It’s true is it? It’s a fact is it? How do you know? Read it on the web, did you? Well, must be true then, eh? Whales can sing Dixie through their bottoms? Who’d have thought it? On the web was it? Funny what you find out.

I read somewhere recently that when the printing press was invented, those who called the shots were extremely worried that the end of the world was nigh. This was bad news. Their reasoning was that information, disinformation and outright rubbish could now be circulated far more easily and their authority would come under attack.

Well, they are right about the far wider circulation of information, disinformation and outright rubbish, but when and where their authority came under attack cannot simply be put down to the invention of the printing press and the good work done by Mr Gutenburg in Germany and Mr Caxton here in Britain (who, by the way, was not a printer by trade at all but an astute businessman formerly based in Flanders who had his finger in many pies and, broadly, invested in the future of the printing press. That Caxton is now widely credited with ‘inventing’ printing might well demonstrate that the fears of those who thought the invention could possibly lead to the public being misled by disinformation and outright untruths were not necessarily Establishment paranoia).

Those calling the shot were worried, of course, because the feudal way of doing things meant that they, a minority, garnered all the goodies and everyone else was merely required to ask what most recent shots had been called. The Church was a major part of the Establishment, as powerful as, and in some ways arguably even more powerful than, the Court. One reason why they were so much against the Bible being translated from Latin into vulgar tongues was because they were keen to preserve their role as the exclusive interpreter of ‘God’s word’. Making ‘God’s word’ more accessible to ordinary folk was, of course, exactly why the various translators set about their work.

In fact, as almost all sociology bores will confirm - at great length if you give them half a chance, so watch your step - was that the invention of printing was a Good Thing overall. For one thing it made literacy and education possible that were the undoubted prerequisite for  the growth of democracy (defined by many as exploitation of the people by the people). That it also made possible such literary gems as Mein Kampf and the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion is also true, but to mention them is simple adolescent mischief.

That was then and this is now. The world and its prejudices have lived with printing for the best part of 800 years, and it was about time for a change. And that change came along around 15 years ago with the development of the internet. In those heady pioneering days it was still referred to as the ‘information superhighway’, though anyone using that phrase today would be mocked so much he or she would dare not show their face in public for at least a year.

But heady days being heady days and all kinds of nerds and geeks getting overexcited at the prospect of ‘worldwide communication’ - why didn’t they make that claim for radio? - the internet was trailed for a few short years as the key to freedom: there would be no stopping democracy, it was predicted, as information and news would spread across the planet at the speed of light (or electricity, I can’t remember: aren’t they essentially both the same? Something like that) and there would be no stopping it. Tyrants everywhere, the message went out, your days are numbered!

Well, call me an old cynic (or even a handsome cynic, if you like) but it didn’t pan out that way. Repressive states weren’t born yesterday, and governments who are not as keen as some on their folk being able to access everything available on the net are more than able to block access whenever they choose. They have also quickly become adept at monitoring web traffic and utilise algorithms to spot keywords and phrases which might merit a site being scrutinised a more closely.

So if, for example, I were to write something like ‘that Al Qaeda, now there’s a man who knows how to put on a show. His last went like a bomb apparently, and he’s become something of an underground sensation’, the chances are that some bright herbert in GCHQ in Cheltenham will have a little red light blinking furiously on his desk and the message ‘potential terrorist alert, check out, check out!) flashing on his screen. CCHQ software will have picked up on ‘al qaeda’, ‘bomb’, ‘underground’ and ‘GCHQ’ all in the same sentence and decided to take a closer look (or not. I’m not that conceited, but I think you get my drift). And in the grand scheme of things, I’m rather glad they are on the ball. So much for the spread of information enabling democracy to spread.

