No surprises

Just watched the Biden - Palin debate on Youtube, where the kind people at CSPAN have placed it.

My verdict: not interesting enough to recommend watching it if you're not a political junkie. I'll try to sum up in 100 words or less.

Palin: fixed plastic smile, reading from cue cards, cutesy sub-Bush linguistics, gee folks, isn't it great the cameras are on me and I'm not f***ing up. Iraq: the surge is working.

Biden: variety of expressions, talking style ranging from punchy to verbose, sometimes I trips over my own sentences. Earnestly frank rather than belligerent. Iraq: them guys was wrong, wrong, wrong.

If this changed anybody's mind I'd be very surprised. It did show that Palin can get through without making any major gaffes on a good day but rumours from one of her Alaska opponents that she was a formidable debater were not substantiated in any way whatsoever.

As I say, not exciting. I'm getting more kicks out of the BBC's predictions for Gordon Brown's reshuffle. Of which more soon...