetable garden, which had been promised as an exclusive to The New York Times (we're not making this up) - is rained on by weekend Web leaks. But the WP has first word that the adorable black Portuguese water dog, a gift from Senator and Mrs. Kennedy, will be named "Bo." (And that the Obamas will make a donation to the D.C. Humane Society, since he didn't come from a shelter.

Iain Martin suggests that amidst the justified hoopla over the death of Ian Tomlinson we shouldn't forget the role the G20 protestors played too. They, he says, are "just as much to blame as the police". And for the police it was a long and stressful day, mistakes happen you know, they'd been insulted and taunted all day, everything was very confusing, etc etc. I'm afraid this won't quite do. As I argued yesterday, the only reason anyone is paying any attention to this assault is that poor Mr Tomlinson subsequently collapsed and died from a heart attack. That and the fact it was filmed. It is the very ordinary nature of the incident that is appalling. No-one can be surprised by it and no-one would have made much of a fuss if he hadn't had his heart attack.

TNR asks defence analysts Who Won and Who Lost in Bob Gates's realignment of Pentagon spending priorities? One party that doesn't get a mention is the Royal Navy, yet the curtailment of the F-22 fighter programme and the allocation of increased resources to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter must be considered good news for the Navy and the Royal Air Force. Given the (intolerable) pressures on the MoD budget the sooner (and the cheaper) the F-35 is developed past a point of no return, the better. Granted, it seems unlikely (in the present climate) that Britain will really buy as many as 150 of the aircraft, but the development of the JSF remains essential to Britain's future defence capability.