I’ve never been a big fan of the Tequila Slammer: licking a lime then snorting salt before downing a dose of Mexican firewater (I’m sure that’s how it’s supposed to be done) seems an awful lot more bother than supping a good old pint of Pedigree.

But if you are a fan of the worm-ridden liquor then despair as its price is about to hit the roof. Fields of the plant from which it is derived, the blue agave, are being uprooted in Mexico in order to grow cash crops that make more green – dollars that is – namely wheat and corn.

Were you screaming encouragement at the TV last Saturday, urging the British men’s coxless four to rowing gold in Beijing? There is something mildly addictive about the Olympics. Perhaps it’s the athletes’ aspiration to, and demonstration of, excellence that stirs something noble in our souls. Only the hardest of hearts could be unmoved by the tears of joy, and the sobs of disappointment that have been headline news for the past two weeks.

Reaction to different competitors’ medal-winning and misfortunes has revealed the extent to which, in the developed world, at least, respect is based on merit, and achievement the passport to social acceptance. So it is that record-breaking, champion swimmer, Michael Phelps, gets to shake hands with President Bush, while China’s crestfallen Liu Xiang prompts a mass exodus from the birds nest stadium on withdrawing from the 110m hurdles due to injury.

The optimistic mantra that began, ‘The future’s bright, the future’s …’ has been ditched. In the biggest global advertising campaign ever launched, Orange have introduced their new litany: ‘I am who I am because of everyone.’ It’s playing on a TV near you.

For sixty seconds, the camera pans over a range of people, a disembodied voice explaining, ‘I am my mum, and my sister. I am my best friend, Mike, who I’ve known since school’ and so on. Backed by a chilled, trance-like music track, it works. It doesn’t scream the product it’s selling, it merely gives off a vibe that emphasises how important communication is.

Teresa Clarke finally passed her driving test this week – after 27 years. It was the thirteenth test she had taken, after a total of 450 hours of tuition, at a cost of £15,000. Naturally, she was delighted; or, as her relieved driving instructor put it, ‘she went absolutely bananas.’ Well, wouldn’t you, after 27 years?

Truth is that many of us would have given up long before. However, despite all the setbacks she encountered, Mrs Clarke insists that she, ‘never wanted to give up learning to drive.’ The primary reason why her success is newsworthy is because such perseverance is a rare thing in our ‘instant society’.

The reason we talk about having the ‘courage of our convictions’ is because there are consequences that flow from those convictions – and not all of them happy ones.

This week, in an interview with The Times, George Bush reflected on his presidency and expressed regret that the rhetoric he used in regard to the Iraq war has created a legacy for him as ‘a guy really anxious for war.’ Had he known back then what he knows now, about the consequences of his language, he would have taken a different tone.

What’s the best way to win an argument?

You might think it would be to discredit your opponents’ facts or undermine their logic but, in fact, the best way is simply to deny them a voice in the first place.

Although few people openly seek to silence their adversaries, when those adversaries happen to be religious (as has often been the case with the HFE bill this week), it is so much easier to deploy the “religion is private” card than actually to engage with their arguments. Hence Jackie Ashley in Monday’s Guardian: ‘There is no sensible conversation between the opposing views to be had… live according to your beliefs, but don't try to impose them on the rest of us.’

This will not do. Christian and other religious opinions should be permitted to engage in public debate, no matter how fruitless some people think that debate is. Moreover, who is the ‘us’ here? If Jackie Ashley imagines the rest of the population thinks the same way she does, she should think again.

“This report contains images that some viewers may find distressing.”

This is a line that our television newscasters have to deliver with alarming regularity. Barely are we coming to terms with pictures of lifeless bodies floating in filthy water in Burma when we are confronted with pictures from China, of bodies buried under tonnes of rubble after the earthquake. Both sets of pictures tell the story of thousands of lives lost and of human misery in epic proportions.