Bound By Charter

IF you enjoyed the sheer precision of the obedience and agility classes at Crufts, have a look on YouTube at what happened in a Finnish dog show when a golden retriever had to negotiate a course where the obstacles included plates of sausages. You can probably guess the rest. The video went viral:

FORMER Home Secretary Jack Straw, recently snared in a cash-for-access sting, says the Press is responsible for a decline in respect for MPs. I just knew it would be our fault, somehow. It always is.

AND yet I suspect when the Straw / Rifkind thing blows over, life will carry on as normal. Parliament has always set itself very easy rules and the chances are that neither Jack Straw nor Malcolm Rifkind actually committed any breach of the regulations serious enough to cause them much trouble. No money changed hands and there are no rules against MPs taking outside jobs. Their chief offence was to be caught asking for large sums of money and to be doing it with a General Election only weeks away. They embarrassed their parties but that's hardly a hanging offence. In due course, will anyone be surprised to see Messrs Rifkind and Straw in the Lords?

BE careful what you wish for. The moment David Cameron declined to take part in a telly-debate, his enemies were whooping with glee at the prospect of him being "empty-chaired" by the broadcasters. While the other party leaders would be able to state their case, the cameras would occasionally cut to an empty chair where the PM would have been sitting if he wasn't such a craven coward. What a hoot, eh? Except that TV and radio, unlike newspapers, are required by law and bound by charter to be scrupulously fair in political coverage. They must bend over backwards to give parties their fare share of coverage. So one suggestion, if Cameron ignores the debate, is to redress the balance by giving him his own little show, a sort of extended party-political broadcast. Thus, the other party leaders would be seen fighting like ferrets in a sack but the PM gets a magisterial 10 minutes of his own, untroubled by snarling and sniping. So who's whooping now?

IT is the 50th anniversary of Yesterday, the beguilingly soulful Beatles hit that became a classic and will endure long after the last of the Fab Four have passed over. Paul McCartney says the tune came to him in a dream. Presumably he hasn't had many good dreams since.

POT, kettle, etc. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, urges householders to install CCTV surveillance cameras to help police solve burglaries. This will come as a surprise to anyone whose experience of being burgled is that the cops don't really want to get involved. Officers tend to see burglaries as a private matter between householders and insurance companies, with the constabulary merely supplying a crime number and sending along someone from Victim Support. But if the police are suddenly getting serious about burglaries, they don't seem to be practising what they preach. It is reported that undercover cops in Essex, testing security at police stations, managed to break into six nicks without any problems.

HAVE police stations always been easy to break into? A very old joke concerns the burglars who enter a police station and steal all the lavatory seats, leaving no clues. According to the local newspaper, police had nothing to go on.