I found myself wondering what happened to slow cookers the other day, a feature of late Seventies domestic life which – though my memories are hazy – I recall being touted as a gadget that would simultaneously halve your electricity bill and quadruple your standing as a housewife and mother (it was the Seventies, remember).

Motoring along the quiet residential streets close to Fulham FC early on Sunday morning, I suddenly felt rather ludicrous. Firstly, it was no day for driving. It had snowed overnight, and the road was treacherous with sleet. It was cold enough to keep my puffa jacket on, even inside the car.

Prepare for a general election next year – if not in the spring, certainly by the autumn. Alistair Darling's temporary tax giveaways (much of which – especially the VAT reductions – will be clawed back in 13 months time) has all the hallmarks of addressing the political rather than the economic cycle.

When even the film industry begins to worry about our ability to concentrate, it is time to start worrying. Identifying what he calls a "snack-culture sensibility", David Kirkpatrick, the former president of Paramount Pictures, has announced a joint venture with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to look at what happens to stories in our restless, digital age.

The decision by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to commission a study into the impact of an amnesty for illegal immigrants has not gone down well in Westminster. Mr Johnson's party leader, David Cameron, has refused to endorse the idea, and the Immigration minister, Phil Woolas, has described Mr Johnson as both "naive in the extreme" and a "nincompoop".

Some names are hopelessly misleading. "Pre-Budget report" sounds like it belongs in some dull accountancy textbook. But make no mistake, the fiscal package unveiled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons yesterday under that insipid name was a colossal and highly risky piece of economic engineering. The implications are anything but dull, for upon it hang the economic future of this country – and, quite probably, the shape of the next government.

I remember looking up as the noisy family burst into the railway carriage – and immediately noticing that one of the boys had the unmistakable countenance created by an extra 21st chromosome, otherwise known as Down Syndrome. Unmistakable, yes, but I had never before seen the condition in the flesh, and felt a frisson of shock and discomfort.

Prosecutors in New York urged a jury yesterday to convict a former actor from The Sopranos of second degree murder for his part in a botched prescription medicines burglary nearly two years ago that ended in a gunfight and the killing of an off-duty police officer.

A newspaper published by China's ruling Communist Party has labelled the latest Guns N' Roses album as an attack on the Chinese nation.

The political map of Venezuela has been redrawn, after results from state and local elections showed the opposition to Hugo Chavez's leftist "revolution" was sweeping back to power in the capital, Caracas, and its three most populous states.