I found yesterday’s news from the Netherlands rather alarming.

Apart from the fact that Mabel is a personal friend of mine and it’s always very unpleasant when people you know get dragged through the media this way, it’s enough to make me wonder what will happen if I ever get back into electoral politics (as I genuinely hope to do some day). Will my ex-girlfriends (or indeed my never-quite-girlfriends) be hounded by the media? Will investigative journalists trawl through my legacy of writing for fanzines and Usenet posts, to quote from my ill-considered rantings of ten to fifteen years before?

Of course, probably the answer is that I am unlikely to be in contention for anything famous enough for that sort of thing (and certainly not looking to marry into royalty or become governor of California). But it’s an unnerving feeling all the same.