Too many books...

I am quite fed up of hearing about John Sergeant.

I am generally in favour of people who are good at things winning and of like seeing humility, self-knowledge and self-sacrifice in public figures, but I can't help feeling that if you allow the public to vote in these things you do effectively forfeit your right to ensure that the most talented people win. If you're going to let the public vote decide these things, then you have to expect that they'll pick the personable ones. If you want talented people to win the competition, then have a proper competition, judged by professionals, rather than an entertainment programme with phone-in voting, dammit....

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It has been a week of very odd events. Nick Griffin claiming a breach of human rights legislation. Now I've seen everything. I've been ghoulishly fascinated by it all, I must admit.

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I feel I am regressing to my 17-year-old self. I was killing time in London the other week and was tempted to buy all sorts of things by Naomi Klein and George Monbiot in the Current Affairs section in Waterstones. I managed to resist and have spent too much money in an Oxfam bookshop instead. I have an enormous pile of books on food politics and world affairs which I am never going to get through... There are too many books in the world.....

I've also managed to get a winter coat, (of which I am sure Ms Klein would not approve) the good news being someone makes a coat for women who don't have the figure of a fourteen-year-old boy, the bad news being that it's Jigsaw and I can't really afford to shop in Jigsaw. (I feel I'm in danger of turning into one of those women with rich partners who says things like, 'I love wearing natural fibres... like cashmere...' but that's another story.) I also have jeans that are not covered in mud and don't have holes in and which I can wear in front of people who are not allotmenteers. And Jen made dinner for some of us and we had a lovely evening.