Perhaps more arguable is the fourth-tier position allotted to Harold Wilson and Harold Macmillan on the grounds of high promise unfulfilled. Both, at least, had promise worth fulfilling. Macmillan raised his party and to some extent the country from despair, and did the job in some style. Electorally, 1960s Britain seemed set in a Conservative mould. So Wilson’s re-establishment of the Labour Party as a party of government, and the significant changes in the machinery of government during his first and second administration deserve some mark-up. Both Wilson and Macmillan faced intractable problems of economic decline compounded by additional individual afflictions—in Macmillan’s case, his prostate disease and in Wilson’s, the left wing of the Labour Party. Both are easy prey for the quotation-makers. “Harold”, one of Wilson’s own officials at Number Ten is quoted as saying, “wanted to be a combination of the head of MI5 and news editor of the Daily Mirror.” Nonetheless, he and Macmillan were the most intellectually accomplished of the post-war premiers and the best parliamentary performers, and some might dispute their demotion below Heath and Callaghan.

As one would expect from Cameron's loose rhetoric since he was elected last December, there's nothing particularly remarkable about this text, save the fact that Cameron has bettered his own paradox of "compassionate conservatism". He's now saying that "this country needs a responsibility revolution".

What could this possibly mean? Surely conservatism is premised on a will to conserve? Revolution is anathema to any conservative worth the name, and has been since Reflections on the Revolution in France.

And just in case we missed it, Cameron repeats the word four times in the subsequent four paragraphs:

A revolution in personal responsibility – giving every individual the skills, the resources, and the confidence to take control of their life.

A revolution in professional responsibility – giving all those whowork in our public services the freedom to fulfil their vocation.

A revolution in civic responsibility – giving our neighbourhoods and communities the power to shape their destinies, fight crime and improve the quality of life.

A revolution in corporate responsibility – giving business the encouragement and the incentive to help enhance our environment and improve well-being.

That is the mission of the modern Conservative Party: a responsibility revolution to create an opportunity society – a society in which everybody is a somebody, a doer not a done-for.

One further thing jumped out at me before I buckled under the philosophic weight of "the aims and values of the Conservative Party". Cameron, as pictured above, is talking a lot about social justice. He says:

A multitude of politicians are now re-iterating the same worn phrase, just as John Reid's clumsy proclamation that the Home Office is "not fit for purpose" has become a part of the political lexicon. "It's not racist to impose limits on immigration", argued Michael Howard last year, and he unveiled large billboards as if to prove it.Michael Howard's campaign was a disaster. But why? Surely he was stating a truism, in the same vein as Israel's "right to exist"? Yes - but as with much of politics, image counts more than substance. Howard seemed reactionary, despite the truism; Conservatism was thus rejected.

Of course immigrants are good for a society, up to a point. New Labour has offered no serious consideration of that point. Nor has it demonstrated that an open door is good for the economy; the real argument is the other way. What we need is rational and controlled immigration; until we have rational and controlled politicians and civil servants, we are hardly likely to get it.

This artificial distinction between "controlled" and "uncontrolled" immigration is commonly made, but is deceiving. To talk of "floods" and "waves" of immigrants is hyperbolic, and the word "uncontrolled" falls into the same trap. An "open door" system is controlled - but it is controlled by market forces and individual choice, not protectionism and a "Whitehall knows best mentality", as typified by John Reid's proposal:

Mr Reid is considering setting-up a Migration Advisory Committee, though the idea is still in its infancy. The panel of experts, headed by business leaders, would assess the skills shortages in the UK to work out how many migrant workers are needed. It would then set an 'optimum' level of migration which is 'beneficial in terms of enhancing the economy of this country commensurate with our social stability'.

This article is not meant as a defence of immigration per se - my thoughts on this subject are outlined in brief here - but rather as an attack on the misleading language which pervades debate on immigration, saturated as it is with all those liquid metaphors. Talk of "racism" is beside the point. But talk of protectionism, provincialism and conservatism is certainly not.

• The current inheritance tax threshold is far too low, as asset inflation (i.e. mainly pullled by house price inflation) has risen much faster than the threshold
• Middle England would be hit hard, but more importantly many members of the lower middle or even working classes would be hit because the tax is a "tax which the very rich are much more likely to be able to avoid through careful tax planning and the setting up of trusts"
• Stephen Buyers has "aimed a grenade" at Gordon Brown and it is obvious that the chancellor needs to show the kind of leadership through change that will win him the premiership
• The £3.6 billion tax is not vital to the Treasury, seeing as £2.5 billion was spent on management consultants
• When Mrs Thatcher replaced Capital Transfer Tax with inheritance tax, it was only something for the rich to worry about then, so Mr Cameron is wrong in believing following her is the right course of action
• Perhaps the most cynical observation of this article is that the underlying reason for scrapping the tax is that of political popularity.

