I was going to blog something personal tonight, some thoughts about the world and my take on something happening in it.

Instead I got stuck at work for two hours past the end of my shift making sense of this ship covered in ice.

Please accept it in lieu of original thinking, or at least that which occasionally passes for it.

This is not amusing.

Okay, maybe just a little bit.

Especially Goals Allowed and the picture of Shay Given surrounded by kittens.

As Homer says, it's funny because it's true.

But don't let me catch you laughing. It's cruel to mock the afflicted.

So as promised, here are my "cultural" high points of last year. I'll explain the rules as I go along. The first one being that these aren't presented in any meritocratic hierarchy, just the order in which they occurred to me.

I find choosing a group of favourites difficult enough at the best of times, it's not a task I take lightly, and I'm not going to demean any of my selections by ranking them. So there.

And unless I decide otherwise, there are five entries in each category.

Ready? Then I'll begin.

Movies (any film seen at a cinema while on general release is eligible)
Good Night, And Good Luck - Clooney's mad as hell with the submissive nature of television news in the face of government corruption and ineptitude and he's not going to take it any more. Plus David Strathairn is just brilliant.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - deliciously odd, just what one expects from Wes Anderson

Serenity - Fox are stupid. Firefly should still be running. Maybe following the success of this movie they want to give it another crack, with one change - stop screwing around with the schedule. They should be so lucky.

Garden State - I'm not too keen on actors dallying as directors, but Zach Braff is allowed to make more films if they're as good as this. I'll forgive him the Hollywood ending - I've heard even he thought it was wrong. Plus the soundtrack rocks.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - clever clever, laugh laugh. Nuff said.

Sideways - even socially-challenged borderline alcoholics who steal from their mothers need love. And the fact that the Academy ignored Paul Giamatti's turn as Miles just goes to show what a bunch of idiots they are. Again. Don't get me started.

Bubbling under: The Woodsman, Batman Begins, Team America: World Police, Hitchhiker's Guide, A Very Long Engagement

Nowhere near: Star Wars Episode III

Somewhat depressingly these are almost all English language (with the exception of Engagement, which didn't make it into the top tier because lovely though it was, it just felt a little Jeunet-by-numbers to be truly captivating - maybe a second viewing would change my mind), so no Downfall, Kung Fu Hustle or Night Watch - must do better this year. Mind you, those are out as I can't reasonably claim anything I haven't seen, so no Kong, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Corpse Bride or countless others.

Special archival mention has to go to Three to Tango, which not only proved to be a superior romantic comedy (an oft-unfairly maligned genre), but also created a good game for Jen and me to play on the way back from Lake Burton.

Music (criterion: released in 2005)
Hung Up - Madonna (gratuitous number one pick, catchy as hell, but the genius is in the Abba)

Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz (difficult to jettison Dare, Dirty Harry and others, but this just snuck it)

Gracie - Ben Folds (there are "better", more worthy tracks on Songs for Silverman, but I just love the simplicity and honesty of this one)

Suddenly I See - KT Tunstall (I could have chosen any of half a dozen tracks from her album, making this selection pretty much arbitrary. And Scottish women are hard to beat.)

The Bold Knight - Seth Lakeman (Actually gives me shivers up the back of my spine. Okay, it was technically released in 2004 along with the rest of Kitty Jay, but I didn't discover it until late last year, along with most of the rest of the universe. Plus it was eligible for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize, and it's gorgeous, so I'm having it.)

I feel my age and how little time I spend listening to music radio show through awfully here. Picking five was difficult enough, and I'm not even sure it's my top five, as I can't remember everything I heard. I've probably forgotten some classics, and I've have loved to get a new Cardigans track in there, but none's grabbed hold of me yet. But it would have been easier had I not limited myself to one track per artist. Tell you one thing though, I definitely don't care for much British guitar-based rock/pop at the moment.

Books (criteria: read, but not necessarily published, in 2005; but published within last five years; hey, it's my list - if you don't like my rules, go make your own)
Empire Falls/Richard Russo - accidentally recommended (by Jen again - she meant to tip Straight Man) but a cracking read nonetheless, with some beautifully crafted characters

The Algebraist/Iain M Banks - Dwellers are his best creations since the ships of Excession. Oh, and I want a Planetary Protector (Deniable).

