I selflessly give another blog (The Slog) a plug and wonder whether in years to come GlaxoSmithKline will be in the hamburger flipping business

Added April 4, 2014.

I notice that this blog post has had several visits over the past few weeks, and I thought it might be best to add this preface. Although I shall leave the post below unedited, I should point out that my opinion of The Slog, the guy who writes it - John Ward, a retired advertising executive - and what he has to say was severely revised several months after I came across the blog.

I admit, rather ruefully, that I was taken in by The Slog’s ramblings for a while. Superficially, with all his talk of ‘my contacts’ in Frankfurt, Washington, Berlin and I don’t know where else, he seemed well-informed and in the know and gave the impression of doing a great deal of ‘research’. It was only when his apparently copper-bottomed predictions of the demise of the euro and other matters failed to come true time after time that I began to wonder whether he was tin rather than lead.

I began to wonder even more whether John Ward was the real deal when I found myself falling foul of him. It became apparent (and still will if you want to try) that anyone daring to disagree with his prognoses, querying his thinking, criticising him even slightly or even choosing not to share his very high opinion of himself, would have his or her comments removed and be banned from the blog (in the sense that future comments were always removed). I know this because after it happened to me, I was emailed by several others whose comments were also regularly removed.

I must stress that my comments were not in the slightest abusive - it was just that it was obvious to anyone reading them that I refused to share Ward’s ineffably high opinion of himself and his abilities as a sage and increasingly could not take him at all seriously.

Having said all that, you must make up your own minds. Perhaps it is me who is a post short of a blog. Perhaps it isn’t. Decide for yourselves.

There are conspiracy theorists and there are cock-up theorists and I usually pretend to belong to the second group. Actually, that is not quite fair as it implies that I am, after all, a conspiracy theorist. So I’ll try again: there are conspiracy theorists who believe humankind is the result of genetic engineering by spacemen who also built the pyramids, erected Stonehenge and were generally responsible for kick-starting the world as we know it. Then there are conspiracy theorists for whom the cynical saying ‘don’t believe anything until it is officially denied’ could be a motto. I suspect I belong to the second bunch.

We never really know the ins and outs of any affair until years later when it is safe for those who really knew what was going on to go public and for those who did awfully naughty things at the time to decry their admissions, confessions and revelations as just so much bloody nonsense. In other words, only when it doesn’t matter any more do we learn the salient facts and by then it is called ‘history’. There are one or two bloggers around who do keep their ear to the ground and like to go public on what they hear long before anyone else. The trouble is that what they say is always immensely deniable and is, naturally, always denied. I’ve come across on such blog which is written by a retired adman called John Ward who blogs under the name The Slog. You can find his blog here.

I came across it following up links about the latest wheeler-dealing going on to save the world - no, sorry, that’s global warming - to save the euro and, by all accounts the EU. The Slog claims to have reliable information that a Greek default is a done thing and that after the close of business on Friday, March 23, Greece will be declared bankrupt. He suggests - no, he insists - that all the various meetings about haircuts and bailouts and Troikas and the rest is just so much hooey used to stall everything until that announcement on March 23. Naturally, the parties involved - which don’t involve Greece - want to protect the banking system and make sure their plans are watertight to protect themselves from the worst of the fallout. This, says Mr Ward, is why every single time a deal seemed within grasp for the Greeks and their creditors to agree on the size of how much the creditors would lose, various bods would stick their oar in to scupper the talks. ‘The Greeks need to put in place more austerity measures’ was one recent ploy.

Anyway, whether or not it is all true, whether or not is is all complete bollocks, it is a good read which, I’ll repeat, you can find here. And, yes, The Slog is a conspiracy theorist, but has the saving grace of not involving spacemen in any of the theories he puts forward and to my knowledge has never yet claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

NB As I write this, EU finance minsters are still meeting in Brussels - it is now 23.40 on February 20 - to decide whether they can trust the Greeks with €130bn of bailout moolah. They will be unable to reach a decision and will want ‘further reassurances’ or some such in order to ensure that Greece does go bankrupt. So if by the time you read this tomorrow an agreement has been reached, you will know The Slog is bollocks. If, on the other hand, there is a delay - well, was there something in it?

UPDATE (Feb21 at 9.58am sitting at my desk just dying for another cup of tea): It’s only fair that I should this morning add a rider to the above in view of the news that the Eurozone finance ministers ‘have reached a deal’ with Greece on what Athens should do to get the next bag of used fivers to pay off its debts. The Slog is utterly sceptical and is confident this is just the latest scene in a long-running farce which will culminate in the announcement on Friday, March 23. Me, I know rather less financial jargon than he seems to, so I’ll just admit that I’m sceptical, too. That’s because too many of these ‘last-minute’ solutions (although, strictly, this isn’t ‘a solution’) began to unravel within hours of being reached. It remains to be seen what will happen.

