So - breaking news, unless you were listening to David Tennant and Catherine Tate's stint on Radio 2 this morning - Tate is to return to Doctor Who in one of the specials this year.

You know I'd only be blogging this one if I was cross about it. And cross I am. Why? Is it because of the "spoiler"? Lord, no. We all know Russell T. Davies will have it splashed all over the Radio Times long before we get to be surprised by it.

And it's not that I didn't like Tate's contribution to the show either. After a pretty dreadful start she really grew on me.

No, here's my gripe: it's that last year we had to sit through fifteen bloody minutes of her character being written out of the series forever (she can NEVER REMEMBER THE DOCTOR or she'll DIE!!!), which felt pretty pointless at the time. But now, knowing that she's going to come back after all, I'm wondering why oh why oh why did we have to sit through it AT ALL????

The same happened with Rose ("will I ever see you again?" *close up on Rose's weepy teary face* "you can't..." *another long lingering close up of Rose's weepy teary face*) - written out FOREVER in a parallel universe. Only to pop up again after a little while.

And then there was Martha, who gets a lengthy tedious leaving scene every time she turns up only to feature yet again, on one occasion actually in the next episode.

Oh, not to mention the Daleks - killed off FORVER by being wiped from history, forcing writers to come up with increasingly tenuous reasons for their survival when they inevitably appear again because the kids would get upset if they didn't. Ditto the Cybermen. We saw the Master's body incinerated, but I'll bet you he'll be cropping up at some point in the near future.

It's like Russell T. Davies has an obsessive compulsive need to kill his characters off COMPLETELY UTTERLY DEAD, then like some hyperactive playground kid realised they're not dead after all. He doesn't seem to realise that dramatic exits a) only really work once and b) don't work at all with the benefit of the hindsight of knowing that they weren't really exits after all. And c) aren't all that dramatic when they happen every bloody episode.

Just once in a while I'd love it if a somebody said "well, bye Doctor, see you around" and the episode ended STRAIGHT AWAY. But that would be efficient writing, something Russell T. Davies has repeatedly proved himself incapable of (except, oddly, when he was still writing for Why Don't You?). I'm longing to be proved wrong, but in tonight's episode, due to be broadcast in a little under an hour, my prediction is that we will meet a whole load of exciting new characters and Russell will have left a good ten minute chunk of the hour-long episode for them all to say goodbye in.

You could be forgiven for not having realised that, as of today, a European Union directive requires all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls for 12 months, since the government have been so sneaky about it (clearly their information is a lot less public that ours).

I have already discussed the worrying implications for people who visit odd websites, and naturally privacy is an issue (you don't want the Home Office knowing about all that Harry Potter porn you've been looking at), but another issue for concern is that the extra storage needed for all this data will be paid for by the Home Office. Which means bigger tax bills all round (one mobile phone company alone is charging the Home Office £875,000 to retain the information).

Obviously in a time of financial crisis we'd all like to avoid this unnecessary cost, so here are a few tips to keep our taxes down and also maintain a modicum of privacy:

1. If you visit a website which lots of other people read, print out the best pages so they can all look at it without building up additional data for internet service providers to store. Or if it's a particularly embarrassing website, get somebody else to print it out for you.

2. Stop using the internet to send messages. Now may well be the time to return to simpler, older methods of communication - in offices, slipping notes across desks, or those whooshy vacuum delivery systems that go through whole buildings, make for methods of communication which simply can't be tracked by the Home Office, and cost the taxpayer nothing. As Young Letter Writer of the Year 1987 I thoroughly advocate the return of the good old-fashioned letter for more personal correspondence.

3. If you absolutely MUST send an email, try to include in it as much information as you can about any terrorist attacks or groups you are aware of. That way it's not a complete waste of money when that email is stored for the next 12 months.

4. If you're going to look at porn, use good old-fashioned pay-per-view channels rather than the internet. That way the Home Office will never find out. Unless you do something stupid like sticking the cost into the Home Secretary's expenses claim...

I seem to be getting a lot of spam these days asking the question "can she have multiple orgasms?". Or rather, a variant of some sort where one of the words is spelled incorrectly: "cann she have multiple orgasms", for instance, or "can she haves multiple orgasms". They always spell "orgasms" right, but then that's probably all they're really thinking about.

I don't look beyond the subject line, because it's functionally equivalent to those terrible panel sessions they have at some of the conferences I go to where the name of the session is a question, and the answer is one word long and obvious (or at least "obvious to those skilled in the art", as IP lawyers would no doubt put it). I'm pretty sure if I start looking at the main message of the spam I'll see that it's been written by a creative director for Razorfish.

If they must start their spam with a question, surely there are more interesting ones in the same general area? "Is she getting multiple orgasms?" for instance. Or even "why isn't she getting multiple orgasms?", if we're going to be pessimistic about her sex life.

Or just skip the question and be honest: "you're rubbish in bed, buy stuff from us so you'll still be rubbish but can blame us instead of your inability to find the clitoris".

A story here about the Home Office's plan to monitor web-browsing habits to build up a database of our very private details. Civil liberties, blah blah, more data to be lost on trains, blah blah, etc etc.

Beyond the whole worrying idea that this level of surveillance is building up detailed private information about all of us, there is an issue here which nobody seems to have mentioned yet - viz. the plain and utter wrongness of the idea that a person's web browsing habits can build up a clear picture of who they are (or to quote Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, "who I'm associated with, perhaps what my politics is, what my religious preference is and shopping habits are").

Okay, in many cases that'll work, because many web users are simple people with simple needs and their browsing habits will be restricted to social networking, news stories, fundamentalist religious websites and ebay. But let's look at those of us who aren't so simple.

Case study #1: let's imagine the Home Office pieced together the character of John Finnemore from his reading habits at the British Library; a cursory sweep through his blog suggests they'd be left with the baffling image of a man whose professional song lyric writing, primarily in the style of by P. G. Wodehouse though possibly influenced by Idi Amin and P. L. Travers, is shared with his enthusiasm for barbed wire (specialising in the area of early US barbed wire patents) and cowology.

Case study #2: as previously discussed, one of the searches that brings readers to this particular blog is the desire to see Harry Potter porn. This was due initially to an unwise post by Mr Aylett, but latterly is something I have become oddly proud of and try to perpetuate with semi-regular mentions of Harry Potter porn. However, I feel it gives a not entirely accurate indication of the content of this blog. Or, to turn that on its head to create a picture of our readers, whilst it might be assumed that they are all literate, intelligent, politically aware writers and Doctor Who fans, a lot of them are in fact just Harry Potter perverts.

Clearly if the Home Office were to start creating databases of the above examples it would be John Finnemore who'd be locked up and our readers who would get off scot free, which is entirely the wrong way round.

I'm told that Bedford's main parish church are going to install a memorial to the BBC.

Bit premature, I wonder?

On the drive from Cambridge to Bedford there is currently a road sign which says "Sign not in use".

Is it any wonder we're in recession?

"I'll let others off first... because I'm balding and insecure."

"And I won't push to get on... because as the hearts in my hair indicate, I can't cope with being a grown-up. Also I can't really see properly because of the fringe."