Rhodes on driverless cars, electricity from the Sahara and the public's verdict on Partygate

It is reported that within five years, the world’s longest undersea cable will connect a vast array of solar panels in the Sahara Desert to a terminal in Devon, supplying electricity directly into Britain’s grid.

This sounds fine and dandy - so long as we don't fall out with a global superpower that possesses large numbers of nuclear submarines equipped with cable-cutting devices. What could possibly go wrong?

Still on techno-progress, I cannot wait for the advent of driverless cars, especially now that the Highway Code says that a) drivers will be able to read or watch movies while the car does the driving and b) insurance companies will be responsible for any gizmo-related crashes. I can understand why anyone would want a driverless car. What I can't understand is why any insurance company would insure one.

Ten days to go to the May 5 local council elections, when we find out how big a deal Partygate really is. Most pundits tell us that the Tories will be trounced, thanks to Boris Johnson's disgrace.

Frankly, I'm surprised he has lasted this long.

Before he was elected, I warned that the prospect of Boris as Tory leader was “chilling”. I rated him as “a total wazzock . . . clearly unsuited for serious stuff”. And yet he went on to become the Tories' best vote winner since Margaret Thatcher. That's why the Opposition want him gone. They may hate him but they also fear him. And thus Partygate, initially ignored by the police, has been elevated to the crime of the century.

The mob howls in the Commons. We recognise them; the adulterers, the drink-drivers, the expenses-fiddlers, the anti-Semites, the ones who took money from lobbyists or foreign governments, all gasping and stretching their eyes with faux-outrage and pretending that Boris's encounter with a cake was worse, far worse, than their assorted sins.

If they can only keep the get-Boris howling going for another ten days, who knows how many council seats the Tories may lose? Labour may sweep the board. But taking the Great British Electorate for granted has often led to disappointment. And I have just the slightest suspicion that Joe Public suspects Partygate is more about political point-scoring than any real concern about standards in public life. In ten days we'll know.