I should point out that Mr Wards’ conspiracy theory is rather supported by one detail of the handover deal: that Greece’s austerity measures will reduce its debts to 121pc of is GDP by tomorrow lunchtime or whenever they are supposed to do so. Until now it was, I think, 124pc. And – a detail which eluded my hawk-like eye last week – the ECB’s boss Mario Draghi announced that when it came to creditors getting their debts, those bonds held by the ECB would get preference over those held by private investors. But things aren’t too bleak for those nasty capitalist scum who masquerade under the oh-so-innocent description of ‘private investors’: they have previously insured themselves against losses so they won’t be quite as out of pocket as might seem apparent and aren’t too concerned about Draghi muscling his ECB to the front of the queue.

What is so utterly farcical about the whole business is that, even if the meeting was gen, even if whoever is going to stump up €130bn to hand over to the Greeks – and I can only admit that I’m very confused on that matter - where does the money come from? Is it from the taxpayers of the rest of the Eurozone countries? The there is the very pertinent point that as the ECB and a great many French and German banks hold Greek bonds, this bailout will simply be used – must simply be used – to pay off some of the debt they hold. So, in effect, all the ezone finance ministers are doing is paying off their own.

Then there’s the complete unknown: with one in five young people without a job and with enough time on his and her hands to do nothing but cause trouble; what with pensions being slashed; what with the mainstream centre parties’

ratings plummeting in the polls and the popularity of the parties of both the left and right extremes rising ever faster, all this talk of a bailout is just so much piss in the wind if there is real trouble there. Remember, the Greeks are due to hold a general election in seven weeks, so after that all bets might well be off, however much backslapping the ezone finance ministers indulge in (pictured above. Aren’t they a lovely bunch).

Oh, and how anyone in Greece is expected to react with equanimity to the demand by the EU that a gang of North European technocrats should be permanently based in Athens to give their consent or otherwise for every item of proposed government spending is beyond me. But there you have it: the wacky, wacky, wacky world of the EU. But still no aliens, UFOs and spacemen. It's all very puzzling.

. . .

Well, there we have it: science advances in leaps and bounds and is, apparently, on the brink of creating meat in the laboratory. Haul out the bunting and crack open the bubbly! Could the news be any better. Dutch scientists - despite their cuddly we-don’t-mind-if- you-smoke-dope liberal image, the Lowlanders have as potent a Frankenstein tendency as the rest of us poor saps - have used stem cells to create a ‘strip of muscle’ several centimetres long, one centimetre wide and on millimetre deep. This, they assure us, is the future and in the future the meat we eat will be grown in labs rather than in fields. The strip they produced cost around £200,000 to produce but ‘costs will come down’ production is commercially viable.

What, you are entitled to ask, is the point? Well, they claim that the point is to ‘save the environment’ because conventional meat production does it no favours. Well, I must say that that’s a new one on me. I have read claims, with which I am inclined to agree, that if the land we use to grow foodstock for cattle which we then eat were used to grow food for humans, it would be used more efficiently. It’s a veggie argument, but not necessarily the worse for that, and does rather forget that land which cannot be used to grow crops for humans can still be used to rear some cattle and sheep. But I was unaware of the suggestion that farming animals actually damages the environment.

Actually, I rather suspect that ‘saving the environment’ and finding new ways to feed mankind is rather less of a motive for these Dutch scientists than to justify the funding they get to keep their labs in operation. I would be happier if they put their intellects and energy to better use ensuring that several million more people had access to clean water. And if and when ‘lab-grown meat’ us available to feed us, you can bet your bottom dollar that those who might benefit most from this additional source of food will be the least likely to benefit. The fat West is inclined to think of itself and its own needs first, last and exclusively.

Damned if they do and damned if they don’t: please lay off the Germans. They really do mean well

In the beginning there were no greater Euro fans than the Germans, for reasons which have been well-rehearsed. They were also a, if not the, driving force behind the creation of the euro. They are one of the hardest and one of the best-managed nations in Europe and have a tendency to keep things tidy. For some reason it is a joke to many that the Germans value Ordnung, but the joke falls very flat indeed when you find yourself in deep in a situation where there is no Ordnung, as the unfortunate Greeks now do. But as one of the great Euro fans it is only right that they should shoulder some of the responsibility of how things have gone wrong. So why am I feeling very, very sorry indeed for all the abuse now being hurled at the Germans?