But what the ‘information superhighway’ is also doing very successfully - apart from making rich pornographers even richer and helping crooks come up with ever more ways of parting fools and their money - is spreading disinformation and outright rubbish. So where before it cost me an arm and a leg to publish and have printed a book outlining my the ‘facts’ that house mice are, in fact, alien beings come to spy on us and prepare the ground for an invasion of super rodents, these days I can publicise that belief at a fraction of the cost merely by posting a website.

Furthermore, it won’t be long before someone else who has long suspected that that is exactly what mice are up to but who lacked the ‘proof’ for his suspicion comes across my website and tells himself - it is, sadly, usually ‘himself’ as most women are too busy buying shoes and chocolate to bother much with the net - ‘ah ha! I knew it! Finally the proof! I knew they were up so something and now someone has shown us exactly what’s going on!’ He might then even copy and paste the text and images on your website to a website he has created, so that now there is not just one website ‘proving’ the existence of evil, subversive alien mice but two! And if two more bods do the same, soon there will be four, then 16 and on it will go until every alien mice conspiracy theorist worldwide will point to the number of websites backing up his suspicion - all carrying the same ‘facts’, of course - and tell his friends: ‘Look, they can’t all be wrong, can they?’

The same thing could - and can - happen with books, of course, and still does, but given that the net demands less of us in the way of paying attention than your average book, and, furthermore, is accessible almost anywhere, it is proving more successful. But the moral is the same: whether it’s something someone has told you, something your read in a newspaper or book, or something you found on the net, use your judgment. If you have no way of knowing just how true it is and how reliable the sources are, withhold judgment. Complete rubbish can also travel at the speed of light.

. . .

All this occurred to me when I was chasing up info about the nation’s favourite paedophile Jimmy Savile and claims he was linked to a paedophile ring which also involved prominent politicians, civil servants, judges and the rest and that they had all closed ranks and were protecting one another (as you would, of course - if one goes, they will all go). I was particularly interested in claims now doing the rounds that Ted Heath as was, one of Britain’s least successful Prime Ministers, was also into little boys and associated with Savile. Most recent, although on radio in Bristol, one bright spark, a barrister called Michael Shrimpton, has claimed that Heath would have young lads delivered to his yacht, have his evil way with them, then have them murdered and thrown overboard. Outlandish claim? Of course, and pretty incredible (as in extremely difficult, if not impossible, to believe rather than in the old hippy ‘far out, man’ sense of ‘incredible’). But Mr Shrimpton is most certainly making that claim. Just google ‘ted heath michael shrimpton’ to find out.

Other prominent names, many mentioned in connection with a gay brothel in Elm House, Rocks Lane, Barnes, include Conservative MP and Thatcher confidant Peter Morrison (now dead), bloody awful pop star, self-styled Christian and ageing Peter Pan Cliff Richard (not yet dead) and former Tory minister and EC commissioner Leon Brittan (not yet dead). Now, I have no way of knowing whether what is claimed about those gentlemen is true, although there now seems little doubt the Morrison was a wrong ‘un. The point is that all three names, as well as several others, are prominently mentioned on any number of website, and anyone visiting such a site might well go away with the firm impression that with so many independent websites all saying the same thing, everything must be true beyond any doubt. But of course it isn’t.

A few months ago, the BBC got itself into a terrible mess by publicly announcing that one Lord McAlpine, a Conservative politician, had been named by one victim of paedophilia as his abuser. Twenty-four hours later came the pofaced retraction: Awfully sorry, chaps, we got that one rather wrong. It wasn’t Lord McAlpine at all, but his cousin. Yet the damage had been done, and to this day someone somewhere searching the net for references to Tory paedophiles will come across the reference to Lord McAlpine being an abuser and believe it to be fact. Dangerous or what?

What is equally worrying is that once you’ve looked up and read through several of these websites, all purporting to be chasing down ‘the truth’, it dawns on you that the widespread practice that all of them is simply to copy and paste what is in one website into your own. Thus the number of ‘sources’ for a ‘fact’ are doubled, quadrupled, multiplied eightfold, then sixteenfold, then on and on in a matter of weeks. And there are plenty of gullible people out there prepared to believe anything about anyone, and the nastier it is, the better. So much for research (and, I’ll add so-called ‘citizen journalism’).

