‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.

Far from slipping away, the great Mosque debate is now getting on to the front pages here. On one day The Independent carried three different feature articles, although there was no eureka moment in any of them. Quest did a piece with a very reasonable, articulate, and intelligent Muslim Republican politician, who also made the point about the danger of encouraging alienation and a feeling of being Muslim first and American second He also questioned what would be a reasonable distance if 2 blocks is too close – 4 blocks? Six? Or what? Reasonable debate seems to have been lost, and O looks as if he is facing both ways. The polls show that 26% of Americans believe that because his middle name is Hussein, he must be a Muslim himself. So a person whose name is Robin must be a bird, OK?

The Big Spill is dead but it won’t lie down. We hear that the State of Alabama is going to sue BP. Will BP join the Federal Government as a co-defendant? ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be counsel was very heaven’. Transocean’s writs were 249 at the last count. The CNN’s man in Florida was struggling on Quest to make a story. The best he could do was to produce yet another ‘expert’ saying that OK there was no oil to be seen on the beaches, other than Factor 8, but the fish were ingesting the oil which could be disastrous for mankind. Handy on the BBQ, though.

After all the sound and fury of poor old Tony Hayward being monstered for taking a day off to go sailing, it is now alleged that apparently the Chairman of BP, Svanberg the Invisible, took a cruise on his luxury yacht with his squeeze just after the spill. And this was not a couple of hours around the Isle of Wight. This was an odyssey to Thailand, Singapore, Bali, and Australia. Whether he took this vacation or not would have made no difference to capping the spill. However, he is said to work at least two or three days a week for his £750,000, so he must have needed the break.

And here’s a funny thing.

This story seems to have gone largely unreported apart from the Daily Mail and an Aussie paper. Private Eye has mentioned it, natch. It didn’t seem to interest Fox News, gobby US Senators, O, the meeja jackals who tore Tony to pieces, or anyone on the other side of the pond. Perhaps the Mail fabricated it.

At the same time, you guys are still asking for Mehgrabi to be returned to the Scottish bridewell. Spiky comments here suggest that the reason for his unexpected survival is being released from the tender mercies of the NHS. It is also mildly embarrassing that the only documents not in the public domain are those embargoed by the US Government, according to the Haggisbashers.

One of the sanity-preserving institutions in this increasingly flaky world is Richard Ingrams. He is one of the original founders of Private Eye and of The Oldie. He also does a column in The Independent which is reproduced in the Oldie newsletter e-mail every Friday. Eye and Oldie probably do more to expose the malfeasances and mock the pretensions of those set in authority over us than all the conventional media together. It was the Eye that gave the lead on the above revelation. Between them Oldie and Eye also have the best cartoons.

It may also be noticed that I am a fan of CNN International. The spoken English is better than we get on UK news channels, the women are mostly better-looking (although if Fiannula gets any bigger I will need a wide-screen box), all presenters are very articulate except Andrew Finnegan who can sometimes lose the plot , ‘Quest Means Business’ is a must when our Richard is there, but he seems to have more vacations than POTUS. The short programmes on Africa and the Middle East are outstanding. The financial commentators are remarkably articulate without a teleprompter, although I challenge the fastest short-hand writer to keep up with Maggie Lake. The oddity is that it is not transmitted in the US. Same problem with the superb BBC World News Service, which is not transmitted in the UK. From my experience, CNN in the US is as bad as BBC News in the UK.

A further comment on the fair-trade racket. One of our supermarkets carries a big banner announcing that it stocks Fair-trade wines. Eh? Where are all these impoverished peasants producing Chateau Collapso? Chile and South Africa, that’s where. Chile is a medium income country that features in the top 70 nations in terms of GDP and the Human Development Index. South African wine farms occupy some of the most highly-valued real estate on the continent. I believe that there is still a quota system to prevent wine lakes and keep prices stable. I have visited quite a number of SA vineyards and have yet to see a farmer with his broekies in tatters.

A most uplifting scene on TV news was the coverage of the bull that leapt out of the bullring and charged the spectators all over the ball park. Truly, as Confucius say, ‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.