I don’t have enormously high hopes that everything will become groovy, excellent, liberal, etc, and I know that the President’s impact on what happens in the states is somewhat limited – but the fact that the Californians have taken a cop who shot a harmless, unarmed civilian, charged said cop with first degree murder, and refused to let him out on bail is still a rather jolly and heartwarming starting point for the new regime.

Now, if David Cameron were to promise to do the same for all UK cops found in the same situation, that might sway my voting plans…

(backing Ian Blair over Jean-Charles de Menezes’ murder was the one thing that made me seriously consider not voting for Ken at the last mayoral elections. Had any candidate explicitly spoken out againts shoot-to-kill-for-suspected-comedians [*], and not had utterly ludicrous policies on everything else [**], I’d've voted for them…)

[*] it flatters the incompetent, trivial jokers we’ve had to oh so bravely struggle against in the UK to refer to them as ‘terrorists’. There’s no terror. The guys in Mumbai are terrifying. Ours are idiots who set fire to themselves [***].

[**] in this context, neither Boris’s nor Brian’s policies would’ve been ridiculous enough to deter me.

[***] and I’m slightly embarrassed when Londoners claim July 7 2005 as a serious piece of terrorism. Cock off: New York had its two biggest landmarks destroyed and 3,000 people murdered; we had the same death toll as four hours’ worth of smoking, plus the same disruption as when Metronet mess up the engineering works. Nothing to see here; trivial nonsense; get lost.