I suppose it has been quite an extraordinary few days in terms of the news: first there was the royal wedding (damn, I wasn’t going to even mention that waste of time and money). Then there was the killing of bin laden, and yesterday, of course, was the referendum on AV and the local elections. It is these latter two items that I just want to write something about.

Something troubles me about the killing of Osama bin Laden. He was, of course, a deranged lunatic responsible for the deaths of thousands. But that does not justify sending troops into his house and killing him. Surely if we are truly civilised, enlightened people, the rule of law and due process should apply to everyone, no matter how repugnant we find them. Of course, we do not know what actually happened in that raid, but it now appears that bin laden was unarmed, in which case he could have been captured. There was a so-called neocon on Question Time last night saying that we were right to just shoot him, and to try him would be to award him a dignity he did not deserve. But the moment we start thinking such thoughts, that some people should be treated as less than human, we start down a very scary path indeed. As far as I can tell, by the way, neo-conservatism is a form of fascism where people say the first thing which comes into their heads without thinking it through, then claim it to be common sense. Our hard-fought liberal values and rights must be extended to all people, lest we become as bad as the zealots responsible for 9/11 and 7/7.

Talking about conservatism, with any luck CaMoron and Clegg would have got the kicking they deserve last night. I haven’t read through much of the results yet, but I hear it was a very, very bad night for the Lib-Dems. People are punishing them, and rightly so: last year they wanted a lib-lab coalition, and got a Tory government propped up by a bunch of traitors unworthy of the name Liberal. I still say our current government was not democratically elected and that CaMoron should be nothing more than a footnote in the annals of British political history, rather than the man now calling himself prime minister. For all his nice-guy image, like the neocon idiot I mentioned above, such people see the world in two dimensional terms: bad and good, poor and rich, lazy and productive. The world is much more complex, and I hope last nights election results tell CaMoron that we do not him and his band of toff morons in power much longer.