Wednesday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Alice Miles:  At last John Hutton has addressed the important question of getting lone parents to work
• I write: Why Oliver James' Affluenza thesis is utterly wrong
• Magnus Linklater:  Let's not be morally sniffy about supercasinos - they may be a powerful tool for regeneration
• Alan Coren: Has John Reid been reading those comics with free x-ray specs?
• Mick Hume: The Government reining back on pub opening hours? Are they mad?
• Peter Riddell: Blair clings on as his authority wanes

And in the rest of the papers…

• Mary Dejevsky: (The Independent) - Where is our national soul-searching on Iraq?
• Steve Richards: (The Independent) - Darkness descends to engulf Blair
• Mark Steel: (The Independent) - Jailing people has become an Olympic event
• Simon Heffer: (The Daily Telegraph) -  Why not legalise drugs and prostitution? The logic is inexorable and the precedent has been set. In a couple of years, we are told, there will be more super-casinos. And then what?
• Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor: (The Daily Telegraph)  - The debate about the role to be played by Roman Catholic adoption agencies has brought into public awareness the outstanding contribution they make to the common good
• Andrew Marr: (The Daily Telegraph) - In terms of vices, there are very few I don't have, but gambling is one of them
• Francis Fukuyama: (The Guardian) - The neocons' zealous advocacy of the invasion of Iraq may have been a disaster, but now they want to do it all over again - in Iran
• John Harris: (The Guardian) - The claim by pro-war writers and their neocon allies that the left dumped its principles to embrace 'islamofascism' is absurd
• Simon Jenkins: (The Guardian) - As the supercasinos fiasco shows, Tessa Jowell's department can't handle the moral responsibility placed upon it
• Leader: The decision of African leaders meeting in Ethiopia to block Sudan from assuming the leadership of the African Union was good news for the credibility of an organisation dedicated to promoting democratic governance - Guardian

And from around the world…

• David Ignatius: (Washington Post) - A view from America - the Blair he could have been
• James Bamford: (New York Times) - Is the President guilty of committing a felony by continuously reauthorizing the warrantless eavesdropping program for the past five years? And if so, what action must be taken?
• Joel Stein: (LA Times) - Can the Hollywood Hills still be a special place when all the mangy yippers flee for Hancock Park?
• Yossi Alpher: (Lebanon Daily Star) - Israel never liked Bush's democratisation scheme
• Editorial: Let's not fool ourselves - ethnic nationalism is alive and well in Turkey - Turkish Daily News

Comments

[Ephi Levyn]

I have not been able to identify the source or confirm the exact wording of the quote: Who has achieved their heart's desire - or having achieved it, is satisfied? To me it sums up the illusiveness of happiness, a subject that, as Daniel Finkelstein states in this morning's Times, has exercised a legion of philosophers, Aristotle among them. Here is an excerpt from The Compleat Angler, by Izaak Walton (1593-1683):

'...Diogenes walked upon a day, with his friend, to see a country fair: where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and, having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country-fair, he said to his friend, "Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!"

'And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God, that He hath not given him enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless, for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want; though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will; it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping or not flattering him: and thus, when we might be happy and quiet, we create trouble to ourselves.'

I shall not be purchasing Oliver James's finnimbrun. If I understand Daniel Finkelstein correctly, Mr James has observed nothing that Izaak Walton did not observe way back in the 17th century.