A given ‘fact’ might well be true. There again it might be complete bollocks, but to the anti-paedophile zealot (which to my ears sounds just as phoney as an ‘anti-death zealot’ - is anyone, except paedophiles, actually in favour of paedophilia?) that is not the point: it has appeared on someone’s website as ‘fact’, this guy is on the side of the angels (‘he’s against fucking cunt paedophiles, innit, so he’s got to be right, innit?’) so it’s all done and dusted. The giveaway is that it is almost always word-for-word.

Try it yourself: google, say, “jimmy savile” “paedophile ring” “cabinet minister” and you’ll come across any number of blogs about the subject all cross-referencing to each other and many carrying word for word the same content. You’ll also find many pointing you to the blog published by Nutter-in-Chief David Icke, who, in my view, gives fruitcakes a bad name.

All this is, of course, a long way off discussing what went on at Elm House, various children’s homes in North Wales and the Jersey, Jimmy Savile, a long list of paedophiles and alleged paedophiles and the rest. And as I’ve got nothing new to add, I shan’t discuss it. I also suspect that, in view of some developments - coppers being taken off the case, files going missing, odd inquest verdicts and the like - there is a widespread cover-up, but I have no proof whatsoever. I should make that clear. The point of this entry is to repeat what is all-too-often forgotten: there’s a lot of crap out there on the net and be very careful what you decided to believe.

. . .

Here’s an example of how what is on the net can very often be top-dollar 24-carat bollocks: copy this (from the start of the double inverted commas to the end of the second set) “andrew marr” “tearound tessa”, then paste it into Google (other search engines are available ©BBC) and see what you come up with. You should come up with 3,630 results explaining that ‘Tearound Tessa’ was ‘jocular nickname’ Andrew Marr earned himself when he was working at the Economist ‘because of his enthusiasm for trips to the canteen on behalf of his colleagues.’

Websites giving that explanation include The Tatler (which writes of ‘his keenness to trot back and forth from the canteen’), Blurb Wire (‘Current news and events for high maintenance minds’ - their own rather self-regarding description, I’m so glad I don’t have a high maintenance mind), Topic Hawk and Scoop Web (ooh, ‘scoop’ eh, sounds good!)

Unfortunately, it’s complete crap. Marr never earned himself that nickname, never told anyone he did and, as far as I know, never used to ‘trot back and forth’ to the canteen to get cups of tea for his workmates. How do I know? I know because I made it up. I did so several years ago and added it - mischievously rather than maliciously - to Marr’s Wikipedia entry. And every other website which refers to that particular ‘fact’ merely cribbed it off Wikipedia - ALL of them.

The ‘fact’ that Marr was once nicknamed ‘Tearound Tessa’ will undoubtedly appear in years to come in many an authoritative biography of the man or at least his obit and appreciations by colleagues once he pops his clogs. But its bollocks. I made it

up. And while I’m in confessional mood, don’t ever believe the ‘fact’ that the great and good Simon Heffer ‘once had a brief flirtation with the hard left in his teenage years’. That’s what his Wikipedia entry proclaims as now do also any number of potted biographies of the man. Trouble is it’s not true. I made that one up, too. Ah, there’s the knock at the door. It’s the Wiki police. Farewell, my good readers, and if they allow me the use of a laptop and access to the net in chokey, I pledge to carry on writing this blog. If they don’t - love, peace and kisses to you all.

