Its worth it.

Online polls although completely unreliable and open to loading, remember the BBCs poll for the greatest ever song, are a low cost online tool to garner buy in from the targeted clients and customers. Also they can be used as a cheap research crutch to support some man in the pub position. They can also be used as Mick on Slugger points out to encourage public opinion in a given direction.

Clear? Well now be a good citizen and express your position on Lisburn City Councils plan for a new retail development. There is an online poll you can vote on.

www.lisburncity.gov.uk/sprucefield-development-poll

Good and bad news

While its nice that an African-American man can get elected to the White House, I'm still skeptical on Obama "changes". His monstrous u-turns on, for example Palestine, lends me to suspect he may be just another politician. I hope to be proved wrong.

What got me passionate about this election and pro-Obama was the clown that was running as VP on the republican ticket, Sarah Palin. Thankfully the wisdom of American voters mean she won't get within sniping distance of the Oval Office.

As for her being a 2012 candidate - no hope. Her only positive attribute, her looks, are the one asset that will wither with experience. Palin will be no more than a quirky footnote in American history in four years.

On a sadder note, proposition R, the renaming of the San Francisco Water Treatment Centre, which we reported in June, to the George W Bush Sewage Works was defeated. San Franers are speculating that nobody in the city was keen on anything being named after a man whom they have made their feelings on clear in successive elections