Ah, but that was long ago. That was in the future.

(Title nicked from a poem that has absolutely no connection to this post)

Asking the question:

IS THE Independent, with its aggressively anti-war stance, going to support the anti-war party, the Liberal Democrats?

To which the answer is 'wouldn't it be more of a surprise if it didn't?', The Scotsman either gets its tenses mixed up, or reveals that the entire Liberal Democrat Conference is so stage-managed it's already happened:

Editor Simon Kelner appeared on the first day of the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth on Monday, to chair a Q&A with Charles Kennedy.

Which will no doubt have very little effect on the plans of everyone I know who's heading down to Bournemouth next week. After all, the conference itself only gets in the way of that important 'networking'.