I have just read an interesting piece by Gideon Rachman in the FT in which he says Germans are slowly beginning to admit that the concept of the eurozone was fatally flawed: that in the long run a single currency would not and could not succeed unless all those in the eurozone belonged to a single state with all that entailed. Many people made that very point 12 years ago when the euro was established and were decried as little nationalists and killjoys. But here is not the place to shout, like kids in the schoolyard, ‘we told you so’. It would not only be impolite, but also utterly pointless: we’re in the shit and the priority is to get back out of the shit. Deciding who and what to blame can be done in many years’ time when the crisis is a matter of history. But it is interesting that influential Germans are now admitting that the whole euro project was flawed from the outset (and leave aside for now the important point that although a successful eurozone needed to be created in the context of a single state, creating that single Euro state would then, as now, have proved politically impossible to achieve.) In Rachman’s FT piece, he also quotes the head of Bosch as advocating that Greece should leave the eurozone. That, too, is a new development: until Christmas the very idea would not have been countenanced.

Solutions to the crisis - that is solving the crisis with the minimum damage - rest on Germany coughing up even more money and Germany agreeing to underwrite the debts of other eurozone members. Germany is adamant that it will not do the latter by agreeing to the creation of eurobonds and feels that not only would it be unfair to ask its taxpayers to pay up more, it is also politically impossible. I agree with them because I think the German position is the only sensible position. Unfortunately, many disagree, and when - not ‘when’ not if - the euro crisis explodes in sheer misery for millions throughout Europe, it is a very safe bet that Germany will come top of the list when appointing the scapegoats. And that is very, very unfair.

Predictably, images from Germany’s Nazi past are being hauled out of cold storage with Greek and Italian newspapers usually regarded as ‘serious’ and ‘respectable’ indulging in some of the worst behaviour. This, too, is wholly unfair. From where I sit, the very worst the Germans can be found guilty of is calling a spade a spade: they are inclined to speak their minds and that often comes over as tactlessnees. So when someone or other in Germany suggested that an EU-appointed commissar should oversee the Greek budget, this was immediately portrayed as a ‘renewed attempt by Germany to dominate Europe’. It would be funny if it were not so insulting. It is not a point one can prove, but of all the nations least interested in ‘dominating Europe’ it is the Germans. I think my German cousins would agree with me that the pervading sentiment in Germany is to lead as comfortable a life as possible, and ‘dominating Europe’ would not enable the Germans to lead a very comfortable life. Ah, I hear some of you cry, what about the Nazis. That’s a fair point. But perhaps you would allow me to ask: what about the Italian fascisti? What about Spain’s long dictatorship under Franco? What about Portugal’s long dictatorship under Salazar? What about the dictatorships, which lasted longer than the modest 12 years of Nazi rule in Germany, by the Communists in the then Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania? What about the Croatian fascists?

Are we all really so certain that every single last German in the country from 1933 to 1945 was wholeheartedly behind the Nazis? What happened to those on the Left, the communists and the socialist, all very active and who often engaged in street-fighting with the Nazis? Did they all, almost overnight, become convinced National Socialists? Do you know, I rather think not. Dredging up Nazi imagery and metaphors sells papers, most certainly - the British Daily Mail’s Simon Heffer has come out with some of the same crap, except that he is able to express himself in a more genteel fashion - but it is wholly unfair.

. . .

Just seen a trail for a programme on tonight: ‘Britain’s favourite supermarket food’ (ITV1 at 8pm). No doubt several tens of million viewers with rather more time than sense will be tuning in and congratulating themselves when a product is featured which they, too, ‘enjoy buying’. For God’s sake, get a fucking life. I won’t claim that the population is being dumbed-down because I think mankind, for the pas 300,000 years, has always had a dumb streak. So nothing really to worry about.. . .

A family visit to London tomorrow by the Powell family. They are coming up by train, and we shall spend the next two days visiting the Science Museum in South Kensington, Hamley’s in Regent St followed by Selfridges in Oxford St, and then go to a matinee performance of Billy Elliot in the afternoon before driving back home to Cornwall. I’m rather looking forward to it. It is all also costing me an arm and a leg.

