EVEN before President Bush has parked his Dubya wagon on the White House lawn, the signs don't look good for the rest of the world. Or Yorkshire.

These are confusing days for those of us who enjoy American culture, having read the novels, seen the films, listened to the music and watched the television (and even visited, long ago).

American television, in particular, offers many highlights. The Sopranos is one of the best TV dramas in years, ER is up there in the hospital hall of fame, NYPD Blue is a police great (though not so fine as the cruelly-neglected Homicide: Life On The Streets), while even Frasier, seven years old and growing a little tired, can still sparkle on a good night. And do not forget the cartoons: the wise wit and in-your-face humanity of The Simpsons or the bizarre antics of South Park.

Strangely, there are those who won't watch American programmes, including my own brother, of all people.

In saying all this, I'm not doing down our culture, our own programmes, or even my brother - just pointing out the vigour of the American variety. But now, a world away from the mannered farce of Frasier, a few dark blocks down from the sugar-frosted fluctuations of Friends, another, older America is stirring. And it is a scary sight.

The incoming President George W. Bush is apparently intent on ploughing ahead with a vast and horrendously expensive missile defence system.

The controversial National Missile Defence Programme is nick-named Son Of Star Wars. This is a reference to President Reagan's failed Star Wars initiative, which might have borrowed the imprint of George Lucas's films but proved to be about as much use as something that fell off the back of a Star Trek set.

Now Bush The Sequel wants go ahead with an even more alarming defence system. This one would deploy thousands of air defence missiles to shoot down incoming ballistic weapons launched by rogue states. To have any chance of working, this space shooting gallery would have to plant one intrusive foot here in North Yorkshire by using the early warning station at Fylingdales on the North York Moors.

The apparent need for such hi-tech defences can be explained by America's weakness for rampant paranoia. The US is now the world's only super-power and what it lacks is a super-enemy. So out of nowhere, the political old guard - many of whom are now trundling back into the White House, behind Bush II - summon up all sorts of half-imagined foreign infidels who might want to bomb America.

And if Son Of Star Wars did go ahead at Fylingdales, a quiet corner of North Yorkshire would become a legitimate target for those supposed missiles from terrorists or rogue states who might have a grudge against the US. Strangely, Tory leader William Hague, a man who rarely forgets where he's from, backs Son Of Star Wars - apparently blind to the potential risks to Yorkshire.

The signals being emitted by Bush have already sent Russia and China into a potential alliance, and if that isn't alarming, I don't know what is.

Tony Blair should tell the burning Bush to send as many TV programmes as he likes - I'm already looking forward to the start tonight of The West Wing on Channel 4 - but to keep his missile system well away from these shores.

THE trouble with driving these days is that the roads are full of idiots who don't know what they're doing or where they're going. Take last Saturday. That car swerving on the motorway round Leeds, apparently struck by a moment's indecision about whether to choose Hull, Manchester or London. What sort of terrible driving was that? Clearly an idiot. It was pretty scary inside that car for that idiot was me. I suppose we all are sometimes. Still, we got there - and back.