Just heard pause for thought on BBC R2, see transcript below. Obviously NCW. Thanks heavens he wasn't in F, goodness knows what he'd have had to say about that!

From BBC website;

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT
From Rabbi Pete Tobias, of the Liberal Synagogue in Elstree
Wednesday 5 July 2006

When I was last in this studio, a couple of weeks ago, I'd just returned from the United States - and the same is true this morning. But two weeks ago, when I went out to visit my son I looked for the cheapest transatlantic option. This last trip was thanks to my partner winning a competition so we were spoiled rotten all the way to New York and back - and all the time we were there too.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I found the whole experience rather alarming. People were falling over themselves to ensure that everything we wanted - and many things we didn't - were provided with the minimum of trouble to ourselves. All delivered with a beaming smile that you just might have been able to mistake as sincere and followed by the obligatory wish that your day be good, excellent or even better than that.

The business class section of the plane was made up of state-of-the-art seating - little booths in which you could stretch out your legs and which shut you off from the person next to you. And if that wasn't enough, the headphones and the entertainment system ensured that your isolation was complete - except for the continuing visits of the cabin staff offering you more food and drink than you could possibly want.

And it struck me that this seems to be the way our world is heading: to be able to have whatever we want served to us on demand - and to be able to enjoy it in complete separation from anyone else. Even the film I watched in my own private little space - the Oscar winning movie Crash - begins with the observation that we are so isolated that we have no contact with other people except when we crash into them.

On the street, on public transport or in shops, we're constantly being crashed into by people locked into their own worlds - listening to I-pods or making mobile phone calls. Cut off from, insulated against people around us. Standing in queues and being shoved around, sitting next to fidgety children or screaming babies - contact with other people in general - is often uncomfortable and annoying. But 2000 years ago, the Rabbis of Jewish tradition advised 'do not separate yourself from the community.' We need that human contact - without it, I think, we start to lose a sense of who we are.