The Meaning of Everything/Simon Winchester - just to show that the best stories don't have to be fiction. Anyone interested in words should read this book.

Lost in a Good Book/Jasper Fforde - not too intelligent, well-informed and witty for its own good... but only just

America: The Book/The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - although I only got it for Christmas (thanks Sam!) and haven't finished reading it, this can't not go in, even if it means excluding the likes of Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Buckley from the fifth spot. I have other things to say about the show that inspired this book, but they'll have to wait.

The one-eyed god (rules pretty much go out the window)
New TV show - US: Weeds - gloriously funny and very watchable even if it didn't star Mary Louise Parker, but the fact that it does makes it unmissable

New TV show - UK: Nathan Barley - the twisted genius of Chris Morris strikes again

New TV show - UK MkII: The Thick of It - the satirical brilliance of Armando Iannucci strikes again

Old TV show - Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston made a decent enough Doctor, a trophy for the relaunch but I suspect David Tennant outshine him. Eccleston regarded the Tardis as an interesting folly but was never likely to stick around. Young Casanova, on the other hand, will really own the role.

That's it. Feel free to argue.

New Year parish notices

In an attempt to enter 2006 with a slightly shorter backlog of things to say, here are a few points of order...

Normal service resumed a couple of weeks ago when Team Albatross won the final round of the pub quiz and the season title along with it by the whopping margin of 33 points, more than most teams scored in a whole week.

I'm sure the world will be relieved to hear this, if not out of good will, then just to save itself from more of my bellyaching (although that did prove most cathartic in that it got the quiz monkey off my back).

Mind you, there was very little good will when it was announced we'd won - the boos and hisses being rather unsporting even in what may have been the best of natures.

In the same mean spirit, it was good to see the Colts' winning run brought to an end by the Chargers, thereby ensuring that the '72 Dolphins' perfect season remains unique in NFL history for at least one more year. You stay classy, San Diego.

Reporting Slipper's death back in October, I gave the impression that every member of the family heralded her arrival with unbridled joy, even the dog.

I have to confess that this version of events is not quite the one that my mother remembers. The way she tells it, Boot had to be tied to the kitchen table, frothing at the mouth, while Mum held Slipper out of his reach. This continued for a week or thereabouts. So not quite a inter-species vision of harmony, then. Hopefully this won't undermine my journalistic credibility too seriously.

The funny little barcode and his fifth metatarsal ensured that the next year will start as miserably as this one ended for those of a black and white persuasion. Who knows. Maybe we'll have a new manager to look forward to.

I'm thinking about my most memorable moments, movies, music of 2005. I'll let you know when more of them come to mind. The word favourite is bandied about far too lightly these days. These things take time. :)

Happy New Year everyone. See you on the flip side.

I didn't think it was possible but I now have even greater admiration for Ben Folds.

At another great gig on Tuesday, he took a couple of minutes to explain the inspiration for The Ascent of Stan, a song about a hippy who abandons his principles in order to get on in the world.

The idea for the song came to him when he got a lift from said far-out groovy guy in a car adorned with peace stickers and witnessed a bout of near road rage from the driver.

Not that it had anything to so with the song, but at the end of the journey, the hippy told Ben he'd been "dialoguing" with his girlfriend.

At this point in telling the story, Mr Folds stopped to make a comment about people who use the word dialogue as a verb, a comment unsuitable for reproduction in a family environment such as this. Actually, that's not true. The truth is I can't remember exactly what he said because I was too busy screaming to process the precise words. Cheering grammar lessons at a rock concert - geek much?

Don't give me any BS about the evolution of language - although nouns like focus and parent have already been lost for ever, the further development of such practice is just plain wrong, and I'm damned if I'll give up any more ground.

But with all the dialoguing, incentivising, disincentivising, tasking, transitioning and actioning that goes on in popular speech there's little doubt that we're unlikely to win this war.

At least now I know that with Ben on our side, we're definitely going to have the better sounding argument.

Loser
I know how Alex Ferguson and Bill Belichick must feel. It's funny how addictive winning can become. I've never really experienced it before, at least not on a long-term basis.

And now... loss. It's almost too much to bear.

