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Some families spend their Sunday evenings at church. Some gather round the kitchen table for homework. Some have a nice family meal, complete with conversation, before sharing the washing-up.
But for many British families - and I would have to include my own in this category - the Sunday evening ritual is Top Gear, in which we slump on the sofa to watch Jeremy Clarkson and his fellow petrolheads as they celebrate the motor car in all its glorious forms.
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What a pity that this intelligent documentary that started on Saturday night is so condensed! Boris was caught up in the Mayoral campaign after the two-part documentary had been commissioned but, ‘written and presented by’, it - so far - takes in a huge range of art, thought and world-class invited experts. The Crusades, in their swashbuckling stories-for-boys image, are given a revisionary kick. Mono-theistic religions are all given a history lesson. The academic experts are articulate and balanced. The economic arguments are merely hinted at rather than fleshed out. The art that is accessed is fantastic - but underplayed.
This could be an Attenborough-style BBC project with Boris instead of David. As it is, it shows Boris as a multi-lingual history scholar with great sensitivity to intercultural relations. Not bad for a subsequently elected Mayor of a world-rated capital.
You know what, I have now heard more than enough about how much Gordon Brown is enjoying this recession. Every time you read about the Prime Minister, they tell you that his mood is getting better and better.
Having been known as a gloomy old nail-biting misery-guts, he is now presented to us as a man “in his element”, the life and soul of the party, a smile or a witty aside never off his lips.
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Why is the pound at a 12-year low against a basket of other OECD currencies?
Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown have peddled some pretty good bilge in their time, but I don’t think I have ever seen anything so bare-faced and intellectually putrid as their attempt to blame the Tories for the sorry state of the pound.
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It was round about 4pm and night had virtually fallen over Islington. The rain was coursing down the window panes and your columnist was flat on his back, riffling the leaves of the paper with his snores. The phone went, and in spite of my indignation - who calls at 4pm on a Saturday, when a chap is fast asleep? - I answered it.
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I happened to be reading Goldfinger at half-term, and chuckling to myself at all the things that Bond says and does that would be completely unthinkable today.
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I don’t want to seem indifferent to suffering, and I don’t want anyone to accuse me of minimising the likely effect of the recession, because the coming months will very probably be a lot tougher - for millions of people - than the boom times we have all recently enjoyed.
The column can be read here.
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There are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.
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A million jobs to be gone by Christmas. That was one of the chirpier headlines in the weekend papers, and oh boy, I don’t think I can take much more of this doomstering.
Spending an hour with the FT is like being trapped in a room with assorted members of a millennialist suicide cult. If their pundits are to be believed, the skies of the City will shortly be dark with falling bankers, and then for the rest of us it’s back to the 1930s, with barrels for trousers, soup kitchens and buddy can you spare a dime.
By this time next year, if the pessimists are right, Gordon Brown will have nationalised most of the British economy and a representative of the Treasury will be attending the editorial conference of The Daily Telegraph.
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The Plan has been written by two young politicians who have discovered first hand how inert is the machinery of the British state, and how intense is the consequent anger on the doorstep. They offer an analysis of why people are sick and tired of politicians, and what can be done about it. Douglas Carswell, is the forward-looking MP for Harwich and Clacton, and Daniel Hannan the firebrand MEP for the South of England. You can read more about Douglas here and about Dan, here.
The Plan proposes to restore meaning to the ballot box, freedom to the citizen and dignity to Parliament. It puts forward a radical legislative programme to:
Douglas and Dan show how a future government could actually shift powers back, from Brussels to Westminster, from Whitehall to town halls, from the state to the citizens.
Things do not have to be as they are. The Plan shows how we can change our country for the better.
The Plan is available ‘from all good bookshops’ from October 6th and the ISBN is: 13-9780955979903 or order your copy direct at: www.Renew-Britain.com
