charged? He was never charged because a) Nothing happened as a consequence (apart from people like you still banging on about it 22 years later). b) The police, like most sensible people, can see that he was only fobbing off a nuisance schoolfriend. Even Peter Risdon (blogger "Freeborn John") the guy who actually made the recording, says: "My own feeling is that Johnson was just going along with Guppy, humouring him, and had no intention of helping. I knew Guppy at that time and he was forever coming up with plans that he would insist on explaining to people, often soliciting their involvement in some way. Humouring him was the quickest way to get it over with." But the way they have surrendered most of what they stand for while being in this coalition has not really sold the idea of some sort of proportional representation (which would produce more coalitions...) It is if you *are* a person. And however you might aspire to the impersonal, the objective, doesn't alter that. And how much more *personal* is political leadership: the very concept of a leader is noihing other than *personal*. Perhaps "personal" is standing here for something like charisma - still a massive factor in politics, especially these days. Most popular on the Guardian Today in pictures After advising tourists against travel to the cities of Jammu and Srinagar for nearly 20 years, the Foreign Office has lifted its guidelines after a fall in violence. So, Dal Lake and part