Ain’t no one can hate as well as the Left even when they have no idea what they’re hating. Bring back the Nazis – at least they knew how to march and could organise a real bonfire

Prominent on today’s Daily Mail (page 6, Wednesday, April 10) are a number of comments by various folk who would most certainly regard themselves as ‘on the left’ about the death of Mrs Thatcher. They are all notable for their utterly charmless viciousness. You can find the online version here, but I will reproduce a few examples:

JOEY BARTON: The footballer posted: ‘I'd say RIP Maggie but it wouldn't be true. If heaven exists that old witch won't be there.’ Barton is not known for being the sharpest blade in the box and apart from his football has become known for beating people up.

FRANKIE BOYLE: The comedian tweeted: ‘All that Thatcher achieved was to ensure that people living in Garbage Camps a hundred years from now will think that Hitler was a woman.’ Boyle has been criticised for making fun of a Down’s Syndrome child and other forms of disability.

MARK STEEL: The comedian wrote: 'What a terrible shame – that it wasn't 87 years earlier.' For sheer, brilliant wit I doubt that can be bettered.

ROSS NOBLE: The comedian tweeted: 'Bloody typical that Thatcher dies when I am in  Australia. I hate to miss a good street party.' Noble was four years old when Thatcher was first elected.

DEREK HATTON: The former Liverpool councillor said: 'The issue isn't about whether she is dead. I regret for the sake of millions of people that she was ever born. She promoted a form of greed in business that we've never known before and it's continued ever since. She actually changed the whole face of this country in a way, that you know, people wouldn't have even anticipated. Even her successors got away with murder, literally, for example Blair in Iraq, that they wouldn't have got away with had it not been for what she did. Hatton is now a property developer with interests in Cyprus.

I have never thought of myself as a ‘Thatcher supporter’ as in some ways I find such broadbrush descriptions (‘he admitted that he supported toothpaste’) to be almost meaningless. I have previously outlined why I think as Prime Minister the women undertook what were undoubtedly necessary reforms that, I suspect, would not have been undertaken by any other political leader of the time. Certainly you can disagree with her policies, but any discussion of them deserves to be intelligent, informed and rational. Likening the woman to Hitler as Boyle does is not intelligent, informed or rational.

 

Perhaps most disturbing is this from an Alex Callinicos, who (I read) is Professor of European Studies at King's College, London, and member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He says: ‘Murder was Thatcher's business. Sometimes the murder was metaphorical – of industries and communities. It still destroyed people's lives. Sometimes the murder was real. Thatcher over-saw the ongoing dirty war in Ireland.’

 

His comments invite, off the top of my head, these questions: what would he say about those who promoted the motor car in the early years of the 2oth century and murdered the livery stable and horse trading industries? What would he say about Apple, Microsoft and the rest of have murdered the typewriter and word processor manufacturing industries? How does he feel about the various Asian countries who modernised their economies and began producing steel and other consumer goods more efficiently and cheaper than Britain which led to the demise – OK, if you insist ‘murder’ if you insist – of Britain’s steel and white goods industries?

 

As for the ‘real murder’, what does the  professor have to say about the IRA bombings in Ireland and England, in  London, Manchester and Armagh, for example? Arguably the bomb attack in Brighton when Thatcher herself was the target – arguably – was ‘legitimate’, but blowing to pieces ordinary folk who were guilty of nothing else but walking past the spot where a bomb was detonated would seem just a tad infra-dig.

 

These outbursts, I think, have their roots in Britain’s chronic and bizarre ‘them and us’ mentality, which is not just a mere disagreement about how the country should be run but incorporates real, visceral hatred. And as someone who dislikes a great deal, not least hypocrisy, Mr Hatton, but can honestly say he ‘hates’ nothing, I find it incomprehensible.

 

Here are a few pictures of how some in Britain ‘celebrated’ Thatcher’s death.

 

 

 

Astute political judgment from four young women who were not yet born by the time Thatcher resigned. But to be young is very heaven. Things are always quite simple, rather like political judgment

 

 

More intelligent discourse here in the free world.

