The Iowa Caucuses seem truly nailbitingly exciting tonight. Does that say more about me or about politics?

From FreeDigitalPhotos.net, with permissionAirport security is increasingly becoming a hassle these days.

Just today, as well as removing my laptop, mobile and camera from my hand luggage, and everything from my pockets, I had to doff my belt, shoes, suit jacket, and overcoat in order to pass through security.

That’s a hassle, and with eight personal possessions slipping through a public security area separately, it’s a wonder that it all gets returned to its rightful owner at the other end. In fact, experience tells me that it doesn’t – I can’t remember the last time I was being screened and didn’t see someone called back as they’d left an item behind.

Add in the ludicrous arrangement that liquids can no longer be carried through security except in a clear plastic bag of specified dimensions and in bottles of specified volumes, and catching a flight has really started to become a serious hassle.

With the introduction of charges for carrying hold baggage and, with some airlines, even for checking in, we’re becoming used to being squeezed for every last penny when travelling by air.

So, given the combination of increasing numbers of reports of the utter uselessness of airport security as it is, and the increasing proliferation of schemes like this (UK) and this (US) which – for a fee – ease the burden of security checks on individuals, is the notion that airport security is being exploited to make money really such a foolish one?

After all, it’s hard to conclude that risk assessments will ever reduce the security hoop-jumping as long as airlines and airports are profiting from it – certainly a change in their fortunes since the measures were first introduced.

You have to admire the entrepreneurial ingenuity of airlines – after all, who’d have thought there was money to be made in allowing people to queue jump? It’s the perfect money-making scheme: Charging big bucks for something which costs the airline absolutely nothing.

Even days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the impact for the homeland she loved so dearly is still far from clear.

The tragedy of her death is certain: A 54 year-old who had spent much of her life fighting for true citizen-led democracy in Pakistan silenced not through reasoned argument but through mindless violence. The first female leader of an Islamic nation in modern history killed whilst trying to improve life for her fellow citizens. Her three children left without a mother, her husband without a wife.

I only hope that the violence of the last two days in Pakistan is short-lived, and that people will continue in her tradition of arguing eloquently, powerfully, and persistently for true representation of the people of Pakistan and against dangerous extremism.

A full and detailed obituary for Benazir Bhutto is available on Guardian Unlimited or BBC News.

May she rest in peace.

Yep, £3,500,000 of taxpayers money – your money – is about to be presented to Marks & Spencers for some teacakes.

You may have thought that teacake expenditure would have decreased now John Prescott is no longer in Government, but there really is a very good reason for the increase.

In 1973, M&S decided to start selling teacakes, and the VAT man decided that they were biscuits, and so insisted on collecting VAT on them. The clue was in the name, really. They’re teacakes, not teabiscuits.

Then, a little over twenty years later, another VAT man realised that the teacakes were, in fact, cakes, and that VAT shouldn’t be collected on them. But between 1973 and 1994, £3.5 million pounds of VAT had been wrongly paid to the Government.

In its infinite wisdom, the government decided that this £3.5m shouldn’t be given back. They reasoned that people had paid for their teacakes, not to give a donation to M&S, and so to give the money back to M&S would be deeply unfair.

So they gave M&S a cursory 10%, and kept the rest for themselves.

Now, a further thirteen years later, the European Court has decided that this was a little unfair, and insisted that the government give the wrongly collected taxes back – costing us all £3.5m.

But then again, they weren’t just teacakes – they were M&S teackes.

This Labour Government is a tenacious beast.

For some time, the Government has wanted to extend the period for which terror suspects can be detained without charge from the current 28 days to something a little bit longer. Quite how much longer doesn’t really matter.

Proposals existed for 56 days, 58 days, and 90 days. All fell flat on their face. This left Labour embarrassed.

Liberty pointed out that the law already allows for detention for 58 days if the government declare a state of emergency – and surely an emergency would be the only time in which we’d want to tear up the principal of innocence without proven guilt on which we have relied for most of modern history.

Yet even this wasn’t good enough – Labour hadn’t got its way, and so announced that declaring a state of emergency would mean that the terrorists had won. Rewriting the basic principles of criminal justice doesn’t do that, apparently.

And so, Labour’s Home Secretary du jour Jacqui Smith is trying again, proposing that detention without trial should be allowed for up to 42 days. There doesn’t seem to be any particular rational reason why 42 days rather than the defeated 56 days. I guess she’s just hoping to be lucky this time. You’d think opposing such a measure would be more a case of principle than a case of quibbling about 14 days, but maybe we’re wrong.

Labour has put forward no convincing arguments as to why we’d want to detain people for 42 days without trial – longer than any other country in the world. The CPS, Police, Security Service, and Former Attorney General have all said that 28 days is perfectly adequate. But the Labour Government doesn’t like not getting its way, so is trying again.

So why, out of all the possible numbers, would they pick 42 days? Therein lies the mystery…

Of course, perhaps Jacqui Smith is a fan of Douglas Adams. After all, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything. Maybe she’s Kabalistic, and sees herself as recreating the universe following God’s plan.