• it seems he's sticking with his pledge to replace the HRA with a bill of rights, despite the criticism he received when the policy was first proposed back at the end of June
• he's calling for a dedicated minister to "pull together" counter-terrorism efforts
• as well as a "dedicated border police force" - perhaps forgetting that most of the 20-odd people arrested recently were home-grown Britons
• he's calling for more "preachers of hate" to be expelled from Britain
• vaguely, he says: "why has so little been done to minimise the impact of imams who come to Britain and preach, often with little knowledge or appreciation of British values"
• he's proposing a "national school leaver programme"
• Martha Kearney picked up on an interesting point, which is that Cameron throughout his speech referred to a "struggle against terrorism" rather than a "war on terrorism". He clearly realises that adopting the Bush lexicon would be a political landmine, even if many of his fellow Conservatives would be comfortable with it.

What can we conclude? Cameron is, indeed, an "heir to Blair". He's making policy on the hoof (just like Blair) in response to events, without due consideration to the implications of his proposals. Also, many of the policies really do sound like a Conservative slant on New Labour - what exactly does he mean by a "national school leaver programme"? Cameron's rhetoric is reactionary, gimmicky and dangerous.

Cameron accuses the government of "ineffective authoritarianism". Perhaps he thinks he's the one to provide effective authoritarianism.

We know that we face a real threat from Muslim fundamentalists, and that we are unlikely to begin to defeat this until we see it for what it is: something infinitely more complex, diffuse and nuanced than the US president wishes to suppose.

Newsnight has really got with the times. In spite of Jeremy Paxman's scepticism, it has free-to-download weekly audio and video podcasts, which often come in iTunes' top 10. The editor, Peter Barron, regularly contributes to his online blog, which is also available via email. More recently, Newsnight has launched a collective blog, which pulls together contributions from a variety of presenters (though so far limited to Paul Mason, Martha Kearney and Justin Rowlatt).

The programme is avant-garde in more ways than one. It has frustrated some "traditional" Newsnight watchers by juxtaposing serious reporting with more frivolous items - such as a quirky 1960s tourist video of Lebanon, driving a car clad in St George's flags in a rough part of Scotland, and, as mentioned before, the ethical man series.

Newsnight's willingness to embrace the broadband revolution has obvious democratising results - ensuring a closer connection between the producers of television and the consumers of it. I haven't always been convinced by this argument, but after making the following comment in response to a post by Justin Rowlatt...

I enjoy the Ethical Man programmes - they are suitably light-hearted while addressing serious issues.
One question, Justin - you apparently gave up your car as part of ethical living, but according to this report, you drove to the green festival. Something smells fishy - and not just your compost heap.

I've made quite a do about giving up my car for the project and yet as SPL noticed I said in my report on the Big Green Gathering that I drove to the festival. As SPL says "something smells fishy - and not just your compost heap."
So here's the mea culpa. We did indeed drive to the festival. The Big Green Gathering is scattered across some fields in the soft Somerset hills and is a good few miles from the nearest town. The event lays on buses from the station but with two toddlers and a two month old baby we can’t travel light. Bee and I reckoned we were justified in hiring a car. My first thought was to get a hybrid car. Wouldn’t this be the ideal opportunity to test one out? The problem is the only hybrid that might pack us all in is a Toyota Lexus. It is an SUV but uses hybrid technology. In fact, it’s the car that David Cameron uses. It had to be the most ethical option, surely. I couldn’t find a rental company that stocks the Lexus so I decide to try Toyota themselves. But when I called they didn't seem keen to help me get back behind the wheel. “You’d be better off with the diesel Aventis Estate”, Alan in the press office tells me, “it will give you up to 45 miles to the gallon on long journeys. The Lexus is based on a 3.3 litre V6 engine,” he explains, “You might get as much as 30 miles to the gallon in town but if you are driving on motorways a diesel would be better.” For all warm words we hear about hybrid technology it clearly has its limitations – certainly when
it’s used in a big four wheel drive SUV, as Toyota seem to acknowledge. Instead we hired a roomy, cheap and fuel efficient 1.6 litre Vauxhall instead. Meanwhile my car is still gathering dust in a car park.
I don't think I am cheating on the project. When I gave up the car I said the idea was to see how the family got on without one. We said we would look at what alternatives to car ownership there are and hiring a car is one of them.
Of course, if you think I am being an a*****e feel free to use the box below to tell me and - yes - the BBC will publish your reply (so long as it is not too obscene).

• Mark Lynas in The New Statesman (available here)
• Richard Mabey in The Sunday Times
• James Flint in The Daily Telegraph (available here)
• Michael Hanlon in The Daily Mail
• Robin McKie in The Observer (available here).

