Very Clean

My apologies, commenters, I had urgent business in the French Alps. Very clean. Now in Geneva Airport, also clean. Normal service will resume when I am back in dirty Blighty.

All Aboard the Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman stories are like buses - nothing for hours then two come along at once.

Monbiot v Burchill

George Monbiot and Julie Burchill have what John Gray would call incommensurable world views. In this case I back Monbiot partly because he is right and partly because Burchill is an experience rather than a proposition. You can't actually agree with her any more than you can agree with a Keith Richards solo. Monbiot rightly defends hypocrisy as better than cynicism or, as he should have said, as the tribute vice pays to virtue. I'm less keen on his statement 'Greens have high aspirations - they want to live more ethically...'. Actually, I'd rather they didn't. If global warming is happening, I want practical people, engineers basically, to put it right, not high-minded guilt fiends. If the oxygen masks have come down and the plane's in a steep dive, I for one am not going to ask the pilot to clarify his position on the activities of Big Pharma in Africa. The word 'ethics' tends to make people think in packages which is one reason why the Greens keep getting it wrong. If they'd worked out some years ago - as, I gather, Monbiot is now beginning to do - that nuclear was our only hope, then we'd be a little bit further away from catastrophe than we currently are. But nuclear was a big part of the 'unethical' package so it never happened. Ethics are what you do, not what you say.

The Mystery of the Primark Barfers

It's summer and, once again, I am seeing TV pictures of dumpy British Primark babes leering, barfing and falling over on some island in the Med. Is the issue, why do our young drink so much? Or is it, why do they behave so vilely when they do drink? The joys of drunkenly sitting and staring into the middle distance seem to have passed them by. But, seriously, why does this happen? They can't all be from Glasgow East.

Wallace Stevens the Inexhaustible

I introduced John Gray to Wallace Stevens some time ago, since when he appears, typically, to have become a world class Stevens scholar. An email arrives from John - 'Stevens is inexhaustible.' In celebration of this unassailable truth, I suggest you exhaust yourself with this great and lovely thing.

Jenkins on Toynbee

This is a fine article by Simon Jenkins about our undemocratic way of choosing Prime Ministers. It contains the following: 'The thesis, much espoused by Guardian contributors, that Brown has totally changed and thus polluted their constancy of judgment is ludicrous. Their former presentation - indeed, eulogising - of him was plain wrong.' Quite. This is is plainly aimed at Polly Toynbee and others - remarkable in view of the fact that Jenkins is writing in The Guardian.

On Sport

I notice 'Andy' Burnham, the sports minister, says we are 'about to enter a glorious new era for British sport.' This will, presumably, be like the glorious new era for British cinema that was promised after the success of Chariots of Fire. Or not - but, either way, politicians in a democracy should never use the word 'glorious'. It is, like the word 'people's', tainted by association with murderous tyrannies. But, with the Beijing running and jumping contest about to start, what about this sport thing? Hamish McRae mounts a stout defence of sport as a good which is, I suppose, fair enough. There is, however, a big difference between the sport McRae is defending and the grotesque, bloated, politically-compromised corruption-fest the Olympics has become. McRae also says people who cycle 'may not think of themselves as taking part in a sport, but in a way they are.' I can see what he means but, by the same logic, couldn't I argue that I am taking part in a sport - motor racing - when I drive? Exercise and sport are often confused and I suspect it is this confusion that has inflated the Olympics to its present absurd proportions. Exercise is good for you, no question. Sport is a specific sub-set of exercise involving competition. This does not mean sport is good for you except to the extent that it helps you exercise. In fact, some sports - notably marathon running and snooker - are very bad for you. Also, if you need sport to make you exercise, then it may discourage you because it is harder to organise than simply exercising on your own. It is the idea of exercise and therefore sport as an unconditional good that has made the Olympics into the sacred lunacy it has become. Preening themselves in the glory of their unchallengeable virtue, the Olympics boosters are the Pharisees of the cult of exercise. The fact that this cult has failed - people have got fatter and sicker faster than ever since the workout cult go going in the seventies - and the fact that the Olympics is just another excuse to flake out in front of the TV are beside the point. We must bow down before the keepers of the flame.

Under the Bed

Bill Clinton says Gordon Brown has 'a big brain and a good heart.' I wonder whose they were and where he keeps them. Peter Ackroyd used to boast he had the body of a fourteen-year-old girl. He kept it under his bed. 

Meanwhile, over at Boris's Puzzle Palace...

That's it. It's official. Nothing makes sense.

Obama: Just Another Politician?

I see Obama is trimming on the matter of offshore drilling. You read it here first. In spite of his European Feel the Love tour, it is clear that, since the primaries, Obama has been turning gradually into just another politician . This is called moving to the centre, but, like everything ever dreamed up by policy wonks and marketing peons, it doesn't work. McCain is moving ahead. I note that Guido and Danny Finkelstein are divided on McCain's tactics; the former thinking that the negative ads are working in the heartland, the latter believing they are self-destructive. The key ad is this one which starts by saying Obama is 'the biggest celebrity in the world'.  This is, indeed, a startling manoeuvre since a cynic might think that the American masses would want to be led by a Paris Hilton or Britney Spears surrogate. But, in fact, they don't. I tend to think, therefore, that Guido has a point; McCain is playing to Obama's weaknesses and it's working. The response should be strength, but Obama's wonks have evidently gone for feeble trimming. Much more of this and he'll lose, which will, in the circumstances, be a remarkable achievement.