Even better news about Michael Howard. Further investigation has revealed that apparently not only was his grandfather an illegal immigrant; so was his dad! He was only allowed into the country after the intervention of a sympathetic MP (a Labour MP, no less). How can this man possibly be leading the party that wants to impose asylum quotas?

omnot - I think Australia's surrealism level has been upped by the whole Amir Laty thing. It feels like a Cold War spy thriller. I'm just waiting for a captured, heroic, ASIO agent to gun his way through hordes of evil Mossad guards.

Sorry to double post but I've been amused twice today. The Tories, realising we have a growing gap between rich and poor, an increasing rate of child poverty, an ever larger number of deaths in hospital from MRSA, a potentially catastrophic threat from climate change and a moral obligation to deal with the horiffying levels of poverty in the world; have struck out at one of the major problems with our society - Pete Doherty!

Yes, Michael Howard has realised that everything will be alright with the world once all celebrities are willing to say that 'drugs aren't cool'. *sigh*

An even more amusing story comes from the other end of the bench. A Labour candidate has been withdrawn after admitting she used to work as a prostitute in Paris. She is understandably quite annoyed, declaring that she's more ashamed of her time working as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. Labour Central Office have said that it's not the fact she was a prostitute that bothers them, but the fact she didn't tell them beforehand (hmm). Still, she's not giving up. She claims to still harbour ambitions to be Prime Minister. Good luck to her, I say.

Last sunday there were distric elections in Lower Austria, this sunday there will be elections in Styria.

There is a tunnel planned under the Semmering the mountain at the border between thoose 2 provinces. The Styrian goverment (and with it the ÖVP of styria) ways was very much for the the tunnel. For the governor of Lower Austria (and the ÖVP of Lower Austria) however had decided to prevent it at all cost. For instance they had changed enviromental laws tailored to the project. The only believable reason for that i have ever heared is that they fear that Styrians if they have better access to Vienna wil seek jobs in Vienna and are a concurence for Lower Austrian doing so.

Until this week the project was on hold. This week it had been anounced that the tunnel project had been redesigned and now it will be built. Conveniantly after the elections in lower austria (so it will be long forgotten that the övp lost its face there when the next elections come) and right before the styrian election so the styrian ÖVP can market this as success.

BTW AFAIK there was no statement by the Lower Austrian ÖVP weather they are going to try to prevent the redesigned tunnel as well or not. Just some other people saying they think the Lower Austrian will be happy with it.