Back to the Fuchsia…

Fuchsia leaves our programme today, to re-join her chums on Newshour. Her love of Chinese food, heavy metal, gothic novels, Morris dancing and the Austin Powers films means she’s been an entertaining part of our team, and we’ll miss her.

Priya has put some ideas for today’s programme on the Talking Points page… have look at them.

Here’s some of my thoughts…

The right to bear arms seems to have grabbed you  ( read here for how it works in other countries ) as does the North Korea decision and the possibility of the same rules applying to Iran….Tom, at our meeting yesterday, suggested we should talk about how countries can bargain their way out of difficulties providing they put their nukes on the table. He put it better than that, but it might be a good area…

I was struck by something Edward, our young Kenyan, on last night’s programme who asked “why does criticising bad governance (in Africa) mean your are lining up with the colonial past ? ” – again, he put it better than that, but it’s a good point. We’ve often been asked to talk about when will some of Africa’s leaders stop blaming colonialism for their ills ?

We also talked yesterday about whether – again in Tom’s words – “the age of innocence” is over, due to new child protection rules here. There’s a debate going about whether we are too protective of our children too…

and you seem to like the swearing debate below too…which is ****ing typical if you ask me…