 David Mamet, a lifelong liberal, began writing a play about politics. And guess what happened?
Mamet's November centres on the argument between: A president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.
And he found his own politics shifting, shifting, shifting: I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philospoher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
So, you have been appointed the chief executive of Northern Rock. Congratulations. But what do you do now?
The preferred alternative of the current management seems to be to repeat reassurances that many depositors refuse to accept and then wait for the share price to drop so low that Northern Rock is bought by a big bank.
This involves just sitting there as depositors, one after the other, conclude that they may as well take out their money. After all, the risk is all one way. Why not close your account?
This may, in the end, be the only thing they can do. But I must say, if I were the CEO or their PR agency, I wouldn't feel satisfied.
Here are some things they could do: Board members queue up outside a branch to put in their own assets into Northern Rock accounts.
Provide a one-off lump sum to all savers, payable if their money is in their account in, say, three months time
A publicity campaign using ordinary savers, "people like you", who are sticking with the Northern Rock.
Are they doing these things? It seems striking that they are so passive.
So what to make of the grim killings at Virginia Tech?
The Washington Post's leader, in typical stately fashion, asks all the right questions: Would the university have suffered the same tragedy if Virginia law did not prohibit the carrying of guns on campus? Should metal detectors be ubiquitous in American classrooms and dormitories? And why are gunmen so apt to carry out their lethal rampages at American schools?
The New York Times is tougher: Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough. What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.
James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice, uses a column in the LA Times to give a brief history of mass murder by gun-wielding lunatics. He examines the social changes that have increased the incidence of such massacres. So what has changed? For one thing, the United States has become much more dog-eat-dog, more competitive in recent years. We admire those who achieve at any cost, and it seems that we have less compassion for those who fail. (Just look at how eager we are to vote people off the island or to reject them in singing competitions.) This certainly increases frustration on the part of losers.
Then there's the eclipse of traditional community: higher rates of divorce, the decline of church-going and the fact that more people live in urban areas, where they may not even know their neighbours. If mass murderers are isolated people who lack support, these trends only exacerbate the situation. Many mass murderers, for example, are people who have picked up roots and moved.
He concludes by saying this: It should give us some degree of consolation to know that these events are exceedingly rare. But they still occur, and they are among the sad and tragic prices we pay for the kind of open, modern, democratic society we live in.
A graduate student from Virginia Tech wrote this article last year, complaining about the ban that stops students from carrying concealed weapons (hat tip Samizdata): Now consider the situation of this past Monday. A violent criminal who clearly has no respect for other people’s lives is running loose on campus, his precise whereabouts unknown. And while the police did an excellent job of patrolling campus, they simply cannot be everywhere at once. Is it not obvious that all students, faculty and staff would have been safer if CHP holders were not banned from carrying their weapons on campus?
What the Board of Visitors has effectively done by banning CHP-holding students, faculty and staff from carrying their weapons is creating a “Safe Zone” for criminals who do not care about the rules anyway. Disarming law-abiding citizens has never made the general populace more secure.
To British ears, the idea that ordinary people carrying guns makes the population safer sounds mad. But we forget our own lost history of gun ownership. Richard Munday wrote this article a couple of years ago. It's a fascinating read: A century ago, the possession and carrying of firearms was perfectly normal here. Firearms were sold without licence in gunshops and ironmongers in virtually every town in the country, and grand department stores such as Selfridge's even offered customers an in-house range. The market was not just for sporting guns: there was a thriving domestic industry producing pocket pistols and revolvers, and an extensive import trade in the cheap handguns that today would be called "Saturday Night Specials". Conan Doyle's Dr Watson, dropping a revolver in his pocket before going out about town, illustrates a real commonplace of that time. Beatrix Potter's journal records a discussion at a small country hotel in Yorkshire, where it turned out that only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver.
Robbie Millen
 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has reset its Doomsday clock. Apparently, it is five minutes to midnight.
The BBC website reports on this move as follows: Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind
Experts in what? In atomic science, I presume. This provides them with a unique insight into the consequences of a nuclear explosion, but not in the probability of it occurring. It is this probability that the clock is measuring (or should I say indicating since it isn't any kind of measure).
They also have no better insight than anyone else into climate change.
The quality of their understanding is illustrated by the fact that during the Cuban Missile Crisis the clock was further from midnight than it is now, while in 1984, when Reagan was President, it was nearer to midnight than at any other time. These seem eccentric judgments and political rather than scientific in origin.
Given that I've only got five minutes left to live I am not going to waste any more of it on the Atomic Bulletin.
There has been a vibrant debate about whether Muslim women should be entitled to wear a veil in public. Now the debate has reached a new pitch with this story: A man who was being hunted for the murder of a policewoman is understood to have escaped from Britain by disguising himself as a veiled Muslim woman.
