From within the pages of the Guardian, no less, sounds a voice of choking disgust from Maureen Lipman at the everyday voice of British bigotry and moral bankruptcy in the form of, on the one hand, the 'cantata' for Rachel Corrie and, on the other, the latest effluent from Clare Short MP:

So, I wasn't standing outside the Royal Court theatre last month for the third showing of the Rachel Corrie requiem, with those prominent Jews and Gentiles who are mourning her tragic death. Not, at least, until there is equal public mourning for the hundreds of exploded Israeli victims, including 16-year-old Rachel Thaler, born in England and killed three years ago by a bomb in an Israeli pizza parlour. Meanwhile, Clare - deep throat/deep-thinking - Short has decided to tell us that American support for Israel is the biggest single factor in global violence in the world today. Well, that really is timely. It also clears up any worries we might have had about the causes of violence in Darfur in western Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, Chechnya, Rwanda, Northern Ireland ... shall I go on? Is there a conspiracy theory to follow, Clare? I'm shaking in my shoes. No, I really mean it, I am. Chilled and shaking. The causes of global violence are global extremism, of any creed, in any guise.