A few weeks ago, disillusioned with the chronic mediocrity of our performances in the Harringay Arms quiz, Team Albatross decided to try out another pub. An experimental competition saw us come fourth, and it was generally decided that with a change being as good as a rest, we might see an upturn in our fortunes.

Sure, the questions seemed a little easier than at the old place, but with the chance to prove our mettle over a six week season, the move - even if only temporary - seemed too good to resist.

Aided by the relative easiness of the questions, the results were immediate. We won the first week of the season with a record score. We won the next week too. And the third, with a total beating our own record.

It was starting to get embarrassing, partly because we were so obviously punching below our weight. We were quickly becoming the least popular team in the pub. The first week we won we were warmly applauded, the second less so, but still a polite congratulatory ripple. But the third week? Nothing. Tumbleweed. And by the fourth victory on the trot, people were asking the quizmaster whether he was going to ban us.

Short of deliberately giving the wrong answers we'd done everything we could to reduce the likelihood of us winning, even going so far as to demand our paper be remarked when we were sure we'd got points for an incorrect answer that had been misread by the scorer.

But all to no avail. Our winnings kitty continued to grow, and the lead over other teams in the race for the end of season prize reached 26 points - more than some competitors score in any one week.

So when, last Monday, we turned up with more than the regulation limit on players, Team Albatross had to split in two. This, we thought, might finally see us lose and regain a little bar cred. Certainly the first half of the quiz felt a little shaky for our depleted forces, and the half-time score confirmed it, putting us in joint second place.

Despite redoubling our efforts in the second half, when the final scores were in revealing a three-way tie we knew our time may well have come. And indeed we flunked the tiebreak question. Our crown went to another group.

But while we were generous in defeat and enjoyed the boost in morale and hope it gave to the rest of the teams in the pub, our loss has haunted me all week.

Why? Because this week's picture round was on British political figures, and while I got nine of the featured individuals immediately, the other one left me agonising: a black female Labour peer. There are only two that I knew of , but which one was it - Baroness Amos or Baroness Scotland? I went with the latter and resisted several urges to change the answer before handing the paper in.

And when the answers were revealed? It was Amos, of course. Bloody Amos. Something I guess I knew all along. The two of them don't even look alike.

I'm still gutted.

I know I ought to be big, that spreading the wealth and ability to rejoice in a win can only be a good thing, and that everyone on Team Albatross felt some sense of relief at finally losing. I also know that we're still long odds-on favourite to take the title in the final round.

But bugger magnanimity - I'm hooked on this victory high. Winning most of the time isn't good enough. We could have had a pefect season, and we blew it. I blew it.

Next week there'll be no surrender. It's clobberin' time.

Hey folks, please excuse the trumpet-blowing but it's a Ben Fell exclusive.

As I've said before, so rarely do we get to do anything truly original (and by that I mean 100%) that when this guy brought us some video footage of the massive explosions at one of Britain's biggest fuel depots, I just had to interview him about the blasts he'd seen from the air. It was our chance to scoop not just the rest of the media, but our own TV and radio colleagues too.

Phil was a nice guy, he needed a bit of coaching to get the best out of the story and was clearly a little nervous about being on camera, but I don't think I'm fooling anyone by saying the final product was worth it.

News 24 clearly agreed, because they used the interview when we offered it to them.

Not bad for a day on which I wasn't even supposed to be at work.

Hmm...


Which File Extension are You?

Wasted (even if I do say so myself)

Just occasionally, when something comes along like this piece of video featuring Dubya's latest comic blunder, I think I'm really in far too straight a line of work.

The obvious, scream out loud, killer line is one about the president showing that of all the lessons he may have learned from Iraq, the importance of developing a proper exit strategy isn't one of them.

I suggested a severely toned-down and much more circumspect version to colleagues writing the text story and while they cooed and shouted "Yes, thank you! That's got to be our line" in the end they took a safe route, as I always suspected they would.

Hopefully Jon Stewart and friends will think along similar lines and I'll be able to feel smug, clever and witty vicariously.

Slipper came to us in December 1989, a tiny stray by way of a student who'd been temping in mum's office.

She was such a wee scrap of a thing that we thought she was only a matter of weeks old. The vet told us she was actually a few months, just small. And she never grew into the biggest of cats.

