Abu Qatada

We're deporting Abu Qatada. Shame. One of my favourites in the Lion King.

Police protest march.

Off duty police are marching in protest about something they care about. Hopefully their on-duty colleagues will use the same aggressive, nasty, needless kettling tactics they would employ at any other demonstration. Yeah. Probably not.

Play-off football.

No consolation to anyone biting their nails as a supporter, but frankly the play-offs provide some fantastic football for the neutral into May. Last night's Birmingham Blackpool game was a great example, decent football, drama, tension to the final whistle.

Best headline today:

Above the tag-line How London landlords are cashing in on [the] housing crisis, “We found people paying rent for a walk-in freezer.” Hope it was off, or rented by a butcher or grocer. The article quotes a local authority bloke, with magnificent understatement, who describes a landlord letting a shed in a Newham garden as “tending to operate at the lower end of the market”. The council planning enforcement team leader said of a shed-dweller that she “didn't know where her toilet effluent is going to.” Must've had too good shoes on to properly investigate. There are signs of human inhabitation throughout Newham's brick and block-built sheds (as opposed to the timber potting shed) that include 'extractor fans and satellite dishes'.

With a shocking lack of political correctness or humanity, the Newham council lady said that while such conditions were of little concern where the tenants were eastern European builders, she was much more willing to get on the landlords' cases where families were living under similarly poor conditions.