Hood vibrations

This is strange in a way, because I'm not much of a one for religion, tending towards the agnostic, although not the atheist. This is mainly because atheists believe just as strongly as believers do, it's just that they are convinced there is nothing to it.

Agnostics merely shrug from the sidelines, wonder at all the fuss and leave the world to go on spinning.

Although we don't share a religion, the archbishop and me, we do chime in other ways.

The face of Dr John Sentamu has become a familiar sight to readers of The Press, sometimes with his gap-toothed smile and sometimes with unblinking seriousness, but always direct and with what, in less flattering surroundings, might be called an "in-your-face" attitude.

Still, it's a good attitude, forthright but friendly, and he doesn't seem to mind what he says. I'm sure his words are weighed beforehand, and checked over with others, but there remains a slightly dangerous air of busking about his speeches, as if he might just say anything.

In his so far short spell as Archbishop of York, Dr Sentamu has been joyfully unstuffy, flooding his inauguration last year with bare-chested African dancers (much to the chagrin of the stiffer-backed worshippers) and holding outdoor baptisms at Easter, in a service broadcast on BBC Radio Four.

He was at it again this week, photographed in this and other newspapers wearing a hoodie, as seen on the right, in warm defiance of those who regard with suspicion teenagers who sport the fashionable hooded tops.

There was a flurry of silly stories last year when hooded teenagers were banned from shopping centres and the like, for fear that their faces could not be seen. A landlord in Acomb, York, revived this topic last week by banning the wearing of any hats in his pub.

Speaking in Bradford, Dr Sentamu, Britain's first black archbishop, wore a red hooded top as he addressed a conference on youth work. He had been given the hoodie by teenagers in the Diocese of Birmingham, and he asked people not to judge young people who sported these garments because "99 per cent of those who wear hoodies are law-abiding citizens".

How true, your grace.

This important message is so often lost in the Asbo-fuelled rush to condemn young people and to define them all by the behaviour of a misbehaving few.

This trend of thinking the worst is a bit of a national habit, a grumpy inclination to believe in the bad rather than the good. And the young are keenly damaged by this negative tendency, which dismisses them all as troublemakers - as has been pointed out in this column before, but what's a little repetition between friends?

o LAST week, I was pondering Tory leader David Cameron's greenness and wondering whether a sliver of cynicism might not be in order. Mr Dave likes to cycle to Westminster from his Notting Hill home, and has often been photographed as he pedals. Nothing wrong with that and I like a bit of spoke-spinning myself. But now Cameron is having to back-pedal on his much-vaunted green credentials after admitting that he is followed by a car carrying his papers and his shoes. What a delightful hoot this story is. All right, it's not up there with the troubles of the Government, which seems to be drowning in a treacly morass of its own making, but it does say a lot. Those of us who suspected Cameron was laying it on a bit thick can savour a tasty little moment. Then again, maybe there's something in it. Do you think I could employ a chauffeur to carry my sandwiches while I pedal to work?