On 27 August a suicide bomber called Abdullah Hassan Tali Asiri nearly killed the Deputy Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Muhammed bin Nayif. The Prince received minor injuries; the bomber was blown in half. Several aspects of this under-reported incident are noteworthy.

Temporarily coshed by the list of achievements reeled off by Gordon Brown, I turned this morning to one of the best political commentators for enlightenment.

Several parliamentary sketch writers evidently had an amusing day watching Peter Mandelson do his stage villian turned saviour act at Brighton in front of a puce-pink backdrop. On the clips I watched on TV Mandelson looked incredibly wooden, with a delivery that was hammy and halting by turns.

I am sure Joshua will have something revealing to say about the arrest in Switzerland of the fugitive film director Roman Polanski in conjunction with a request from the authorities in California.

Part of my weekend was spent reading David Galula's Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: Theory and Practice. Galula fought in the wartime resistance and then in Indochina and Algeria, with periods as a military liaison officer based in Hong Kong.

As I point out in my column in the October issue of the magazine, sanctions ain't what they used to be. They are more like giving a corporation a highly contagious disease, so that, for example, India's Reliance oil company has to weigh up whether to ship 30,000 barrels of gasoline to the mullahs, or forfeit a US$500 million contract to supply jet fuel to New York's JFK airport.