Melanie Phillips will be talking about her new book, The World Turned Upside Down, at the New Culture Forum this coming Thursday, 21st October, and Standpoint readers are most welcome. If you'd like details or to RSVP, then please go to this link.

The book is currently only available in the USA, but luckily we will have copies for sale on Thursday. 

You might have read in the press over the weekend of a short film produced by Richard Curtis for the Environmentalist campaign 10:10. 
Called No Pressure, it is truly nasty piece of work. 

I shall direct you to James Delingpole's excellent blog piece about it at the Telegraph, for there's little to add to that. Suffice to say this film manages to be hateful, self-hating, almost fascistic, and socially snobbish all at the same time.

Realising perhaps that this amounts to one massive own-goal, the 10:10 people have already taken it off their website. But it should be seen by as many people as possible before it is 'disappeared'. So here it is, below.    

It's very sad to hear of the death of Tony Curtis. Unlike many stars of his era, he remained something of a fixture on the Hollywood scene right up to his later years.  

The visual arts carry on down the road to complete irrelevance. A storm in a teacup is currently brewing around the series of pictures by Brazilian artist Gil Vicente which went on display recently at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial. The charcoal drawings depict the artist about to assassinate a number of world figures, including the Pope, George Bush, Ariel Sharon, the Queen and Ahmadinejad.

Amid all the pomp and ceremony of the Pope's visit, one moment stood out for me: the address welcoming Benedict made on the steps of Westminster Cathedral by Paschal Uche, a 21-year-old student of Nigerian origin from London's East End. So eloquent, clear and charismatic was he, I imagined maybe he was a drama student, an aspiring actor, but no; the superb way in which he delivered his speech derived solely from his faith, and sense of occasion. It was truly moving, and great to see a talented individual thrust into the spotlight amid the usual detritus clogging up the airways.

You can watch it here:

So it seems that some of the usual suspects among the cultural great and good - Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman - have signed up to a campaign in opposition to the Pope's visit.

I'm not Catholic, not remotely religious at all in fact, but it seems obvious to me that the Catholic church AND the Catholic religion is regularly demonised by our culture (and in our culture) because it is 'of ' us and therefore fair game. To that extent it is an expression of cultural self-loathing.