The teeniest glimmer of good news in a sorry, democracy-challenged, US-Anglo demi-monde:

[Joe Chi Minh]

From the Around Britain column in this evening's Edinburgh Evening News:

"A former city mayor has been jailed for nine months for vote-rigging.

Mohammed Choudary, 49, was one of three men convicted of forgery over a scheme to fabricate votes for the Peterborough city council election in June 2004."

Is it possible, I wonder, that he has a glittering career ahead of him beyond the dreams of avarice. Surely, he is set fair to become a very popular speaker on the billionnaire Republican speech circuit.

What a "can do", self-help type....! What a paragon of right-wing values. In normal times, surely, the far right provide a felonious demographic excelled only within the confines of secure penal institutions - though today, there must be more innocent prisoners than in the past, and many more felons on the outside.