At first we worried about how she'd get on with the dog, Boot. Or more to the point, how he'd get on with her. But it was never a problem. In spite of his natural disdain for all things feline, he seemed to understand that she was part of the family. Indeed, there were times we thought she was being brought up more dog than cat. Even when Boot died and Boggart arrived on the scene, she was the boss. Sure there were times when the pup would try his luck, but he'd never push it too far, fearing a scratched nose or worse.

When my parents moved to Wales in the mid 90s, she stayed with me in Yorkshire to look after their house. During this period of a year or so, we became particularly close, forming a bond that was never really broken, even after she moved down to Wales and I struck out on my own.

We could always pick up where we'd left off. We had this routine, wherein she'd lick my fingers and I'd use them to stroke the crown of her head. I never knew exactly what she got out of it, but I like to think it reminded her of being groomed by her mother.

She was fearless for such a small thing. She took on foxes in the middle of the night, warning them away from her territory. Once she even jumped on the back of my grandmother's dog, Sally, after she attacked Boggart. She knew where her loyalties lay.

In later years, she seemed to go a bit dappy. Mum was convinced she lost her marbles a couple of years ago. But she was always in good spirits, happy to come on late night walks with the dog - a habit which always mystified and amused us.

And the end came quickly, in a matter of a fortnight or so. Apparently she probably had end-stage kidney failure. Her muscles had wasted away, so that in recent weeks she'd barely been able to walk. She ate very little, Mum feeding her her last couple of tiny meals on the end of a teaspoon.

Slipper died this morning at the age of 16, the vet's doing, but something he didn't have to talk my parents into. A cat of such calibre deserved something of a dignified ending, and it seems that's what she got. Quick, peaceful, in my mother's arms. I'm only sorry I didn't get to say goodbye when I last saw her in August.

So goodbye princess. I love you.

The reason for the current silence is that I'm currently on retreat, recharging my anecdotal batteries. High time, some might say. I'm inclined to agree. Stories aplenty when I return in a couple of weeks. So if you wouldn't mind popping in to water the plants, I'd be ever so grateful.

More animals for you. This time, dolphins - fitting, considering my American Football allegiance. My modest contribution to the flood of Hurricane Katrina stories. Short and sweet, quick and easy.

And fluffy is not the sum total of what I do, honest, however much that might appear to be the case. My other, bigger contributions to the newsroom's effort are just less tangible.

One of these days I promise to share something people don't automatically want to cuddle...

Who needs football?

Kylie, Skippy, Rolf Harris, Chopper Read, Bob Hawke, John Howard, Mick Dundee, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Bradman, Harry Kewell, Olivia Newton John, Harold Bishop... your boys took one hell of a beating, I said your boys one hell of a beating.

(With thanks to a certain Norwegian football commentator.)

It's not big and it's not clever

It struck me last night that I've not had a hangover in more than a year. This has been through choice, admittedly, but for someone who used to suffer quite badly on more than a strictly healthy regular basis, it's still quite a lifestyle change.

So in honour of the headaches and DTs that I've consigned to the past, and in no particular order, here are my top five most memorable hangovers:

Warning: graphic description of shameful drunkenness and bodily functions follows.

Yorkshire/Manchester, January 1995
It had been Thomas' last night in the family home before he and Lizzie were due to set off for six months in Tanzania. The two of us decided to mark the occasion - a school night - with beers and vodka depth charges. It got messy, natch. And unsurprisingly I didn't feel much like work the next day. But I managed to make the hour or so's journey from home to the office - just about five hours late. Finally rocking up at New Broadcasting House in Manchester at about 2pm, I slumped in my corner for a couple of hours before excusing myself, blaming a bug or something. But these were hard-bitten and sozzled media people I was working with - I'm fairly sure not a single one of them was fooled.

Sweden, July 1995
Officially my Worst Hangover Ever. Developed while on holiday with University friends Andy, Matt and Chris, at the latter's grandfather's log cabin in the woods of back of beyond Sweden. Mix a very hot summer, closed windows to keep the mosquitoes out, no TV, several hundred hands of pontoon (matchsticks one credit, 10 matchsticks = one bottle top, five bottle tops = one loo roll) and two litres of duty free. With two of the boys already nursing a hangover, much of the drinking fell on me. When I went outside for a pee and fell over backwards with the force of zipping myself back up (my head missing a breeze block step by a matter of inches) they decided it was time I should go to bed.

