I'm so patriotic, I think every British kid should have a chance to grow up to be our head of state.

Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay.

There is an emerging scientific consensus that global warming is making hurricanes more intense and more destructive. It turns out that Katrina fits into a pattern that scientists and greens have been trying to warn us about for a long time.

The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers. They are nudging close to having the moral credibility of Holocaust deniers.

The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don't begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives - and millions may die there.

Something has gone badly wrong with our culture. We've created a culture where really large numbers of the people around us can't bear to be present in their daily lives. They need to medicate themselves to get through their day.

I got my dad a great father's Day present. He called to say: 'Ach. Zis present is so good I now think it vas almost vorth having children.