 

Look away now if you want just another chorus of what a bitch Maggie was. She wasn’t

 

It would be perverse to ignore what this morning is the big story here in Britain, but I am neither going to indulge in a round of universal praise nor a rant of unmitigated condemnation. If that’s the kind of thing you want, you’ll find whatever you want elsewhere in spades. In fact, the chances are you’ve already found it, and not doubt what you have read have confirmed your prejudices that Margaret Thatcher – ‘Maggie’, The Iron Lady’’ Mrs T’ – was – delete as applicable – a modern-day saint with miraculous powers the likes of whom we shall not see again for some time / a monumental bitch of a she-devil who murdered children for sport, Both sides are willing to produce ‘proof’ for their view. (Incidentally, it has long been apparent to me that when most folk ‘want proof’, they want nothing of the kind. They merely want someone more articulate than themselves and preferably better known to confirm their prejudices. In that spirit, you’ll find proof galore if you hunt the net just a little to find ‘proof’ that, for example, aliens DO exist, live up are arses and make a mean spag bol if that’s your personal delusion.)

So instead of a hallelujah chorus or a round of kill-the-bitch (rather difficult in Mrs T’s case as life has already got in there first) I should like to remind those of you who are ‘more mature’ i.e. an old fart like me (or inform those of you too young to remember) what was happening in Britain in the late Seventies and what state the country was in. On the radio this morning – which was unsurprisingly wall-to-wall Maggie except for the football and weather forecast – Max Hasting, hack of this parish and once editor of the Daily Telegraph, made the point that ‘Thatcher was of her time. Any given leader can probably only do what they do at a given moment of history’, and I think it is a good point. Take a look at the picture above and reflect on what someone else observed on the radio this morning, that ‘Britain was economically and politically a laughing stock’ in Europe. It was taken in London's Leicester Square at a time when our rubbish collectors went on strike. Why I can't remember - perhaps they wanted more sugar in their tea like the bosses. But what you see above could be seen all over the country. It was not a pretty sight.

The Seventies were for the more developed nations of Western Europe the endgame for an economic model. I specify ‘for the more developed nations’ because countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece were still emerging from dictatorships, in the case of Spain and Portugal, several decades of it, and were still economically several decades behind Britain, France and German. The Japanese were beginning to produce better, more well-equipped cars than Europe and selling them more cheaply (it was the Japanese who began to sell cars with a radio as standard and European and US car makers had reluctantly to follow suit). Coal and steel were being produced and sold more cheaply and white goods were also cheaper to import. By the Seventies the quality of many British goods, almost always those at the bottom end of the market, were of piss-poor quality. The country was also in the grip of rampant inflation.

Faced with these problems, the various governments of the Seventies all opted for the easy way out: paying subsidies. It is the coward’s way out – pay off the blackmailer, which only encourages him to come back for more. It is, of course, far too easy for a blogger writing after the event to criticise: what would we have done given that the collapse of Britain’s heavy industries – coal, steel and car making – would, if not managed properly – have led to massive unemployment. And I really can’t blame the trades unions for some of the things they did: their role was, is and always will be to represent the interests of their members and their members wanted to keep working. Why should they pay the price while ‘the toffs’, who were everyone else but them as far as many were concerned, were able to carry on blithely? Where the unions came unstuck, I think, as that too many of there leaders were rooted in the old ‘let’s create a socialist state’ ideal ‘by taking over the means of production’, and striking and other forms of industrial unrest were their weapons. It was never going to end in sweetness and light and it didn’t, but that is no criticism of Thatcher.

So you might agree or disagree with what she did, but any honest man and woman would be hard put to deny that she was a one-off: she didn’t care whether or not she was popular – which makes her almost unique among politicians – and she was convinced she knew how best to pull the country out of the mess it was in. She went for it and transformed the country. There is much I dislike about the country into which she transformed Britain, not least the way almost everyone seemed to jump on the ‘greed is good’ mantra. But I sincerely believe she was far more nuanced than her public image would suggest. Nor do I believe she was the right-wing harridan of left-wing mythology. So as far I as I am concerned: RIP Margaret Thatcher.