As the developer of the controversial but respected so-called “Gaia theory” of the global ecological system, James Lovelock enjoys widespread praise in all of the above reviews for his various scientific achievements. It is in this context that the above reviewers assess what is indeed a piercing book; one that challenges our innate preconceptions of safety and of the near-invincibility of Earth. The book is forthright; according to Robin McKie, it is “gloomy to the point of near suicide”. When James Lovelock first developed his Gaia theory in the 1960s and ‘70s, he was of the opinion that the self-correcting mechanisms inherent within planet Earth were sufficient to re-balance humans’ ecological impact, particularly in the last few centuries, since the industrial revolution. Gaia is “the sum of all … mutually dependent networks”: a sort of collectivised Darwinism, inspired by the notion that species evolve interdependently with other species and the planet; thus evolution as a concept may only be accurate if the Earth is considered as an inseparable whole (hence, Gaia, or “Mother Earth”), rather than as a collection of individual animals. The implication of James Lovelock’s new book, therefore, is that, as Robin McKie notes, “Our planet will burn like a crisp and, along with it, civilisation”. Richard Mabey in The Sunday Times also notes that “If Gaia means the interdependence of all organisms on Earth, then its breakdown implicates all organisms, though it is our fault, exclusively”.

A distinct difficulty, which has encumbered all of the above reviewers, is James Lovelock’s confusing blend of science with quasi-religious undertones. Richard Mabey is perplexed by the undertones of James Lovelock’s book, which “reads at times like the Book of Revelation”. The Observer article notes that James Lovelock’s book represents “science meets the Book of Isaiah”. Moreover, James Lovelock’s personification of the Earth, via his ubiquitous Gaia creation, prevents some reviewers, notably Michael Hanlon in The Daily Mail, from accessing the true science behind The Revenge of Gaia. Michael Hanlon’s reaction is understandable: as James Flint characterises it, “Gaia is growing weak, and old. And increasingly unhappy”. Michael Hanlon dismisses The Revenge of Gaia as sounding “like the plot of one of those lurid 1970s sci-fi movies in which the world ends in an onslaught of plagues, nuclear war or apes”. The explanation for such a reaction to the book may be found in Richard Mabey’s intelligent review in The Sunday Times, for he notes that while James Lovelock “is a scientist of brilliant prescience, he is not such a good psychologist”, for The Revenge of Gaia is “disablingly depressing” and the “Spartan argument may not push the right buttons”. Richard Mabey’s respectful review of The Revenge of Gaia is, however, somewhat more optimistic about the Earth’s future than is James Lovelock himself: for with “common consensus”, and “something truer to our organic origins and our present psychologies”, human society “might just turn things around”.

James Flint notes that James Lovelock's musings makes us feel as if “we’re powerless to stop it”. However, James Flint contends that James Lovelock is misguided in his negative approach to such efforts as wind power, organic farming and simple, domestic conservation of energy, as is personified in Newsnight’s “Ethical Man” feature. James Flint thus implicitly rejects James Lovelock’s adopted policy of “sustainable retreat”, for he argues that if environmental policies are derided to such a drastic extent, then the public may lose any remotely green motivation it may have acquired in the global warming media frenzy that has ensued in the past year. There is a haunting reverberation in James Flint’s last lines, challenging the reader to “make that call”, reject James Lovelock’s thesis, and thus gamble “the future of the planet”. Michael Hanlon is clearly ready for such a challenge himself, contending powerfully that “the global warming brigade” ignores “the contradictions, the nuances and uncertainties of climate science and always plump for the absolute, we’re-all-going-to-die scenario”. Michael Hanlon’s scientific basis for such assertions is that for much of the Earth’s history, our planet “was several degrees warmer than it is now”. James Lovelock and Michael Hanlon agree on one point, however: “bring on nuclear power”, they say. According to Mark Lynas in The New Statesman, James Lovelock is a keen nuclear power advocate because he sees it as the only way in which to ensure “secure and relatively safe electricity” in order to facilitate the electrical lifestyle central to modern life.

The green argument in general, and James Lovelock’s in particular, is compelling, despite the scepticism of Michael Hanlon and others. Mark Lynas writes in The New Statesman that “atmospheric greenhouse-gas levels are far higher than at any other time in the past thirty million years”. Such an assertion is not scientific fact, but its re-iteration may cause governments to pay heed; that is surely what James Lovelock and others in the green movement are striving towards. The danger for the green movement is that the perpetual use of hyperbole may backfire, once the public realises that, while we may indeed be “ecological sinners”, the world is not “fighting back” and humanity not “about to get the elbow”. James Lovelock, it seems, may not be credited with effective use of the metaphor. However, he does recognise that, for instance, “Kyoto … was a mere act of appeasement to polluters”. James Lovelock, along with the green movement, is faced with the quandary of trying to persuade reluctant governments to act against the powerful business lobby which would loathe to see “green taxes” and increased regulations on emissions. James Lovelock is not indicative of greens in general, however – his support for nuclear power solidifies this fact – and, as Mark Lynas says, “Perhaps his book should carry a special label: ‘Warning – for those with open minds only. Do not read if you cannot be persuaded’”.