NOW here's a funny thing. After a horrid, torrid week in which all sorts of colourful allegations have been thrown at the Government, none of it appears to have stuck. The ordure has slipped off Teflon Tony, with seven out of ten voters expressing support for the Prime Minister in an ICM poll.

What has become known as the Mittal affair, steelgate or, to quote Teflon Tone himself, "garbagegate", has apparently not harmed the Government at all.

In a sense this is not surprising. Most people probably don't understand this affair; either that or they've taken a sniff and don't report anything unpleasant lurking beneath their nostrils.

Here's the nub of this scandal/piece of nothing (delete according to political preference or general inclination): Tony Blair supported a bid by an Indian steel tycoon, Lakshmi Mittal, to take over Romania's previously state-owned steel industry.

Nothing much wrong with that - except that Mr Blair appears not to have been entirely honest about the matter, or perhaps the troublesome details just slipped his mind. Alleged bad smell number one concerned the fact that Mr Mittal had donated £125,000 to the Labour Party. Alleged stink number two arose from Mr Blair's assertion that Mr Mittal's LNM company was British. In fact, it is based in the Caribbean in the Dutch Antilles.

This issue has now been poked many times and various other malodorous fragrances have arisen, but nothing to make the voters hold their noses.

There are a number of explanations for this. The biggest and most likely one - and I know I shouldn't be saying this - is that this is the sort of issue to excite journalists more than ordinary people. Nothing more enlivens a political reporter's dull day than a whiff of scandal; and nothing better pleases many newspapers than a chance to have a go at Labour, especially after too long spent being complimentary about Mr Blair.

Once a story has become an affair, or has had a "gate" attached to it in honour of one of journalism's more boring traditions, it becomes an issue that is kept in the headlines. Sometimes such attention is important and relevant; at other times, a lot of hot air seems to be spent keeping the matter in the public eye.

I suspect many don't really care about this story at all. At best (or worst), it's too complicated. And anyway, where's the sex or the money in brown envelopes?

But Teflon Tone does not escape without some scratches on his non-stick surface, mainly because the story emerged in dribs and drabs (mostly drab), and there are suspicions that the whole truth was not always to hand.

New Labour's reputation for spin strikes me as over-rated, mainly because controversial issues are often handled so badly. All that spinning doesn't seem to get them very far.

As to whether or not Mr Blair has been lying, let's just leave the last word to that great authority on humanity, Homer Simpson: "Marge, it takes two to lie - one to lie and one to listen."

WHAT a lot of noise about the "metric martyrs", the market stall traders who lost their fight to sell goods in pounds and ounces. "Europe smashes 1,000 years of British history" said the Daily Express; "Bananas" said The Sun.

I don't understand this one at all. What a lot of fuss about nothing much. There are more important issues than what weight we buy our fruit and veg in. Everyone always calls on older people for support on this matter, but generations of children have grown up knowing only metric measurements. What about them?

Updated: 11:17 Thursday, February 21, 2002