Death and the national identity - a shameful thing!

Played snooker with Paul on Wednesday and he told me about a text he had from his friend in Mumbai. "I know it's dangerous" the message read "but I've run out of cigarettes". Paul had replied "get two packs". I had to laugh if only because laughter will ease the pain and (perhaps more importantly) defy the odds. What has been almost as depressing as the actual carnage has been the recurring estimation about how many of the dead are British. Of course it will be the ordinary Indian people who have borne the brunt of the violence but the compulsion among most reports to identify the level of non-indian casualty provides an unpleasant echo of the gun-men's own desire to single out westerners in their initial onslaught.

This idea that some lives are of more value than others is what has prompted the invasion of countries and the leaving of bombs on buses. We should be careful what we wish for....

The Corporate State - I am afraid!

They used to say that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marx but now it looks more like Matalan. Everything is for sale! Somewhere along the line the party ditched its notions of citizenship and began to treat us as employees. The difference is not always apparent but when it is apparent it is glaring. Chief amongst the changes is the fact that bargaining is done through wages (taxation) rather than rules of civic purpose. The assumption is that tax cuts are a virtue in themselves, as opposed to a means whereby we can agree (or disagree) as to how that spending is applied. Hence the enormous sums given to the banks and without firm demands about what that money will buy, only the vaguest of "understandings" about holding off from foreclosures. This is not the same as policy. The reason the banks have tipped the economies of the world into recession is that they have treated debts as assets and got wise to each other at roughly the same time: if it is true that they have been "gambling" it is also true that they have shown their cards. Darling has acted not as a paymaster (which is the role the banks have required of him) but as an institutional investor, an altogether different character.

The latest round of budgeting aims to do little more than encourage shopping, which is what got us in this mess in the first place. Herein lies the riddle of the corporate state: charged with the welfare of the nation, the Government has taken the side of PLC rather than the people to whom it is beholden, it would seem, only at elections.

Champagne - I love it!

I went to a Business Awards ceremony on Friday night when I should be at home with my love and our child upstairs sleeping and sat through the night among an army of women with too much foundation and the men trying to look important. Ghastly. Stir in a liberal helping of turgid D-list celebrity chef MC-ing in the manner of someone whose career had truly bottomed out and you have a night not so much to remember as to never forget.

Nice to be among some of my colleagues but the evening was truly redeemed by Champagne. Free at reception and drunk continually for almost an hour, I was in the mood for anything after that, even the Dockland Light Railway on my way home alone. What is it about "Shampoo" - it's not just the lightness of the liquid or the gentle roll of bubbles. I think there's also a thrill of something slightly dangerous because it can sneak up on you and leave you feeling quite helplessly drunk. The trick is to drink it continually but carefully, not let it settle and then top it up with Red wine, not white.

Strictly Come Dancing? - I must be out of step!

Some washed-up old hack turns his back on the merry-go-round as though it were an act of redemption. "Save us" sings the populace and damns the judges where the height of entertainment is to find facetious fault and make a virtue of belittling people. SDC is in a long line from Dragon's Den and The Apprentice and Big Brother where the audience feels superior in the knowledge that someone has been taken down a peg or two. A number of fading careers are filled with a sort of ratings-helium until popular culture has arrived at a truly sorry state. Flagship? You must be joking! How about some real humiliation? Maybe the temptation of Cliff Richard or Bruce Forsyth runs for a bus or Sue Barker - The Sunday Roast? Now that would be worth the licence fee!

I love the England Team

Lescott didn't even play and Young didn't start so what the f**k do I know? Wright-Phillips was the heart and soul tonight - Eriksson liked him but Chelsea just bought him to hoard so it's nice to see him getting his career back on track. Everyone will cast doubt on Carson but Terry should have booted that ball into the stand - what was he doing playing hide the football in Berlin? Everyone's playing for their place. The Italians always used to say there's only room for one ego in Capello's teams and that's his...

Germans - I love them (not just their footballers)

20 minutes from the match and for all that certain managers bemoan a friendly there's never really a meaningless match against Germany. I can't see it being 5:1 even though the odds might favour the Germans coming up with that sort of scoreline, it's a chance for the squad players like Lescott or Young to show what they can do. Worth remembering that although England trounced them several years ago it was the Germans who got to the final, it's not just the good teams that they've produced it's also the mediocre ones who punch well above their weight. People talk about "efficiency" whatever that is, actually it's more like self-worth. English people call it arrogance, lacking a sense of where we stand. "Can I hang onto your coat-tails Mr President I'd prefer it to rubbing shoulders with the Krauts?" Look where that gets us in Afghanistan after a surge of body bags in a years time....

I like the way they play football (the "holding" player has caught on around the world as Gareth Barry will try to demonstrate tonight) and I like the way they conduct themselves, cool calm and collected, and if they win it will be nice to go into work and see the embarassment from all the people who still like to look down their noses and never had to fight in an actual war...

Chillies - Love them (and the guys who sell them)

Tonight I cooked a cashew sauce and chilli pepper sauce, bathed over chicken and red pepper. Not bad although it needed roasted cashews rather than raw ones. Anyway I don't seem to be able to pay for my chillies these days because I've normally just got two or three. The gentleman at the Sri Lankan shop just laughed when I offered to pay and today it was the same at the grocers on the corner. He was washing grapes and he just said just "have them". I told him he was kind but he better let me pay sometime soon and he laughed. These litttle green bullets are two-a-penny, common currency, but they turn a sauce or a salad into a feast. So small and so light that they hardly need bothering with, more trouble to weigh and cost than they are worth but with all the delectable flavour from something so small and supple....

Children in Need? Pass that bucket!

Children need love and care. They don't need a barrage of C-list TV hacks singing songs and chasing ratings. £15 that cost me yesterday and if I thought that it would prevent any small child from being smeared in chocolate and battered to death I would have made it £25. The constant barrage of plastic empathy seems to somehow be turning the subject of cruelty into a sideshow, forget about an evening on telly, what's it like the rest of the year? A constant cult of everlasting youth and a pervasive fear of teenagers means that there's probably never been a worse time to be a child, or at least since they were being stuffed up chimneys....

Remembrance Sunday - the onset of loathing

No I know it's not very nice and I don't really mean any ill to the ordinary soldiers but the whole ceremony and more specifically some of the people who come out of the woodwork to take part in it, fills me with a sort of revulsion. Prince William who got his wings unfeasibly quickly and still no sight of a proper job but he gets to wear all the medals like making toast under fire and travelling first-class beyond the call of duty. Then Brown with his big wreath, perhaps a poppy for everyone who's died on his watch in two pointless wars and his awful book about Courage, other people's of course. Real courage would be taking himself off and raising his children that he's very lucky to have at his age....

Norfolk - Love it!

We stayed in Sheringham for a week, the sun shone crisp and clear and the waves foamed across the stones and sands. South of the county is more bourgeois . North is more posh and the landscape is wild. Second-homers have over-run certain parts. Holt, which used to be well-heeled farming territory, now boasts 3 Art Galleries and countless delicatessens and was more like the upper-east side of Manhattan....

Anne-Marie loved it and thought that she had seen nothing like Holkham beach, where the sand and the sky seem to touch a million miles in the distance, since she was in Australia