Shuffle

Now that the natural order in Westminster has been restored, the Coalition can really get down to business. I'm hearing figures of between 80 and 94 (!) % of cuts still to come, so there will be some tears before bedtime, is all I can say. The silence of Miliband and crew is testament enough to the fact that the established order has no answer to this mire we're in, and we look set to follow Greece down the road to abject poverty, 6 day weeks and foraging in the woods.

Yet I fail to see how promoting that little turd Jeremy Hunt can be defended by anybody, even (especially) the deranged kleptocrats currently in charge. Finding out that he supports homeopathy was just another reason to despise him. Not to mention his vote on shortening the abortion time to 12 weeks. Chris Grayling, he of the unpaid youth work thanks to buying a drink from an Aussie barman, is another fucking cunt. That's all the incisive political comment I can muster at this point. Only the brief joy of Osborne getting booed at the Paralympics leavened the recent dark mood.

Said Paralympics on C4 is almost unwatchable, sad to say. Frigging adverts every two or three minutes mean that it's just so stuttering, and you lose the thread of the events. There have been (and are) some good presenters and pundits - Clare Balding is excellent as ever, and I like Ade Adepitan - so it's a shame I think that it's ended up like that, but they (like everyone else in this bright future of ours) have to make money, dont they? Also disappointing is that C4 don't have that cool moving yellow world record bar in the swimming, which marks it down from the superb BBC coverage. I'll be at the Olympic Park myself tomorrow, so perhaps first hand experience will help to change my perception.

Football is football, and City are more like the City we know and love. Defensively, we've been terrible, and clearly needed quite a few of those deadline day signings to bolster us up. I won't comment on any of them till I've seen them play, but will say a few words about the performances I have seen. Tevez has been great - full of energy and desire - and if Kun hadn't been injured, I believe more end product would have been forthcoming. We should have put 5 past QPR in the first 20 minutes, but almost paid dearly for switching off and letting them come at us. Dzeko had loads of the ball on Saturday and worked hard, but his touch and finishing let him down too many times. Silva was tired and ordinary looking at first, but showed a good deal more after half time. Lescott has regressed to the player he was before last season, and the rest of the back line (even including Vinny to a point) appear nervous, slow and out of touch with each other. Hart (with the exception of a good save from Andy Johnson) hasn't been excellent...

I could go on, but I won't. Seven points in the bag and some potentially exciting new players, as well as Agüero hopefully back soon (don't let him play for Argentina please!) and we've got to be optimistic. In any case, we've had some cracking games, and you can't ask for more than that.