My guilty secret

I have a confession to make. It is one I make with some considerable trepidation, as I know that what I am about to reveal will have me condemned to the realms of outer darkness by those who think I am (a) stupid (b) single-handedly destroying the planet or (c) simply a social pariah. My habit was until recently thought to be harmless, if not positively good for me. Now it is seen as even worse than driving a gaz-guzzling 4X4 in London or spilling raw sewage into our rivers. Tomorrow night's Panorama is devoted entirely to this clearly filthy habit. Nevertheless, I will let you in on my guilty secret: I drink mineral water. And I have no intention of swapping it for what comes from my tap even if a combination of Phil Woolas, Giles Coren and Jeremy Vine try to force me to do so. First, the water I drink is sparkling, and as such is good for the digestion; indeed I'd start to be very worried if that from the tap sparkled. Second, I don't particularly like the taste of the water from taps, no matter how good people claim it to be. Third, when I'm drinking mineral water I am generally drinking less alcohol or less of other fizzy alternatives, which have already been condemned as unsuitable, not less tap water. And fourth, unless I'm abroad where I drink the national mineral water, I tend to drink British or Irish mineral water, which is providing thousands of people with gainful employment and shouldn't involve any air miles. Indeed I have yet to hear those who champion this latest piece of political correctness explain why drinking sparkling British or Irish mineral water necessarily involves the use of any more glass or plastic than the materials used to package Coca Cola, imported lager or their doubtless cherished organic New Zealand wines. Perhaps I will give in if the NHS establishes a Quit line to help wean us mineral water drinkers from our terrible habit.

Liberal fallout?

I've just finished reading Andrew Anthony's The Fallout, a book I wanted to like more than I did. Anthony has come to realise that many of the liberal pieties that grace London dinner parties and Guardian op-ed pieces don't reflect the realities of the world we live in. His catalogue of anti-racists who believe only white people can be racist and Trots and Islamists conniving in the Stop the War coalition rightly invites ridicule. But as with Nick Cohen's recent entertaining diatribe What's Left?, one wonders who his real target is. When I came to London from Ireland in the early eighties, there was certainly rather too much political correctness in the circles within which I mixed, and it was with some trepidation that I decided to criticise the miners' strategy during the strike at my first Islington Labour Party meeting: I needn't have worried; most people there thought Arthur Scargill was behaving like a fool. Similarly, I have never encountered howls of outrage among Labour or liberal friends over the years when questioning many of the things that have recently excited Anthony's ire (or which have long excited the Daily Mail). So while I share many (though not all - I disagree with him on faith schools for reasons explained elsewhere) of Anthony's views, I doubt they will shock or surprise as many people as he imagines. Perhaps in the cloistered world of the Guardian Comment pages, these views are strange or shocking. And, sure, there is a lot of opposition to the Iraq War (which I supported on humanitarian grounds given Saddam's record) but liberal political correctness of the type Anthony fears is less widespread than he thinks. His is an attack on the conventional liberal wisdom of the 1980s (updated to deal with those who appease militant Islamism today), and it is trenchant and well-written at that. But there are rather too many Aunt Sallies for my liking.