Sick notes

Thanks to www.yachts.monacoeye.com for the picture above.

Off sick today - for the first time this year - with a cold and cough. It's been nice to take the time to read through the Guardian dead tree edition after a long gap, and now all that's left is the concise crossword. Also had the opportunity to listen to the Today programme and even watched the 'season finale' (another American term I detest, BTW, creeping its way into our living rooms) of the Life of Mammals. Splendid footage of Attenborough with orangs and Attenborough with chimps, and the usual depressing prognosis at the end. When DA goes, the world will be a much poorer place.

The story which has grabbed my attention today didn't make it into the dead tree GU, but has featured on Today throughout the morning, and is prominent in the online version of the paper - and no doubt pretty much everywhere else by now. It is the continued rumbling around the dripping of 'pure poison in the ear' bit over dinner in (on?) Corfu.

People on Radio 4 (well, Robert Peston anyway - is he the hardest working man on the Beeb, or what?) were referring to 'Nat' Rothschild and the allegations he has made that the Tories put out the begging bowl to a certain rich tovarisch - Oleg Deripaska - who is the owner of the luxury yacht, the Queen K. Conservative HQ naturally and strenuously deny the allegations as such behaviour would not only be immoral, but also illegal (not that that has necessarily stopped these people before, mind you)

Forgive my naivete, but I really do find it difficult to understand why Peter Mandelson - then EU Trade Commissioner; George Osborne - then, as now, Shadow Chancellor; Nathaniel Rothschild - then hedge fund manager, then and now fabulously rich scion of the Rothschild family; and Oleg Deripaska - then, as now, Russian tin foil magnate (arf); why all of these people were together on (in?) Corfu. Surely there's something inherently wrong in that fact alone? Why was Mandy having lunch with Osborne in order to be able to drip poison in his ear about Clunking Fist? Aren't they supposed to be political rivals? It's all very fishy if you ask me. And what has Rupert Murdoch's yacht got to do with it? H'mm?