Beware of Greeks bearing gilts, something about socialists, heads and hearts, and I’ve realised why country and western music pisses me off

There can be no one in the world who thinks that what is now going on in Greece can still all be sorted and that it will eventually all end with laughter, handshakes and ouzos all round. I also think it is clear to anyone but a blind bat that Greece will go bankrupt and leave the euro. Imposing yet more austerity on a nation the majority of whom no longer have a drachma to their name is as futile a solution as urging a corpse to lose a little more weight (‘Look, we can’t quite get you in the coffin. Any chance, y’know . . . ?’) We’re told that almost half of all those of working age under 24 are out of work and have no prospect of finding a job and there has been violent protests on the streets, with the police

being petrol-bombed and I heard a report on the radio last week that to save money hospitals are only operating every few days. Those with the wherewithal to do so are moving their money out of the country as fast as they can, and to say the outlook is bleak is an understatement.

The coalition government has been engaged in more than pointless negotiations about even how even more money can be saved in order to qualify for another bailout. The Greek parliament will vote on that austerity package in the next few

days, and there is a very real possibility that it will be voted down. But whether or not it is voted through - and remember, what parliament will be voting for will be whether to shit on the voter even more, all for the greater good of the euro and EU - is utterly irrelevant. Part of the deal to form a coalition government was to bring the 2013 general election forward. It is now to be held in April and will be a field day for extremist parties of every kind. I think what the EU has achieved in Greece is a new definition of ‘fuck-up’.

The whole issue is one of those curious matters which, when individual elements are considered, they make a certain sense. It’s just that when you look at the big picture you start to realise the total lunacy at play. I’m not yet again going to go through the litany of reasons why the euro was an ill-conceived notion in the first place, only because it

would be pointless to do so. When Greece has left, the commentators tell us Portugal is next and then it might well be Ireland. After that the currency will have lost so much credibility that surely to goodness it will somehow or other have to be revamped. But don’t bet on the idiots in Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels and Paris who got the EU into this mess doing the right thing. If there’s some way to fucking things up even more, it’s a sure thing they will find it.

. . .

Several hundred years ago when I was at college, a number of my friends belonged either to International Socialists or Solidarity. Both were on the Left - bet you didn’t see that coming - and, if I remember rightly, were at daggers drawn. I am pleased to say, although they will perhaps not be too pleased to hear me say it, that all those of my friends who were members are now doing very well, holding down well-paid jobs, many have their own business (I am thinking of one in particular) and generally have become what their younger selves agitated against so zealously. C’est la vie. That was in the late Sixties/early Seventies, and since then or students seem to have become less politically engaged. In fact, there was a time in the Eighties in Britain well all they seemed to want to do was to own both a collection of ties and a Volva and have a weekend cottage in Dorset. But I knew that somewhere or other lurked the spiritual descendants of Arthur McDonald, Ian Renwick and the rest (I can’t remember any more names off-hand), and now I think I have found them.

Tracking down images to go with the entry above, I came across a website for an organisation which calls itself ROAR (Reflections on a Revolution) - our young left-wingers are always rather good at coming up with heroic names for their groups. I read through several off the pieces and, us usual, they are of varied quality and depth of thought, but it is an interesting site nevertheless. You can find it here. I don’t mean to sound patronising, but it is reassuring that at least some of our young are still going through a left-wing phase. It is so disheartening to meet anyone under 25 who is a convinced conservative, yet they do exist.

. . .

There is a quote by someone along the lines of ‘If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain’ I thought it was by Churchill and tried to track it down. And it is, in fact, by

Churchill, but it was not an original observations. While tracking it down, I am across another blog which quoted yet another party, who in turn quoted a book called Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, written in 1992. Keyes come up with several variation of that observation. Here they are:

Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head — Georges Clemenceau

On response to being told that, someone called Bennet Cerf is quoted as saying:

If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.

A young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head — Lloyd George.

The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot who is quoted as:

Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.

If you want more Churchill quotes, you can find some here.
There are some great ones, of which my favourites are:

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all

and

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire

which could well have been by Wilde. Incidentally, I have chosen to picture of Churchill as a young man, because we invariably only get to see those of him when he was more or less in his dotage, and it is good to remember that he, too, was once young.
NB I had never heard of Bennett Cerf and have just looked him up. It seems he will not be that unknown to American readers.

. . .

I’ve often wondered why I loathe country and western music, and now I think I know why. Musically, it is very, very attractive, especially to a guitar player. A country and western (hereafter referred to as country and western) tune will rarely consist of more than three chords. If it does, the additional chords will be related e.g. if G, C and D feature prominently - which they are likely to do - Em, Am and F might also show up. But anyone searching for the added sophistication of a sixth, major seventh, diminished or 9th and 11th chord would be best advised not to waste their time. Yet musicians who play country and western professionally are usually very, very good, and it’s not just because of the the three-chord trick.
What I have realised is that however much I might like the music, it’s the mawkish sentimentality of country and western music lyrics which pisses me off terminally and the truths which undoubtedly truths, but which are no more than skin-deep and trite truisms, the kind of truths which strike you was ineffably profound when you are pissed and a lot less so the following day as you search for those elusive paracetamol.

