Earlier I asked you to suggest what question I should put to Tony Blair during his monthly presser (which you can watch here).
I was so so tempted by Chris's suggestion to ask "Is this your best ever year yet?". It was a clever, witty idea which would undoubtedly have got a laugh but in the end I plumped for asking him simply why he hadn't repeated the Health Secretary's "best ever year" claim.
Chuck no doubt speaks for many when he says that Blair never answers the question but in truth you do learn quite a lot from these news conferences - often not on the main story of the day.
I will recall today as the day he said he was only "marginally open-minded" to the idea of a democratically-elected House of Lords and that the more you looked at the idea the more problems there were. Oh yes, and his insistence that giving cash to his favourite schools - city academies - was the biggest contribution that you could make and might merit an honour.
"It's a bit like breaking wind in a hurricane". Top Gear's former man Quentin Willson has given the best political analysis of the day so far. That was his description (on Radio 4's Today programme) of the environmental significance of David Cameron shunning the oh-so-green Toyota Prius and picking instead the luxury but not quite so green Lexus instead. With the entire British economy contributing just 2% of the globe's warming gases, political journalism risks focussing on what car Dave's picked when he's not on his bike.
That is, of course, partly his fault as he's chosen the politics of symbolism - bike riding, sled riding and windmill fitting - to launch his Conservative "green revolution".
It's partly our fault too for finding the personal so much more interesting than the political. We love learning about - and then usually condemning - the lives of those who aspire to rule us whether it's about hairdos, MMR or electric baths (that last example's for the nostalgic among you)
It's my fault too. In my interview with Gordon Brown last week I asked him how green the Brown household was.
He visibly winced and then talked rather uncomfortably and indirectly about what he did. After the interview he chided me gently for the line of questioning. His implication was clear - it trivialised important policy dilemmas which is what politics should really be about. At the time I thought him unduly defensive, unappreciative of the ways we try to make politics interesting and nervy that Cameron is so much better at talking about himself than he is. Ever since, he's been mocked for telling people that they should switch off their tellies at the mains and should unplug their mobiles overnight. So maybe he had a point.
Yes, the personal is the political. Yes, the success of political ideas depends on them resonating with people's own lives - Cameron is tapping green sentiment in just the same way that Brown channelled symapthy for the poor of the third world. But, no, the future of the planet does not depend on a choice of a Lexus or a Prius or on whether junior Brown or Cameron's nappies are binned or washed. It depends on who can find a way to persuade us to live within our planetary means but, more importantly still, who can persuade the Chinese, the Indians and the Americans to do it too.
P.S. Off to Tony Blair's monthly presser soon to discover why this is the NHS's best year ever. Or maybe I should ask him the Mrs Merton question about Labour and peerages. What do you think? Ideas gratefully received.
