To march or not to march? It would be good exercise, of course, exhilarating with it. As Doris Lessing once remarked, recalling her five Aldermaston outings, "It seems to go against the grain of leftwing pieties to say that few things are more enjoyable than marching, picketing, striking, rioting; to be part of a large crowd high on singing, chanting, slogans. To be, by definition, with the forces of good against evil. No wonder it is so popular. But is it always, or even often, effective?" Well, the Aldermaston marches weren't. Nor, more recently, was the Countryside Alliance's demonstration, the biggest ever, of more than 400,000 people. The presence of so many disparate, sometimes conflicting, interest groups, which added so much to its size, also robbed it of any clarity. What could you make of a march that features slogans from ramblers as well as pleas for cheaper fuel?  With "Not In My Name", anti-war organisers seem to have found something that is not merely catchy, but suggestive of some sort of solidarity, the line featured, in the past few days, on the banners of individual lobbyists at Westminster as well as on the front page of the Daily Mirror, which has appropriated the slogan for complaint forms that, once signed, will be forwarded en masse, to Tony Blair.  Actually, the wording makes it rather easy for him to answer, doesn't it? "It's not in your name, you conceited twerp. It's in the whole country's". In fact, if disassociation rather than outright disapproval of the war is their motive, his critics probably ought to write directly to Saddam Hussein, making it clear that whatever missiles might shortly be coming his way, they most certainly do not hail from the blameless environs of No 10 Acacia Avenue.  Compared to the anti-war slogans of the past, NIMN sends out a piqued, self-regarding sort of message that seems more suited to use by picky consumers who define themselves, say, by their disapproval of GM foods, or boycotting of Starbucks rather than by a mass movement aiming to change the views of a legitimate government in whose actions everyone, assuming they have a vote, is implicated whether they like it or not. "Not in My Name" is just a more fatuously self-important version of "I'm against it". So what? Loads of us are against it. We've all got names.  Still, putting feelings before arguments is one way of uniting the unpersuaded with the fanatics, of snuggling the views of Major General Cordingley alongside those of George Galloway, Tony Benn and all the other speakers whose presence on an anti-war platform make marching such an ordeal for the unpractised protester. I may be against the war, but I'm also against George Galloway. Quite possibly, being harangued by Galloway, the doting recipient of Saddam's Quality Street, is too high a price to pay for the thrill of direct action.   Unless, as believers in marching must hope, the activity is not just an irrelevant "not in my name" opportunity to show off, and Blair really is listening. Or counting. Maybe there is a magic number. How many of us on the streets would it take to change his tactics, or sharpen up his arguments? More than 400,000, we must assume, since that failed to change one single government policy on the countryside. Half a million? A million? Two? But for a such a very modern prime minister as Blair, all this galumphing up and down may well be a bit last century. Will a march tell him anything an opinion poll or focus group cannot? Not, I think, if its most prominently displayed message is Not In My Name, the Baby on Board of political slogans.  <B>Abu Hamza: what's with the hook?</B>With his many acolytes and arduous round of spiritual duties, the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza can surely be forgiven if he does not always have time to make the best of himself. On the other hand - and I say this not in a remotely critical way (for Hamza turns out to be a valued friend of my colleague, Rod Liddle), but in a spirit of Trinny-and-Susannah-like altruism - would it not be in Hamza's own interests if he worked just a tiny bit harder to frustrate those who enjoy portraying him as the fanatical embodiment of all evil? Could he not, at least, lose the hook? We know that Hamza had the misfortune when abroad, in circumstances that are not entirely clear, to be parted from at least one of his hands. In the short-term, a stout claw must have seemed a nifty and economical substitute. But years later, it is this very hook that enables his tabloid critics to play, continually, on his supposed similarity to Captain Hook, the murderous villain from Peter Pan. It is as if, John Major, for convenience's sake, had actually painted himself grey; or if Cedric Brown had gone about in a set of whiskers, miaowing.  And it is so unnecessary. As we know from Mrs Paul McCartney, who likes to take hers off on television, the modern prosthesis can be a wonderful and lifelike thing. And even if the NHS is unable to supply, free at the point of delivery, the sort of costly, custom-made limb that McCartney is apt to flourish, it can no doubt be relied upon, after Hamza's long residence in this country, to come up with something a bit more appealing, not to mention less sharp, than a hook.  Indeed, if Hamza does not stop waving his claw about, there are sure to be unjust suspicions that he is doing it to annoy. As JM Barrie writes of Captain James Hook, a man so wicked that he has a special contraption for smoking two cigars at once, "undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw". But Hamza is probably a stranger to The Adventures of Peter Pan, and will be dismayed to hear that his treasured hook is not a perfectly innocuous choice of hand-substitute. If he cannot persuade either the NHS or McCartney's landmine charity to supply a less threatening-looking replacement I am sure Guardian readers would be happy to help. To avoid confusion in any future police raids, any donation sent to the Finsbury Park mosque should be clearly labelled Give Hamza a Hand. <B>The crime of nostalgia</B>While some Londoners marvel at Ken Livingstone's nostalgia for the era before the invention of sexual intercourse, with its mumps, corporal punishment and thousands of six-year-old  commuters, the mayor would no doubt find passionate support for his views from Tony Martin, the farmer currently serving five years for shooting a burglar.  Only last week Martin was denied parole: partly because he is not remorseful enough; partly, as a shocked probation officer reported, because he "has strong opinions about how 'England'   should be and makes references to how wonderful society was in the 50s". Although the viewing of the past through rose-tinted spectacles is not - yet - illegal behaviour, Livingstone's  constituents may, none the less, wonder if they wish to be represented by a man whose opinions, were he a convict, may be punishable by an extra year in prison. Only a very strong,  compensatory show of remorse for the criminally poor quality of his leadership may be enough to convince us that Livingstone does not constitute a very present danger to society.