Ironically, there are several country and western lyrics which do hit the nail on the head, or, at least, do so up to a point. This particular entry was brought on by me turning on BBC2 to watch the France v Ireland Six Nations match and finding that it had been called off because of a frozen pitch and that instead a series of excerpts from country and western concerts were being screened. One was Kris Kristofferson and his then wife singing Me And Bobby McGee, a song which contains the splendid and very true line ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’. Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s catchy and true. But no, there is far more to the concept of freedom and, anyway, the line is not intended to covey a truth but a sentiment. Unfortunately, at heart country and western is merely music to feel sorry for yourself too, and although I, like everyone else, have often felt sorry for myself, I don’t feel it is an admirable emotion or one to be encouraged.

I break my 11th commandment and visit a folk club. And given the guest spot, I’m rather glad I did, though I’m otherwise still no convert

A first for me last night: I went to a folk club evening and didn’t run out within the first ten minutes. You might gather that I am not a folkie, in fact, I am probably in the same relationship with folk music as matter is with anti-matter. But my brother-in-law was going with his teenage son and I decided to join them, if only for a rare night out down here in Cornwall (and up in London, for that matter, seeing I don’t leave work until 10pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, and spend Wednesday evenings travelling back home to here in Cornwall, whether by car or on the train).

But I wouldn’t have missed the guest act for the world: accordion player Kate Tweed and fiddle-player and singer Jackie Oates. They are proof, if proof were ever needed, that there comes a point where music ceases merely to be classical, jazz, Country & Western, pop, rock, folk or what have you, but is simply music.

Kate Tweed was especially enjoyable, hitting chords which would not have been out of place in jazz or classical music, and although Jackie had the kind of virginal, pure folk voice which usually sends me screaming to the loo (I prefer deep, gutsy women’s voices), oddly I didn’t object at all. Then there were the songs: they utterly avoided an - to my ears - insufferable worthiness which spoils it all for me, and instead at times created a kind of quiet beauty.

OK, so I am laying on the ‘isn’t folk awful’ with a trowel rather, and to be more specific I rather like much of the music. What does rub me up the wrong way is the ‘revival’ element in much ‘modern’ folk, which creates a kind of second-hand emotion. In days done by, when a great many people found themselves at the bottom of the pile, could be evicted without warning and for whom crushing poverty was a daily reality, one of the few ways they could express their misery was by singing about it. The songs really did come from the heart and soul. These days, what with a welfare state here in Britain, which might even be said now to parody ‘the welfare state’, when we are able, more or less to insure ourselves against anything except, as the saying goes, death and taxes, when healthcare and education are free (well, make the primary and secondary education) and when a panoply of human rights legislation goes some way to ensuring the kind of high-handed and merciless behaviour of an alleged toff class is more or less impossible, it strikes me as all rather phoney.

I must, however, distinguish between modern ‘folk singing’ and the music played. And much of the music played my Ms Tweed and Ms Oates was, to my ears at least, sublime. The sound of the accordion and fiddle (I’m told by my daughter I can’t and mustn’t call it a violin) are made for each other and are a marriage made in heaven. So all-in-all I’m rather glad I overcame my prejudice and went along to Bodmin Folk Club last night. In fact, there’s some American called Jeff Davis performing in a fortnight’s time, and I might just go along again. You can check out Karen Tweed here and Jackie Oates here.

Today’s dare: patronise a Scotsman, then run for your life. As for the Union: keep it – better the devil you know. And it’s official: winter can sometimes be a bit chilly and we might even get a bit of snow (but probably only on high ground)

I am an Englishman who spent four happy years at Dundee University in the late Sixties and early Seventies and who came to like, admire and respect much about Scotland and the Scottish. More to the point, I came to understand how completely bloody irritating it is for Scots when they are patronised by the English, and, as Canadians, Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, Australians and New Zealanders know only too well, no one can patronise quite as well as the English. It is almost an art form. So the rise and rise of the Scottish National Party does not surprise me and that popular support for the party has managed to get Scotland within a referendum’s vote of independence.

