Visitors arriving at Heathrow Airport are now greeted with the graffito: "Great Britain Welcomes Careful Terrorists". In the heart of the city, relentless, screaming police sirens and the gabble of foreign languages are an integral part of the backing soundtrack of London's summer. However, bombers or no bombers, the UK does not feel like a country at war. Perhaps it's a question of approach. While Americans tend to think the situation is always serious, but not hopeless, the English think the situation is hopeless, but not serious.

Back here in wonderful Absurdistan nothing is different, but everything's changed: it's like being in a David Attenborough film about human nature in action. The Democrats claimed the "new" airport has hired a firm to put in sophisticated electrical equipment, which only had experience in making ice and providing massage; the Election Commission was given a tonking for allegedly hiring a company to provide arm bands that only had experience in manufacturing insecticides; and our leader was upcountry claiming how much he had helped the farmers while a huge crowd of rural workers was in town besieging the Agricultural Ministry claiming that he most certainly hadn't.

Meanwhile, the Thai Rak Thai Party was seething over a senate hopeful because he had urged the public to keep a close eye on the government, which, one would have thought, was the whole point of being a senator in the first place.

If there's an Irish component to any this I think I'll retire.

LLL

Thaksin supporters in Roi Et claim that it's just not worth the Democrats even campaigning in the area. Perhaps they have a point. After all, it's a mere statistical curiosity that the Democrats don't have enough MPs north of Bangkok to sing a duet.

LLL

Wouldn't it be great, suggested a potential candidate for our New Chivalry Party (the party that pledges to put "the chap back in chaperone"), if we could empty the Senate and populate it with the ordinary people of Thailand. Engineers, nurses, teachers and welders could all take a turn, like jury duty. The point being, that if you take politics out of the hands of professional politicians, you'd get a much better picture of what was going on.

Ever wonder why anyone would want to be a politician in the first place? Well, imagine lying in bed every night and asking yourself, "Did I really want to help out, or did I just fancy myself in a huge car with a convoy?" and you will get some idea of the constant, ruthless self-examination that comes with being an unimaginably rich politician. And, if Thai Rak Thai ever implodes it will be because of irreconcilable similarities.

LLL

Bands playing in London this weekend:

Charlie and the Cock-Up Factory

Pink Fraud

Four Tumbling Bastards.

Massive sign outside a house in Chelsea:

"Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica for sale. Wife knows everything."

LLL

As you may have read, in just four years, China will have designed, built and opened an airport terminal larger than all the terminals at London Heathrow combined. That's rather less time than the politicians spent arguing about the roof tiles at Thailand's new Terminal 2 at Cobra Swamp over champagne and oysters. There are 40,000 men on the Beijing site. Seriously busy ants. The money's bollocks, but better than anything they've ever had before. Still, many of my colleagues still think China is a huge riot waiting to happen. What's more, about 10,400 sq km of land turns to sand each year, and nearly a fifth of mainland China is now desert. The nearest sand dune is now less than 120 km from Beijing.

LLL

American politics is about to get interesting. Kinky Friedman, the "legendary country singer and detective novelist" is running to be the governor of Texas as a "compassionate redneck".

"My plan is to bring back the Ten Commandments and call them the Ten Suggestions. I'm for gay marriage - they have as much right to be as miserable as the rest of us."

LLL

Quotables:

Libyan leader Mu'ammar Gadhafi, April 10, 2006:

"Europe is soon to become Islamic. We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades ... Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims."

New sub-editor joining The Nation: "I expected there to be more shouting."

An Aussie tourist visiting Italy: "Many people ask where we can find the money to save Venice. To judge from the price of a cup of coffee in St Mark's Square, many of us already have."

"The only thing A-list actors find harder to bear than being ignored in public is being observed in private." Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times.

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," writes San Francisco neuro-psychiatrist, Louann Brizendine. Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."

Sunday thought:

In "Salvage", the third play in the Utopia trilogy, the writer Tom Stoppard makes the character Herzen puncture the exuberant anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in a needle-sharp exchange.

Bakunin: "Left to themselves, people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they'd create a completely new kind of society if only people weren't so blind, stupid and selfish."

Herzen: "Is that the same people or different people?"

Compiled by Roger Beaumont