Peter Black

Well, there was the 600 e-mails that I am still ploughing through, the large pile of post and that is before I get into the office, and of course, the cold weather. Can it really be this cold or is it just that I have come back to it from the Mediterranean? Apart from that I don't think I missed much else.

Of course there were the news stories but my self-catering apartment had a TV and the only English language channels were BBC World, CNN and Sky News*. This enabled me to keep up with current affairs especially when I developed a very bad back halfway through my holiday and was forced to spend most of two nights sitting upright in the living room.

It is in this way that I saw Bill Clinton endorse Barrack Obama live in Florida at 5am Malta time as well as a great deal more of the US Presidential race than is healthy for any individual. It is so nerve-wracking. I want Obama to win, it looks like he is winning and yet like Mike Smithson on politicalbetting.com, I have this sense of foreboding. Could 2008 be America's equivalent of the British 1992 General Election?

Meanwhile, and before I expand on the US election, can anybody tell me why BBC World has advertising and why does Sky News transmit Republic of Ireland advertisements to Malta including a very cheesey Westlife?

The more I saw of the American election the more I became convinced that Obama is the man who should be President. He is a natural. In my view he outshone Bill Clinton. He has risen above the nasty attacks and off-the-wall claims of his opponents and come across as a mature adult, capable of dealing with any crisis thrown at him as President.

That is not to under-estimate the effectiveness of McCain's and Palin's attacks. The Republicans however have chosen a team designed to put off the voters. Palin is just scary, whilst McCain comes across in speeches like robocop. His movements appear to be synchronised by remote control. Indeed so unnatural does he seem that there were times when I thought that the Republican nominee was break-dancing with his arms. In contrast Obama is more relaxed, more at home with the crowd, more elegant and more purposeful in the way that he works his audience.

The other story that we could not escape from was the meltdown of BBC Radio Two over a prank phone call by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. Wherever we went there was the TV news leading on this incident.

There is no doubt in my mind that what Brand and Ross did was unacceptable. The BBC were also at fault for broadcasting a pre-recorded show containing this material. Their apologies and the subsequent resignations of Brand and BBC Radio 2 controller, Lesley Douglas, and the suspension of Ross without pay were the right decisions.

For me the point at which the media started to consume itself over this affair was when Andrew Sachs' 23-year-old granddaughter, Georgina Baillie appointed Max Clifford to represent her. The scandal was hardly spontaneous anyway, with just two complaints on the day and only taking off when it was picked up by the tabloid press days later. Once a professional publicist got involved I felt that the story became increasingly surreal.

And then there was David 'Top Cat' Davies, who was mistakenly invited to speak at the National Black Police Association Annual Conference instead of his namesake, former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis and rather predictably provoked fury by accusing Britain's black police leaders of being racist.

In some ways it is difficult to feel any sympathy for the NBPA. Not only did they spell the name of their intended guest wrongly on the invitation but they presumably also failed to address him correctly as Rt. Hon. If they had got either of these minor matters of protocol right then the invitation would have ended up in the right office and the MP for Monmouth would not have shown up.

Nobody in Wales is surprised at what David Davies said at that conference. After all he has been ploughing this particular furrow for years. What he did manage to achieve however was to bring his views to the attention of the Daily Mail's readership. Unsurprisingly, most of the 58 comments support what he said.

Finally, a story that started on a blog, Welsh Ramblings I believe, and made the mainstream media within a week. Yes, it even showed up on Sky News in Malta.

Inevitably the sign is in Swansea and was put up by the Council without checking the Welsh. The translation reads: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work for translation."

It seems that this out of office reply was what came back to the e-mail requesting a translation and it went straight onto the sign without question. The sign has now been removed.

*This discounts Living which was intent on broadcasting Most Haunted all week and therefore could be safely ignored.

Update: I am told that the reason for McCain's limited arm movements is injuries he received when he was tortured as a prisoner of war. I was not aware of that when I wrote this piece and am happy to apologise for my insensitivity. The point I was trying to make was that Obama was better at working crowds and appears more relaxed in speeches.