No actually 'The Host' was totally a palate-cleanser for me. I wanted to do something a little bit different than romantic love. Romantic love is in there obviously because I enjoy writing about that and living it a lot.

We learned about gratitude and humility - that so many people had a hand in our success from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean... and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect.

In reality Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power bashed energy-efficiency standards attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

If we can produce more ethanol and bio-diesel to help fuel our vehicles we will create jobs boost local economies and produce cleaner burning fuels. This will keep dollars here at home where they can have a positive impact on our economy.

Conserving energy and thus saving money reducing consumption of unnecessary products and packaging and shifting to a clean-energy economy would likely hurt the bottom line of polluting industries but would undoubtedly have positive effects for most of us.

Politics thrives on simple clean messages something that played to Obama's advantage in 2008. Stagnant unemployment and the loss of America's AAA rating are as simple and tough as they come. This is the economy on Obama's watch and there's no one left to blame.

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming cleaning modernising our clapped-out system.

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer fairer and cleaner 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

When power leads man toward arrogance poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts poetry cleanses.