Off to a well-known Swedish furniture store to get a new desk. It's what passes for a birthday present. Only two things went wrong: the beech version wasn't logically stacked alongside the birch version, but some way down the corridor; and mother dropped in for no adequately explored reason. Two and a half hours later, Dad and I have got the desk up and running, and it's a huge advance on the previous, converted kitchen table, effort.

London Underground drivers have threatened to stage some interesting industrial action: drive trains at half the speed limit. That, I suggest, would cause journeys to take longer, but would change trains' arrival from a Markov chain to a more regulated one. Drivers on the M25 know about the variable speed limits that do the same thing, and a similar effect may emerge on the tube. We shall see.

So, let me get this right. According to VH1, Steps' glorious party animal anthem Stomp / Tragedy was a worse #1 single than anything by the Vengaboys? Or the likes of The Stonk and Bob The Builder are better - by any definition of "better" - than anything Westshite have ever done? Can't agree with that. Not in the slightest.

Dave Blunkett, the extreme right wing Minister For The Daily Hell, has called a BBC programme exposing racism in the police force a "stunt." He accused the programmers of creating, not reporting, events. The BBC has declined to reply to the minister, who is somehow even further to the right than Norman Tebbitt. We reckon he was talking about himself, and certainly got the last three letters right.

And speaking of cunts, the Tories have attacked plans to allow 150,000 people to take permanent residence, following the government's inability to process their claims in under three years. They've not tackled the woeful inefficiency and wastefulness, but rather jumped on the racist bandwagon and attacked people who Aren't White Europeans.

My new regular stop Easterblogg suggests a nice, simple way to rescue the Iraq debate. Translated into British, here it is.

If the reason we went into Iraq really, truly was that the Blair cabinet really, truly believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, then there is nothing of which the government need feel ashamed - but the United Kingdom must immediately leave Iraq.

We now know there was no significant banned-weapons programme in Iraq. Any serious manufacturing facilities for banned weapons would have been detected by this point. If we went in to stop a banned-weapons programme genuinely believing one existed, and now know one did not exist, then our military must depart immediately. This is the only honourable course.

Alternative: The government admits that other reasons, possibly valid, were the real reasons all along.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Back at the end of May, when we weren't sure who had won the Eurovision Snog Contest, I set up a Google News query for anything to do with Russian entrants Tatu. It returns a lot of hits for Romanian rugby players, too...

Anyway, the Irish news wires claim Tatu disappear from pop radar. The spurious report claims the pair "have disappeared and no one knows where they are, including their record company." A source, speaking to that well known music source The International Movie Database, is quoted as saying "They've fallen out and Tatu no longer exists as a group. Both of them have disappeared off the radar somewhere in Russia and it's impossible to track them down. The only firm contact is their former manager, Ivan Shapovalov, who is less than helpful."

Now, this is news, especially to the duo themselves. Just as that report was hitting the press wires, the Antan Dec of the new century were performing a free concert in Hong Kong. The girls incited a minor controversy after asking members of the audience to kiss each other. "A number of parents, who said they were Catholics, then stormed out of the event accompanied by their children," reports The Standard.

Somewhere, there's a learned article explaining why fake Russian lesbians with an unexpected stage presence don't win the votes of the British public, but real Cornish ones with an equally unexpected stage presence do. This is not that article.

Somewhere, there's an article explaining why Antan Dec are gay icons. This is not that article, either.

Somewhere, someone at the Irish News Association has egg on their face. Muahahahahahaha.

To the surprise of no-one, the Labour party votes to expel itself from George Galloway. Mr Galloway had told the world about the unlawful nature of Mr Blair's attack on Iraq, and the party had allowed itself to be brought into disrepute. Mr Galloway now expects to stand as an independent at the next election - and he may yet resign and force the next election to come around sooner.

Scientists may discover intelligent alien life by 2025. Or, they may not. Will we bother to remember this prediction in 21 and a bit years' time? Possibly...

I'm fulminating against the media yet again today. Let's start with the easy target, the Daily Hell. The self-proclaimed bastion of middle England frothed at the mouth today, bleating against C4's Pornography - The Musical. "It's Channel Whore," puns the extreme right-wing organ. By lunchtime today, television regulator the ITC had received the grand total of 2 (two) complaints. That's one per 750,000 viewers.

BBC4 last night had an excellent documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It ended with one of the sound alchemists talking how they made one particular piece, and how someone had popped a short sting on the end that everyone of a certain age would recognise. Thanks to some impossibly sloppy editing, the head talked for too long, and crashed the sting, the closing bit from Newsround.

