I do hope that Roger Harrabin hasn’t invited too many people round for Christmas. That man needs all the rest he can get in the next couple of weeks. For those of you unfamiliar with Harrabin’s schedule, and curious as to why I should be so solicitous about his health, I’d recommend a quick visit to the BBC website. Harrabin is the corporation’s environment analyst and he’s been covering the recent climate conference in Bali. And by cover I mean all over. From dawn to dusk his increasingly hoarse, but always lucid, commentary has helped us through the intergovernmental maze.

Having been to Indonesia once myself (though not Bali), I also know that it’s a body-clock-shattering number of hours ahead of us. So when Harrabin was doing a live piece for the Six O’Clock News it was actually in the wee small hours, at a time when the only people who would normally be up are rock stars attending their last after-party and Gordon Brown’s press team wondering how they’re going to break the latest crop of front pages to their master. As it happened, Bali last week had more than a few rock stars and nervous government press officers, so at least Harrabin wasn’t short of companions familiar with the 3am shakes.

In fact, he wasn’t short of companions during his sojourn in one of the world’s tropical paradises. Every time he was broadcasting live there seemed to be some sort of rave going on in the background with music, whistles, dancing, whoops and shrieks. If I hadn’t known that this was an intergovernmental climate change conference I might have imagined that he was in Ibiza, making a terse reportorial point about cheap holidays and carbon emissions. Listening to the sounds of festive music coming from, it turned out, campaigners who had come to Bali to apply moral pressure on the government delegates and then, the next day, looking at pictures over the weekend of some of the gaily dressed activists who had donned costumes to raise awareness of the issues being debated, I was filled with a sense of almost inexpressible sympathy for Roger. Bali is only about 5,000 sq km (2,000 sq miles), and he had to share it with these people.

I should declare an interest. I’ve known Roger Harrabin for more than 13 years. We worked together as reporters at the BBC and I remember him diligently doing more than his fair share of the long night shifts (9pm to 9am), even though he was significantly senior to most of the rest of us and could easily have wriggled out. He was a green specialist even then, breaking stories about climate change and environmental degradation long before it was fashionable, deliberately eschewing easier routes to BBC stardom because he took this story immensely seriously. So he doesn’t need to have his consciousness raised by someone dressed as a turtle congaing past him towards one of Bali’s still-golden beaches.

Nor, I suspect now, do most of the rest of us. Public opinion across the globe is alive to the need to tackle man-made climate change. Politicians in most democracies, including our own, compete to develop ever-greener credentials. So can I ask why it was necessary for these freelance activists to jet to Bali (they certainly didn’t get there by building a replica of the Kon-Tiki) to make their point? I know that many of us might want to spend the week before Christmas on an island paradise (though we might leave the turtle suit behind, just to avoid the excess baggage charge), but I don’t think we could get away with putting down the trip as “saving the planet” on our expenses.

Of course, it isn’t just with environmentalism that consciousness-raising has become an end in itself, divorced from any calculation of how high the level of consciousness was before someone appointed themselves to raise it farther. I don’t know about you, but I am pretty conscious that there’s been a bit of bother in Iraq over the past few years and, indeed, all too well aware that anger about Western democracies actually daring to topple a tyrant provides all sorts of people with enough moral outrage to keep The Guardian and Channel 4 News going into the next millennium. Indeed, you’d find it odd if I weren’t aware we’d had that war, being as I am an MP.

So what, then, is the point of the encampment opposite the House of Commons with its raggle-taggle banners denouncing Tony Blair as a war criminal and the permanent presence of the now nearly canonised Brian Haw? Which member of the House of Commons passing by will suddenly think: “My word, how dreadful. A war’s been started by Mr Blair – I must investigate. Perhaps I can call for an inquiry . . .” Short of having our major broadcaster begin every interview with a government minister with a reference to Iraq (actually we may be nearly there . . .) you could scarcely raise consciousness of Iraq higher. We’ve had theatre plays, TV dramas, even bestselling popular novels in which the casual assumption that Blair must be a war criminal is almost a given. Yet Haw and his allies are still seen as somehow antiestablishment, rebels daring to speak the truth to power. But the truth is that it’s Haw who now enjoys quasi-regal status, with prizewinning artists lauding his efforts and his position in SW1 more secure than the monarch’s.

As it happens (and as you’ve probably guessed), I have more than a measure of sympathy for the climate-change protesters’ agenda and almost none for Haw’s. But that is beside my point. The best way to raise someone’s consciousness, and keep it raised, is through the calm and rational medium of proportionate argument, supported by facts. That’s why one Roger Harrabin, with his diligent reporting, careful balance and thoughtful analysis is worth 100 kids in turtle suits or 1,000 days of Haw’s vigil. And why diligent reporting from postsurge Iraq is beginning to redress the balance on the issue and make us analyse once again how Haw’s mantra became the cultural orthodoxy . . .

O, tannin balm: why wine is the best gift

I promised a while ago to offer a simple riposte to the needlessly extravagant and desperately modish present suggestions littering the colour supplements. Instead of buying gadgets that teeter on the edge of obsolescence within days of being invented, clothes whose fashionability is fading even before they’ve been wrapped, and tat that photographs well next to a pic of Nigella Lawson in a tight red velvet dress but that no one in their right mind would purchase if it weren’t Christmas, I can suggest a present to suit every pocket, and almost every adult: wine. Nowhere are price and quality so closely correlated as with wine. You can spend hundreds on a frock for the missus and still find yourself with something not even Nigella could fill prettily. You could spend a month’s salary on a signature timepiece and it still wouldn’t tell you much more about the time than a secondhand Swatch. But spend £20 on a bottle of wine and it will be (at least) four times as good as a £5 bottle.

Buy from a quality-assured outlet and you will get every penny of your money’s worth. And so will the recipient. If you want to show real thought, get two or more complementary bottles (Nuits St Georges and Aloxe-Corton?) so they can enjoy the comparison and spend twice as much time toasting your generosity. I cannot think of any adult – bar a teetotaller – who wouldn’t welcome well-chosen wine, especially if it’s a bottle or six above his or her usual quaffing bracket. And if they’re teetotal? Well, you can never have too many socks.

Arise, Sir Christopher

The lack of a Times next Tuesday means that I won’t have another chance before the new year to influence the Honours List. So may I beg, not for the first time, for a knighthood for Christopher Lee? A petition has been on the No 10 website since May. Lee is our greatest living film star, his oeuvre a canvas for a prodigious talent, and there are few more gracious gentlemen in acting. Let us pray that Gordon is a fan of The Wicker Man.

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