Election nights are wonderful. There are swings, exit polls, and reminders that these graphics are based on projected vote-shares. For about 15 years, I've sat up into the too, too early morning breathlessly awaiting results at every opportunity. I even sat up for the results of the referendums on Scottish and Welsh devolution. But not tonight. Tonight I realised that I actually don't care.

I don't care if the Tories take a council in the north. I don't care if Labour can hold Reading. I don't care what Worcester woman does. Unless it's porn. I might stay up if it's porn.

As the early results came in I settled in front of Dimbleby's massive face, surrounded myself with booze, and waited. And waited. And it never happened. The tingle, the odd squeeze of the gut as the Tories take a seat in Wyre Forest, the infintesimal thrill as they lose one somewhere else. It never happened. I just don't care any more.

It's taken a long time for me not to care. I've adopted a position of haughty indifference in public for as long as I can remember. "They're all the same," was a mantra to live by. I knew this. I'd go on at tedious length about it. They're all the same. But, of course, they aren't. Some of them are Blues and are thus hateful gutter-vermin, a black crust around the rim of humanity's toilet bowl, whose every misfortune makes the world a happier place.

And the others have been swaggering disappointment-hounds, urinating in the face of all that was good and decent, with Richard Branson holding their collective penis. From Clause IV to tuition fees, from the Terrorism Acts to Iraq, to the 10p rate of tax, to all my adult life they've... No. It doesn't matter. I don't care any more. And, nominally, I never have - but there was always a little smile of satisfaction when they won something. Because if they won, the others lost. And the only thing worse than them was the others.

Except it wasn't. Finally, my gut appears to have accepted what my brain claimed to know. They are no better than the others. That half-hope that it was all Tony Blair, and that once he was gone they might rediscover the principles you always hoped they had? The pipe-dream of a twatbasket. Nothing more. A towering, imaginary palace, constructed of dandelion seeds and fairy guff.

And tonight, watching the heads bray and bleat about what this means for who, finally, I truly did not care. And I shall go to bed and not care. I shan't care. It's over, at long last. I do not care.

Until tomorrow, when they count the votes for London Mayor...

My entry to the LOLBlair meme that seems to be drifting around the interwebs today...

This site is a wonderfully comprehensive look at the 'sexed-up' Iraq dossier. It tracks the document and its authors through time and space to show you what really happened. Sort of.

Still, I enjoyed poking around it...

Ross McKibbin gives a wonderful analysis of the Blair years here, it's measured, well thought-through, and right. He correctly (in my view) identifies the most prominent characteristic of Blairism as being defeatism (and I would add a lack of faith in the British public). If you're interested in that sort of thing, I suggest you go and have a read.

If you're not, here's a picture of a dog. There.

It occurs to me, when reading about the increasingly-bizarre case of Abdel Kareen
Nabil, whose father and brothers learned the whole Koran to show their devotion whilst abandoning their sibling, that one of the reasons many people around the world have less than total confidence in the War on Terror is its hugely selective imposition.

It is not a War on Terror. George Bush has no intention of invading the Basque region or Northern Ireland. It is a War on Certain Terrorists of a Religious Nature. However, the catch-all term does allow Vladimir Putin to gloss over the Chechnya problem, and his troops actions in Beslan as part of the War on Terror.

We claim that we support democracy in the Middle East, which is quite clearly an untruth. If you have the misfortune to be living in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, whose regimes provide us with lots of money and oil, our troops probably won't be riding in any time soon to secure your freedoms. Sorry. The same applies if you're living under military dictator Parvez Musharraf in Pakistan (who even got interviewed on the Daily Show, we like him so much). You're going to have to do it yourselves.

Also, our siding with Shia militants in Iraq, providing a base for Moqtada al Sadr and the Mahdi Army shows that we aren't even consistent in opposing violent religious fundamentalists. Not if they dislike the same people we dislike.

What Tony Blair and George Bush do not realise are that there are many people who opposed the war in Iraq who would support a general push for greater freedom for the peoples of the world. They just don't think their way is the best way of doing it.

For someone who is strongly rumoured to be converting to Catholicism at some point in the next two years, you would expect the death penalty to be a fairly serious issue. However, according to this analysis of the Blair's position to the death penalty in the European Union, it appears that even the threat of eternal damnation as a result of mortal sins pales into comparison to 'making things difficult for the Americans'.

Of course, I'm an American, and it wouldn't make things difficult for me. I haven't executed anyone in ages, not since the moratorium I imposed on myself in 1996. It was for the best.

I wonder which American he's actually thinking of...