In Russia this week they had the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, boasting about shooting a tiger. In the US they found themselves a prospective vice-president who has most of a grizzly bear strewn across her sofa, including the head. In Britain we were wringing our hands because some members of our Armed Forces, the most iconic in the world, will occasionally get bits of an already dead Canadian bear and balance it on their heads.

“Britain!” as Tom Baker used to say. “Britain! Britain! Britain!” Could this happen anywhere else? Would another nation even begin to care? War in Iraq, 3,000 troops shuffling a monstrous dynamo across the Taleban heartlands, and still Baroness Taylor of Bolton, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, finds time to sit down with a group that chased the Prince of Wales around the country in a bear costume (them, not him) and pretend that they aren't utter, screaming cranks.

This would be People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which is desperate for the Guards regiments to ditch the bearskin, worn for the past 200 years. I followed the campaign with interest when I wrote the People column in this newspaper, because: (a) it was nuts; and (b) the Peta press office would answer any question whatsoever, entirely sincerely, apparently without realising we were taking the mick.

I'm sorry, Peta people. Perhaps I wasn't treating you very ethically. That time we called up, and offered to find you an actual dead bear for your bear man to wear? Yes. You were on speaker-phone.

In the US and Canada, I'm told, Peta actually does some sensible stuff. Recently, it has had battery hens in its sights. (Not literally.) In this country, it's bears, bears, bears.

For the love of God, why? The Army doesn't kill bears. The MoD has bought a total of 51 bearskins since 2005. The Canadian Government culls 10,000 a year, on ecological grounds. These are spare bears. They're effectively roadkill. Why is this a priority? Why has Ricky Gervais, of all people, written to Gordon Brown about it? Did I miss the point when we all became vegetarians and stopped wearing leather?

For now, the MoD seems to be stalling. Synthetic alternatives, a press officer says, “have all flopped, literally”. Bearskin is good at keeping the rain off. That's probably why bears wear it. But don't think that the rest of the world doesn't notice this stuff. In opinion pages across the globe, we are at present getting the sort of look that you might give your grandmother if you spotted her on the bus with 15 cats. The Germans in particular, the MoD says, “are distraught”. According to a writer in the Canadian National Post, “Britain's record on the defence of cultural integrity is not a strong one these days.” Too right.

Searching for...

Here at The Times, the online newsdesk sends out e-mails every day to show us which internet searches are attracting readers to the paper's website. “Keegan resignation”, “Google Chrome”, “Lily Allen drunk”, that sort of thing. When this began a couple of years ago, I used to search for “Dominic Kennedy's shoes” for ten minutes a day to see if I could get our investigations editor (Dominic), who sits at the next desk along, on the list. It never worked. Not sure why.

But this list is a particularly useful service, I realise, when you are on holiday, especially if your wife has a special sigh that she uses whenever you read a newspaper on the beach. With a spot of lateral thinking, and the odd glance at other news alerts, it allows you to maintain an accurate picture of world events. You just have to check your e-mail slyly whenever she goes for a swim.

Well, fairly accurate. I won't bore you with the exact misapprehensions under which I laboured for most of last weekend, but it was a surprise to learn, eventually, that New Orleans was still standing and that something terribly scandalous hadn't happened to Michael Palin in Bristol.

...Mrs Right

The oddest thing about Sarah Palin, now that I'm up to speed, isn't the woman herself, but the reaction to her. The Republicans have made a goddess out of her already. It is as if they were waiting for one.

I was reading Ferdinand Mount's autobiography Cold Cream on holiday, and his recollections of Margaret Thatcher reminded me of just how gooey the Right is prepared to go over the right kind of unobtainable woman. It's not just worship, it's a weird sort of sexy worship. Alan Hollinghurst nails it in The Line of Beauty. Maggie-love and Palin-love are a lot like Kylie-love at the nightclub G-A-Y.

Mrs Palin I can almost understand. For a man of my generation, though, Baroness Thatcher as any sort of sex icon remains a deeply troubling notion. If we think of the Iron Lady and sex in the same thought, we are probably thinking of Austin Powers trying to resist the lure of the Fembots. “Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!” Maybe he just swung to the left.

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