Simon Goodley's Diary

Boy, you just have to admire the front of George Bush's mouthpiece, Scott McClellan, who is busy fighting a media that seems incapable of resisting the temptation to bash his boss. Lord knows why they'd want to snipe at the handling of the Katrina aftermath, but damaging tales continue to appear in the papers, such as how firemen who have volunteered to help are still awaiting orders. "On the news every night you hear [hurricane victims say], 'How come everybody forgot us?'," fireman Joseph Manning tells the Los Angeles Times. "We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer." Meanwhile the Salt Lake Tribune reports that a team of 50 firemen was flown to Louisiana on Monday with the sole mission of standing next to Bush as he made his tour. No wonder that Scott was forced to rap journalists six times for playing the "blame game" (like his boss, Scott is so linguistically dexterous that he even uses the verb: "you're blame-gaming"). However, as Salon.com points out, this is a touch disingenuous. One "senior Bush official" has been mischievously planting stories that the governor of Louisiana (who just happens to be a Democrat) had carelessly failed to declare a state of emergency. Oh really? In fact Governor Kathleen Blanco was not to blame, having done so on August 26 while Bush was on holiday. Poor show.

· Is the parliamentary gift shop the setting where the country's greatest ironists hone their skills? The store has just started selling teddy bears dressed in hoodies (with the portcullis logo emblazoned on the front) and after those (painful) efforts to ban the blasted tops, the innocent-looking toys have gained a predictable moniker. The new "Asbo bears" are proving quite a hit, with one researcher, who was making a purchase, overheard asking for: "The one on the left, with his arm up, like he's just about to deck someone." Very cuddly.

· A swift U-turn by Alex Gilady, the Israeli International Olympic Committee member who is on the overseeing commission for London 2012. You'll recall that Gilady sent out a press release stating his appointment was interesting "considering the anti-semitic expressions of the mayor of London" and (predictably) he's now desperately back-tracking. In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle he observes: "I do not think it's appropriate for me in my capacity as an IOC official to comment on or criticise Mr Livingstone." You don't say. Now Gilady's also called the mayor's office to insist that this new line is his true position. Why didn't he just say so in the first place?

· We haven't quite figured out how this might play out in the Tory leadership election, but a curious piece of gossip arrives. Apparently Tony Blair has told his former chief political adviser, Sally Morgan, that David Cameron is his natural successor. Not sure he specified of what exactly, so make of that what you will.

· With the start of today's final Ashes Test being billed as "England's biggest sports game since 1966", the nation naturally expected its players to spend every hour of yesterday busily preparing. Not so England's butter-fingered batsman Kevin Pietersen, who along with Aussie leg-spinner Shane Warne visited the head office of bookmaker Cantor Index yesterday afternoon. There, they answered phones and chatted to punters as part of a charity bash. An odd day to choose. And Pietersen really should have been practising his catching.

· We finish (in more ways than one) with the now obligatory Kevin McNally surveillance. Kevin was spotted playing tennis in Chiswick last week and was ostentatiously sporting a brace of pony tails. Quite frankly, no McNally solecism, either sartorial or with his coiffure, surprises us any longer, so we'll now lay off Kevin before this series grates (any more).