Commentariat

Times Guest contributors

A hard-working – and Labour-voting – friend of mine is absolutely clear what
she will do if Gordon Brown brings in the new top rate of tax of 45p in the
pound, announced in the prebudget report. She will negotiate with her
company a “salary sacrifice”, ie, a large wage cut balanced by additional
pension contributions. Alternatively, she will work a three-day or four-day
week. Anything but pay more income tax.

Liberty is always a rollercoaster ride and last week was more so than most. As
an organisation dedicated to protecting civil liberties we began defending
the free speech of Sun journalist and former Talksport radio presenter Jon
Gaunt. He once thought me “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, but Britain
it seems, is even more dangerous now. Hired to be a colourful “shock jock”,
he was then summarily terminated for calling a local councillor a “Nazi” and
a “health Nazi” in a heated debate about the wisdom of banning smokers from
fostering children. Is passionate argument and rudeness to be censored? Are
there to be no warnings or second chances in post-Brand/Ross radio?

As the story of the carnage in Mumbai unfolds, it is tempting to dismiss it as
merely another sorry episode in India’s flailing effort to combat terrorism.
Over the past four years Islamist groups have struck in Delhi, Jaipur,
Bangalore and Ahmedabad, among other places. The death toll from terrorism –
not counting at least 195 killed in Mumbai last week – stands at over 4,000,
which gives India the dubious distinction of suffering more terrorist
casualties since 2004 than any country except Iraq.

Yesterday I went to buy a present for a friend’s new baby. With £20 to spend,
I didn’t linger over the baby cashmere, the silver teething rings or even
Baby’s First Lap-top; in the end, I bought a boxed set of Beatrix Potter
books. All human life is there in a format designed to fit perfectly into
tiny hands.

The Queen is going to lead us out of the recession, or so it has been
reported. Presumably this will all be done in some ceremonial way. The
nation will line up behind the state carriage. The band of the Royal Marines
will strike up with Happy Days Are Here Again and one of the Dimblebys will
do the BBC commentary.

MINDS OVER MATTER
I’ve been holed up, writing a book with Mark Augustyn and Chris England – who
also co-write my television show Al Murray’s Happy Hour with me – and it’s
made me realise the only way to write is collaboratively. We sit around, eat
crisps, talk about food, play with props and watch reruns of The Prisoner;
and somehow, at the end of it, a book emerges.

The bright spot on the financial horizon is that – in theory at least – after
a period of disinfection a new, sanitised world awaits us. In culture no
parallel purge is necessary, because the arts in Britain are in blooming
health. We know because arts bodies say so, ministers echo them, and most
critics bring up the chorus. Against their judgments there can be no appeal:
now that the arts have become a state religion, dissent would be sacrilege.

Enid Blyton is back, and all is forgiven. This summer she was voted the
nation’s favourite author. And yesterday the author Anne Fine, the former
Children’s Laureate, winner of every possible prize for her books, came out
powerfully on the side of the Faraway Tree and the Five Find-Outers and Dog
series, with a Radio 4 programme called A Fine Defence of Enid Blyton.

Is it just me, or does it seem odd to you, too, that while folk all over the country are being laid off from their jobs, we're being told that the only way out of this mess is to spend like there's no tomorrow? Hurrah, another 20 per cent off at Marks & Spencer! That will make us forget our woes, and give our ailing economy a boost as well! What's not to like?

There is a way out of this recession. It's one inch high, plastic and costs less than 30p. You flick it or throw it, it's called Mosh, Sato, Helly or Evolution One. It might be red or green and, on rare occasions, multicoloured. It lurks at the bottom of school bags and has been banned by some headteachers.

If Oliver Cromwell's head were to pop up from the chapel floor at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where it is reputed to be buried, the old puritan would be delighted at what he saw. At a time when a good proportion of the nation's youth can be found mooning on Facebook, there is still one group of young people who can purport to be shocked by the sight of nudity. Last week an undergraduate magazine, Vivid, was distributed to 5,000 students with, shock, horror, a topless photograph of a woman Homerton student. The result? General outrage.

