It looks like Plan B for the Lisbon Treaty might be in trouble, already. It was pretty obvious at the last EU summit that the idea is to proceed with ratification and then to try and force the Irish to re-consider. Given the irritating inflexibility of the Irish constitution, that would mean a second referendum.

But a new poll commissioned by Open Europe suggests that a second referendum would result in an even bigger Irish No vote. Some EU leaders reckon that the Irish are bound to re-consider, if all the other 26 countries can be persuaded to ratify. But “isolate Ireland” looks like a dubious strategy. First, I’m not sure it’s going to be that easy to secure ratification everywhere. Second, the new poll asks Irish voters how they would react if all the other countries have ratified. Answer - they become even more stubborn.

All this is a horrid dilemma for poor old Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister. He is meant to “report back” to the European Council in October and “to suggest a way forward”. But what if there is no way forward?

Rupert Murdoch’s arrival at The Wall Street Journal is being greeted by American journalists with roughly the level of enthusiasm with which the Romans greeted Alaric the Visigoth. The Atlantic Monthly proclaims that the day the elderly tycoon took over the Journal was “a date that will live in infamy for a certain generation of American newsmenâ€.

The Atlantic frets that the Murdoch model will sacrifice “responsible, serious journalism†and damage public life in the process. Mr Murdoch’s defenders regard this as self-important tosh.

Of course, the reactions of anybody watching events at The Wall Street Journal from the Financial Times are bound to be a little complicated. But my first instincts were sympathetic to Mr Murdoch. A lot of American newspaper journalism strikes me as self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy.

 The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

Ths time last year, I was about to head off to Brussels to an EU summit. The top item on the agenda was an effort to rescue the European Union constitution, after defeats in the French and Dutch referendums. The result was the document that became known as the Lisbon Treaty.Now I am about to head off to Brussels for another EU crisis summit - this time designed to rescue the Lisbon Treaty after its defeat in the Irish referendum.

These people never learn. But then that is why they can keep going. They are like the proverbial goldfish, endlessly circling their bowl - and constantly surprised and delighted by the view. (more…)

A colleague has just forwarded me an AFP story headlined - "Nepal bombing bad news for peace process: analysts". I applaud the urge to maintain a rigid division between fact and commentary. But sometimes I think journalists should be allowed to state the blindingly obvious - without resorting to "analysts".

The headline reminds me of a conversation I once witnessed at the BBC World Service. A worried editor was fretting that the presenter of a current-affairs programme had described some people who had let off a bomb as "militants". The presenter - Hugh Prysor Jones - replied, reasonably enough - "Well, they are unlikely to be moderates."

On the other hand, one should always be aware of the possibility of misunderstandings and ambiguity in newspaper stories. Reading the Washington Post this morning, I came across the headline - "Showdown Nears on Stimulus Bill". My initial assumption was that this was an article about Bill Clinton’s controversial campaign tactics. In fact, it turned out to be a piece about efforts to pass a fiscal package to get the American economy going. But I prefer my initial interpretation. I think "Stimulus Bill" is an excellent name for the former president.

This morning I woke up with a start and immediately reached for the Blackberry on my bedside table. This is an incredibly bad habit, which I must rid myself of. Among the messages that had come in overnight was this comment posted on the blog by WCM, who makes "no apologies" for his rudeness. He suggests that I am not doing my job properly because I am writing about trivia and neglecting important issues like developments on the Turkish-Kurdish border, developments in Pakistan, the world of private equity etc…

WCM is not alone in his concerns. When I mentioned to my colleague Lucy Kellaway that I was planning to write about celebrities this week, she looked slightly concerned and said - "Isn’t that a bit moronic?" However, since her previous column had been devoted to seeing how many swear-words she could get into the FT in one go, I did not feel Lucy was in a position to preach. (I recommend the podcast incidentally).

However, the issue raised by WCM and LK is a valid one. My answer is that the question I ask when choosing a topic for my column (or indeed for the blog) is not - what is the most important thing going on in the world? It is - do I have anything original to say about this?

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Here is a selection of recent newspaper headlines: "Redford slams Bush over Iraq"; "Bono takes IMF to task over Liberia"; "Jolie blasts US military spending"; "Clooney’s foreign policy - sexiest man has a plan to save Darfur".

