In the UN bashing business (entirely legitimate on the basis of supply and demand) there seems to be no better port of call than the Diplomad (as I mentioned previously), although I'm always slightly worried when people very close to situations are blogging in a popular way, fearing that someone senior to them my just tell them to stop sometime. I don't think the same can happen to Tim Blair, who has also put together some excellent posts on the UN, like this one.

Blair also pointed me to this superb, almost definitive one would have to say, article critical of the UN by David Frum. I think Frum is great: witty, thoughful, articulate (you can find his NRO blog in my links, at the bottom). In fact I can't think of a better advertisement for the art of column-building. There's always a touch of moralism, a little wisdom of a private kind, in what he writes- such as in his conclusion to his analysis of the 'special place' the UN occupies in the well-thinking left:

'But the real challenge to all of us, in all the democracies, is this: to be guided by realities, not fantasies - and especially not such uniquely unconvincing fantasies as the allegedly unique moral authority of the United Nations.'

In other words, Clare Short, go and acquire some judgement from somewhere.

But meanhile, back at the ranch, the BBC is showing off what must be the strangest construction still left over from the Victorian Age of moralism: its scales of mediatorial judgement.

The Beeb have a report about the UN-Oil-for-food programme, which is, like Volcker's report itself, quite conservative. Then they have this rather more colourful story about homelessness in the USA, called 'Homelessness in a land of plenty' . Why do I always feel the BBC are trading a story they don't want to report, but must, with a report they shouldn't need (like some latter days unwelcome Dickens) to keep disinterring, but do? And why is the former one of kleptocrats in high places the only story that comes over with all its colour drained?

Even while stealing the show from Koffi, Jill 'quivering' Mcgivering's tiny Tim gets a breakfast of 'porridge and bagels, and eggs and hot coffee.' from a local church, which left me thinking 'please please please make me homeless in that part of America rather than housed where I am'


Ok, perhaps it seems a little unfair to the BBC to cut n' paste their coverage so savagely as I have in the penultimate paragraph above, to make my favoured points. However, if the Beeb gave adequate weight to the many (too many, surely, for cossetted Beebies) unwelcome stories out there (they know what they are), perhaps there would be no room at the inn for vacuous moral statements.