But the main course comes from an unexpected place. Here's a conversation I had with my cable company this evening:

Weaver: I'd like to cancel my sub to NASN, please
Customer service rep: (slightly flummoxed) Er, it's on free view until Saturday, and...
W: I've previously ordered a subscription.
CSR: Yes, you have. And you'd like to cancel that channel?
W: Yes, please.
CSR: Can I ask why?

Here's why. About a week ago, Gregg Easterbrook wrote an article explaining why he thinks Kill Bill is an immoral movie. It's a matter of record that Gregg has an unfortunate tendency to post first, think later, and that's especially evident in the last paragraph of his article. Decently quickly, he realised the error of his phrasing, and put out an apology for his remarks. Being a good, honest journalist, the original was left for all to see.

Case closed? Not quite. Complaints were surprisingly thin on the ground, with some pundits offering unexpected support. The New Republic, Mr Easterbrook's regular employers, were big enough to take this apology. But someone else wasn't.

Back in 2000, Gregg Easterbrook had started Tuesday Morning Quaterback in the annals of Microsoft's slate magazine. Many warmed to his quirky, offbeat, couch potato view of American professional football. For my part, TMQ became as much a part of Tuesday evenings as the previous night's NFL highlights taped off Channel 5. Indeed, regular readers of ze Week will spot some direct lifts from TMQ, that's how influential it's been on my writing. In 2002, TMQ moved to ESPN. For such a high quality signing, the network's website didn't give very high promotion to their star columnist.

Surprisingly, this Tuesday's column didn't appear on time. Nor was it there this evening. Chasing up where it had gotten to, and why there wasn't even a note on the TMQ page explaining the delay, got me to the meat of the story. ESPN had sacked Easterbrook.

To say that this stinks really underestimates the smell. Whatever Gregg writes for The New Republic has nothing at all to do with ESPN. Similarly, his writings for ESPN aren't reflected in his work for TNR. Something's adrift here.

It doesn't take a genius to work it out. Kill Bill, the movie that excited Easterbrook's ire, is a Disney / Miramax co-production. One of the people he slated is Michael Eisner, Disney's CEO. Disney owns the ABC family of channels, and ABC owns ESPN. So Easterbrook has been relieved of his column because he insulted his boss. Disney has form in this area - a 1998 report on ABC got pulled for corporate reasons.

It's a bad decision, but that on its own isn't enough to get me really angry. What gets my goat is the way ESPN pretends that their business decision is being done in the fight against anti-Jewish feeling. Yes, Easterbrook's language invoked stereotypes against Jews. He hadn't made those comments in his ESPN column, or on the network. So far as I'm aware, ESPN hadn't referred to those comments. This matter had absolutely nothing to do with the channel. I can only conclude that it's been done to stop ESPN's brand from being damaged further. And in defence of the ad hominem attacks, it's been blazingly clear from TMQ that Easterbrook is a man who thinks, a man of honour, and a man of inclusive faith. ESPN has made a personal stand against a decent man.

This all comes less than a month after some racist airhead was fired from ESPN - but not taken off other ABC-owned radio stations - for claiming there was a conspiracy to promote black players in the NFL. Were the cards marked for the token free-thinker on ESPN's staff from that moment? Certainly, the only way to read previous editions of TMQ is via the specific search above, and I don't know how long that will last. In short, ESPN has blown it, and blown it big time.

Now, how can I make my displeasure felt? Submitting a feedback message makes my point known to the monkeys who handle that kind of thing, but it doesn't hurt them in the pocket.

Then I remember how much material ESPN and ABC contributes to NASN. By my reckoning, the Setanta channel contains something like 70% programming from the Disney group. This is how I can get my revenge. I can stop paying a tenner a month to my cable company, stop paying nine quid to Setanta, stop paying something like five quid a month to the Dismal corporation.

Weaver: Because I don't want to give any money to the Disney corporation, a major provider of programming to NASN, following Disney's atrocious treatment of Gregg Easterbrook.
Cable service rep: (writes that down) Er, OK, I'll pass your comments on to NASN. Are you OK to talk this through with them?
W: If they want to talk to me, I'll talk to them.
CSR: Anything else I can help with?
W: Er, yes. Can you selectively stop all the Sky channels from my cable package?
CSR: (scratches head). Not right now, we don't offer a la carte channels, and I don't think we will for some years yet.
W: OK, thanks for being so helpful.

Bookmark vanishes
The delete key works both ways.
One less pair of eyes.

