Is it wise for JK to pop her head above the Hogwarts parapets?

Published on Tuesday 23 September 2008 20:05

IT IS difficult to criticise JK Rowling in this country, and perhaps rightly so. She is, after all, the woman who introduced a generation of children to literature.

Years ago, while working on another newspaper, I was charged with putting together a feature on the impact Rowling's first book had made on Scottish schoolchildren. This was before the publication of her second Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and before Rowling became so hyperactive about privacy. I phoned up her publishers and a week later, an enormous pile of letters arrived on my desk.

They were, without exception, heartbreaking. Children who had never read before until they'd picked up The Philosopher's Stone, teachers who had finally found a book their pupils loved, children who identified with Harry because they, too, had lost parents – all had written to Rowling because they felt moved enough by her storytelling to thank her. It was powerful stuff.

Rowling does good things. She campaigned, incredibly emotively and effectively, for better conditions for orphans in Romania. She has successfully raised awareness of multiple sclerosis, the illness that took her mother's life. She talks in moving and articulate ways about life as a single mother. I admire her greatly for all these things.

So why then, does Rowling's 1 million donation to the Labour Party, announced on the eve of the Labour Party's annual conference, stick in my craw? After all, it's her money. She can spend it how she likes.

But I find it bizarre that someone who values her privacy so much, who rarely gives interviews, should stick her neck above the parapet in the back-biting political world.

"I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party," she said as she handed over the cash. All well and good, but why tell the world? If you're so concerned about the future of 'poor and vulnerable families', why not use the money to start a charity, rather than prop up a political party?

But then, friendships are funny that way. Rowling's pallyness with Gordon Brown is well documented, and her donation is a clear shot in the arm for an ailing Prime Minister who needs all the help he can get. Indeed, just in case you missed it, he even referenced it in yesterday's party conference speech.

All well and good for Gordon. But what impact will it have on Rowling's reputation? Perhaps she has enough cash and good works to her name that she no longer cares. But by writing such a public and political cheque she has also given up much of her right to privacy. Let's hope she doesn't live to regret it.

When it comes to cars, buying British could be unpatriotic

WHY ON Earth does John McCain need 13 cars? Surely one for every day of the week would have done?

What is interesting about this latest US election stramash, however, is the outrage that McCain has caused, not having 13 cars, but by possessing three that are foreign-made – a Lexus, a VW convertible and a Honda (Barack Obama, somewhat smugly, owns only one, an American-made hybrid Ford). Ah, if only British politicians had such a luxury.

Instead, in this country, an entirely British-made car is a thing of the past. These days our cars are themselves international hybrids – Honda Civics and Nissan Micras are produced in the UK, and Ford's engines and gearboxes start their lives here too.

While the impulse to "buy American" is undoubtedly a patriotic one, many of us in the rest of the developed world have long since come to realise that, when it comes to the car industry, it is also outdated.

ISN'T that Kate Moss a clever girl? Not only can she lounge about in expensive clothes, take endless foreign holidays and get herself filmed taking drugs, but she can paint too!

In fact, she paints so well that her first work of art to be sold publicly, a wobbly self-portrait done in lipstick and smeared with the blood of her ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty, is expected to fetch between 30,000-40,000 when it is auctioned this weekend in London.

Now, I'm no Brian Sewell, but I suspect this "masterpiece" might struggle to pass muster on the walls of the National Gallery. Not so much the emperor's new clothes as the empress's old lippy.