You do not have to buy supermarket tabloids to read this stuff. The Bono headline was in the Financial Times; the Clooney story was in the Chicago Tribune. The news editors of these high-brow publications have not gone mad (as far as I can tell). They are simply reflecting the fact that film stars and rock musicians shape public opinion - and therefore public policy. Daniel Drezner, an academic, argues in a forthcoming article for National Interest - "Foreign Policy Goes Glam" - that the growth of "celebrity activism" reflects the decline of traditional media and the rising power of star-struck "soft news" outlets.

Something about this mix of glitter and public policy makes me uncomfortable - and apparently I am not alone. When I suggested recently on my FT blog that Bono was a "grandstanding poseur", I was astonished by the gleeful vitriol I unleashed in response.

The remainder of this column can be read here; comments can be made below.

Nicolas Sarkozy is shaping up well as the politician who provides best value on YouTube. In an earlier entry, I posted the video of Sarko’s giggly press conference at an EU summit. Now the French president has surpassed himself by walking out of an interview with CBS’s "60 Minutes" programme, because the interviewer asked him about his divorce.

Well done, indeed. This interesting footage, got me thinking about a hit parade of political moments on YouTube. I think Sarko’s walk-out goes straight to the top.

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I was sorry to read today that Joseph "Erap" Estrada, the former president of the Phillippines, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption. I have a soft spot for Erap. He is the only politician I have ever interviewed who actually fell asleep during the interview.

It was in the mid-1990s and Estrada was vice-president at the time. He was also enormously popular with the poor in the Phillippines - largely because he had played a series of heroic roles in low-budget thrillers. He was clearly the coming man, so getting an interview with him was quite a big deal. He had a large office, full of note-taking flunkies. They were as horrified as I was, when the great man nodded off and began to snore during the course of our interview. But I can’t really blame him. It was hot; I was asking a lot of damn fool questions about development and foreign policy. He might have had a few at lunch. He has a reputation as a world-class drinker and womaniser. Eventually I was ushered to the door by a staff member who said:  "I’m sorry about that, but I could tell the vice-president was very interested by your questions until he fell asleep."

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[This is my latest FT newspaper column, drawing on suggestions from an earlier blog post. My other newspaper columns can be read here — most require an FT.com subscription.]

Conspiracy theorists have a bad reputation. They are usually portrayed as paranoid, isolated, deluded people, best avoided.

It is true that there are many sinister and unpleasant conspiracy theories. These are usually the ones that seek to blame all the world’s ills on a single racial or social group – Jews, Catholics, Freemasons.

But there are also conspiracy theories that are delightfully dotty. A friend in Ankara tells me many Turks are convinced that, during the cold war, the Russians infested the Sea of Marmara with a sturgeon-devouring predator that sent these valuable fish fleeing into the Russian bit of the Black Sea – thus allowing the Russians to control the world’s supply of caviar. That is a theory worthy of James Bond.

The idea that conspiracy theorists are an isolated bunch, on the fringes of society, is also wide of the mark. Some theories are so widely believed that they are now almost mainstream. A recent BBC opinion poll suggested that only 43 per cent of Britons accept the official verdict that the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, was an accident. The countless “9/11†conspiracy theories also have a surprisingly wide audience – even in America. A Zogby poll last year found that 42 per cent of Americans think the US government is “covering up†facts about the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001.

Why do conspiracy theories command such a wide audience? I have my own theory about that.

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Well, I think the experiment in crowd-sourcing (otherwise known as picking the brains of readers of this blog) has been a great success. It would be invidious to pick out particular contributions. But I was struck by how interesting and rational most of the posts were - so unlike the forums in other newspapers. I mention no names. I think I’ll definitely repeat the experiment, after the summer break.

In the end I’ve decided to do the conspiracy theories column. In the course of the research I came across two particularly striking conspiracy websites. (There are zillions of them) The editor of Conspiracy Planet sent a rather aggressive letter to the editor, accusing me of being a "shill" for the establishment. Fortunately, he is based in Montana - so I doubt I’ll ever have to argue this one out in person. Then there is the Lobster site, which has long had a devoted following in Britain.

Meanwhile, out in the real world  - things still look bad in Pakistan, with a resurgence of violence at the Red Mosque.

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