I've been a little preoccupied these last few days. Young Bertram hasn't been very well since Thursday. He's currently in a veterinary hospital in Six Mile Bottom a few miles from us here in Cambridge. He's being treated for acute anaemia which seems to have been caused by a severe bleed into his intestinal tract. The cause of the bleed hasn't yet been determined but he's responding well following a blood transfusion and some medication to counteract the bleeding and ulceration.

He had an endoscopy this morning to check on the state of his stomach and upper intestine. There is little sign of ulceration there. He has minor pitting and healing wounds and a couple of active bleeds. His vet took a few biopsies which will take a few days to develop. That might get us to the bottom of the problem which is causing the bleeds.

His vet is going to change his medication tomorrow from an injection to an oral one. If all goes well, we'll get him home over the weekend and Madeleine will have her brother back, we'll have our friend back and the house will feel complete again.

I have a confession to make. I have no idea what Nick Clegg looks like. This is a bit of a problem for a LibDem supporter. I would also argue that it's more of a problem for Nick Clegg. I can easily pick out Nick Griffin, for obvious reasons. I can also identify each of Nick Clegg's predecessors all the way back to Joe Grimond, but I have wouldn't be able pick out Nick Clegg in a line-up unless he wore his "No, I'm Nick Clegg" t-shirt and a spinning bow tie. That would be an amusing and probably inimitable way of raising his profile with the electorate.

I searched for Google images of the leader of the Liberal Democrats and found some easily enough, but I can't remember what they were like. I follow him on Twitter but the avatar image is so small on TweetDeck that it's not much of an aid to identification. It's a bit like watching the stage at a panto through the wrong end of a pair of opera glasses. You can hear the voices of the audience yelling "Behind you!" but you can't quite make out why they're doing it.

I thought about putting a photograph of him onto my laptop as wallpaper, but that might strike people as odd. What do you think?

I came across this post by Salman Shaheen on The Third Estate blog via someone's Tweet. Unfortunately, I can't remember whose Tweet it was and it's lost in the feeds now. Thank you, whoever you are. I'm most grateful.

As I said in my response, I'm fed up hearing about Nick Griffin. It's not as if he's the only person with odious views ever to have appeared on Question Time, but I grant it's probably the first time that someone with officially odious views has appeared on the programme. While it's true that I have no wish to see Nick Griffin on Question Time, I have even less wish to see him in Parliament. Only the knuckle draggers and the mouth breathers really want BNP Members of Parliament, never mind a BNP government. The rest of the people who have voted for BNP councillors and MEPs feel excluded by the mainstream parties and that's the problem we all have to address.

If I'm hiding my head in the sand in wishing Nick Griffin just had never existed, so are the leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democratic parties in thinking that the views of sections of the electorate can be ignored because they're unacceptable round the dinner tables in the sleeker parts of London or even sat on the sofa here in Cambridge. There are those from the mainstream parties who are challenging the BNP and are standing up for true British values of tolerance and respect and I thank them for that.

I'm also worried by the more outlandish anti-fascists who seem to spend quite a lot of money buying eggs to lob at the man some call Fat Hitler. They think that in shouting him down, they're denying him a platform. They're not. They're just getting hoarse and boosting egg sales. As someone who has a deep love for chickens, I'm pleased that the anti-fascists are so assiduous in their support of Britain's egg producers. I can only hope that all the eggs thrown at the leader of the BNP are organic, free-range eggs from happy, democratic chickens. It's probably a vain hope. It might also be a vain hope that they're buying the eggs. I hope that anti-fascists' consciences extend beyond political awareness to the point that they won't actually pinch the eggs they throw around the place. I might be deluding myself in this as in so many other things.

If ignoring him doesn't work and shouting at him and pelting him with produce doesn't work, what will? Challenging him in debate might. I have the feeling that he's not the crunchiest biscuit in the box. That's the purpose of Question Time. I hope it is. I really hope it is. I'm just not going to watch it. I don't want his smug, self-satisfied face on my television or his voice in my living room. I'm not going to write to the BBC in protest, because my inner democrat says that his voice should be heard (and if his face were punched shortly thereafter, I'd probably laugh guilitily about it). I'm going to exercise my choice and do something else instead. Read a book in bed, probably. I can thoroughly recommend my friend Alison Bruce's book Cambridge Blue. Probably the only time in her life Alison will be mentioned on the same page as Nick Griffin.

