Following recent developments on the London Stock Exchange, this blog has been taken over by a private equity firm and will be subject to new management shortly. Regular underperfomance made the blog vulnerable to take-over and this site will now undergo a brief period of internal review before a dazzling re-launch featuring a host of celebrity contributions (for more see below).

Blog-staff have been sacked, the pension-fund has been plundered, and golden-handshakes have been swiftly agreed. A new blog will begin soon with lower standards of public transparency and more intense worker exploitation. Watch this space.

So this is the last post under the old regime. Morale is low, inspiration is woefully lacking. This last post has been handed to our guest writer, Jim Smith, part-time cabbie and pub philosopher:

Last night's Question Time: Actually a decent edition of QT last night but proof again that there's rarely anything 'liberal' about the Liberal Democrats. Shirley Williams' woeful failure to defend freedom of speech, the freedom to cause offence, was staggering when discussing the Rushdie Knighthood award. Williams, you're supposed to be a fecking liberal! Stand up for the right to piss people off and don't say it was a 'mistake', blah, blah...Well done McNulty, good performance, and well done the "Hitch"(the Chris version).

Honours: So a guy who designs knickers gets offered a gong and doesn't want it cos' Blair is 'morally corrupt'. And guess what...the Independent put this as it's front-page. Jeez.
Joseph Corre said he was: "Most proud of my daughter, Cora, and least proud of Tony Blair and the Labour party." This is a man whose fine reasoning led him to name his child Cora Corre...I think we need to take his moral judgements about as seriously as his daughter's name.

Nick Ross: Auntie Beeb don't owe you a living mate. It ain't ageism, they've just woken up to how dispensible you are.

Beppe from Eastenders has already pledged to blog on his experiences of auditioning for the understudy part in the new musical "Lord of the Chastity Rings", a mediocre tale about one girl's crusade to wear the ring of virginity and which ends in moderate tragedy when she realises no one fancied her anyway.