Bojo At The Crossroads

You wish for a politician who looks and sounds like a real human being and what do you get? You get Boris Johnson.

Of course he wants to be party leader. NB: on matters of substance he's as slippery as all the rest.

He's a neo-con of neo-cons. Give him the top job and- like every other leader since Thatcher- he'll govern in the interests of the bankers. The only difference is he'll do it in the style of Tommy Cooper.

There are an awful lot of skeletons in his closet. Affairs, illegitimate children, dodgy mates, Darius Guppy. Will they come tumbling out if he climbs any higher?

Jude The Obscure: Thomas Hardy

It's not like earlier Hardy. The sensuality has gone. No more moo-cows in lush green pastures. The writing is spare, perfunctory, sometimes clumsy. At times it's as if he no longer cares. At least no longer cares about the novel as art.

The Bishop of Wakefield burned his copy (Thomas Hardy, meet Salman Rushdie) because what has the Church to do with truth?

Got any illusions- About men and women, sex, religion, education, morality? This'll scotch 'em.

It's a terrible, terrible book.