I'd like to think that when Question Time starts tomorrow evening, hundreds of thousands of people will just hit their remote button and turn the programme off. I really hope that quite a lot of them have inter-racial sex instead of listening to him try to justify himself and his pointless, whiny, dreadful little views. There's nothing quite like a spot of casual miscegenation to piss off the racists.

I went beyond the bounds of reason itself yesterday and out into darkest Norfolk to Norfolk Children's Book Centre. I love that place. It might be the world's only wind-powered bookshop. It's probably not the world's windiest bookshop; lots of them are full of hot air but it's one of the nicest for me to visit. As soon as you arrive, a nice person offers you tea or coffee and there are always biscuits in the tin. I had Bourbons yesterday. Nice. Well, I had Nice last time. It was also my last visit for a while. I'm handing responsibility for that account and the other ones near Norwich to my colleague who covers London. I'll probably be back there at some point in the future. I really hope I get to go back again.

The reason for their success is down to the staff's enthusiam and knowledge; it's basic, old fashioned bookselling. Independent booksellers can still be successful in the UK market if they have a commitment to customer service, well-trained staff, strict financial discipline and a willingness to carve a niche for themselves in their community. In the case of the NCBC, that community is Norfolk's teachers. They are half a mile down a narrow lane off the road between Norwich and Cromer and they still manage to drag in the punters when you have to be looking quite hard for them just to qualify as passing trade.

So, thank you Tina for all the tea, coffee and biscuits over the last few years. I hope I'll see you and Marilyn again soon.

I've been somewhat exercised this week with the soddish tendency, my own in part but then there's nothing like an MP being a sod about expenses to bring out the sod in oneself. David Wilshire, the Conservative honourable member for Spelthorne in Surrey claimed £100,000 in office expenses to be paid to a company called Moorlands Research Services which wasn't publicly registered and which had never filed accounts. Oh, and in a final layer of soddery, the only partners in Moorlands Research Services were Mr Wilshire and his partner, Anne Palmer. Needless to say, David Cameron probably went slightly mental at him and now Mr Wilshire is to step down as an MP and will probably - possibly - repay the money. The office and staffing allowances are separate from the living expenses which gained so much notoriety earlier in the year. MPs staffs are small and generally over-worked and I don't begrudge them a penny of the money they earn keeping their charges on the straight and narrow. Moorlands Research Services is just a front for a bit of soddishness.

On the other hand, some politicians are just lovely. I've had a fine time over the last couple of days. Like most of the Twittering classes, I became very worked up over the Battle of Trafigura to the point that I did something I've never done before and wrote to my MP. I had what can only really be described as a delightful customer experience. James Paice MP is the Conservative member for South East Cambridgeshire and he responded to my e-mail within a few hours agreeing that what Carter-Ruck had attempted wasn't a good thing and noting that the injunction against The Guardian reporting Parliamentary proceedings was no longer in place. I was mildly surprised at the speed of response. It took me longer to find a reliable man to come and fix my central heating this week.

Then to add to my befuddlement, I've been having a very pleasant correspondence with Peter Bottomley. I e-mailed him in support of his complaint to the Law Society about Carter-Ruck's conduct in the Battle of Trafigura, he replied, and then I replied to his reply and it snow-balled. He is a very nice man and I've found I like him very much. It pains me now to remember just how much I took the piss when he was a minister all those years ago and I was both cynical and daft as a badger's codpiece. If you're reading this, Peter, I'm really very sorry. Really. I take it all back.

Two pleasant encounters with hard-working and diligent gentlemen have reminded me that it's always the arseholes that attract attention. The ones who just get on with the job and do it quietly and well seldom get attention or approbation. I suppose it's just not as much fun to pay someone a compliment as it is to call them a scheming, money-grabbing little shit whose economy with the actualité is breathtaking. It's so much less creative.

The Leicester Mercury is reporting today that Martin Bell is campaigning for independent candidates to stand against Keith Vaz and Alan Duncan at the next general election. The comedians of Britain have much to thank Martin Bell for, not least introducing us to the joy that is Christine Hamilton, God love her. Almost as a by-product, and of more relevance to the politically-minded, he worked very hard to highlight some of the sleaze of the last years of the Major government by capmpaigning against Christine's husband, Neil, the sitting MP in the Tatton constituency. He won the seat, overturning Neil Hamilton's considerable majority and plunging the former MP into a living hell of reality television and pantomime appearances.

