Personally I prefer to watch dancing on the TV and listen to music on the radio, as it doesn't work so well the other way round. So I tend to prefer Strictly Come Dancing (called this here instead of Dancing with the Stars because in the UK we had a programme called Come Dancing that ran from the 1940s to the late 90s) to X-Factor.
But the BBC seems unable to do anything without introducing a degree of the bullying that is institutionalised within the organisation as it exists today. Last year's Strictly was marred by the judges' campaign against John Sergeant for his crime of consistently being the public's favourite, and this year Craig Revel-Horwood homed right in on Jo Wood, who was so vulnerable as her marriage to the spectacularly adulterous Ronnie Wood deteriorated that her partner Brendan Cole admitted he didn't know how to move ahead. I stopped watching at these points.
However, there's much more chattering about the challenging manner of Simon Cowell on ITV's X-Factor, which a Brit would have to be Rip Van Winkle with extra somnolence on the side not to have heard about, and which has just finished in Britain.
Cowell is a hard-nosed businessman but not a bully: there's a difference. He puts his charges under pressure deliberately because the business side of showbusiness is not known for its touchy-feeliness. But he will accept the mitigations of his often kinder co-judg
es Louis Walsh, Danni Minogue and Cheryl Cole - and, crucially, he accepts the public's votes, not least as regarded atonal Irish teenagers Jedward (John and Edward Grimes) whose style I would find difficult to describe.Jedward were interesting. Had they won the X-factor every adult in the land would have been annoyed to bewilderment; but it's happened before, that's what punk was about. For a brief and - for them - shining moment they had the sort of notoriety I haven't seen a TV programme bestow since we all ran about buying stickers saying that we'd killed JR. Both the Labour and Conservative parties brought out eve-of-war posters casting each other as the surreally-coiffed pair, which is certainly something the lads can show their grandchildren. (Click on the two pics below to read more on Iain Dale's Diary)
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e talent will out: and it's notable that Hear'Say, who won a 2001 talent-show programme called Popstars, contained classically-trained pianist Mylene Klass, while Britain's Got Talent, another of Cowell's vehicles, was won in 2007 by a tenor called Paul Potts who'd been winning smaller-scale competitions for years, and this year's runner up in the competition, Susan Boyle, has famously been singing in clubs for decades. Talent shows, whether they be on the end of a pier of in front of a TV audience, don't create talent, they merely give it a platform.I wish winner Joe McElderry well. For as long as Cowell keeps him on his label he won't go far wrong, because people who are good at making a lot of money generally don't s
et themselves or their money-makers up to fail, which is perhaps why much of the commentary has a jealous edge to it. And if McElderry's single The Climb makes number one - which despite highbrow harrumphing is a big "if" given competition from George Michael and the Children in Need single - it'll be for no other reason than that people choose to buy it. He may prove to have staying power like Myleene Klass, but if he doesn't he'll have a pile of stories to tell his grandchildren. And, thank heavens, he isn't Jedward.
I'm happy to admit that there are some truths in James Lovelock's theory that some of earth's systems contain compensatory mechanisms - that's how volcanoes work, why the Himalayas are getting taller, and what makes winds to blow my aerial over whenever there's a good rugby game on. (And I have to profess admiration for a man brave enough to suggest that the way to preserve the rainforest in the Amazon basin from development is to bury nuclear waste there.) What gave his theory of what one might call natural checks and balances legs, though, was a suggestion from his fellow villager William Golding, as they walked to the pub, that he swap the various long-winded names for his theory for one word: Gaia - "wide-bosomed Earth" in 
As a rule it is an animal, either edible and harmless, or dangerous and feared...which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and protector; it sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows and spares its children. The members of a totem are therefore under a sacred obligation not to kill (destroy) their totem, to abstain from eating its meat or from any other enjoyment of it. Any violation of these prohibitions is automatically punished. [Corrected for transcribers' spelling mistakes]
t of negation of one's culture that makes it all the easier for those who wish us harm to tighten their grip yet further the reins of power.
to say you feel rubbish or that you want people to leave you alone, and possible the less religious one becomes the more guilty one is of this. In Cambridge, if you have mental health problems, most of the services for us that haven't been closed for good are on holiday or reduced hours, so it's really good to be part of a family where I'm allowed to slope off for a while if I feel awful. And out of the house, I must admit I do revel somewhat in the epithet of "bah humbug": it's good to be grumpy.
es.
his would lessen his chances of catching the virus - but at least he accepts that HIV is the causative organism of AIDS and is allowing palliative anti-retroviral drugs to be given to his people, both of which his predecessor 
Not that in Britain we can claim cultural superiority - 
