Bbc

The accusation that the Tories have been installing their people in public appointments should evoke only a hollow laugh. They have been comatose on the subject. One of the greatest skills of New Labour was putting its allies in positions of control across the public sector. A great many are still there, and yet the Tories wonder why their efforts at reform are frustrated. Maggie Atkinson, for example, was imposed by Ed Balls, when in office, as Children’s Commissioner, against the recommendation of the relevant selection committee. She lingers on in her useless post. Lord Smith, the former Labour cabinet minister who has been flooding the Somerset levels, is still at the Environment Agency.

When I interviewed Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France, for my biography of Margaret Thatcher, I asked him why, when she lunched with him at the Elysée Palace for the first time, he had been served before her: she had been offended. M. Giscard explained that no slight had been intended. It was a matter of protocol — the president is the head of state, the British prime minister only the head of government. ‘You must remember,’ he added, ‘that the president is in the line of sovereigns.’ I recalled these words when reading about President Hollande and his amorous adventures in his helmet. To the British, it is a puzzle that French presidents are protected from the media scrutiny we inflict on our own leaders.

There was a lovely little ultrasound picture of a foetus to illustrate the Independent’s splash today about the incidence of sex-selective abortions in Britain. According to the paper’s analysis of ONS statistics, the incidence of second daughters among immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh and possibly those from other countries such as India isn’t quite the same as in the population at large. Either immigrants from these groups are, more than the rest of us, having child after child until they have a boy or they are simply aborting second pregnancies where the foetus is a girl in order to ensure their next child is a boy: most probably, according to a statistician used by the Indie, the latter. The cull of pre-natal girls could have cost between 1,400 and 4,700 lives.

There is a new series of BBC Radio 3's discussion programme 'Belief'. Some readers may be interested in this episode in which I am interviewed by Joan Bakewell. It was recorded before Christmas and went out a few days ago. In any case, I much recommend the other programmes in the series, particularly those with Ian McEwan and Diarmaid MacCulloch.

Look; I’m sorry Nelson Mandela is dead. It happens quite often to people in their 90s who have been very ill, even famous people, but I’m sure that doesn’t lessen the sadness for many of us. I never met the man but, on balance, I came to the conclusion that he was a force for good rather than ill. I think I came to that rather banal and broad brush conclusion twenty years ago, or maybe fifteen. So, I’m sorry he’s dead, I wish it were otherwise. But for Christ’s sake BBC, give it a bloody break for five minutes, will you? It’s as if the poor bugger now has to bear your entire self-flagellating white post-colonial bien pensant guilt; look! Famous nice black man dies! Let’s re-run the entire history of South Africa.