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Some $671m (£461m) will go to General Electric and $1.4bn to IBM.None of this, as has been pointed out in the States, will benefit fire fighters, police officers or the citizens of Rockaway Beach. Solidarity has been demanded of the average American, but solidarity has not been shown with the average American.We must do better than this. The New York Times’ quote of the day yesterday came from a 19-year-old man who had just joined the forces. “When something like September 11th happens,” said Kirk Evans, “you feel helpless I had to fix that.”I am beginning to feel the same We must shut our collective eyes Take a deep breath Turn off the television and shut out the noise Pause Think. Then talk seriously about how to order things in a fairer, more rational way Let’s break the news ourselves And God save us from dramatic pictures.

Enough already.David.Aaronovitch btinternet . One of the marks of an exceptional novel is that, for some time after you have finished reading it, the lives, scenes and ideas in its pages continue to impinge on everyday life. Events in the real world seem to offer a sort of echo to those in the fictional one. Having read Jonathan Franzen’s ambitious saga The Corrections while on holiday, for example, I have found peculiar resonances in the recent the mini-row surrounding the future of Jimmy Young.
One the face of it, The Corrections would seem to have little to contribute to the national debate about the JY prog and whether a man of 80 should broadcast every day on Radio 2.

A publishing sensation in America, Franzen’s novel tells the story of an American family and, through the lives of an old couple and their three adult children, explores the pain, fears, uncertainties and ambitions of the age in which we live. It is a long and leisurely book, but at its core is a simple story. Enid, an old woman living in Philadelphia with her increasingly decrepit husband, wants her three children to return home for a last Christmas together in their family home.Old age, its physical humiliations and mental slippage, have been covered well enough in fiction but it has been treated comically or sentimentally or seen from within, by authors such as Philip Roth, Joseph Heller or John Updike. Franzen conveys something new: a mercilessly clear-eyed yet humane view of the fear of old age felt by those in their middle years.The Jimmy Young saga offers a less edifying variation on a similar theme. A broadcaster called Nicky Campbell let it be known, presumably for reasons of personal ambition, that he had been approached as a potential replacement for Young on his daily show There was fuss. Young’s defenders have pointed out, quite rightly, that he does a good job, that often his unshowy, deceptively innocent interviewing technique uncovers more than the strutting, egotistical style of broadcasting heavyweights. He sounds, they say, more like a man of 50 than one of 80.The question as to why being a middle-aged rather than an old presenter should be regarded as a compliment has not been asked.