Mauby Tastes Horrible In Stoke Newington

How different things look after 36 hours back in Stokie. On Sunday night we were physically in Hackney but mentally in Barbados. God, you have no idea how awful mauby tastes round the gas fire in a flat in Stoke Newington. It tasted great on Crane Beach. Why on earth is that? Having unpacked and settled down again, I've had a chance to catch up on what's been happening while I've been away. My spoofster appears to have been navel gazing again - this time in a gobsmacking way. With the rest of the world discussing the end of Karl Rove, he was debating the end of Karl Marx.

Looking at the news of the past three weeks (I forgot to cancel The Guardian) I see interesting articles about the Heathrow Climate Camp, deserters in the White House, Islamist successes in Turkish elections, the UK house building crisis and flood plain developments, BSE, Government failure to meet renewable energy targets, Bush's brain going missing, John Redwood being released from an asylum, co-operation between No.10 and No.11 (at last), The White House pulling Musharraf's strings, crisis deepening in Zimbabwe, slave labour supplying UK fashion shops and Government failure to hit transport targets. Had I been around in Hackney, I'm sure I would have expressed my opinions on these and other matters of political interest.

The imitation Luke Akehurst caught on camera indulging in his favourite pastime

Unlike my pathetic spoofster, who managed postings while I was away on the topics of the Grassroots Alliance slate for elections at Annual Conference, letters to the Editor of the Communist Party of Great Britain's Weekly Worker, financial accounts of The Communist Party of Britain, the Independent Working Class Association, the Official Monster Raving Looney Party, Respect, the Revolutionary Communist Party Britain (Marxist/Leninist), the Socialist Party of Great Britain, Workers Liberty and the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Daily Telegraph's view of whether Labour will call snap a General Election and debating with Labour Left Briefing on Gordon Brown's proposals for renewing Party democracy. Best of all, he managed a farcical attempt to pretend that I was following the example of Gordon Brown in vacationing on one of Britain's splendid beaches (holiday highlight a trip on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Steam Railway), when everyone knows full well that Linda, Augustus and I have been holidaying in Barbados (no, Marie Lloyd, I wasn't there at the hospitality of Jack Lemley, ex-Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority). He also managed a review of the year's most exciting book, "The Blair Years - Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries". The following day he published what I will be nominating as my own entry for book of the year - a lengthy diatribe that I intend to re-title: "Boris Strangelove, or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love Red Ken".

Finally, my cyber-stalker offered commiserations to Tower Hamlets Labour Party for losing the Shadwell by-election to a bunch of Marxists. Now I don't suppose that would be the Shadwell in his earlier assertion to Respect: "Carry on believing that comrades, if it makes you feel better. It will be interesting to see how you explain away losing the Shadwell Ward by-election in Tower Hamlets". Thank God I'm back. Just in time to save Labour Party activists from being driven insane by the ravings of a Marx-obsessed pretend Hackney Councillor and spoof wannabe M.P.