As for Scottish independence, I am neither for nor against ‘preserving the Union’ ‘on principle’. (In fact, I am a man of few principles and find that one or two of them go a long way. Broadly speaking, be doubly wary of anyone or everyone who loudly proclaims his or her principles. Principles are essentially a private matter and when they are noticed, it is best in how someone does or does not behave. Someone who thinks the rest of the world is just dying to hear all about his or her principles is usually very boring and most certainly bad news.)

One the question of the Union (the British one not the American one), one can take the view that all things must pass, that the time of the Union has gone and that, all things being equal, if a nation would prefer independence over the status quo, they are fully entitled to it. To clarify my view a little more: I regard it as a certain kind of nonsense to speak of any nation ‘asking’ for independence. As far as I am concerned true independence is declared and that’s the end of the matter. But, sadly, I don’t think all things are equal, and, purely on pragmatic grounds, I feel the two countries should stick together.

My reservation is that I feel Scotland as well as England would be a loser if the union between the two countries came to an end. An end to the Union would, I suspect, diminish and impoverish both. Furthermore, I rather fear that gaining independence would not leave Scotland as a promised land it might seem to some at present.

For one thing, the SNP, until now united in its common objective of gaining independence, would slowly, but surely, split into left, right and centre factions with all the petty politicking that would entail – a multitude of largely pointless skirmishes between rabid lefties, rapacious righties and treacherous centrists would still be the order of the day.
Any Scot craving independence shouldn’t imagine it will all

be sweetness and light once the nation is shot of perfidious Albion and has reached the promised land. As one famous Scot once observed, to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

I should also point out that from where I sit south of the border the SNP’s leader Alex Salmond stands head and shoulders above the rest in his party and I doubt the Nationalists will benefit from the same decisive and dynamic leadership once he decides to spend more time with his slippers. If I remember, he had previously retired, but had to come back to head the party again because those who took over made such a dog’s dinner of everything. Can Scotland really be sure that might not happen again?

There is also the small, though embarrassing, point that not all Scots have have each others' interests at heart. We shouldn’t forget that Sir William Wallace was finally brought

down by other Scots who felt their own interests were best served by sucking up to Edward I of England, and that at Culloden more Scots fought under the Duke of Cumberland’s colours than fought under the Jacobite banner of Charles Edward Stuart.
These are, admittedly, two examples from the past and not necessarily representative of modern Scottish manners, but the treachery of some Scots at their fellow countrymen’s expense cannot be ignored.

I suspect that if only the English could be relied upon not to be so patronising, Alex Salmond would be on shakier ground, and his suggestion of ‘devo max’ as a fall-back position persuades me that he is already several moves ahead of the pack. Out-and-out nationalists must, of course, pray that the English continue to lord it over everyone else until it’s too late. Me, I’ll repeat: united we stand, divided we fall, even though union with those sassenach ejits does try the patience of even the most patient of Scots.

. . .

Now there’s a funny thing: it’s winter, so it gets cold and it snows. Well, bugger me! Who’d have thought it? Yet every year the Brits greet the news (December and January were mild this year, but that was exceptional. Usually temperatures are average for this time of year - low) with the kind of surprise and dismay a 12-year-old might show when it dawns on him that Santa doesn’t exist. The headlines scream (even in the ‘broadsheets’ these days, which are also known by some as the ‘serious papers’ although I really don’t know why) ‘Winter wipeout!’ ‘Country blanketed by 3in of snow!’ ‘Santa just a myth: official!’ ‘Temperatures plummet to -5c!’ Well, Lordy me. And there was me hoping that it would be so mild this weekend that I could strip off, lie on the grass in the garden and get a tan. Better shelve that idea, pronto - the might be a flurry of snow!

Amazing! Or not. And the latest wheeze ‘to save the euro’ is launched to universal derision

Two weeks ago tomorrow (and try translating that into Italian. I could never get the hang of the future past, or whatever boring grammarians call it, when I spent five months teaching English in Milan in the early Seventies and was slowly learning to get by in Italian - ‘non sono tedesco ma inglese, mia madre est tedesca et mio padre est inglese’ I kept having to tell people because apparently I spoke Italian with a pronounced German accent. Which is all by the by) and on a whim - that sentence while make a lot more sense if you start again at the beginning and ignore what I have written in parentheses (OK, brackets) i.e. go straight from ‘tomorrow’ to ‘and on a whim’ and cut out the crap in the middle which is pretty bloody irrelevant at the best of times and - don’t we know it - these are not the best of times. Still with me? Probably not, because if the truth be told, I’ve even lost myself.

