Prime Minister Blair is planning a press conference next week similar to the one held last month by President Bush to unveil the faces of the most dangerous men in the war against terrorism. The traitors, most of them British citizens and enjoying the full benefits of this democracy, are operating in London. Enemies of the free world all, there are about a dozen highly trained subversives and their leaders - the men who fund, train and protect them.

Expect to see heavy rewards placed on the heads of Piers Morgan, Alan Rusbridger, Simon Kelner and Roger Alton. Others to be named are John Pilger, Daniel Jeffreys, George Monbiot, David Seymour, Paul Foot, Nick Cohen and Paul Routledge.

Jack Straw's comments on Breakfast with Frost, that the press has "almost no humility and no memory", and his attempt to blame it for the "wobble" and unease that an increasing number of people now feel about the bombing, is new Labour hypocrisy as an art form. For a government whose hallmark is a total lack of humility, that believes the collective memory of the people can and should be manipulated at will, that has almost no relationship with the truth and cares less, these are dangerous attacks and leave it badly exposed.

Instead of going to war with the media (which smacks of the very thing we are supposed to be at war with - totalitarianism), this government would do well to try to form an allegiance with it, at least for the duration of the conflict.

The "war wobble" is not created by the media; it is reflected by it. Jack Straw and his advisers would do well to remember that.

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I was at a brainstorming the other day for a new BBC channel. During the break, one of the programme-makers was complaining that a series he had been developing for months had been canned without warning. The reason he was given was "Sep 11".

GMTV ran a report on "terror sex", which is neither terrorising sex nor terrible sex, but the urge that people felt after Sep 11 for a "life-affirming" act. The dramatic increase in appointments at family planning clinics in New York bears this out.

Dieting companies are losing business, junk food sales are up, people are drinking and smoking more - all because of Sep 11.

We are witnessing the emergence of "Sepelevenism" - the latest form of absolution. For weeks now, it has been infiltrating the psyches of apparently rational men and women, like a handful of behaviour-altering anthrax thrown carelessly into our moral system. By the time the symptoms appear, it is too late. There is a wringing of the hands, a wrestling of the conscience, an eye for the main chance and a post hoc justification for any manner of bad behaviour.

My first encounter with Sepelevenism came in a phone call late Wednesday night. It was one of my closest male friends. "She's left me," he said, his voice so choked I could hardly make out what he was saying. "Sepeleven. It's all because of Sepeleven."

Thinking his married lover had sought closure of their two-year affair after falling into the arms of an obscure German goalkeeper, I said the first consoling thing that came to mind: "Don't worry, she'll be back, she doesn't even like football. The sex may be great but what can they possibly have to talk about?"

"What?"

"You'll see off this Stepp Leven bloke," I said.

"No, he's not a footballer, he's a, it's a . . . it's September Eleven, the day the world changed. Where have you been?" His lover now felt more responsible for her three children, her job, her husband, her conscience and her two dogs. My friend had become another casualty of Sepeleven.

Or had he? Was this not a convenient way to (with apologies to Jo Moore) "bury some bad news" - that she had tired of the relationship?

In the Eighties we blamed our parents for our behaviour; in the Nineties the fashionable mantra was "I'm doing the best I can", which roughly translated meant "I'm doing whatever I like". Now we have Sepeleven.

We are in danger of becoming a nation of Jo Moores, people using the murder of 5,000 people in New York as an excuse to "bury" our own bad news, as a way of not taking responsibility for our own decisions and actions. And there is no finer example of this than the behaviour of the government since 11 September. Our "Jo Jo" government decided to sneak out the damning report on the way it handled the foot-and-mouth crisis, the latest waiting list times in the NHS, and the decision to force Railtrack into administration. The de facto legalisation of cannabis was announced in the press as a fait accompli. What better time to announce the U-turns on asylum vouchers and student tuition fees and avoid criticism or explanation? Cynical or what? Tony Blair may have denounced Jo Moore last week, but his government is following her advice to the letter. No wonder they refused to sack her.

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Having confessed last week that he fills the lonely hours between broadcasts at the Royal Opera House (cheap tickets, of course) it transpires that Andrew Marr, the BBC political editor, has an insatiable cultural appetite. When not at the opera, he can be spotted wandering around London's galleries. He was overheard at the Langham Hotel this week showing off a collection of postcards he had bought of the Pisanello exhibition at the National Gallery.

"I send them out as thank you cards," he explained, "and this is my favourite to send to politicians." It was a chalk drawing of a magnificent black boar.

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