That should be very easy, Mr Straw, what with the UK being nowhere near New Orleans.

I’m in Brighton for party conference, finally with a chance to blog. Been very busy putting videos online, running training sessions and, last night, at the Blog of the Year Awards. Congratulations to all the winners, and hello to the bloggers I met for the first time.

This morning, I had phone calls with a couple of people from the BBC about the awards, giving them background information about the awards, talking them through who won, and putting them in touch with Blogger of the Year James Graham.

There’s a maxim when dealing with journalists: always assume you’re on the record. As such, when I found myself unexpectedly quoted on the BBC website, it was a pleasant surprise. Reading back what I said, though, I do think I could perhaps have been a little more erudite when praising James – so let’s assume “slag off” was me being “spikey“…

Anyway, here is a lovely photo of myself and the winners, courtesy Alex Folkes/Fishnik.com.

I can’t believe this came and went on Tuesday without anyone in our office knowing. Even if it only lasted three hours, I’m sure we could have made it to Covent Garden in time. We never have chocolate…

Sometimes you can misjudge a headline. The BBC today demonstrated how by providing one headline that could have fitted elsewhere:

What a depressing array of news stories on the BBC site this morning.

Jolie causes stir on Mumbai train
An actress caught a train. Whoop-de-doo.

Bodyguards made sure no one got too close – quite a feat on Mumbai’s crowded transport system.

They would have had the same problem on the train I caught this morning. Not the train I was planning to get, mind, as that – a half-hourly service – was remarkably 34 minutes late.

Leeming bitten in TV tucker trial
OK, a seriously ill celebrity is worth reporting. Oh no, hang on…

Ex-newsreader Jan Leeming has cried after being bitten by ants on the first ‘bushtucker trial’ of reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Someone cried. Stop the presses. Hold the front page.

Now another food scare story is of course worthwhile so that we can make informed choice.

Eating large amounts of red meat may double young women’s breast cancer risk, a study suggests.

In other news, eating large amounts of food may make you fat.

Oh, this is absurd too, although I suppose if you can have honorary degrees, you can have honorary rank without it being a slight to those officers who actually have to work for it. When I shout at the radio, it’s almost always the Today programme; today it was for the thoroughly pointless playing of the National Anthem to mark Charles’s birthday which interrupted it as I made my sandwiches.

Train problems + cold weather + rain = me grumpy.

Update: What a way to pass 150,000 words and 800 posts on this blog…