The leaked Afghan war documents show that the trouble with the Net is that every liberating feature its boosters claim as a virtue is also a vice. In the pre-computer age, a mole could not have got 90,000 documents out of a military base and to a journalist without being arrested. Nor for that matter could a disaffected worker in Parliament copy all the receipts of all the expense claims of 650 MPs and deliver them to the Telegraph. He would need to spend the best part of a morning loading them into a removal van, rather than slipping a couple of computer discs into his pocket, and the odds are the security guards would have realised a crime was going down long before he had heaved in the last box.

My paper the Observer has now got stuck in with a debate between Boyd Hilton, who argues that British TV has no problems, and Euan Ferguson, who says the Brits are years behind. Boyd supports his argument by saying that the BBC made The Office

 I've met many an American TV producer/writer/actor who talks in the same misty-eyed manner about Gervais and Merchant as we do about the creators of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Mad Men. And even though The Office is a comedy rather than a brooding, intense drama, if the question is "have we produced anything of similar quality?", rather than "have we produced anything similar of similar quality?" I think you'll find most American TV types would point to The Office (the final two episodes of which were pretty much comedy-drama anyway).

The quid pro quo for Tories accepting the AV system is to wrap it up with a package which will cut the number of Parliamentary constituencies. Nick Clegg was full of wind and self-righteousnes when he commended it to the Commons yesterday.

Next year's referendum on the alternative vote is meant to be the pivot on which the coalition government will swivel. The thinking runs that if the Liberals lose then they have no reason to continue their cohabitation with the Tories and Labour is back in the game. I doubt this and suspect that if public spending cuts push us back into recession, mass unemployment and penury will bring Labour back. ( And conversely, if the Conservatives and Liberals manage to build a prosperous society, then their future is assured.)

The polls for the Sunday Times and Telegraph have the Lib Dems on 16 per cent and Labour and the Tories well up on the election. Meanwhile, over at the Observer we have a poll  showing that leftish Lib Dem voters are ready to defect to Labour.

    Who cares when there may not be an election for five years, and every sensible person is checking their beer and wine supplies and preparing for the England game rather than thinking about politics?