Descartes on a wet sunday

Atrocious weather continues, high winds and constant rain. But the miserable day was lit up by the wit of Rod Liddle in the 'Sunday Times'. He was writing about the 'think tank', the 'Progressive Policies Forum', and the welcome shadow its shadiness has cast over politician Peter Hains' smug, fat, heavily suntanned face. The Forum, which provided over 100k for Hains' deputy leadership bid, has held no meetings, has no website and no employees. Liddle commented that by Cartesian logic this think tank has no existence: 'It doesn't think, therefore it isn't.'

Liddle, editor of the BBC 'Today' programme during the Gilligan/Iraq War controversy, is refreshingly his own man, uninterested in being 'correct'. He doesn't fear to offend Evangelicals or atheists, Muslims or Israilis; he sniffs out the frauds, the hypocrites, and Harriet Harperson. If he sees an outrage, like the refusal to admit an aged Gurkha with cancer into Britain --the man had won a V.C. fighting for us-- he will say so. I don't know how he keeps his standard so high. He can always make me chuckle.