Alex Massie

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the pundit seeking heft to support his argument must eventually turn to George Orwell. This is, for sure, often a wise decision since much the most remarkable aspect of Orwell's writing is how much of it remains vivid and even valid today. But not all of it since Eric Blair was as capable of talking through his hat as the next intellectual. Thus John Quiggin, writing about the Olympic torch's travels across Australia, cites Orwell's view that: Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles. There's a missing "can" there whose omission condemns Orwell.

Mike Crowley highlights Hillary Clinton's changing style: April, 1993: "We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility   and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable   questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how   we can have a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves."  April, 2008: [E]very speech she gave in Indiana on Friday and Saturday had the same topic sentence. “My campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said, always to thunderous applause.From a political point of view, it seems Hillary has learnt something.

Sometimes the news isn't terrible: A doctor caught with 14 ecstasy tablets at a music festival has been allowed to keep his licence to practise. A General Medical Council panel told Dr Fraser Gibb they were satisfied he only used drugs to enhance his life and not to "prop it up". However, it found him guilty of misconduct and imposed conditions on his licence over the next 18 months. But suppose Dr Gibb were popping the occasional pill to "prop-up" his life? Why would that be an affront to civilised society and all that's sweet and wholesome on this planet? After all: Colleagues at Dumfries and Galloway NHS Trust said the locum consultant psychiatrist at Crichton Royal Hospital was an asset to the trust and preventing him from working would not serve any purpose for patients.

Matt Yglesias writes: For such a nice country, Italy's politics seem weirdly screwed up. There's the famous instability of the governments, of course. And then there's the fact that their main right-of-center party is led by the legendarily corrupt Silvio Berlusconi. And then there's the fact that despite the broadly discreditable nature of Berlusconi, the left-of-center bloc can never seem to stop him from coming back to power. Well, yes and, as is so often the case, no. I don't know what correlation there is between a country's niceness and the screwyness of its politics, but itt's true that foreigners of all stripes enjoy their occasional surveys of Italian politics. Certainly no commentary can avoid having fun with the "famous instability" of their governments.

Er, I'm the subject of this week's Normblog profile. It's here.