Anyway, there was some good stuff in there in there. Firstly, a surprisingly intelligent and sensitive treatment of the 'gypsies versus rural communites' story of the moment. Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, is the site of a huge traveller camp, which locals have been objecting to for months. Villagers say a vast influx of caravans has ruined the environment and is threatening the infrastructure. A good number of them also hate 'Pikeys' because that's what Pikeys are apparently for. The travellers, meanwhile, say that since the Tory government removed the obligation on local councils to provide them with sites in 1994, and then used Michael Howard's Criminal Justice Act of 1995 to criminiliase them for stopping on public roads, there's not a lot else they can do.

So The Observer brings a local village bignob and a gypsy leader together and, Lo and Behold, they agree with each other. The government should re-introduce the obligation to provide travellers' sites, they both say; then there won't be any need for illegal activity or a mass influx of caravans anywhere, and both 'sides' can get on with their respective lifestyles. Both also agree that this craven government is unlikely to do so, because it's scared of the ever-obnoxious Daily Mail.

Another interesting titbit was an opinion poll comparing attitudes in Britain now with attitudes fifty years ago (have you noticed, by the way, how common it is these days for newspaper 'stories' to be fulsome reports of polls commissioned by other people? This is because they can fill up entire pages and simply require the hack in question to copy out a press release. Still, probably shouldn't knock it - it seems to have worked in this case).

This poll contains some intriguing results. Most admired man in 1954? Churchill. Today? Mandela. Not very suprising perhaps, until you notice that Tony Blair is apparently the fifth most remrkable man ON THE PLANET according to today's Britons. Then you perhaps start to wonder. (In my case, I also start to wonder who Lance Armstrong, who comes fourth, even is. Oh wait, I just looked him up. He's a cyclist. A cyclist? Jesus.)

Amongst other disturbing findings: Margaret Thatcher is the most admirable woman on Earth, asylum-seekers are the second-most pressing political problem in today's Britain, and over half of us have no idea who our MP is.

This last one, though, leads us to a serious point: 81% of people today think there's no real difference between political parties - that's twice as many as fifty years ago. On this point, at least, ordinary people seem more perceptive than the political and media classes, who persist in banging on about what the Tories think about this and Labour thinks about that as if it actually mattered. It doesn't really, because in a world ruled by the market, in which the old left has collapsed and the new anti-capitalist movement hasn't yet developed ideas or presence big enough to fill the gap, it's all pretty irrelevant.

In my last media reference of the day, Martin Jacques wrote an interesting piece on this subject in yesterday's Guardian. I wrote one on it too, for this month's New Internationalist. Ten years ago, when I was a lowly researcher at The Independent, Martin Jacques was my boss, and I can't say it was an altogether pleasant experience. So do let me know which one you prefer, won't you? Wrong answers will, of course, be deleted immediately.