When is printing money not printing money? Never, actually, but there’s bugger all you and I can do about it except choose to believe the bullshit

It’s always good to begin obliquely, so I shall begin this entry with a medical story. One night several years ago, about five years ago, I got up to have a pee. The next thing I remember is coming to leaning against the bath with my wife leaning over me. I had passed out. What made it all just a little more alarming was that two years earlier while using the rowing machine in the gym at work I had a heart attack.
My wife called an ambulance and I was taken to Derriford Hospital in Plymoth 40 miles away. The doctor who examined me had blood tests done, monitored my blood pressure and did various other tests, but could find nothing wrong with me. And my heart was in good condition. What had occurred had nothing to do with my heart. But she was loth to let me go. At about 8am the following morning a colleague turned up and she asked him for his opinion. She explained what had happened - that I had got up during the night to have a pee and had passed out - but that all the tests she had had done revealed that nothing was amiss. He told her what had happened, she told me, and within 30 minutes I was up and dressed and allowed to make my way home.
What had happened? Well, it was something which, the colleague told her, happens quite regularly, but almost always only to men. I had suffered ‘micturition syncope’. Sounds bad, doesn’t it, but actually it is not that bad at all. Translated into the kind of language you and I use and understand, it means ‘fainting while having a pee’.

This is rather a good example of medical men and women using ten words where two would do and possibly only trying to disguise the fact that they don’t really have a clue as to what is going on. Another example is NSU, and infection with which those of you who have ever had to visit ‘Ward 45’ or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods will be familiar. NSU means nothing more than ‘non-specific urethritis’, and that means an a general infection which inflames the urethra and isn’t gonorrhoea (and I don’t mean on of Lear’s daughters).

I’m not suggesting our doctors are rogues, but like most profession they are apt to resort to jargon not just for convenience but partly because it shuts the rest of us out. There are however, rather more dubious reasons to resort to jargon. For example, it was quite some time before I realised that when a company is ‘highly leveraged’ it means it has borrowed a lot of money. But saying Global Undertakings Inc/plc/Ltd is ‘highly leveraged doesn’t sound half as bad as ‘deep in debt’. And, finally to get to the point ‘pursuing a policy of quantitative easing in order to stimulate the economy’ sounds reasonably respectable, admirable even. But were we to be told that our Treasury, the U.S. Fed and, most recently, Japan’s Central

©Paul Zanetti
Bank is ‘printing money’, I don’t think any of us would be half as sanguine. But that is exactly what they are doing.

Mind, it’s all in a good cause - isn’t it? The idea is to ‘stimulate spending’. Again, who would argue with that. Well, savers for one thing, because the rates they are offered when they want to put a bit of money by for their old age are more or less non-existent. As usual, when you ask an ‘expert’ - I do so love ‘experts’, wish I were an ‘expert’ - whether the ‘policy of quantitative easing’ is worth a row of beans the answer you will get will depend solely on which expert you ask. Broadly, the are split down the middle: supporters say, yes, it has helped and the economy is now in better shape than had we not ‘pursued a policy of quantitative easing’.

The others, those who think it is totally daft totally daft to print money, for whatever reason, will tell you the opposite: that it is sheer madness to print money, whatever the reason. So asking for an ‘expert opinion’ gets you absolutely nowhere. I mean you have to know something about the subject in order to choose the right expert, one who might actually know what he or she is talking about, and if you knew something about the subject, you wouldn’t be seeking an ‘expert opinion’ in the first place. Q.E.D.

I must admit that I am aware of taking too simplistic view on this matter, and have been knocking around to find some explanation for quantitative easing which doesn’t involve printing money. To be fair, the various central banks are not actually printing money at all, but they might as well be: they are simply crediting themselves with money out of thin air and using that money to buy up government bonds. But it would be difficult to fool a five-year-old as to what is going on: it is exactly as though they were printing money.