Or maybe – and this is the theory I prefer – it’s an allusion to the Valenzetti Equation. After all, once we’ve lost our basic sense of justice, surely the distruction of all humanity can’t be too far behind?

It’s been an extraordinarily bad few weeks for Mr Brown. I can’t actually remember the last bit of positive press, or even of genuine policy, that he managed to get out.

Even today, his government’s faintly ridiculous announcement about introducing a ‘skills check’ for single parents has been buried by news of more Labour sleaze, leading to the resignation of the impossibly young-looking ex-nurse Peter Watt, who was the party’s general secretary.

With the infamous lost discs, the floods, bluetongue, the ongoing saga with H5N1, the high price of petrol, the Northern Rock scandal, and so much more all obscuring the message, he’s in a bit of a pickle.

Yet, before he came to power, commentators may well have suggested that it was exactly this sort of baptism of fire that would give him a boost – after all, he’s always seemed to be excellent in a crisis. But it now appears that he’s pretty crap when he’s in the middle of the crisis himself.

If he continues to crash his way through crisis after crisis, announcing ridiculous policy after ridiculous policy, then the next government of this country will be Conservative.

Given Mr Brown’s lacklustre performance, I foresee a winter of discontent – amongst the Labour Party, at the very least – and Mr Brown’s position as PM may not seem such a given by the time it’s over.

They’ve lost half the country’s bank details, can’t keep track of our cars, publish doctors’ intimate personal details online, drop customs documents in the street, misplace laptops with personal data on them, and don’t even bother with passwords on their computers.

They lost this most recent data by sending it on couriered CD-Roms, which is certainly against policy, and possibly illegal. It’s also the way they lost Standard Life and another banks’ customer details earlier this month, and UBS’s customer details in 2005.

Of course, we already know that Government can’t learn from mistakes, since they rehired the company behind the ‘not fit for purpose’ MTAS computer system.

Now they want us to trust them with our health records and even our identities.

Is this Government serious?

The ridiculous ongoing strike by Royal Mail workers which is risking lives and livelihoods is easy enough to fix: Simply change to paying the workers by cheque, sent in unmarked envelopes through the mail. I think the strike might end rather more quickly then.

I still don’t understand the aim of the strikes. Every day of disruption takes business away from Royal Mail, and increases the number of redundancies and level of pay-cuts which will be necessary to make the organisation competitive. The strikers are shooting themselves in the foot.

In the meantime, DHL must be celebrating the day they decided to offer their consumer courier service via Staples stores. It’s not cheap, but it works.

A single sentence in Mr Brown’s conference speech could have saved him a huge humiliation today. But he tried to keep his options open for too long, and look where he’s ended up. A huge climbdown following an unnecessary build-up, in the face of a terrible poll.

The number of mistakes that have been made in the handling of this situation is staggering.

He’s announced this decision in the face of a poll showing a Conservative lead, meaning that the poll gets more attention that it otherwise would have.

He’s done it on a Saturday so he gets a bashing in the Sunday papers and the Monday papers.

He’s done it in an embargoed interview, so the only pictures to accompany the story for the first (almost) 24 hours are those of Mr Cameron criticising him.

He’s done it in a BBC exclusive interview, pissing off every other broadcaster and guaranteeing himself a rough ride.

In fact, I don’t think there’s anything right about the way he’s done this. Yet he’s supposed to be one of the greatest political strategists of our time. What’s gone wrong? Is the pressure of being PM taking his eye off the political ball? And if he makes this much mess of not having an election campaign, how will he manage the real thing in a couple of years’ time?

A kilogram © Robert Rathe - www.robertrathe.com

The lump of metal by which we define a kilogram has lost weight: It’s now 50μg lighter than it was when it was created, 118 years ago. We know this because other cylinders created at the same time are now heavier than it – but they are not the designated ‘official’ kilograms, so I guess, in a round about way, it’s now them that’s wrong.

This is one of those delicious stories which messes with my brain. It’s scientific, philosophical, and incredibly accessible. ‘Cool!’

So, if the official measure of a kilogram is now lighter, is it lighter, or is everything else heavier? And how heavy is it? Despite having lost 50μg, its mass must surely still be 1kg, as it is by definition 1kg. Indeed, if it had lost half it’s weight, or gained ten stone, it would still weigh 1kg.

And, even more intriguingly, this is a kilogram that’s been kept in a triple-locked safe – so how can it possibly have lost weight?

Richard Davis, who’s the bloke in charge of the lump of metal, says that nothing will change: A kilogram will still be a kilogram. But what does that mean? A kilogram is the mass of this lump of metal, which has changed, so how can the kilogram philosophically stay the same? Scientifically, we can say that a kilogram is the weight of the lump of metal plus 50μg, but that’s not very satisfying, because if the lump has fluctuated already, who’s to say it won’t again?

The sensible solution is to define a kilogram using some more scientific measure – a popular option is to define it by a number of atoms of a particular type, which would never fluctuate. Except that it might, as our understanding of physics increases.

It’s all a bit reminiscent of the problem of the 2p coin from last May, but maybe that’s just because I like this kind of story.

Anyway, I hope it makes you think.

Originally posted on Gazette Live