Starting the week ......

A cornucopia of illogical whingers to reflect on. First up, we have Seb Coe in Comment is Free telling us that the 2012 Olympics are about more than just sport. Of course they are Seb, hubris, greed, profit, sponsorship deals, TV rights, profit, legacies, corruption, profit, backhanders, self-promotion, profit, deluding the public, additional taxation, sucking supportive funding away from truly amateur participatory sports, celebrity cults, oh, and err... profit.

It is a measure of the weakness of the case for the global TV-fest scheduled for east London in 2012 that apologists constantly harp on the supposed residual benefits. The Olympics have become nothing more than a stage for self-promotion by a bunch of celebrity athletes seeking to add another whopping sponsorship cheque to their bank accounts and jack up their appearance money in subsequent events.

Next Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Indie is complaining at the lack of black faces on the BBC and in the media generally. Well actually she is complaining about the lack of a certain very particular face on the BBC. Hers. Well it could just be Yasmin, that having seen the odd TV appearance by your goodself that the BBC has judged that you may not exactly help the viewing figures.

To take her general point though, that there should be positive discrimination in order to get the numbers right. Does that mean that all those black athletes that appear in GB vests should be sidelined and replaced with white athletes to get the right ethnic balance? Or strict ethnic monitoring applied to football team selection in order to make up for the deficit of white players? Or how about government funding for drug dealers in order to get that particular ethnic mix right.

The Indie offers up another hard done by sufferer of personal discrimination. Rowan Pelling believes that the reason she and her sister-in-law were fired from their jobs was due to producing children. She says that she went along with the loss of her job, which carried a generous severance package due to post natal exhaustion, a desire to spend more time with her child and guilt.

Just to gently point out, Rowan, job specifications rarely call for applicants to be ridden with guilt, in a state of exhaustion and desirous of extra time off. Your mistake was to believe the feminist propaganda that the only true way to female fulfilment is to prove your economic prowess. There are actually other ways.

The Indie again. This time the leader writer castigates Bush for promoting bio-fuels in order to quench the thirst of gas-guzzling American automobile behemoths. Switching to bio-fuels will not save the planet. Well no, I agree, but I don't suppose for one instant that that is G Bush's intention. More like reduce American dependence on imported fuels.

Back to Comment is Free for the real gem of the day. Roy Hattersley tells us, by way of recounting his personal odyssey from gung-ho nuker to unilateralist, that Clement Attlee was the greatest British Prime Minister of the twentieth century. This was the man who was responsible for nationalising coal, transport and health care. Coal and transport ended up being run for the benefit of union bosses.

He bequeathed a planning system that has bedevilled housing in this country ever since. The NHS has been an appalling testimony to bureaucratic inefficiency for the whole of its days. Attlee finally fell from office when about the only policy he had on offer was the nationalisation of the sugar industry. What a record!