7 September

I admire J.K. Rowling because she’s one of the few higher status people who actively take on desperately unpopular causes, because she (rightly) sees what’s happening as wrong and unjust. Like Germaine Greer before her, she won’t be forgiven for doing it. The only reliable test of truth is unpopularity. I love her description of people (which is most people) who just follow the ‘vibe’ on an issue i.e. what everybody else thinks, out of cowardice. She calls them ‘weathervanes’, sensing the mood and then following it. Or to quote her directly: “Changing sides years late, and only after you've realised the non-elite opposition is winning, isn't a mark of integrity but of arse-covering. Those whose overriding focus is remaining in good odour with the in crowd can never be trusted.”