Does it matter? Supporters insist that the economies of developed nations would be even more in the shit had quantitative easing not been adopted, but in truth there is no way we can test that claim. I simply take the view that I am in no position to make a blind bit of difference and never will be, so I might as well take it on the chin. But I do get just a little peeved that at the end of the day it will be the usual people who will carry the can - those at the bottom of the pile. At my age I might not see too much misery, but I do increasingly wonder what the future will hold for my daughter, 17 in August, and my son, 14 in May.

When I was in my 20s, the big problem the country faced was ‘beating inflation’. You went to the shops, bought a pint of milk, went home and by the time you opened carton, it had already gone up in price. Mrs Thatcher - the Saviour of the

Hans Jederman gets ready to go out for a pint of milk
Western World/A She-Devil Incarnate depending upon which prejudiced bastard you are talking to - dealt with inflation, but did it the Hayek way: she let firms fail and a great many people lost their jobs. For that, at the end of the day, is the only real solution.

Trouble is, of course, that if you are one of those paying the price, it’s not a solution you’re going to vote for. Hayek’s old sparring partner Keynes was all for spending our way out of trouble. Yet that means simply more borrowing, which again doesn’t these days seem to be the wisest thing to do. But never mind, the best brains in the land are on the case and have come up with a solution: print more money! But doesn’t that mean stoking inflations? Well, yes sir, it does, and it will be the salvation of the western world. At this point I think it is time to go an lie down. Sometimes there’s a lot to be said for being a simple fellow with a simplistic view of the world and her acorns.

Mother Russia? Still misunderstood? Perhaps, but ain’t nothing like doing things as they were always done

I grew up in what was then called the Cold War and everything was simple: we, the West – that was the U.S. Great Britain, France and the rest – were the Good Guys, and the East – the USSR and its various satellite states, as well as those who aligned themselves to it in return for financial support – were the Bad Guys. Looking back, it is all very reminiscent of the ‘cowboy films’ at the time: the Good Guys road white horses, wore the trousers over their boots and worse cool hats, and the Bad Guys road black horses, tucked their trousers into their boots and wore rather sillier hats. And just like the morality conveyed in those cowboy films – Rin Tin Tin, Gene Autry, Annie Oakley, Roy Rogers, The Cisco Kid et al – the Cold War – well, ‘narrative’ is the buzz word at present (and although I don’t want to use it because I don’t like using buzz words, I can’t deny that it has become a very useful word) – was equally as facile. What we did was Good because we were the Good Guys: QED. And what they did was Bad because they were the Bad Guys: again QED. But, oh were life really that simple, as I have since discovered.

This is not the place to retail the various iniquities of which the West is guilty, but a short list of them over the years would include invading Iraq twice (‘because it was there’ as we Brits like to justify many of our escapades) and destabilising countries because it suited our interests (for example, getting rid of the elected government of the Iran and installing the Shah to make sure we could keep our hands on Persian oil). But before the East gets all hoity-toity and self-righteously smug, their list of misdemeanours is equally as unimpressive (invading Hungary and the then Czechoslovakia, and also toppling governments, that kind of thing). Both sides were also not above murder and assassination, although the West insists it never indulged in that kind of thing (which makes taking out that nice Mr Bin Laden rather difficult to explain).

So far, so banal, and what is the chap on about? Well, this morning my brother alerted me to the fact that the Voice of Russia is now available online. It also has a website which you can find here. The Voice of Russia is Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Voice of America and, quite possibly, our very own BBC World Service (although the Beeb  – ‘Auntie’ to those who really can’t stand the Corporation – vehemently denies any such thing and insists that the World Service is solely there for the betterment of our coloured cousins with the sole objective of saving their souls. Nothing like the – allegedly CIA-funded Voice of America at all, old chap, and if you are inclined to believe such a thing, well, it’s a pretty poor show, if one might be so blunt! I mean what harm can there be in passing on to all and sundry the latest Test cricket scores?) The thought occurred to me, as it increasingly does these days which is admirably summed up by the French phrase ‘plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’. It’s like going back in time.

