Billy Jo-King

It's Festival time again in Cheltenham, and given the shortage of parking spaces the tall statue of King William IV in Montpellier Gardens has been appropriately adorned. I went to two Times events, one more enjoyable than the other.

The Leader Conference - for a third year in succession - took place "live" at Midday, half a dozen journalists discussing what should appear in the three slots in tomorrow's paper. Last year, former Ladies' Coll. Head Enid Castle, in the Q&A towards the end of the hour, suggested a topic that hadn't been canvassed - and they went with it. This year, I put in a bid for tomorrow's feast of St Francis and the opening of the Rome Synod on Monday, but Oliver Kamm had other ideas, and he's apparently the one who writes "religious" leaders, despite being by his own admission "devoutly irreligious".

At this very moment he'll be polishing the third leader on the vital question of Um and Er. Can't wait.

Despite this failure, I found the hour's exchange of ideas entertaining and provocative. Is the suggested reform of human rights legislation just a political gesture?  Does it matter that Milliband's Conference speech was much-derided? (What, for that matter, differentiates Cameron's speech from "the old policy of populism" in Venezuela? And don't pledges of tax cuts undermine austerity?) Should we send the army into Sierra Leone to halt the spread of Ebola? What are the knock on consequences of making cycle helmets compulsory, as in Australia and now Jersey? Should they also take the brakes off cars?

The Times, News in pictures event this afternoon was by comparison low key, the star of the show - photographer Jack Hill - not being a naturally-gifted communicator in words. So his narrow escape last year, from capture at the hands of the Syrian man he thought was a friend, didn't register with me as I know it has done with others - an  appalling ordeal.

More people than ever throng Cheltenham for this year's Festival. No doubt it's no longer PC to say that the world and his wife were there.

Grumpy old men - 2

For one reason or another, we hadn't been to the Film Society recently - till last night. "The Guard" (released in 2011) is Irish noir, laced with good visual jokes. There were jokes in the script too, but many of them passed me by: never have I found the words of an English-language film so difficult to grasp. A strong case for subtitles throughout!

Delivering Christmas cards earlier, I dropped one in at Catherine Shinn. Her father, Catherine said, was at home decorating an absurdly large Christmas tree: "we don't do minimalism," she added - unnecessarily, if you have ever been to her magnificent shop: see my photograph.

I bumped into another of my "by hand" card recipients as she walked homewards with the shopping: recently having flown back from a pilgrimage/holiday in the Holy Land, she justified her failure to send conventional cards this year by a desire to save trees. Really!!

Which brings me onto the great airport debate, raging anew this week - mostly about where extra capacity should be built. The leader in today's Guardian stands alone, reminding readers that roads (and runways) breed traffic. "The old Mr Cameron," it goes on, "warned that If we don't act now, and act quickly, we could face disaster from the climate. That danger has not gone away, and neither have Whitehall's own projections for a 50% rise of aviation emissions by 2050, projections that make a mockery of a supposedly binding commitment to cut 80% out of total greenhouse gases by the same date."

"It's called losing"

A great-grandmother of mine was born in Daventry: we went there briefly on Saturday, but not for family history purposes. A short way South of the town lies the village of Canons Ashby, dominated by the remains of its Priory and an Elizabethan manor house, the home for many years of the Dryden family, now owned by the National Trust: we didn't have time to pay a proper visit, but this delightful early 18th Century statue caught the eye when I had a peep over the garden wall from the roadside.

Segue to Chris Heaton-Harris, Daventry's Eurosceptic MP, who numbered himself amongst the 100 or more Members putting questions to the Prime Minister in the Commons this afternoon: unusually, I found myself watching more or less the whole proceedings. You couldn't but admire Cameron's stamina and courtesy, in keeping up the appearance of considering each question on its merits. But he surely suffered from Ed Milliband's early barb: a veto, he said, was what one deployed to stop something from taking place. If what you tried to stop goes ahead anyway, it's not a veto - "it's called losing."

The Durban platform

Two items have dominated the news this weekend: in Europe, our Prime Minister reached for the unilateral opt-out (surely a better description than "the veto"); whilst in South Africa some sort of legally-binding climate treaty looks now to be on the cards - thanks largely to the EU's climate chief (Connie Hedegaard)'s efforts. (What better illustration do you require Mr. Cameron, of the importance of us playing a full part in Europe?)

Both events will impinge far more upon a four-year-old than on someone of my age, but so far from this being the public perception, all we hear are Hooray Henrys on the Tory right apparently regardless of the significance of the Durban roadmap: it may only be a mouse, where a lion-sized compact for humanity's future is required, but it's better than nothing.

Blackberry Messenger

Someone must have given these cousins a message that there were blackberries around; from which you can tell that I am (a) dangerously facetious and/or (b) something of a mobile phone Luddite, certainly unfamiliar with apps. The other sort of BlackBerry must cost well over £100 a throw. So, the hoodlums organising the rioting in London and elsewhere, who seem to be using BM to coordinate their forces, are not exactly going to be on their uppers. Or perhaps the Blackberries themselves were looted?

Nausea quickly overtook me as I listened to the horrific news on the Today Programme this morning. So I turned to Radio 4 Extra, where I found a rerun of To the Manor Born. This is of course hiding one's head in the sand: there can be no peace without justice. Nevertheless, it's perhaps what David Cameron would like to have been able to do when advised to break his Italian holiday.

PS Thomas has drawn my attention to a brilliant post here by Rosamicula: don't be put off by the fact that you have to consent to reading adult content: there's no need for the warning on this particular post. Indeed, reading it should be compulsory.