Does this conclude the argument?
I don't think it does.
Despite my opposition to all kinds of fundamentalism, I think that a liberal society ought to be able to withstand a few people exercising their free choice to wear a veil. And it is important to understand that, difficult though it is for many us to comprehend, it is a free choice.
This story is not about the veil, it is about airport security. It is unbelievable that they are busy checking my 6 year old son's bottle of still water, causing huge queues, while letting a wanted man waltz through security dressed as a woman, without having arrangements in place to check his face.
John Bolton has resigned as US Ambassador to the UN. The Economist argued that his main success has been to unite the southern hemisphere against the rich north. Newt Gingrich in this National Review article from last year defended Bolton from the accusation that he is too tough, rough and uncompromising. From the Left, the stalkerish website Bolton Watch has been keeping tabs on him. And here you can read The Nation's take on Bolton's original appointment: Perhaps the real damage is the signal Bush has sent to the other members of the UN: that the United States is not really serious about the organization it helped to found. Almost as worrying is the implicit message of encouragement to the know-nothings on the extreme right of the Republican Party, who get their news and geography from Rush Limbaugh and Fox, and see the UN as a cabal of gun-reforming, gay-liberating, abortion-peddling, US Constitution-undermining foreigners.
But does the UN deserve to be treated seriously? If you read Rosemary Righter's splendid (but long) piece in The Times Literary Supplement, the answer will have to be "no". The UN is looking rather beside the point. The UN no longer exists, as it did in 1945, in lonely eminence. It must compete for influence in a world of instant communications and multiple voices, and of networks inside and outside government that operate across frontiers with unprecedented ease. Globalization is transforming not only the world economy, but also the relations between governments and their increasingly mobile, disconcertingly better-informed citizens. The inter-state threats which the UN’s security machinery was designed to address have been largely displaced by the problems of collapsing, dysfunctional states and the globalization of organized crime and terrorist networks.
Robbie Millen
 The doctors I've known are terribly good company because they usually have a well-developed sense of black humour and an amusing line in misanthropy. And who can blame them when they have to deal with the rest of humanity. Alas, some health professionals take their misanthropy too far. Stephan Letter, a male nurse and Germany's most prolific serial killer, has just been jailed, with 28 deaths on his hands.
A disproportionate number of serial killers have been doctors and nurses. This snappy article in the British Medical Journal argues: There are enough recorded instances of multiple murders by doctors (real or bogus) to make at least a prima facie case that the profession attracts some people with a pathological interest in the power of life and death
Because death and dying maybe a workaday experience for doctors and nurses, I wonder if they may find it emotionally or morally easier to kill? Or perhaps they simply have more opportunities to murder?
Robbie Millen
After a sale at Christies yesterday the Chair of the Communist Party, Anita Halpin looks set to become a multi-millionaire. Her family is establishing ownership over thousands of paintings stolen from them by the Nazis.
What will she do with the money?
Professor Margot Light of the London School of Economics is clear: To each according to his needs is the communist philosophy, so she should keep what she needs and give away what she doesn't.
What a ridiculous idea. The "each according to his needs" philosophy is meaningless. She can't "need" this money at all or she'd be incapable of clothing or feeding herself already.
I've got a better thought. Why not keep the money and give up communism.
Phil Woolas's comments about the veil-wearing teacher seemed to me highly incautious. Should a Government minister wade in and call for an individual teacher to be sacked? Isn't the school in the best position to decide this, perhaps with help from the local authority?
And does the Prime Minister agree with me? The exchange at this morning's Downing Street press briefing was comically evasive (PMOS, incidentally, is the Prime Ministers Official Spokesman): Asked if the Prime Minister agreed that the teaching assistant at the centre of the current debate regarding the wearing of veils should be sacked, the PMOS replied that what the Prime Minister believed was that there was a debate going on, and that these were matters which should be resolved locally.
Asked if that meant that the Prime Minister thought that Phil Woolas should not have spoken his mind about it, the PMOS said again that there was a debate going on, and people were perfectly entitled to contribute to that debate from all points of view.
In other words, the Prime Minister is arguing that he shouldn't express a view because the issue is going to be decided locally, while also saying that it is fine for ministers to express a view because there is a debate going on.
Which is it?
Competition time.
Tom Watson, coup-maker extraordinaire, has started blogging again and says that he has been given many labels - rebel, suit, two-dinners and now Jackie Ashley has erroneously called him Scottish.
Reviewing this list, it strikes me that readers of Comment Central might be able to think of a better description of Mr Watson.
Yesterday Gordon Brown wrote a column on terrorism in the Sun. Much of it was rather blah, as these things (not just his, but ministerial columns) often are.
