Okay, it's just Play.com's pre-order chart, but it's not lonly SF/F titles or even just fiction, so it made me smile. The UK edition of GEARS OF WAR: ASPHO FIELDS is #2 in pre-orders. (Yeah, the title's not quite right, but you can't have everything.) And your patience has been rewarded, fellow Brits; the book is out on Thursday.
The cockles of my shrivelled black heart have also been warmed slightly by the sudden dawning of realisation in the media that the arrest of an MP really is very bad shit indeed.
Jack Straw, may these words come back and sink their teeth in your scrawny arse before too long:
But he added: "We don't have a police state here, despite many of the ridiculous newspaper headlines. A police state would be where ministers were directing an investigation."
That term would not apply, of course, where a government has created a police force that is politicised and devotes more enthusiasm to arresting women chefs who read the names of Iraq war dead at war memorials and harrassing amateur photographers than it does to nicking criminals. Nor would it apply to a government that wants to collect and track the phone and e-mail traffic of every UK citizen under the guise of protecting us against terror, a piece of Himmleresque record-keeping whose capacity to be misused routinely just begs the question of what they might really want this for. Because your average crazed jihadist is just going to avoid phones and e-mail.
The broad brush of a Stasi state is very visible when you consider that anti-terror legislation has now been used for every non-intended purpose from councils spying on residents over school catchment areas to freezing Iceland's UK assets to get it to repay money to UK investors.
I think The Mash sums it up best - as ever.
(And you can judge a country's democratic health by how much more relevant its humorists and comedians are at news coverage than the bona fide media.)