Last month Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, admitted that he
thought Islam should be treated more sensitively than other religions. As
the London-based publisher of The Jewel of Medina (the novel about Muhammad
and his youngest wife Aisha) could tell you, it can pay to be careful.
Gibson Square had its London offices firebombed just before publication. But
this is no time to accept any kind of censorship - whether self-imposed or
worse.

As the credit crunch sinks its spiky gnashers ever deeper into Britain’s
single remaining financial buttock, the Government and its loyal Opposition
have been pondering whether to spend or save our way out of their trouble.

What’s wrong with this? “The last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix
Experience was found dead in an hotel room in Portland, Oregon, while on a
US tour. Mitch Mitchell, 61… appeared to have died from natural causes.
Hendrix’s stepsister, Janie, said, ‘His role in shaping the sound of the
Jimi Hendrix Experience cannot be underestimated’. ” (News in brief,
November 14.)

The first Christmas card of the year has arrived…and what’s this, it’s from
the Royal Mail. It has a cheery red delivery van swooping over snowy slopes
with a gaggle of acrobatic postmen spelling out: “We’re all about you this
Christmas.” Inside there’s a load of guff about what to do if they have to
leave a “sorry you were out card”. As in my case it would be more
appropriate if they left a “sorry you were upstairs card”, I was interested
to read that their generosity extends to waiving the 50p charge they usually
make for the local collect scheme, where you find the post that they failed
to get to your home now lurking in your local post office.

I'm not entirely sure, I must admit, what dear old Boris Johnson means when he worries that Londoners live like Hobbits. I confess that I've never been able to get to grips with Tolkien's masterpiece, so the precise living arrangements of Hobbits are a tad mysterious to me. Yet I suspect some confusion in the Johnson cranium: I sense that “living like Hobbits” means that we're all cramped and huddled together, our spirits burdened by the absence of cat-swinging room.

Imagine the international outrage if the now-famous Somali pirates - in a fit of pique over an attempted hostage rescue, perhaps - decided to blow up their latest haul, the Saudi supertanker

It is a basic rule of democracy that the person who wins always deserves to. The same is true in competition. If no rules have been broken, the winner deserves their victory. So there is no doubt that John Sergeant deserves his place in Strictly Come Dancing. And no doubt either that it's time to get rid of him.

I am not into Eastern mysticism, but I find myself fretting over the architectural karma that will effuse from the walls of The Grove country house hotel in Watford if it is picked to stage the follow-up next spring to the emergency G20 summit. Far from sorting out the world's economic problems there, I fear there is a risk that Messrs Obama, Brown and the others might flip and reorganise the global economy along the lines of British Rail.

All hail the whistleblowers, our beloved contemporary heroes! How we admire the courage, the risk, the selflessness as these Davids topple the ruthless Goliaths; how we laud their sacrifice as they expose the cheats of Enron or the tyrannies of Abu Ghraib or the secret movement of nuclear weapons.

I feel slightly fraudulent. I was under the impression you needed more than two O levels to get to university. My education consisted of attending school for the minimum time required by the law. I was encouraged by Winston Churchill, who once said: “My education was interrupted only by my schooling.”

Museums may present the past, but they are above all acts of faith in the future. Objects prized by one generation are given, to be freely studied and enjoyed by those who come after, making every one of our public museums and galleries - and Britain is uniquely rich in them - a house of gifts. And only through gifts can they survive and flourish.

Crucial moments in history call for great leaders. So it was last month that Tottenham Hotspur - bottom of the Barclays Premier League, without a win all season and heading for relegation - appointed Harry Redknapp as manager.

For a paid-up glutton like me, the job of reviewing the latest cookbooks is one of the most pleasurable of the year. You try, you really do, to give some of the recipes a go, you dwell lasciviously on what can only be described as food porn in the way of the photography.

This is a sad time for South Africa. Miriam Makeba's death on Monday came as a great shock to me, and there is a sense of devastation here. There are some people you think are indestructible, with whom it is impossible to associate mortality, and she was one of those. We believed she had always been with us and that she would always be there. My country has lost a great human being.