However, alongside 300 words or so telling us that security is important (er, yes), there were two policy thoughts for the future. There was this: So, alongside the national ID card scheme, our next step must be the introduction of biometrics in new passports and visas, and the screening of all passengers.
And this: Besides targeting the terrorists themselves, we must win the battle for hearts and minds in their communities.....
So, as well as supporting our police, security services and armed forces in the front line of the war on terror at home and abroad, we also need to mobilise the power of argument and ideas to expose and defeat the ideology of hate.
This second point is rather vague, of course, but that is excusable. He's certainly not wrong. And it's encouraging to know he wants to make broader points than a reform of the Passports Agency.
However, there was a notable omission from the article.
Tony Blair believes that spreading democracy around the world is a vital part of our security policy. There is no mention of that in Mr Brown's article. He has a token reference to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the usual Blair point is missing.
Perhaps he ran out of space and had to cut the crucial paragraph. Or perhaps he left it out on purpose because he doesn't share the Blair view.
I think we should be told.
My favourite part of Tony Blair's I'm off speech was his reference to the TUC conference: The next TUC next week will be my last TUC, probably to the relief of both of us.
This was an excellent joke, but my Times colleague Tim Hames says that it wasn't included merely for comic effect.
Saying that this year would not just be his last Labour conference, but also his last TUC, was part of the Chancellor's coup deal between the old friends. It means that Mr Blair will not be able to resign at the end of next Summer and only let Gordon Brown take over in late September. Instead he has to go with enough time (at the very latest by mid-June) to have a contest and let the new leader take office before the August break.
So while the press reported that this was to be the Prime Minister's last year, he was actually telling us that it was to be his last 9 months.
 Charles Clarke had this to say about Gordon Brown's grinning as he left Downing Street after his coup supportive meeting with his old friend:
"A lot of people are very upset and cross about that. It was absolutely stupid: a stupid, stupid thing to do."
On the Today programme Ruth Kelly denied this, suggesting that it was just one of those accidental poses that photographers catch.
Isn't catching a picture of Gordon Brown accidentally smiling, statistically extremely unlikely?
 Here's a game for everyone to play. What does Tony Blair do once he steps down? Apart from making his successors life a misery, I mean.
Here's my suggestion. The famous leaked Songs of Praise memo described Iraq as "the elephant in the room" and, as the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland argued in his column this week, this description is correct. The memo author suggests "incorporating Iraq into the media plan". I suggest something a little stronger.
I think that Tony Blair and his advisers should be proud of his stance on foreign affairs and that, after he leaves office, he should set up a foundation dedicated to spreading democracy round the world. The Tony Blair Foundation should be a non-partisan, international campaign that is uncompromisingly outspoken on the need for liberal, democratic regimes to be strong in their support for human rights.
So that's my proposal. Terence Blacker, in an article originally published in the Independent, thinks Tony Blair should take up gardening instead.
And your idea?
 Let's leave Tony Blair's statement to one side for a moment and concentrate on Gordon Brown's.
The Chancellor has mounted a coup against a serving Prime Minister, and a successful coup at that. He owes the public an explanation for his behaviour. Instead he gave us this.
Let's take Mr Brown's statement paragraph by paragraph (a process that in the blogging world has become known as Fisking): We are in the unique situation in our country where the Prime Minister has said, as he has said on a number of occasions, that he does not want to lead our party and our Government into the next general election.
Who knows whether the Prime Minister wanted to lead the party into the next election. Mr Brown's persistent campaign made it impossible for him to ignore speculation any more.
But if Mr Brown is going to make a virtue out of Mr Blair's stated desire to leave office before the next election, he ought to point out that the Prime Minister also pledged to stay through the whole Parliament.
As Matthew D'Ancona points out in his Spectator account, Mr Blair said in the October before the election: "There have been all these stories rolling round that maybe I might stand for election, but stand down in year one, year two. I'm not going to do that." Mr Brown has not, therefore, supported the statement that the Prime Minister made before the election, he has forced Mr Blair to abandon that statement. As a result of that, there are questions about what happens in the time to come, and it's right to say that I, like others, have had questions myself.
This is a ludicrous way for Mr Brown to describe his behaviour. He clearly thinks we are all fools. But I want to make it absolutely clear today, that when I met the Prime Minister yesterday, I said to him - as I've said on many occasions and I repeat today - it is for him to make the decision.
Given that the meetings took several hours, involved a great deal of shouting and ended in deadlock, this assertion of Mr Brown's is, ahem, surprising. Perhaps what the Chancellor meant is that "on several occasions I shouted at him 'well it's up to you, sunshine'." I said also to him, and I make it clear again today, that I will support him in the decision he makes, that this cannot and should not be about private arrangements but what is in the best interests of our party, and most of all the best interests of our country - and I will support him in doing exactly that.
