Boyhood memories....

You know you must be getting on a bit when the people who were your boyhood sporting icons start dying off, and Bob Woolmer was one such. He wasn't the greatest batsman to play for England in the 1970s, but he was one of the first who truly impinged on my consciousness. His 149 against Australia in 1975 - in only his Second Test Match - was one of the stand-out innings of the era, and he went on to make two more centuries against the same opposition in the 1977 series.

Although never a big-hitter, there was a classiness about Woolmer's batting that was very easy on the eye, and by the time he defected to the Kerry Packer Circus in 1977-78, he had established himself as the Mr Dependable of the England team. I remember being devastated when he went and, as Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted in his incomparable Who's Who of Test Cricketers, whatever he gained financially from joining World Series Cricket, he lost in the momentum of his Test career.

Five things to change the world

Sadly I've never been asked to contribute to Comment is Free - they've probably got enough lefties at the Guardian already - but if I had taken part in yesterday's What would you change? opinion-fest to mark the first birthday of the site, here's what I would have listed as the things I want to see change in the year ahead.

* to see Gordon Brown as Prime Minister reaching out in a radical new, policy-rich direction which genuinely seeks to fulfil Labour's mission to serve the many, not the few.

* to see people starting to take personal responsibility for tackling climate change, including changing their travel patterns, and for acquaintances of mine who refuse to do anything about recycling to realise how stupid and short-sighted they are being.

* to see a growing awareness of the futility of military action in Iraq and other Middle East countries where the West is already viewed as the enemy, and a growing recognition of the need to tackle the Israel-Palestine conflict ahead of anything else.

* to see an end to the absurd micromanagement by Whitehall of housebuilding targets, leading to the production line of uniform boxes with tiny or non-existent gardens coupled with increasing encroachement onto green belt land.

* to see people taking faith and spirituality more seriously, realising there is more to life than money and material possessions.

Oh well, I can but dream....

Punditry

UK Daily Pundit has long been one of my favourite blogs but it has really excelled itself in recent days. Last November, it reported that Shadow Home Secretary David Davis was on the point of resigning. Now he's apparently on the verge of taking over as Tory leader.

I've never quite worked out whether the Pundit is the blogging equivalent of the newspaper racing hack who tips every horse in the Grand National in the run-up to the race so he can say he backed the winner - or whether the entire blog is an elaborate spoof on dead tree political commentary and its tendency to make outlandish predictions about the fates of individual politicians.

Probably a bit of both...!