MAIL COMMENT: Giving progress a sporting chance

Many on the Left hope they will be a failure, marred by protest against China's detention of political and religious activists, and brutal oppression of Tibet.

Such sentiments, while churlish, are, in a narrow sense, understandable.

Olympic spirit: A man shows his Olympic spirit in Tiananmen Square before he was asked to leave the area by Beijing police

China has failed to make the promised strides towards improving its dreadful human rights record, and its leaders remain intolerant of even peaceful demonstration.

Just ask the two Britons swiftly deported earlier this week for unfurling a Free Tibet banner on a Beijing lamppost.

But it would be a mistake to follow the cack-handed lead given by George Bush yesterday, and to spend the next 17 days attacking China's obvious need to allow its people greater 'liberty'.

Rather, the Games should be an opportunity to cement what limited progress has been made, and to press vigorously for much, much more.

China is at least at the table with the West for the first time in generations. Isn't it better for liberal, free-market nations to cajole it into changing its ways, rather than simply condemn?

Over the course of the Games, China knows it must be on its best behaviour, and is preparing to give its citizens freedoms which would otherwise be denied  -  such as greater internet access.

Once granted, they will be harder to take away. Isn't this the way to make progress?
Let's also remember the Games are, first and foremost, a truly magnificent sporting event: A celebration of years of planning, sweat and endeavour by the finest athletes on the planet. To the British athletes striving to fulfil their dreams, the Mail wishes the very best of luck.

A legacy of waste

Extravagant trips to the south of France...ludicrous taxi expenses...a £20,000 jaunt to a film festival in Dubai.

Quangocrats at the Government's Regional Development Agencies have devoured £15billion of your money since 1999  - nearly £600 for every household.

Yet in almost every region, economic growth was faster in the seven years before they were established by John Prescott than since.

Such failure is a fitting legacy to the vainglorious but inept ex-deputy prime minister, and his obsession with creating regional bureaucracies.

The RDAs should join him on the scrapheap, and their monstrous budgets spent on something worthwhile.

For instance, some of the money should be spent reversing yesterday's disgraceful decision to deny NHS kidney cancer patients four life-prolonging drugs.

Taking the oath?

Some will have sympathy with the view, expressed by a band of MPs today, that it is outdated to ask parliamentarians to swear allegiance to the Queen.

The practice is 500 years old and, they argue, does not properly reflect the Monarch's position as figurehead, rather than ruler.

Yet the MPs' arguments are fatally flawed, failing to offer a convincing alternative.

If not the Queen, who should it be? An elected president? Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone? The EU, God forbid?

The suggestion made by the MPs  -  for an oath to their 'constituents and the nation'  -  is vacuous, and constitutionally naive.

For centuries, the constitutional role of an independent sovereign has protected Britain from the tumult that has rocked many other nations. Is it asking too much of our parliamentarians to honour that?