God is on whose side?

THE Labour Party is spending more than £100,000 on the services of David Axelrod, the man credited with getting Barack Obama into the White House, in the campaign to get Ed Miliband elected. There is a big difference between these two campaigns. Obama was a great and inspirational candidate but nobody knew it. Miliband is an indifferent and uninspiring candidate - and everybody knows it.

MEANWHILE, David Cameron has also appointed a significant figure to the Tory re-election campaign. It is the Lord God Almighty whose healing power, says the PM, could transform our troubled land. Doing God is never an easy option for politicians. But at least we are not like the States where it is electoral suicide for any candidate not to profess a faith. When Hillary Clinton referred to her "personal relationship with God," one sceptic commented that the relationship was so personal that even God didn't know about it.

STILL on things holy, I may be a hard-boiled old atheist but I had a lump in the throat watching Father Ray Kelly enlivening an Irish wedding ceremony with his own version of the Leonard Cohen hit "Hallelujah." Fr Kelly, of County Meath, has been performing his song at weddings for the past four years but in the past few days it has suddenly gone viral with about 10 million hits on the internet. Enjoy : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T95bqw0Clt8

YOU can do wonderful things in the theatre. In the excellent Henry IV Part I at Stratford, directed by Gregory Doran, one scene ends in Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, with the chivalrous, battle-hardened Harry Hotspur (Trevor White) striding offstage. The next scene is in Cheapside, London, with the immature, drunken Prince Hal (Alex Hassell) walking on. The two scenes, and the two characters, are hundreds of miles apart. Common sense tells you they cannot possibly see each other. Yet Hal watches Hotspur vanish into the darkness of the auditorium and a moment's shameful, wistful envy crosses his face for he knows he must grow up, become more like Hotspur and earn his father's pride. It is a spellbinding moment. You couldn't get away with it in a film or on television yet in the magic of the theatre it works perfectly.

I WROTE some months ago about London turning into a city-state, no longer the capital of England but a place apart. More proof came a few days ago with the launch of the city's own internet domain. They are no longer .com but .lon.

THAT great Victorian writer Jerome K Jerome wrote in Three Men in a Boat that sailing was the closest that man had come to flying. He imagined that flying would be the same liberating and exhilarating experience as sailing. But then Jerome never had to check in his baggage three hours before take-off. Or face a surcharge for daring to carry an extra bag. Or sit in an airliner on the runway for eight hours because of some unexplained terrorism or infection scare. Or be forced to remove his shoes for "security" at one airport and his belt at another. I was sailing my old boat a few days ago on an English lake with the sun blazing down and a good breeze filling the red sails. An airliner flew over, no doubt heading for some hot, exotic resort. I knew where I'd rather be.

NOT that sailing is entirely worry-free. In the middle of the lake, as the breeze turned suddenly stronger, my mate picked up a shackle bolt from the floor. "What d'you think this came off?" he asked. Worrying . . .