Start again: two weeks ago tomorrow and on a whim I decided to stop eating all wheat products - bread, cakes and biscuits. I really can’t remember why, but I am already noticing a marked difference. I feel more energetic and less tired, my body feels ‘tighter’ and generally I feel a tad brighter all round. I am not gluten allergic or anything like that, it’s just that I decided to give up wheat and feel all the better for it. Admittedly, I am now eating more fruit and salads, which has got to be a good thing, but I’m not stinting myself in any way and haven’t, for example, given up other carbohydrates, alcohol and sugar.

I should stress that I am no faddist - in fact, faddists piss me off big-time (‘You know when you have that first pee of the day, you know, first thing in the morning, out of bed and into the loo and just let it all out, well apparently, according to researchers in Brazil, there are an unbelievable number of nutrients in that first batch which we are all getting rid of because, you know, overnight your body does some sort of housekeeping operation but very often overdoes it, so, according to these Brazilian researchers, we are actually not just getting rid of waste matter but proteins and vitamins and stuff which our bodies actually need, you know, we’re literally just pissing it all away which can’t be a good thing, can it? Mind it’s that very first piss of the day, not the rest that follow them, that’s just waste matter. Anyway, they say that we should catch it all, after what you piss in the first few seconds, your don’t bother with that, you know, like you do when you have to give the doctor a sample, you don’t bother with what comes out first, but then you catch it all in a cup and drink it. Yes, I know it sounds awful and the Brazilians say it’s quite OK to flavour it a little with a small measure of tequila or rum or something just to get rid of the piss taste, but anyway I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now and I feel totally different, I mean totally, it’s as though I’ve been reborn. Yes, it sounds daft but, you know, loads of things sound daft at first but they’re not, I mean if you told someone about nanotubes even five years ago they would have called out the men in the white coats pronto, but, you know, it’s the future, and we would be silly to turn our backs on stuff just because it sounds totally off the wall. So give it a go, there’s only one way to persuade yourself and that’s by trying it yourself. As I say, the researchers recommend a slug of something or other to tone it down a bit, although wasn’t there that Indian prime minister or president or something who used to drink his piss every day and he lived to a ripe old age, so - well, it can’t be that stupid, and now the Brazilians have done some science on it and it seems it’s all pretty kosher. I know I feel totally different, and I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks.’

But let me reassure you, dear, dear bloggees, I have only gone down the wheat-free road. I shall leave the ‘drink your own piss’ salvation to hardier souls. I'll keep you posted on the wheat-free thing.

. . .

The other thing I wanted to mention was how totally - and I mean totally - fucked off I get with the use of superlatives on TV these days. Everything is amazing, and you and I all know that hardly anything is amazing, so why do they keep using that attitude. I used to enjoy TV documentaries about more or less anything, from Anglo-Saxon to dolphins mating to new solar system being born to how the Mesopotamians first invented surgery to how medieval kings used to use shorthand to pass on cookery tips - anything - and in the olden days they just got on with it. They told you what was what, it all lasted half and hour, then it was on to something else. Now? Now everything is bloody ‘amazing, with the presenter claiming he or she feels ‘humbled’ just to be able to open a 700-year-old book. Why ‘humbled’?

I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that a small part of me had some kind of sociopathic tendency because I didn’t faint when I saw an original da Vinci, that I wasn’t moved to tears when I was fed some concoction cooked the way the Aztecs used to cook it. Now I know I need not worry: it’s just the latest fashion in documentary-making. Roll on the next, although going by past developments it will probably be even more insufferable, although at this point I can’t quite imagine how.

. . .

How anyone can hope that the eurozone crisis will end in peace and harmony and rueful smiles and promises that ‘we mustn’t let that happen again’ is beyond. I have no idea exactly when the shit will hit the fan - no one does - but hit the fan it most certainly will, and it will be ugly, ugly, ugly for everyone the world over. But there still are many benighted souls (my sister is one, sorry M.) who think ‘it can all be sorted out, if only we pull together’. Yet the latest ‘proposal’ to sort out the mess should tell any one that the whole exercise is doomed to fail. And you don’t need to know anything about finance: you just need to have a passing acquaintance with European history and human psychology.

According to the Financial Times, the latest EU wheeze to pull the bacon out of the fire is for a Brussels-appointed commissioner to take control of Greek’s budget. It is a measure of how deep we have already ventured into la-la-land that not quite as many jaws are dropping as should. To make matters worse, the wheeze was dreamed up by the Germans. Need anyone be reminded that the Germans are best advised to make discretion their watchword in view of, er, their not so distant past? I yield to no one in my admiration of the country and its people, but they do have a tendency to precede with a total lack of nuance. Put it this way: if the idea was going to be mooted, was it not beyond the wit of someone in the candy store known as the EU HQ in Brussels at least to ensure it came from the French, the Dutch - anyone but the Germans? Well, yes it was. Oh, well.

