review

I don't know whether George Monbiot really believes in God, but he talks about him a lot. "They didn't make the land and God didn't give it to them," he said indignantly about landowners in If I Were Prime Minister (C4), a programme in which he argued for radical land reform. The suspicion occurs that God is just an argumentative device here, a figure who is unlikely to give any explicit instructions about who He wants on His land and who He doesn't. So when Monbiot was upbraiding the robustly impolitic Lord Macclesfield ("the public are vandals") for his selfishness, I couldn't help fantasising that a thunderous voice might break through the clouds and say "I'm on His Lordship's side - back on the footpath, matey". This isn't, incidentally, a vote in favour of Lord Macclesfield - if Monbiot is a Leveller reincarnated, dreaming of dank communes in English woods, then Macclesfield is a Squire Thwackum, untroubled by democratic notions: when he talked about controlling "the smallest vermin to the largest vermin", it seemed a good bet that human beings were to be included in the category.

But there's something peculiarly irritating about the lachrymose religiosity of Monbiot and his fellow eco-protestors. Every road link is also a Via Dolorosa, with innocent trees toppling to the sound of choral lamentation, and crucifixes erected at the site of the sappy carnage. For believers, this comparison between a bit of tree-felling and "the greatest event in human history" must surely be a little blasphemous; for non-believers, it brings to the debate a complacent assumption of piety on the part of protestors, engaging in their muddy games of British Bulldog with site guards. Besides, if the land really is God's, He might prefer not to have it despoiled by day-trippers leaving a trail of crisp packets and drink cans behind them- which would be one possible consequence of the proposed Freedom to Roam. Monbiot included "strict penalties" against littering and vandalism in his legislative proposals, as a nod to common sense, but to stand any chance of enforcing such measures he would have to hire God as a policeman.

Other proposals were closer to reality: his suggestion that the balance of power should be redressed in planning procedures, giving more to local people and taking some away from the big developers, was sensible, as was his disapproval of "off-site planning gain", the euphemism for the communal bribes by which the big chains squeeze planning concessions out of local authorities. He might even have a point about the hidden social costs of the big superstores, which render their cheap food remarkably expensive by some measures. But these suggestions weren't really required to test themselves against any kind of rational contradiction. In The Number 10 Show, the predecessor to this exercise in armchair politics, candidates were often given a bracing education in the difference between the desirable and the do-able, by those who would be required to implement their proposals. If I Were Prime Minister, which is made by the same company, appears to have largely done away with the wake-up calls - a decision which allows the dreamers to get their feet completely clear of the ground.

The Day That Changed My Life (BBC2) told the grim tale of Michael Gerwat, a blind man who built a successful business as a piano tuner to the stars. At which point he was struck deaf by a viral infection, leaving him, in his own words: "in prison, solitary confinement." Lucy Jago's film attempted to replicate this deprivation with a rattling slam of mute blackness, which interrupted various scenes of domestic routine, but the device was most effective in its inadequacy - you suddenly became aware of how much you can see reflected in a dark TV screen, how many noises you can hear when you turn the sound off. Such disabilities are often described as "unimaginable". The truth is, it's all too easy to imagine them, but quite another thing to live with them for the rest of your life.