Yes, it has been awfully quiet round here in recent days. I've been working on another project for this site, and it should be ready for prime time in about 10 days.

Cambridge Folk Festival has fallen through; the people in whose house I was going to crash have double booked, and my lift to the site has dropped out, and it's all-round easier just to get them to flog on the day tickets. Blah.

As a something to do, I've thought about taking a day in Oxford looking at second hand book shops. Travelling there from here, a Saver ticket (valid on any train arriving after 11am) from Longbridge is £22.20. Ouch. Expensive. Very expensive. Rebooking at Birmingham: still £22.20, and I've got to get there. Rebook at Coventry? No joy.

But there is a cheaper way. Cheap Day Return to Leamington, valid on any train leaving here after 0900, is £6.40. A Saver ticket from Leam - Oxford (still not valid for arrival before 11, so I can't take the first train from New Street) is £11.20, total £17.60, saving 20%. And it comes with an excuse to potter about Leamington if Oxford gets too boring or too full of dumb United Stations.

It is possible to do it slightly cheaper: a ticket to Dorridge is £3.55, Dorridge - Leam is £2.70, for a total of £6.35 on that stretch. There's one drawback: I'm limited to Chiltern trains between Brum and Leam, so have to change trains at Leam to go on to Oxford, and have to walk back through Birmingham city to New St. That's not worth a 5p saving on the total fare. The ticket to Leam allows me to make a platform change at New Street, and simply show both tickets to the inspector on the Oxford train.

Once again, it's high time for Mister Tony Blair to go. For almost two months, the Government's spin machine has been locked on a self-destructive course of battle against the BBC. The independent journalists have a source that the government added a claim to last September's "intelligence" dossier on Iraq. The claim: that the legitimate government of Mr Sadaam Hussein had weapons that could be deployed in 45 minutes. As noted below, the UK government has since retracted that claim.

The government attempted to go into damage limitation mode, but went into Make More Damage mode. A Commons inquiry into the claim was - quite transparently - rigged to clear the government of any wrongdoing, and the whole thing exposed the lies that run the UK government in general, and its unlawful guerilla action in the Persian Gulf region in particular.

About ten days ago, the Ministry of Defence allowed a name to reach the newspapers. It was the name of Dr David Kelly, a researcher into destructive weapons, and the government allowed the press to think that he was the source for the BBC's report.

Yesterday, Dr Kelly was reported missing, and his body found in woodland close to his home. It's an apparent suicide. The spectre of Vince Foster, a close aide of the Clintons, whose body was found in a Washington DC park ten years ago springs to mind; there have been persistant rumours and innuendo that Mr Foster was murdered rather than committed suicide.

Even the Government's quasi-official mouthpiece, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said that Dr Kelly was "most unlikely" to be the BBC's source. The committee chairman, Donald "Liar" Anderson, blasted foreign affairs minister John "Jack" Straw for mistreating the scientist. Anderson's committee interrogated Dr Kelly for six hours on Tuesday, and he underwent a more gentle questionning from the Intelligence Committee the following day.

It's abundently clear that the government has found the scapegoat it wanted, regardless of the facts. It's also clear that no one in the government expected Dr Kelly to do what he did. This is a row that the government has fanned and reignited over the past two months. Mr Alistair Campbell has forced the issue up the agenda whenever it could have quietly been dropped. Mr Campbell, you have blood on your hands. Mr Blair, you have refused to fire Mr Campbell, you must also take personal responsibility for this death. Cabinet ministers John Straw, John Reid, and Geoff Hoon have also been on the attack.

Finally, it's worth noting that the late night programme NEWSNIGHT filed a separately-sourced report three days after the original story broke. The government has not objected to a single item in that report.

Nor can the government object to documents revealing US plans for Iraqi oil fields. The documents are dated March 2001. Would anyone care to say it's not all about the oil?

The Indescribablysmug puts forward twenty (20) lies about the recent military conflict in Arabia. The Indescribablysmug will start charging for this article next Sunday. Here's the gist of the argument, preserved for free and frank debate.

1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta.

2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together

A leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report said there were no current links between them. Mr bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.

3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme

The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence."

4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons

The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.

5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War

Apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.

6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles that could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range that would threaten British forces in Cyprus

There has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, and Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. Chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that Britain did not take her own claims seriously.

7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox

This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.

8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors

Mr Blix, last September: "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

9 Previous weapons inspections had failed

In 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated."

10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors

Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."

11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes

Mister Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.

12 The "dodgy dossier"

Mr Blair told the Commons in February: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." Most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.

13 War would be easy

Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.

14 Umm Qasr

The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff.

15 Basra rebellion

Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking.

16 The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch

She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.

17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons

Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad were wrong. "It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."

18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD

Almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.

19 Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis

Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund. The resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

20 WMD were found

After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain.

Blimey, it's hot. 33 degrees or so, the highest temperature since the Long Hot Summer of 1995. Enough to leave me utterly exhausted.

But back to the Biggest Fib of the Fortnight award. "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." - George Bush Jr, spokesmoron-in-chief for the US military junta, speaking of outsted leader President Sadaam of Iraq.

The usually slavish press core wrote: "The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective."

After months of denials, squeaky clean popster Gagagagagagagareth Gates has admitted that he did have a fling with glamour model Jordan. In an interview with a celebrity magazine The Annoying One said:

"I did have a brief relationship with Jordan. I shouldn’t have denied it but I did. I was naïve."

Jordan has quite clearly lost whatever standards he may once have had. To boink Rayanne Graff in the back of a car with Brian Krakow taping the whole event is bad. To boink Gareth Gates is just wrong.