Voting is (sort of) underway in the French Presidential elections. Nicholas Sarkozy is, of course, taking on Segolene Royal to become President of France.

Most of the world seem to think that Royal is the better candidate, and hence, most likely, the French will vote for Sarkozy to piss everyone off. It seems to be what they do best. My trusted, reliable informant is predicting a Sarkozy win, and it does look like he’s ahead in the campaign. It’d be nice to see Royal win, though.

That’s about the limit of my knowledge on French Presidential politics. Rather pathetic, really. So, for better quality, more in-depth coverage, check out the Social Europe Blog. Going by that name, I’m guessing the coverage won’t be exactly unbiased, but since I’d prefer Royal, I might as well link to another blog that would, too.

Belgian police are investigating a virtual rape on Second Life – but can virtual rape really be a crime? A very interesting read.

A pretty unreliable source which is known for reprinting tabloid gossip without credit claims that the BBC has pulled out of negotiations to keep Neighbours after its latest offer was rejected. Will it work outside of its cosy BBC home, though? I’m not so sure.

It’s probably unlike me to say this about an election, but wasn’t it incredibly dull!

For the broadcasters, it seemed to be an exercise in going through the motions to come to a result that we’ve all been able to predict for weeks – but a slightly more dull, less damaging to Labour result. They might as well have played the results show from the last local election – I doubt anyone would’ve really noticed.

The BBC resorted to bizarre graphics apparently borrowed from The Day Today involving a rapping Menzies Campbell cartoon (‘Ming’s Bling’) and Tony Blair playing virtual tennis, presented by a Radio 2 DJ. I’m all in favour of making these things more accessible – but Ming’s Bling?! ITV were so bored by the story that they didn’t even bother with a special.

The only moderately interesting thing about the election is that the SNP have the most seats in the Scottish Parliament. But it’s no majority, they have one more seat than Labour. Again, it’s interesting to see, but only slightly interesting – and less interesting than the prediction of the SNP doing very well.

The Scottish elections were a practical disaster, with hundreds of thousands of spoiled ballots and an electronic counting system that didn’t work. That was unexpected, and perhaps there are lessons to be learnt, but it’s hardly the 2000 US Presidential Elections.

Dull, dull, dull.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/pat.flv” title=”Question Time, BBC One, 3rd May 2007″ /]

It’s rare for me to post something like this, but the following is an extract from Adam and Joe’s brilliant XFM show. If you haven’t discovered it yet, now’s the time: They’ve just released a ‘best bits’ compilation from Series One of their XFM podcast. So listen, and then go and download.

Today, I’ve received news of the sad passing of Rose Tombe of Juba, Sudan.

After a quiet start to life, Rose shot to fame early in 2006 when she married Charles Tombe, who loved her so much that he was willing to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dollars to secure her hand in marriage. The news of the wedding was marred by the revelation that the happy couple had been caught by Mr Alifi, Rose’s carer, having sex before their marriage, which had resulted in Mr Alifi becoming unnecessarily aggressive and tying poor Charles up for the night.

You see, Mr Tombe and Rose were truly star-crossed lovers. For some, they were just to ‘different’ to have a true, loving relationship. Some even suggested that Charles was just playing along for the sex. But luckily, Mr Alifi soon came to his senses, and allowed the marriage to go ahead.

The couple had a bright future together, but things hit the rocks a little towards the end of last year, when Rose became pregnant. Whilst the paternity has not been formally determined, it is noticeable that the offspring bears little resemblance to Mr Tombe, but has a distinct likeness to some of Mrs Tombe’s former boyfriends.

After much soul-searching, the couple were able to work through their problems, and share in an open relationship considered radical in their Sudanese home. However, Rose tragically died earlier this week, after choking on a plastic bag.

Tributes have been pouring in from across the world, and Rose’s closest friends and family turned out to pay their last respects at the funeral. But perhaps the most moving tribute came from the late Mrs Rose’s son:

Naa naaaaa. Naaaaaaaaaaaa naaaa naa na. Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

A fitting tribute to a truly special goat.

After finding that the MTAS system was a complete balls-up and had not only failed in its designed intention to match doctors to jobs but had also spewed applicant’s intimate personal details onto the internet such that they were publicly accessible (see here), it would seem reasonable for Patricia Hewitt to take some action.

Perhaps you might expect that she’d sack the people who design the system. Perhaps she’d resign, and admit that the system she’s introduced was an absolute unmitigated failure. Mad Pat did neither of these.

Instead, she reported Channel 4 News to Ofcom. She hasn’t done anything in terms of getting rid of the company who designed this lamentable system, but has reported the programme which exposed the problem to the broadcast regulator, on the basis that Channel 4 should have reported the problem to the Department of Health more quickly.

Clearly, she thinks that it was absolutely unacceptable that a news programme should take 120 minutes to verify a story before notifying the interested parties, yet spewing junior doctors’ and medical students’ personal data all over the web for anyone to see is merely a minor error.

She said she was sorry ‘to junior doctors or foundation programme applicants who have been caused anxiety or, in some cases, inconvenience as a result’, which is all very nice. But remember, she has broken the law. This is an enormous breach of the Data Protection Act. Saying ‘sorry for causing anxiety’ doesn’t really cut it. If I were to post her intimate details on a website for all to see, would ‘sorry’ be enough?

She also claimed that

There is no evidence that members of the public or other commercial interests, apart from staff at ITN and “Channel 4 News”, accessed the site.

That is an out-and-out lie. There is evidence, and the MTAS project manager has that evidence. And, what’s more, it’s clear from her own speech that it is a lie. She said:

The overwhelming majority of individual accesses before the security breach was closed came from an internet address belonging to ITN, the providers of “Channel 4 News”.

The ‘overwhelming majority’. That means, quite simply, that some of the accesses were not from these internet addresses, but from elsewhere. Therefore, there is evidence that other people accessed the site. She is quite clearly and openly lying to Parliament. If you want to read more of her misguided spiel, check Hansard.

The system has criminally failed, and now she’s lying to cover her own back and kicking off against the people who exposed the flaws.

The Ministerial Code is quite clear about this. Section 1.5.c:

Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister

She surely knows what she has to do.