Several hours later I woke up lying across the bed, my head lolling backwards, unaware I'd just escaped death for a second time that night, this time Hendrix-style. However, I had just managed to, err, revisit the bedroom's interior design during the night (and as a former library student, I'm still quietly proud of the fact that I managed to miss the bookshelves completely).

Although my friends tried taking me to the seaside for some fresh air, I couldn't actually handle being anything other than horizontal until late afternoon, Chris nursing me with tonic water, fruit salts, and blueberry soup - traditional Swedish hangover cures.

And when my dear friends decided to clean up my mess, they found that the combination of alcohol and stomach acid had eaten away at much of the bedroom wallpaper. Chris' father had to drive the 100 or so miles from his home to redecorate. And while Chris' parents must have known what had happened, I'm not sure whether they knew exactly which of the four of us was responsible. Even if they did, publicly at least, they just smiled and put it down to the high jinks of young men.

I've not drunk Southern Comfort since.

Yorkshire, March 1996
Not so much memorable for the hangover as the manner in which I got it - locked in during a snow storm with Paul and Laura waiting up for the Tyson-Bruno fight. Paul and I worked our way through a box of bottles of French lager, plus one shot short of two bottles of Bourbon - all supplied by me. Well, I had said I'd bring drinks.

I can't remember whether we actually saw the fight (I've never actually liked boxing), but we were still going at six the next morning, and after nodding off for an hour or so, I decided that what with it being Mother's Day, I'd better go home. My mum's first comment? "You reek of booze. Fresh booze." The fact I'd left her card and present at Paul and Laura's didn't help. Not that she appeared to mind, particularly. The day with her, dad, the brothers and my grandmother felt pretty gruesome, but I made it through in one piece.

Paul, on the other hand, stayed on his living room sofa all day, before eventually deciding he had the strength to stand up at about midnight. Problem was that once he'd achieved vertical status, he couldn't stop going, falling over and breaking his ankle.

This has been known ever since as "the time I hospitalised Paul."

Yorkshire, Summer 1998
Another one of the many sessions with Paul and Laura that ended far too messily. I was due to meet Thomas and his then-girlfriend Gina at a pub in Hebden Bridge, half an hour or so's bus journey from Laura's house. Everything was going fine until we got halfway, and I had this urge to be sick. I hit the bell requesting the next stop. But it didn't come quite quickly enough. Although I attempted to stem any flow by putting my hands over my mouth, unfortunately my fingers only served to act as a kind of spray attachment. This must have been particularly gruesome for the two elderly ladies sitting in front of me, presumably off to something nice, sociable and wholesome on a Sunday morning.

I managed to get off the bus at a small industrial estate, find a tap and clean myself up a little. I think I may even have had a change of clothes with me. Still, nothing could disguise the fact that I must have met Gina for the first time smelling of vomit. It was something of a strained meeting, and as it happened, our only one. I'm not saying it was anything to do with me, but Thomas and Gina didn't last long enough for me to meet her a second time.

Wales, November 2003
Possibly the best hangover ever, the day after my mum's surprise 60th birthday party (and England's rugby world cup victory). A group of very old friends - Joseph, Lizzie, Robin, Hugh - who mum just happens to love, waking from our slumbers all around the living room (we'd been left where we fell), being very silly, playing word games (fish-based quiz shows), being scared by modern television for pre-school children, and generally just laughing until our sides were fit to burst.

Of course, this list is not to be confused with the top five times I've been plastered (as if such a compilation could even exist). There are many drunken afternoons and evenings I've enjoyed - weddings, stag nights and birthdays included, as well as spontaneous sessions, very special (and sometimes somewhat hazy) memories all - which would otherwise be recorded here.

Now I'm more about restraint, quality not quantity, the quiet pint or two of something good, rather than litres and litres of whatever gets the job done quickest. Yeah, I sometimes miss those raucous days and splitting headaches. But not really enough to want them back.

Oh glorious day.

Cue manic laughter.

Look, kittens!
At work it's good form to create the odd "original" package occasionally, taking pictures fed by one of the agencies, knocking out a short script and putting it all together to provide something the rest of the Beeb doesn't have time or possibly interest to cover. It mixes up our work, helps us hit our objectives for creativity, and sometimes proves very popular with the site's users.