Now Martin is going for Messrs Vaz and Duncan. Keith Vaz seems to be like an impersonation of Peter Mandelson done by Sanjeev Bhaskar. But with none of the joy or irony. He has had a troubled relationship with the press and some problems during his time as a minister, such that he is no longer a minister. He is, however, still a very prominent back benxh MP and chairman of the Home Affairs select committee. He has faced enquiries into his own ethical behaviour going as far back as the Filkin Enquiry early in 2000, was involved with the Hinduja Affair in 2001 and managed to get himself suspended from the House of Commons for a month in 2002. He was quite a naughty boy.

Alan Duncan can do a passable impersonation of Tony Blair. He's done it on pretty much every occasion he was on Have I Got News For You. It's only passable, and it's only Tony Blair, so he needn't have done it every time. He gets cool points for coming out and for having a civil partnership and then loses them all by being a bit of a git. He's the man who claimed that MPs on an annual salary of £64,000 and generous expenses were forced to live "on rations" and were treated "like shit." He faced quite a lot of criticism for his expenses claims including  maintenance on his garden tractor. He was demoted from his position in the shadow cabinet, but his abilities and influence are such that he still serves as the Shadow Minister for Prisons.

Given that he's a Tory, Alan Duncan would be very unlucky to lose his seat at the next election. His problems have been less high profile and more of a personal embarrassment than the more public ones faced by Keith Vaz. Mr Vaz has a secure power base in Leicester East but as a Labour MP is facing the same anti-Labour sentiment as other Labour MPs. Of the two, he's the one more likely to be looking for a gig as the back end of a pantomime horse, particularly if he faces a challenge from a well-known local Asian businessman without Mr Vaz's baggage.

It's rather dispiriting that twelve years after the Man in the White Suit rode into battle against the Hamiltons, we have to face the unedifying prospect of watching sitting MPs face challenge from independent candidates standing only because the MPs themselves have been behaving less than well. We don't expect perfection from our public servants (just as well) but we do expect them not to behave like complete and utter arseholes and then have the arrogance to say that they've done nothing wrong.

Alan Rusbridger has just announced that the legal firm Carter-Ruck has thrown in the towel. The social media have ridden to the rescue of the mainstream media and in so doing given a ridiculous law a thorough kicking. Journalists have to be able to report on proceedings in Parliament and elsewhere. It shouldn't take a Twitter campaign to allow newpapers to report on matters which already in the public realm.

About 8:30 yesterday evening, David Leigh of The Guardian, posted the following article on the newspaper's website. I quote it in full.

Guardian gagged from reporting parliament

• David Leigh
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 October 2009 20.31 BST
• Article history

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck. Photograph: John D McHugh/AFP

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented - for the first time in memory - from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself."

The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.

He said: "Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of 'Colonel B', granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of 'national security'. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published."

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority - up to the king - over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, "it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to".

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

This is an enjoyable book which pulls in influences from all over the place. Like most Pratchett books, it's not really about what it says it's about and there is some clumsiness to the way the various plot threads are tied up for the first time I can remember in one of his books. It's still the best thing I've read this year and only misses out on a fifth star because he didn't make me laugh quite as much as he has in the past.

View all my reviews >>

I'm off to Scotland tomorrow for my friend's 40th. I'm having enough trouble believing that I've gone past that particular landmark wthout having to cope with my much younger and better looking friends also suddenly finding their lives about to start. I'm not much consoled by the notion that 40 is the new 30 and 50 being the new 40 and all that rubbish. That would mean that life begins at 50 and frankly, I can't wait that long. I'd quite like it to begin quite soon, please.If you don't mind. If you'd be so kind. Please.

And when I say I'd like life to begin, I mean I'd like things to stop just happening to me. That really annoys me. Like my car deciding that sitting on a hill on the handbrake was too boring and that it wanted to be on the other side of the road, up against that Vauxhall Cavalier over there. That resulted in me spending a half hour giving a statement to the world's youngest - and nicest - policeman while my chips went cold. I don't know what the etiquette on these things is, but I didn't think it was a terribly good idea to eat my chips under caution. It just seemed impolite. The only time I usually speak to the police is when I ask one of my brothers what they want to drink at a family bash.

So anyway, I'd like a bit more life and a bit less crap, please. If you don't mind. If you'd be so kind. Please. I hope that being polite about it helps.