I've been nursing a parallel theory that we confer official museum-grade status on writers from ethnic groupings we feel guilty about - 'we' meaning the mostly white, mostly middle class, slightly angsty and concerned audience which reads what's usually called 'literature'.

This isn't about talent, or the lack of it. More that there will always be talent which isn't picked up because it doesn't tickle the ethnic 'oh, the horror' guilt buds in the right way. Even when there's plenty of horror and brutality - which seems to be another essential contemporary ingredient.

I don't know what TBG will think of his new bedmate, but Rod Liddle, in a recent Sunday Times article, collected nominations for fiction with an undeserved reputation, and had something similar to say:

Here's a bunch of stuff we were all told we had to read by the political and cultural climate of the day; because it would be good for us and because, way beyond this, it was our responsibility to start patronising writers from minorities because it was only the oppressive white male cultural hegemony that kept them in an ethnic- or gender-defined ghetto.

What draws these nominees together? They perhaps captured a certain spirit of the age in which they were written, replete with its fashionable literary conceits, its political leanings (or lack of them), its mannerisms. And this is what characterises almost all of the books that were nominated. They were not so much deemed to be shocking at the time, or too difficult, or experimental - there is no Henry Miller on the list, or Robbe-Grillet, or Sartre. Instead, they seem to be books that fitted in far too comfortably with the sensibilities of a certain chattering-class elite when they were published.

So, which classic books do you think are overrated?

My nominations-anything by DH Lawrence, most of the counter-culture classics (vaguely interesting as museum pieces only-sorry) and the works of Ian McEwan, who I  suspect would be regarded as a writer of potboilers, were his characters not upper-middle class.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, writes that "there are over one - maybe even two - million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological sustainability and social justice".

And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement. There is no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and begin to sequester carbon dioxide.

Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The "movement" that Hawken refers to is, he notes, "atomised" and "largely ignored".

Diary rescue by Migeru

At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The [food] crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people.

Of course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules that turn grain into [biofuels]. But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals - which could cover the global food deficit 14 times.

Where I live is nowhere very special.  A city only because of its cathedral, it was, in effect, a market town until 1967, when it was given the dubious honour of new town status.  Since then, it has become a byword for provincial soullessness, so deeply unfashionable that, despite being within an hour of London, property prices are amongst the lowest in the country.

The detractors don't have it all wrong.  When I first came here, much of the Tudor centre had already been ripped out and replaced with a monolithic shopping centre, but the candied smell of the sugar refinery still announced the beginning of Autumn.  Now most of the manufacturing has gone, and the economy is based on corporate headquarters and the London commute.

And yet, like every inch of this small island, it is flooded with echoes of the past.  It has seen bloodshed, war, taken part in events that changed the face of Britain, contains some of the most important historical sites in Europe- and some tiny, local fragments all its own.

More ET Photo-journalism from the diaries -- whataboutbob

Easyjet is having a 'sale', including the Easter period.  I just checked the price for a return flight from Luton to BCN Good Friday morning-Monday night and it came out as £108 including taxes, compared to £160 with Ryanair (Stansted-Girona) last week.  

The latest woman to disappear-Paula Clennell-continued to work despite the dangers. She told an ITN news crew that she needed the money.  But it had made her
'a bit wary about getting into cars'.

Brought across from the diaries - afew

Ape drunk: sociable and  happy.

Lion drunk:  aggressive, quarrelsome.

Pig drunk:  Sleepy and lazy.  This is the person still on your sofa after everyone else has gone, moaning for another drink or to be covered with a blanket.

Sheep drunk:  able to solve the problems of the world, but mysteriously unable to communicate his vision.

Maudlin drunk: or,  "You're my best friend, you are."

Martin drunk: one who has drunk himself sober

Goat drunk: "he hath no mind but on lechery"

Fox drunk:  the crafty drunk.

(Anyone who wants to read the original and more elegant Elizabethan English version of Nashe's menagerie click here. I apologise in advance to sober Dutch negotiators).  

But what is the link between alcohol and behaviour?  And why does drinking in the UK seem to be associated with excess and violence in a way not necessarily experienced elsewhere?

provides an opportunity for people of all ages to be involved in a simple, hands-on missions outreach while focussing on the true meaning of Christmas-Jesus Christ, God's greatest gift. Along with shoebox gifts, millions of children are given Gospel booklets in their own language.
(my italics)

I haven't seen this year's leaflet, but in the past it hasn't always been immediately obvious that this is an evangelical organisation.  My local (and multi-ethnic) primary school was not aware of the evangelical aspect of Operation Christmas Child until I asked questions about its appropriateness. It has now started sending boxes via a secular organisation (see below).

Not wanting to support evangelism doesn't have to mean not giving at all.  The British Humanist Society has a
list of alternative donations including
21st Century Child: the secular shoebox gift scheme now used by the local school.