Tick-tock.

I must admit that the world doesn't look a great deal different from where I'm sitting - it's amazing how changing the guy at the top can amazingly transform the perception of America for the entire world, like they're all just red or blue, chop and change, in and out - I'm convinced it's an incredibly nuanced, subtle, beguiling sort of country and I'd love to spend some more time there. Maybe I'll hang back 18 months and visit the newly-opened Disneyland Cuba - they're going to need to do something with that place.

Over here the mundane continues - the Brown bounce is now what happens when you try to cash a Government cheque, but Madonna is still in the paper with her madge hanging out (not quite cockney rhyming there, but you get the idea), rain and tax, the beat goes on. The faint stench of ennui hangs in the air. They thought it was London fog, but I suspect it was palpable indifference.

Does one chap have the power to change the world quite so profoundly? He's not Jesus, and even he took three years to get his point across - when you translate that to the US election cycle it just wouldn't have been doable - water into wine, midterms and you're running for re-election. The Great O has precisely 100 days to blow our skirts up, raise the dead, etc, etc - not that the world is going end if he doesn't, we'll just get bored.