It has been a queasy week. Various faces have drifted aimlessly across the news screens, but one in particular has shone out. No, delete shone, insert 'glowed'. I encountered Peter Hains' brand of forced bonhomie during his coitus interruptus of Welsh politics, and there was always a plasticity about the man. The man is, in many ways, an emblem of his party, and the coterie that surrounds the upper echelons of the Labour Party would do well to realise this.

Hain is all deep tan, sharp suit, whitened teeth. Yet this was the man who, in the 70's, stepped up to the plate against a dirty tricks campaign coming from the very heart of Apartheid. A streak of decency, a moral pole, principles and ideology all cast aside in the pursuit of electability. Laborus big hitters have abandoned any kind of left-leaning ideal as fast as their facial hair. Truly it is said that a democratic people get the government they deserve; in Britain, with our celebrity obsessed, vote-now, X-Factoring culture, real political democracy is remote and infrequent. Most are too lazy to even try and understand what is at stake or why it matters any more. So we go for the glitz and the jam today, and who knows what tomorrow will bring, and who can remember what was promised yesterday? Gordon Brown said very clearly in his early days as PM that he was waving goodbye to the celebrity approach that Blairs years in Number 10 had embraced. But just this week, he was waving goodbye to an over-priced ball-kicker and hair products salesman, who talked him up in glowing, but essentially simple terms. So much for that.

Sir Edmund Hillary died this week. A high achiever, (ho ho) his relatively simple but demanding and previously unachieved exploit of climbing a big mountain brought much of the English speaking world (and a portion of the rest) to an electrified halt. He reached his summit at a time when such things had value, and our collective attention could stand to be crowded into one small place. Now even OJ back in the dock is largely ignored. Sir Ranulph Fiennes called Hillary 'an inspiration'. Quite so - without his enduring example, Fiennes would still have all his fingers.