Ted Kennedy Has Died.

Over night veteran US Senator Edward Kennedy finally lost his long battle with cancer. While Edward never rose to the political heights of his brothers John and Robert he became known as the Liberal Lion for his long career in the US Senate. In the last year of his life Gordon Brown had him Knighted for his work in education and health care reform. He was 77 years old.

While America has been coming to terms with his death the world has sadly not stopped turning. After a bad fortnight in which Britain has been reminded that it's current path will, at best, only end in failure they've decided to discuss opening up new high speed connections and pathways. Never ones to speak clearly they've decided to do this by proposing a new high speed rail link between London, Manchester and Glasgow so I apologise if the next bit is a little cryptic. The £34bn rail plan is expected to halve journey times by allowing trains to travel at speeds of over 200mph. The only problem is that the government thinks that the plan will take up to twenty years to complete. That is of course nonsense because I know a gang of talented navvies who can get it done in 18 months, they're just waiting for the state to give the go ahead.

More details have emerged about last nights riot between West Ham and Millwall which is being described, fairly accurately, as the worst rioting seen at a British football match in twenty years. This is no great surprise because West Ham/Millwall is one of the bitterest rivalries in football dating back to the days of the Greenwich docks. Perhaps rather fortunately the two teams rarely find themselves in the same division but do occasionally meet in cup competitions. The last time this happened was in April 2005 just as Britain was preparing to host the Gleneagles G8 Summit. That fixture was relatively peaceful and by peaceful I mean heavily policed but when the two teams met in 2004 one fan was thrown under a train and killed. This level of animosity means that the police have a well worked routine for dealing with the fixture. This involves getting the Millwall fans to assemble close to their home ground before the police march them to the local Tube station and put them on a specially dedicated Tube train that takes the directly to West Ham Tube station. From there the police in full riot gear form an armoured corridor along Green Street and the Millwall fans are marched into the ground without being able to interact with their surroundings in any way. Last night the police didn't bother do that citing a lack of resources due to Climate Camp as an excuse. As a result both sets of fans were allowed to congregate and get drunk by West Ham Tube Station breaking the golden rule of football policing. At around 18:00 this unsurprisingly led to clashes between the two groups of fans which quickly developed into a full scale riot engulfing most of the area in and around the Upton Park Stadium.

The good news is that aside from the man who was stabbed all the rioters who still have jobs turned up for work this morning feeling much more productive after being boosted by the adrenaline and excitement of the previous night. Those without jobs are expected to head down to help the police with their Croydon Community Style Policing of the Climate Camp which apparently "surprised" the police by setting up in Blackheath, South East London right on Millwall's home turf. Personally I wouldn't be too shocked if the whole thing gets a little bit rapey by the end of the week.

Today has also revealed the real reason behind British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday. It was simply a cover for a low key but high level meeting between a US negotiating team and an Israeli negotiating team which Britain offered to host in the hope of finding out about the Kosher Nostra case. The only item on the agenda was the issue of Israel's illegal settlements on the West Bank. As a lot of effort has been made to keep this meeting discreet it is difficult to find out how it is progressing. Given the run up to these talks I for one am not holding my breath because the Israeli's have long been looking on them as the moment the US drops it's opposition to Israel's, well I believe war crime is the correct term.