Apparently the French have 'opted for a left-right battle' in the next round of their elections.
Nonsense. When your coarse-grain democracy that far nobody decided anything. People tried to get what they wanted, which was their own favourite through, and the result is an average of all those votes.
I don't dispute the system. That's how democracy works; you can't please all of the people all of the time, so you try to please a majority of the people for as much of the time as you can. And if you get it wrong, then there'll be another guy along in a few years who'll probably get it wrong in the other direction, and so hopefully the country keeps going.
But the French didn't decide they wanted a left-right contest. That's an average of all their decisions. All you can really say is 'More people wanted left or right than wanted anything else.' Which doesn't tell you much about the French, but does represent the facts...

Should the videos and photographs sent to SBN by the Virginia Tech murderer be shown on television?
On the one hand, it's news. It helps to explain, if not justify, why the young man did as he did. It shows perhaps where society failed him and what the authorities should already have known about him. And it brings in viewers.
On the other hand, the images are ghoulish at best. The killer is getting what he wanted: notoriety. Showing these things could provide an incentive for other people to copy his acts, in the knowledge that they will at least get their message across. In a world where your voice will never be heard or heeded, making the headlines is a powerful temptation.
It is of course up to the broadcasters involved what they do. I hope they take their responsibility seriously, because it is they who must tread the fine lines between news and voyeurism, reporting and encouraging.

So speed cameras only catch people who have paid their road tax and kept their records with the DVLA up-to-date.
Are we surprised?
The problem is, criminals don't obey the law. If you ban guns, the criminals keep theirs. Only the basically law-abiding people hand them in. If you use remote detection to catch people who break the speed limit, then people who use their cars illegally can't be caught. Not a great system, although much better for money-making than policemen.
Does it matter? If only two-thirds of cars can be traced to owners, that's still two-thirds for whom the fine is a real possibility. If two-thirds of people are under th authority of the law, then that two-thirds may perhaps drive more attentively when the cameras are around.
Of course speed cameras have failings!
But if you break the speed limit, you break the law. More than that, it's a stupid and dangerous (to others) thing to do. If speed cameras can't catch criminals who speed, that's no surprise. If they help persuade the majority of drivers to watch what they're doing and minimise the danger they pose, I'm for them.

Diana, Princess of Wales, is possibly the most universally loved person in Britain. Which isn't bad for a dead person.
Everybody loves her. Or at least, everybody gets very sentimental when she's mentioned.
Why?

Diana Spencer grew up in a rich family. Marrying a prince was not the unthinkable it is to most of us.
She did marry Prince Charles, and it was around about then that the British public lost its senses.

Over the next few years, she bacame famous. She visited the needy, spoke to the starving, waved at the poor of all varieties. I can't remember her actually doing much, but it all looked good.

Her marriage was notoriously 'crowded' and with a sense of inevitability it ended. Nobody seemed to notice much, and her now inaccurate title 'Her Royal Highness, Princess of Wales' was attached to her name so firmly that the present Duchess of Cornwall doesn't use it. She paid more attention to her image now that the royal finances had been cut off, but her basic activities remained the same.

After a few years the People's Princess died on a French road whilst being driven too fast by her drunken lover.

The nation went in a display of mourning the like of which had never before been seen, and the scale of which hasn't been seen since. Everyone spoke of how she had cared, the places and people she had visited (but not helped) the way she had 'understood' people.

Given the hypocrisy of her life, commemerating it with a large circular ditch seems rather fitting.