Some letter-writers to this newspaper continue to assume, wrongly, that because I don't much care for Tony Blair I must be a Conservative supporter.

What they fail to understand is that when there's no effective parliamentary opposition, the media's role as watchdog and critic of the actions of whatever party is in power takes on added importance. We have a duty to snipe.

The Opposition in Britain has been weak for some time. Those who believe the arrival of David Cameron will change things are being over-optimistic, I reckon. He's a clever if smarmy performer, but in many ways he and Blair appear to be interchangeable.

They're masters of spin, of "smoke and mirrors", and embrace very similar policies - although Cameron seems to be shouldering the Conservatives marginally to the left of New Labour, which is a curious and highly-suspect manoeuvre.

Presumably it's designed to snatch back support from the Liberal Democrats, who won brownie points with many people thanks to Charles Kennedy's brave and consistent (and at the time unpopular) opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Speaking of which It's always sad to see a basically decent bloke take a tumble, but Kennedy had little choice other than to resign.

He had denied his drink problems, probably to himself as well as to his party and the public, until forced to confront reality by an imminent press revelation. If someone is shown to need his arm twisting to make him own up, he does his ambitions for high office no good at all.

That's particularly true if drink is the issue in these puritan times in which we live. It's well known that Churchill was under the influence for much of the time, but despite that he was a brilliant wartime leader - anyway, in those days noone cared because heavy drinking, particularly by those who could afford it, didn't have the stigma it has now.

He was fortunate, though. Booze inspired rather than undermined him. He famously said that he had taken more out of alcohol than alcohol took out of him.

It seems to have worked the other way for Charles Kennedy, as it does for most people. Let's wish him well as he struggles to stay on the wagon, and hope that whoever replaces him continues to be a vocal opponent of the occupation of Iraq and presses hard for Britain to get out of the deadly quagmire it was so obvious from the start that country would quickly become.

Please, though, don't let it be the eager Mark Oaten, who was quick to invite the TV cameras into his home to picture him breakfasting with his young children.

If he becomes the Lib-Dems' leader, there'll be three-of-a-kind at the top of the main parties - every one a spinner.

Day Sam was all shook up

It being the 71st anniversary of Elvis's birth last Sunday, a Presley CD was playing at Priestley Towers . My seven-year-old grandson ("But I'm nearly eight!") much appreciated the 2002 reissued, soupedup version of A Little Less Conversation which had been remixed for the modern mark et.

However, when the next track to play was Presley's first hit, his 1956 classic Heartbreak Hotel, he was less impressed.

"He's making a fool of himself singing this!" young Sam said, with the same expression on his face that he wore a couple of years ago when we tried to persuade him to sample a Brussels sprout.

What a difference two generations make to musical taste. But what a tribute to Elvis, I suppose, that given the right arrangement and from beyond the grave he can bridge that gap.

War on words?

It's alarming that Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, should be investigated by police after denouncing homosexuality as immoral in a Radio 4 interview, and claiming that it spreads disease.

From the quotes I've seen, he wasn't inciting hatred, or saying anything threatening or abusive likely to cause "harassment, alarm or distress", as the 1986 Public Order Act puts it. He was expressing a concerned point of view based on his religious belief, and one moreover which is shared by other religions.

If you are no longer allowed to say anything that runs counter to PC doctrine, now long I wonder before Big Brother begins to look inside our heads in a witch-hunt to flush out those who might not say such things but merely think them?

Hardly barbaric

Whatever reasons there might be for considering Turkey to be unsuitable for membership of the EU, the fact that village children risk contracting bird flu by playing "catch" with the severed heads of slaughtered chickens isn't one of them - which is what a national newspaper columnist suggested this week.

As children in 1950s Britain , a time when meat mark eting was less sanitised than it is today, we occasionally came across the severed leg and foot of a chicken and would make it "work" by pulling the tendons.

As a plaything, admittedly it wasn't very hygienic. But nor was it a sign of barbarism, surely. And it did teach us something about anatomy!