Daniel Finkelstein And Me...

I am growing rather fond of Daniel Finkelstein, of Comment Central at The Times online. It all started with this post, which was supposed to be a sophisticated comment on the paradox of state funded therapy (societal problems should not be remedied with individual solutions etc.) but which was actually just a spontaneous and barely coherent sound-off about the ludicrous notion of giving women counselling in lieu of an early termination (waiting times for terminations being ridiculously long.) Mr Finkelstein picked up on my question of whether it is ‘the government’s job to help us to manage our emotional response to the world’ in his Web Grab section. I responded in a churlish fashion. I am a Guardian reader, after all, and was disconcerted by the fact that he quoted me directly after a damning piece on Oliver James’ new book, Affluenza, the thrust of which I have much sympathy with. I was secretly pleased with the link, of course, and I suspect Mr Finkelstein was aware that my churlish tongue was at least slightly in my cheek because he has followed this up with another link to this post, which I will be much less churlish about. Except that it follows yet another damning piece on Oliver James’ new book, and I now feel obliged to post in defence of Affluenza, despite the fact that I am not a big fan of Oliver James’ propensity for courting controversy. (Post coming soon, I promise.) I suspect that Mr Finkelstein is teasing me. And because of that, I repeat that I am growing rather fond of him.