Clinton: do I want the distinction of being probably the only columnist in the world not to have voiced an opinion about him?

I was intending to be, but then I had a letter from regular reader Kathleen Yates whose attitude seems to reflect one of two diametrically-opposed points of view of the embattled US president.

People are either for him or against him. Few couldn't care less one way or the others. Kathleen is for him.

"Bill Clinton is an attractive, handsome man," she writes. "He is also President of the United States, which gives him power and status. All these women fell for him, and although he is President, he is no different to any other normal bloke who is bound to be flattered by their attention. If the man is doing a good job, his personal life is of no concern to the rest of the community.

"In this day and age, we are bombarded with sex and sexual harassment from breakfast, through lunchtime, till dinner. Let him that is without sin cast the first stone. I say leave Bill Clinton alone and let him remain in office, as President."

That's what a lot of other people are saying, too - particularly in the United States, where the Clinton years have coincided with a period of affluence for many Americans.

But it does rather miss the point. The case against Clinton isn't that he has used his powerful position to attract and seduce young women or has been a willing victim of their flattery. It isn't that he betrayed his wife (although that could well be her case against him should she ever choose to pursue it). If, when challenged, he had owned up, apologised to Hilary and told the rest of us that it was none of our business, he would have been forgiven and perhaps even admired for his honesty and directness.

But he didn't. He lied and lied and lied. And when he was finally found out in his lies, he grovelled for forgiveness so that he can stay in office and enjoy all its trappings. It was transparent and it was pathetic.

The man is dishonest from top to toe. He has no respect for anyone: not his wife, not his daughter, certainly not the women he has indulged himself with, not the American public who still seem more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Above all, he has no self-respect. He is driven by a keen survival instinct which over-rides any pride or integrity.

A tragedy for America is that most of the people who live there seem to think he's the best person available for the job. A worse tragedy for us all is that they're probably right.

Mystery of the little green bag invasion...

A sudden rash of pale green bags filled with litter has afflicted Bradford this week, appearing on traffic islands and grass verges and alongside shrubberies.

It took me a while to figure out that they were the result of the work of Cleansing Department teams who had been out and about picking up the rubbish that people lob out of their cars or throw down on the pavement for the breeze to blow about.

It's a very necessary job, unfortunately, given the lack of pride that so many Bradford people show in their city. But do the bags have to be left in place for such a long time before they're collected?

It's a well-known truth that litter attracts litter. And bags full of litter just could send out the wrong signal that here is a dumping place for other bags full of litter - or other discarded items, for that matter.

Given the IQ of your average rubbish-dumper, the wagon which goes around to collect the bags just might find that some of them have been joined by some old shoes, a bin bag full of hedge clippings and a clapped-out sofa.

WHAT A terrible shame it was that a briefcase containing irreplaceable J B Priestley documents and pictures was stolen last Sunday from a car parked near Bradford Cathedral.

The brief case belonged to John Bennett, editor of the Priestley Society's newsletter, who was in town from his Sussex home for the inaugural Priestley Night supper at the Pennington Midland.

What a welcome to Bradford, eh?

Ain't what he said but the way that he said it

TUC president John Edmonds might be a bit more careful after this week about the faces he pulls at conferences - at least, when the assembled newspaper photographers are pointing their lenses at him.

Most of the national newspaper reports of Edmonds's now-infamous "greedy bastards" speech was accompanied by a photograph of him with his mouth wide open, apparently bellowing in rage.

He looked like a bull walrus about to charge. His expression was a gift to a newspaper like the Daily Mail which makes the most of every opportunity to present trade unionists in the worst possible light.

In fact, as the Daily Telegraph pointed out in its caption, the picture wasn't taken during Edmonds's speech in which he castigated the fat cats, but earlier when he was testing the microphones.

Still, it added the wrong sort of impact to his remarks - remarks which have brought him a great deal of criticism but which in fact were only unreasonable in the language he used.

The point he was trying to make was that workers are having to settle for modest pay rises in the name of wage restraint and low inflation while some of their bosses are rewarding themselves more than handsomely.

He added: "We have little chance of creating a fair society unless we insist that people with great power act with a similar level of responsibility."

Personally, I can see nothing wrong in that. You surely don't have to be a red-hot socialist or a trade union "dinosaur" (the Daily Mail's word) to consider that it isn't exactly setting a good example for a company director to give himself a rise which is worth four times the annual pay of one of his shop-floor workers while expecting them to settle for a fiver a week.

Most reasonable people accept that it's only right for bosses, with a lot of responsibility, to be well rewarded - especially if the company is a successful one, keeping a lot of people in employment.

But for them to give themselves massive rises at a time when everyone lower down the ladder is expected to hold back is only to emphasise that there is one rule for them and another for the drones. It's simply greedy.

That, stripped of the distractingly strong language, was what John Edmonds said. And it's something that needed saying.

Thanks, Bob, we didn't wish to know that

So Bob Monkhouse has used Viagra, has he? He's tried it at the age of 70, and he says it works. He was pictured in a national newspaper this week looking very smug indeed, sitting alongside his 62-year-old wife.

She looked less smug. In fact, to my mind she looked ever so slightly embarrassed. And who can blame her when her husband had just been talking to journalists about his (and therefore presumably her) sex life?

If Bob Monkhouse (pictured) uses Viagra, that's entirely between him and Mrs Monkhouse. It's nothing to do with us and we shouldn't want to know about it. By the same token, he shouldn't want to tell us.

But he's such a show-off that he simply couldn't resist joining the growing list of mature men keen to re-establish their macho credentials by "coming out" as one of Viagra's successes. Sad, isn't it?

INCIDENTALLY, in these Viagra-obsessed days it made a pleasant change the other day to hear mention of something which was meant to have the opposite effect - bromide.

In Monday's Coronation Street Jack Duckworth told Rita how they used to have it given to them in their Army tea to make them lose interest in sex.

"Did it work?" asked Rita.

"Not at the time," said Jack. "But I think it's starting to, now."

An old joke, but still a funny one. But please, Street scriptwriters, steer clear of the obvious temptation to follow it by having Vera persuade Jack to give Viagra a try.

The recent "Lusty Jack" daft storyline was quite enough of that sort of thing, thank you very much.

Enjoy Mike Priestley's Yorkshire Walks

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.