Tom Hamilton complains about being spammed by Naomi Klein’s people, looking for publicity for her latest volume of designer politics. (Exactly as I didn’t with Peter Cook’s book back here, I am going to divine without reading it that Klein’s book will be rubbish.) From Tom’s comments, it seems, they also pestered Tim Worstall, Mr Eugenides, and Devil’s Kitchen; but they didn’t bother me. I feel a bit like a straight bloke finding out that one of his closest male friends is a wildly promiscuous homosexual and then realizing that said friend has never made a pass at him.

Like a bunch of other bloggers, however, I did get a free trial of the new Toshiba Tecra A8 laptop and I’ll be reviewing that soon. They said I could say anything I wanted to about it, and I will—so I don’t even have to publish a Worstall-style disclosure—but my latest freebie is different.

Regulars here will know that I say anything I want to about digital cameras and it’s often not nice, but I am about to be sorely tested. Panasonic phoned me this afternoon to invite me to try out their new dSLR and, in return, they’re going to give me a free digital camera. Result! Despite this, I promise that if the Panasonic SLR is crap then I’ll say so.