. . .

I have no idea how Boris Berezovsky’s life ended, but from what I have read the most likely explanation is that he hanged himself. But there is also the poisoning by radiation (worthy of a modenr-day Agatha Christie, that one) of one of his associates, the former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko, which we Brits are blaming on his former employers, the continuing crackdown on anyone who thinks Vladimir Putin is a bad egg and dares say so in public, and a general sense that Russia is reverting to type. How, for example, to explain its support of Syria’s Assad and apparent opposition to the West’s promotion of the ‘rebels’ ?

Actually, that’s a very bad example, but I did introduce it for that very reason. The current Janet and John thinking here in the West is pretty much along the lines of our Cold War analysis and equally as duplicitous. Assad was and is (he’s still alive and kicking) a nasty piece of work. And who can blame his brave people from rising up and attmpting to overthrow him ? First off, the ‘opposition’ in Syria is about as united as a family of Irish topers at a late-night drinking session. None of us really knows who is on whose side, and even if we knew that we still would not know why. But we do know that, for its own reasons, Iran supports Assad and supplying him with men and materiel, and that Saudi Arabia is supporting the ‘opposition’ and is dong the same for them. So what at first blush would seem like a war of liberation in Syria looks rather more like a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance in the area. The same thing is going on in Iraq whose Sunnis and Shi’ites will not get a single night’s peace until Iran and Saudi Arabia call it a day.

The West, which just loves to cover its intriguing with the fig leaf of ‘bringing democracy to the world’ is also supporting the Syrian ‘opposition’ and so, as though by default, Russia has taken up Assad. It also helps that with Assad in charge, Russia would have far more useful access to the Mediterranean (which is also why they want to keep Cyprus in their ambit). So it would seem it is also something of a proxy confrontation – I’ll use that word rather than ‘war’ – between the West and Russia. As I said, ‘plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’.

. . .

I would dearly like to visit Russia, and meet its people. I would dearly like to spend more than a tourist week there. I should like to live among them, learn their language and get to know how they tick. As it happens I would also like to do the same with many other nations, not least with our Yankee cousins. My point is that so much of our ‘knowledge’ of countries and their people is nothing of the kind. I can read the Economist and the ‘serious’ newspapers as much as I like. I can listen to From Our Own Correspondent till the cows come home, but nothing would beat going there and making up my own mind.

I’m intrigued by Russia. I intrigued that – apparently – a great many of its people are really not that bothered about whether or not their system is ‘democratic’. As long as things wend their way, as long as they have work and can keep warm, can socialise with as much vodka as is necessary and as long as official life keeps out of their hair, the system is fine by them. Is that true ? I really don’t know and don’t have any way of knowing, but it would be interesting to meet ordinary Russians for myself and find out for myself. There were the days, of course, under the Soviet regime when people such as me were regarded as potential ‘useful idiots’ who could be invited over, wined and dined, shown the sites, perhaps if that was our bag, be introduced to a very pretty Russian woman or two, then returned to our country of origin to spread that word that things aren’t all that bad, if only we could get to understand each other. (The small ads of the New Statesman used to carry adverts for two-week coach trips to Poland which were ridiculously cheap, and I was sometimes tempted to go merely because they cost so little, but was put off buy the thought of spending almost 24 hours stuck in an uncomfortablte seat next to some comrade eulogising about ‘all them corn fields and ballet in the evening’)

I don’t doubt that ordinary Russians have just as skew-whiff a picture of Britain and its people as we do of Russia and her people. Judging from today’s Voice of Russia web front page things aren’t looking too good in Britain at all. Funny that. Especially when we play the same game.

Finally, this is another chance for me to plug one of my You Tube videos. Oddly enough, it is rather pertinent.