This piece about a pair of baby snow leopards born at Berlin Zoo is my first production in 18 months. Not exactly hard news, I know, but it's the first offering since the Great Gorilla Disappointment of 2004, which knocked my confidence and put me right off packaging material.

I'm something of a reluctant broadcaster, feeling much more at home expressing myself in type. I tend to seize up in front of a microphone. Strange for a kid who grew up on the stage, I know, but there you go. Besides which, I think there are people better and more naturally suited to this kind of work - Sam, for one.

Despite the fact I hate listening to my voice, and think there's still room for improvement, I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. Hopefully the next thing (for next there must certainly be) will be another notch up the scale. After all, practice makes adequate.

Oh please!
Pleasepleaseplease, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease, PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!

If all has gone according to plan then today Mr Danny Fantastic should have set off on his journey to India.

"Big wow," some might say, "India's so 90s." Or, "Terrific! What a place to visit. Not the best weather at this time of year, but hey, who needs the sun?."

But for those who don't know the thing that makes Dan's trip a little different is that - but for the little matter of the English channel - he's planning on cycling pretty much all the way from Barnet to Bombay (and maybe a little bit further) with just 40GB of iRiver music and a big book to keep him from losing his marbles.

Having packed in his job with the evil Murdoch Superglobomegacorp, he'll ride through Europe, Turkey, Iran, and on to India, camping where he can, relying on the kindness of strangers when necessary, and maybe giving the odd dusky local beauty a story or two to tell about her night with the strange English boy who rode through town one day.

He even has the ambition of providing local news outlets with the occasional outrageous "And finally..." along the way.

Whatever he gets up to, he's promised to document at least some of it along the way, on his specially built blog.

We're not expecting him back for about nine months, and he'll leave a big hole behind. As a founding member of Albatross his reliability, intelligence and steadying influence will be missed at the pub quiz. And it's strange to think that we won't be seeing his big smiley face, listening to another of his seemingly endless supply of fresh anecdotes, hearing him play sax, or just talking crap over beer for a long while.

I think I'm right in saying we're still building our friendship after a fairly slow, tentative start that dates back several years, but this much I know: he's a good man, a good friend, and he'll be missed.

God speed, Dan. Travel safe, and come back soon.

Things I mistakenly never thought I'd do (number something in an occasional series)

Play the voice of Diego Maradona in a professional broadcast. Honest.

Hello, by the way. Sorry about the lengthy silence. I've had a lot on my mind. Hopefully that's all out of the way, though. Good to be back.

Wot no terrorists?
According to the house style guide at work, use of the word "terrorism" and derivations thereof should be avoided in copy on the BBC News website unless attributed to a reported individual or organisation. One man's terrorist, the thinking goes, is another man's freedom fighter, especially on a site read the world over.

So yesterday's attacks on London were apparently not the acts of terrorists. Yes, more than 50 people are thought to have died. Yes, they came out of the blue. Yes, a self-proclaimed affiliate of al-Qaeda has admitted responsibility for them. But is it terrorism? Apparently not.

The anti-terror line of editorial thinking obviously has some merit. In the case of most Palestinians, for example, they are simply fighting for autonomy and equality in a land that used to be their own. The methods employed by Hamas and their like may be deplorable, but they are born of frustration and hatred of the people they see as their oppressors. Ordinary Israelis, on the other hand, are being made to pay in blood simply for occupying the land they were taught was theirs by divine right, however archaic that may seem to those who don't share their faith (as well as some who do).

And the British people were clearly against the US-led invasion of Iraq, even if Mr Tony didn't appear to give a toss what we thought.

Al-Qaeda's main aim, on the other hand, appears to be devoted to anything but increasing liberty. Yes, they want to end the West's involvement in the Arab world, but they want to replace Muslim secular states with a single Islamic leadership. Government on their terms, not those of the people.

Not exactly my definition of freedom.

And just as the Crusades weren't exactly a great idea, I don't think the slaughter of innocent Britons is how the majority of Muslims would really want to achieve an Islamic utopia, however desirable an ideal that may actually be.

As for the people who attacked London yesterday and what we call them, well if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's probably got explosives strapped to its chest.