Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan makes election interesting

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ROMNEY'S V-P PICK MAKES ELECTION INTERESTING
THE SUNDAY TIMES ON PAUL RYAN
The unveiling by Mitt Romney of Congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate in November's US presidential election "has ensured this will not be a dull contest", says the The Sunday Times in an editorial. Ryan, 42, wants to cut the US budget deficit from 8% to 3% by 2014. He proposes to do that by slashing spending by $6 trillion, lowering corporate and income tax, and abolishing health benefits. It is a plan "that many British Conservatives will find attractive and in sharp contrast to what they see as the timidity and ineffectiveness of the coalition". Not all Ryan's ideas will be taken up by Romney. "But by focusing on debt and the deficit and on an economic recovery… the Romney-Ryan team has given notice that it intends to attack [Obama] where he is most vulnerable."

THE COOLNESS OF REJECTING THE AD MAN'S DOLLAR
JOHN HARRIS ON ADAM YAUCH'S WILL
At last a musician has made a stand against the "blurring of creativity and advertising", writes John Harris in The Guardian. The late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has said in his will that his music cannot be used in any commercials. "Sponsorship is ubiquitous, as proved by this coming weekend's annual V festivals – two days of promotion for the Virgin group, who push their trains, mobile phones and the rest". Although "moaning about the state of pop music at the age of 42 is probably a futile and undignified thing", it is worth it, because we are witnessing "the washing away of all meaning, so that most contemporary musicians apparently have no language with which to convincingly sing about the world, and their forebears end up as nothing more than poster boys (and girls) for other people's very marketable notions of cool". The Beastie Boys sang: "I might stick around or I might be a fad / But I won't sell my songs for no TV ad." And they meant it. "How great is that?"

OLYMPICS WAS A CELEBRATION OF COMPETITIVENESS
JANET DALEY ON LEARNING TO EMBRACE SUCCESS
"The Olympics were an unapologetic festival of competitiveness, pursuit of individual excellence… and uncompromising reward for merit," writes Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph. "They were, in other words, a celebration of all those aspects of the human condition which the political fashion and educational ideology of the past 40 years has attempted to denigrate. And the country loved it." Britons seemed "ecstatically untroubled" that dedicated people won and some other people lost. Everybody wants to know which is the real Britain: Team GB's successes or the rioters of last year. "The answer, of course, is both." But we must decide which one we want to embrace and which to repudiate. When a postbox was painted gold in Sheffield to celebrate local girl Jessica Ennis's Olympic triumph, it was soon vandalised. The local authority immediately painted over the graffiti. "Sheffield, inspired by the Olympic spirit, decided not to let the hooligans win. Is it too much to expect that the rest of the country might do the same?" ·