For those of us who present on a regular basis a reminder to always check the material before hand...

So the parliamentary Conservatives no longer want Iain Duncan Smith as their leader and have risked the wrath of the constituency members. Duncan Smith always had the look of the night watchman about him and so his removal at some point was always on the cards, what has been a surprise however is the stepping aside of the major contenders for Michael Howard. Maybe they realised that the next leader will also be a caretaker and to be Tory leader now excludes the chance of taking residence at No 10 at the next election. Expect the Labour party to quickly remind us of his job history as a key member of the rather dodgy Major administration and Ann Widdecombes comments about Howard having ‘something of the night’ about him. Ironically it maybe this lack of media friendliness that will do for him in the end, but we should also remember that the constituency party members with their blue rinses and coffee mornings have long memories…

After the dog had decided that the battery charger for my trusty DSC-P1 was rather tasty, panic set in at the thought of paying UK Sony prices for what effectively a coil of copper wire in a plastic case. eBay, as it often does, came to the rescue in the shape of Sonypart who hails from Hong Kong. If your dog, cat, gerbil or small child does the samething you know where to find one. Handy as he sells other Sony accessories as well...

With Leeds United Leeds annouching a pre-tax loss of £49.5m for the year ending 30 June 2003, the highest ever figure for a British football club, the club is now some £78m in debt. But I can't help feel that this is just the tip of the iceberg; of the twenty two clubs in the Premiership only a handful are truly solvent and as player wage bills become more outrageous, at Leeds for ever £100 pounds the club earned £88 went out in wages, it is only a matter of time before something breaks. Maybe that something will sadly be Leeds United.

At long last the brilliant Indiana Jones trilogy is available on DVD. Now maybe George Lucas will do the same with the two and a half good movies he's made...

Anyone with a vague interest in British politics will be watching with interest the infighting currently taking place within Her Majesties Official Opposition. What no one at Tory Central Office seems to remember is that this is a replay of the self destruction the Labour Party went through when Thatcher was PM. The simple fact is that they will continue to be ineffective and unelectable whilst they have a leader which doesn't unify the party. Ian Duncan Smith will have to go and maybe even the next leader will suffer a similar fate; my guess is that the next Conservative Prime Minister is probably someone we've never heard of. Not that difficult in what is generally a party of nobodies anyway...

This Friday will see the last flight of Concorde and it's expected that the M25 and the surrounding area will be grid locked as people gather to see the final landing. Ironically BA could save Concorde by selling them to Virgin, but they probably couldn't stomach the PR disaster that having Concorde with Virgin logos on them would bring. Also does that mean that the big static model of Concorde on the access road to Heathrow will now be moved? All the political and financial reasons aside I can't be the only person who sees the irony of the untimely death of supersonic transport; here we are in the 21st Century, information moves around the planet at the speeds unheard of just ten years ago but us, the really important bit of modern society get subsonic cattle trucks with wings. Whilst Concorde was still flying there was always hope that someone else might just build a newer better aircraft, but now the model on the way to Heathrow will remind me that for most of us air travel will continue to be a chore rather than a pleasure.

Like most regular listeners of Radio 4 Today programme I mentally switch off when ‘Thought for the Day’ comes on at 7:45. It usually has some religious commentator make a tortuous connection between a random item in the news and a moral or religious message. You know the kind of thing, how the Sermon on the Mount has some deep buried message about prudent fiscal policy for Gordon Brown. This morning had one of those rare things a ‘Thought for the Day’ that was both interesting and thought provoking. Colin Morris asked what is an ideal family and where should we look for one? Well not the church it would seem and certainly not the bible. Neither the old nor especially the New Testament have any families which fit the notion of the family that the church tries to have us believe is the right one today. So Morris concludes how can we take the stance as some members of the church do about ‘gay’ bishops and single parent families as not being right. All families are different, true some are more different than others, but to those within them they are families all the same.

A little while ago I motioned that whenever I listen to George Bush Junior speak all I can hear is human equivalent of a background hum. He's so heavily scripted in short media friendly sound bites, largely because he can’t be trusted to string a sentence together if left to his own devices, that I hear the sound but not the words. This isn’t just an affliction of American politicians however. Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs suffers from the same problem. All sound and no content. Next time you see him on the TV or hear him on the radio, not surprisingly radio is best for this, try to remember what the interview was about afterwards. Bet you can’t…

I've thinking about getting an iPod but as I don't have a Mac I'm not sure I could cope with the crappy PC support, on the other hand you could aways get hold of a copy of the XPlay from Mediafour which I'm told is excellent. There is however a few alternatives are beginning to emerge. Creative Labs have the new Zen and hopefully Toshiba will bring this cutie to the UK.

One of the things about Microsoft is that everyone has an opinion and to paraphrase Oscar Wilde it's better to be talked about than ignored. This tries to be a bit more balanced 'which was nice!'

Someone sent me this this, it's 'completely handstand' website imaginatively called Sniff Petrol. The MG ad will make a particular Rover 75 owner laugh...well it might do.

I've been asked by a professional body for Legal firms to speak at a conference later in the month about the 'Impact of Technology on Globalisation'. Globalisation is a hot subject at the moment and has been pet subject of mine for sometime and there are simply hundreds of books and web sites dedicated to the subject, some with extreme opinions on both sides. But every now and again you stumble on something that simply blows you away. $1.5 trillion ($1500 million) changes hands on the global currency market on a daily basis. That is a huge number which we can't comprehend but to put it in some perspective the annual global trade in merchandise and services is about $6.5 trillon, the equivalent of 4.3 days trading on the currency markets. Government reserves in currency is about $1.6 trillion or just over a days worth traded on the forex markets. Think about that for a moment. Dunno about you but I find it a little worrying...