This is entirely, almost embarrassingly, untrue. Mr Brown was only willing to support Mr Blair's decision once Mr Blair agreed to do what the Chancellor wanted him to. Indeed the Prime Minister himself said later that he hadn't wanted to make the announcement he made. Mr Brown's reluctance to support Mr Blair's original decision that he would not set a date was the foundation of the entire crisis. And the idea that it is not about private arrangements is also an insultingly obvious untruth. Tony Blair and I have worked together for 20 years and we have done so in difficult times as well as in very good times.
Yeah, yeah, get on with it. We continue to work together because we share a determination, both of us, that we will advance and get down to the business of the Labour Government, and doing our best by the people of the country.
Sharing a determination to get on with the business of government isn't sharing much is it? He didn't say they shared values, policies, approaches to government. I suppose if they did then there would be no need for Labour to replace Mr Blair with Mr Brown, now would there? I am determined that in the months and years to come we continue to do our duty by the people of Britain - and it is my determination and his to do that - that will influence everything that happens in the time to come.
It is his determination to be Prime Minister that has influenced everything. "Continue to do our duty by the people of Britain"? Do me a lemon.
The resigning Tom Watson is famous as the blogging MP. But so far on his website, nothing. The last posting on the site conveys this (amusing in the circumstances) advice to Stephen Byers: He's worrying too much. Chill out Steve.
Mr Watson appears to have forgotten this sage thought. He also advances the unlikely proposition that Caroline Flint is "cooking on gas with policy ideas". The Labour Party is saved.
Mr Watson's silence is not shared by other Labour bloggers. The debate on the resignations rages on this Labour forum. Bob Piper defends Tom Watson's decision to sign the letter. Recess Monkey thinks Blair's having that sinking feeling. Rachel from North London questions whether Tony Blair has gone mad, a charge I've always found offensive. Meanwhile, Luke Akehurst explores the motives of the resigners.
Splits, resignations, media frenzy, calls for a new leader. It all sounds incredibly familiar to someone who has worked for John Major and William Hague. So I thought my Blairite friends in Downing Street and elsewhere might enjoy the benefit of my experience:
1. You will be tempted to call for unity. Calls for unity never work.
2. You are quite right, you are surrounded by nutters. But the funny thing about nutters is that they don't appreciate being called mad. Don't bother, therefore, attacking your internal opponents.
3. You were quite wrong. Things can't only get better.
4. Every cunning plan you dream up for diverting the news agenda will fail. Don't think that getting Margaret Beckett to make a speech on CAP reform will move your splits down the news.
5. There is nothing you can do. Nothing. And therefore the best thing you can do is.....
6. Nothing. The only card the Prime Minister still has is incumbency. He should keep his head down, keep his mouth shut, and keep going. This will fail to work, but do so less spectacularly than anything else. Oh and.....
7. Don't write anything down.
Once you've read Alice Miles, you might want to read the whole Charles Clarke speech.
I'm almost sympathetic to Tony Blair's team.
I was working for William Hague when a memo entitled Project Hague leaked. It sketched out some ideas for improving Hague's image. Not only did it provoke universal derision, it made it impossible to do any of the things the memo suggested (So there goes the Prime Minister's Blue Peter badge).
Preparing a memo like this is simply professional. But there's no getting away from it, it is also hilarious. The plan for the Prime Minister to appear on Songs of Praise is my particular favourite. Who would be the subject of the praise?
Inevitably, the memo has proved an attractive topic for bloggers. Iain Dale thinks the leak was deliberate, Paul Linford says this is another example of the Prime Minister losing grip with reality and Nick Robinson believes that Blair has to shore up his position by either announcing his departure date or reopening transition talks with Gordon Brown.
Yesterday Tim Hames wrote in The Times and was in despair about our Iran policy. Here Andrew Sullivan links to a piece that attempts to provide some answers.
 Given today's announcement that the consumption of kiwi fruit has been made a part of the national curriculum, now might be the time to champion Burning Our Money's campaign against the British Potato Council.
You might think that this body was created by Armando Iannucci for an episode of The Thick of It, but it really exists. It is a £6 million a year quango, established by the Potato Industry Development Council Order of 1997 (although at the time I missed the Council's creation in all the excitement).
While one part of the Government is trying to reduce chip consumption, the British Potato Council organises National Chip Week.
I have not made any of this up.
Daniel Finkelstein
is Chief Leader Writer of The Times and writes a weekly column. Comment Central is his rolling guide to the best opinion on the web. Click
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David Mamet, a lifelong liberal, began writing a play about politics. And guess what happened?