Well, that's saved me a bit of a decision, then. In its infinite lack of wisdom, Last Century Fux studios has decided that the BBC isn't fit to broadcast the third series of its comic-book drama 17. Starring Elisha Cuthbert's bras and Kiefer Sutherland's beard, 17 sees unreal explosions, preposterous news coverage, gratuitous plugs for the evil murdoch empire, and hours that last just 42 and a half minutes.

After attracting rave notices for the first series and a half, before it all went a bit silly, Last Century Fux has decided not to let the Beeb broadcast the comedy. Their excuse: that the BBC doesn't encrypt its satellite feed any more. So? Less than 15% of the audience comes via wok, the vast majority of people still watch 17 on squeaky old analogue. Moreover, theevilmurdochempire has tolerated the show being distributed to Belgium, the Netherlands, and fringe areas of France and Germany via cable for two years, the exact areas where any satellite overspill would be strongest.

Don't believe the evil murdoch empire, it always lies. This is no exception: theevilmurdochempire reckons it can get more folding stuff and viewers by flogging 17 to itself. Er, quite how does that work, exactly?

Anyway. 17 is made without adverts, and to shove commercials in the middle completely destroys the real-time nature of the programme. I won't be watching it on any commercial channel. And I don't watch any evilmurdochempire channel ever, anyway.

Actually, let me move my notional money in the Notional Christmas Number One Best Seller In Store By Volume stakes, results due out December 28.

Originally, I'd bet on the traditional standby Lord Clifford d'Richard, but then I had to remember that he had held down the #21 position in the last chart of the year each year from 1991 to 1994. So that's no good.

It feels like the year for a novelty single, so it does. Frontrunners The Darkness fit the bill, so does Avid Merrion.

But my money's on the ultimate teeny-bopper novelty single. It combines the songwriting talents of a failed Eurovision entry with the singing ability of someone who demonstrably can't. It comes out in the last week of active releases before the festive chart.

More importantly, it contains the man whose fans (Kylie and Jade Bonkers) are still smarting from the way he lost to someone far, far more talented in the Star Academy final, and they'll buy one single before getting bored and moving on to someone with far more talent, such as Mr Blobby.

Yes, the unlikely combination of Al Griffin and Robin Gibb, with their double A-sided release, provisionally entitled "You wouldn't catch Dogsby being as talented as this," backed with "Bring it on."

It's News: Malaysia hosts skyscraper forum. The Malays like their big buildings.

Note reveals Diana's biggest fear. Being ignored.

Government promotes cruelty to animals - if they wanted to do something, they'd start with factory farms.

Entertaining ... Mother ambushes education secretary over student fees. "I just can't get my head around the attitude that you are encouraging children to get into debt - it bugs me. When he does get his grant, it's not enough so he is having to work to support himself." Yep, on one hand the government tells people to save for their old age, on the other, it puts people 20 grand into debt before they're 22. And doesn't this legitimise the "buy now, pay later" culture that's caused so much misery in the modern world?

Elsewhere, the Press Complaints Commission issues a quiet reminder to the hysterical tabloid press that their campaign against immigrants, disguised as concern about "asylum seekers", isn't going to be tolerated. Next stop: the PCC ruling against the Daily Tabloid's vindictive and clearly illegal campaign to "name and shame" young offenders. Rebekah Wade, you edit the Tab, and you are a criminal. You need to be hounded out of your house, just like you're doing to those kids.

Elsewhere, betting for the Christmas Number One single. Darkness 9/4, Avid Merrion 7/2, Sir Cliff 6, Alex Parks 7, B Nighy (who?) 10, Robbie 14, Pestlife 16, Gaga and Gals and Flopstars and Eminem 33, Basil Brush 50. I still have a feeling that it's the turn of a novelty record, so back the Fast Food Rockers at 20s (;

Off the rails ... One, Mister Tony Blair; Two, Paul Burrell; Three, the Northern Line. We're backing Mr Livingstone here, does anyone have any idea how difficult it is to play Mornington Crescent in these conditions?

Ah, nothing like a good bash at Birtney's Pears to start a Sunday. The enhanced one appeared on Sunday Morning Live last night. Lip-synced her way through one song, then did actually sing live. Bad karaoke. Dogsby would rip shreads out of her.

And why is Birtney Pears like the leader of the Conservative party, the bloke whose name no one can remember? No support.

According to a poll of the Grate British Public, there are 21 novels greater than all others in the world literary canon.

On an idea from roobarb, here are the ones I've read, ranked in order from greatest to most mediocre:

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
2. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
3. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
4. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
5. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontė
6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontė
7. Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
• Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
• The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
• Catch 22, Joseph Heller
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• 1984, George Orwell
• His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
• The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
• War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Hmm. This has got to say something about something, really.

Out of the mouths of babes... of course it's christian domination.