Freddy Gray

It seems that everyone agrees Pope Francis should be Time's 'Person of the Year 2013'. Better him than Miley Cyrus, at any rate, or Bashar al-Assad, and Francis deserves it, too. This year he has -- forgive the media-speak -- changed the narrative about Christianity in the liberal world. He's spreading the Good News, not just reacting to the bad. But Catholics have mixed feelings about all this acclaim for their new Pope. Peggy Noonan put her finger on the key point in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, when she suggested that Time would choose Francis because he is different 'in ways Time's editors and reporters find congenial'.

What happened to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Just over a decade ago, the French, having refused to join the allied adventure in Iraq, were the butt of every hawkish joke. (Remember ‘Freedom fries’? Oh how we laughed.) Now, as America and Britain are beating a retreat from the world stage, France has turned into the West’s most reliable interventionist. Its President, the disaster-prone François Hollande, rattles his sabre at any despot or war criminal who dares to stand in the way of liberté, egalité, or fraternité. American neoconservatives — the War Party in Washington — have turned Francophile as a result. ‘Vive la France!

A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football multipliers.’ Multipliers, in case you don’t know, are those enticing combination wagers on bookmakers’ shopfronts: ‘Liverpool win 2-0 + Sturridge to score = 33/1.’ Mugs like me fall for them every time. My subconscious tends to add together the two probabilities — that of Sturridge scoring and that of Liverpool winning 2-0 — when really I should be multiplying them. Duh. The bookies don’t always triumph when it comes to football, however.

As Isabel says, the HS2 brigade are on a roll. Not only are Labour now under serious pressure over the party's support or otherwise for the project, each day brings a new headline about the advantages of high speed rail. Today, the money quote comes from David Prout, the HS2 director general. He says that, without high speed rail, London would become 'a global city surrounded by rust belt'. The Times leader page dutifully regurgitates Westminster's fodder: 'If the map of Britain is not to become a literal illustration of Disraeli's two nations, the tracks must be laid.' At first this is a compelling argument. It seems obvious that a quicker link between capital Birmingham and Manchester would help alleviate some of the disparity between North and South.

Hats off to the Second City Network for the brilliant video above. The funny thing about the great Syria intervention saga has been the number of astoundingly smug and normally dovish left-liberal types who have been cheering on a US-led strike. Those who would usually be first to cry 'western imperialism' have in this instance been desperate for the West to flex its military muscle. Is it because of chemical weapons? Possibly, but I doubt they'd feel the same way if a Republican was calling for action. 'Because Obama' seems as good a reason as any.

Leave Florence and Sienna to the aesthetes. Let the in-crowd do Naples and Palermo. For the amateur Italophile, Rome is the destination. The eternal city is endlessly glorious, chaotic, stylish and funny: where else do you see nuns listening to iPods? Or medieval churches with condom machines by the doors? You can barely walk ten feet without coming across something that might change your life: obelisks, piazzas, churches, gardens and statues. All that antiquity makes Roman Catholicism seem distinctly modern. And there’s the hotels. I spent a Friday night in Rocco Forte’s Hotel de Russie on the Via del Babuino, near the Spanish steps, slap-bang in the best part of town. The room was more of a suite, or what a London estate agent would call a spacious nine-bedroom apartment.

Well, well, well. Nick Cohen's excellent column in this week's mag  has caused a stir today. Sadly, though, Nick's astute argument became another excuse for a boring slanging match between atheists and believers. And of course Stephen Fry waded in: Mary had a little lamb It's fleece was white as snow All you religious dicks Just fuck off and go. No more discussion with dickheads. Sorry. — Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) August 22, 2013 Really? Fry's Twitter cronies lapped that up. They always do. He's so clever and civilised, our Stephen, bless his colourful cotton socks. Unlike those credulous maniacs who believe in God. In 2013! Celebrity atheists always claim the rational high ground: we are calm and normal, the God squad is angry and mad.

Of all the qualities one hopes for in a Bank of England Governor – a brilliant mind, the courage to tell politicians they are wrong, supernatural foresight – coolness is not among them. I don’t mean coolness under pressure; clearly that helps. I mean the ability to project a hip image. The new Bank of England Governor may well be a terrific economist. More than that, however, he is a first-rate media brand. He's more Blair than Blair. Hell, he's more Blair than Cameron. Last weekend, he went to the Wilderness Festival, aka ‘poshstock’, and the press seems to have taken that as proof that things are going to get better.

Here's another sign that America's economy is on the mend: US culture wars are in the news again. When Americans are not depressed about unemployment and 'declinism', they revert to rowing about liberty. It's what they do best. But the culture wars are becoming a culture rout. Yesterday was another good day for America's progressives: the Supreme Court struck down a law that denies same-sex couples federal benefits and, on Capitol Hill, Wendy Davis successfully filibustered a Texas anti-Abortion Bill. By speaking non-stop for 11 hours, and blocking the bill, Davis has become the left-liberal media's latest darling. The Independent today called her a 'loquacious heroine'. She wore trainers for her speech -- how brave! She had an unwanted child herself as a teen -- how authentic!

Porn, porn, porn. One way or another, we all like talking about it. But today's debate about children and 'sexually explicit material' on the internet might be more demeaning than the smut itself. For a start, it's government manufactured: the coalition knows that nobody ever lost votes by saying they cared about kids. The media love tackling porn, too, because the subject enables them to be prurient and morally serious at the same time. Stories about online porn and the young are, inevitably, accompanied by lots of images of naked women in provocative poses. Newsnight last night used this strange blue filter to soften their broadcasting of quite a lot dirty pics to the nation - after the watershed, of course. (And oh look above — we've done it too. LOL!