How to alienate people. Simple: praise one Margaret Thatcher

Off to see The Iron Lady some tomorrow or Friday with my stepmother, who rarely gets out. There have been mixed reactions to the film, including the comment that releasing it before the good lady has passed on is rather odd. My theory is that is was conceived, approved and planned several years ago, and the, somewhat cynical, expectation was that Maggie would have popped her clogs long before the film was released. Those who have seen it say both that it is a tour de force by Meryl Streep as the lady herself (or The Devil Incarnate as those even ever-so-slightly on the left like to call her) but that there is something a little out of kilter about it all, as well as one or two bizarre in accuracies. I understand the film takes the form of a woman with dementia looking back on her life in her more lucid moments, including the Falklands War and the Brighton IRA bombing, so it is a little odd not decently to wait until she had shuffled off her mortal coil.
I am neither ‘of the Left’ or ‘of the Right’ and most certainly try not to belong to any kind of glee club shouting the virtues of this, that or t’other politician. But I must come out and say quite unequivocably that Maggie, Mrs Thatcher, Mrs T or however you want to refer to her stood head and shoulders above the other politicians of her generation and that she and her achievements will be remembered not just in years to come but in centuries to come. She will, I believe, be numbered among the great Prime Ministers alongside William Pitt the Younger, Sir Robert Peel, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd-George, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. (Incidentally, I looked up a list of PMs to familiarise myself with who was actually a Prime Minister, and I was astounded at how many come from the ‘aristocracy’. It seems that it wasn’t until the beginning of the last century – strictly the last century: for me that still seems to mean the 19th century – that ‘commoners’ became Prime Minister.) Our recent PMs, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will, I’m afraid to say, be mere footnotes in history textbooks, if they are lucky.
I realise that Mrs Thatcher can divide Britain almost like no other political figure and that what I have referred to as her achievements are anything but to many others. For example, she emasculated the trade unions and brought them into line, she revitalised the economy by introducing a more modern way of looking at business and the role of the state (there would never have been Tony Blair and the revival of Labour were it not for Thatcher and Blair cannily building on attitudes she had established) and she managed to keep Britain out of much of the lunacy which passes for the ‘European Project’. One of her few failings was not realising that the best time to quit is when you are ahead, and so her fall from power was in many ways pathetic.
But she had real conviction: none of this phoney litany of ‘I’m passionate about…’ and ‘I’m committed to…’ which is intended to pass for principle and conviction these days. She believe in ‘sound money’ as everyone else should do. In the great Keynes v Hayek debate, she was most definitely in Hayek’s camp and her economic princples, like his, like his, was simple: if you spend more than you earn, you will eventually pay the price. Nothing wrong with that. (Yes, certainly there is virtue in Keynes’ view of the virtue of spending to create work and grow the economy, but it can always only be part of a solution, not the solution. Sooner or later the bills have to be paid, and if not by you, then by your children and grandchildren.)
As for seeing off the unions, you had to remember the shambles that Britain had become after the Sixties to understand why that was so necessary. I am a firm supporter of trade unions – the Law Society and the British Medical Association are nothing but unions by another name – and someone must most certainly protect the interests and wellbeing of those who are for whatever reason to weak to do so themselves. But by the Seventies, our British unions were reacting to a bygone age: they had been born of the era of heavy industry, the factory fortnight, wages delivered weekly in little brown envelopes, a true ‘working class’ and the country was moving one. It had no heavy industry to speak of, coal was cheaper when imported, and the unions themselves were beginning to behave like the industrial fatcats they purported to despise. They were, almost to a man – there were one or two outstanding unionists such as Brenda Dean, but it was still a man’s world – almost old-style Leninists who, at heart, were campaigning for a proletarian state. This at a time when the Left in other European countries had long since jettisoned such old-fashioned ideology and were firm Social Democrats. And, ironically, young Margaret Roberts, as she was, of Grantham, had, despite her father’s ownership of two grocery stores, far, far more in common with ‘the working class’ – for which read aspirant working class – and the ‘ordinary man and woman’ than her rich and titled predecessors at No 10 Downing St. That is probably why so many identified with her, accepted her and supported her. And because she was, while leading the party its backbone, that is why the Tories simply collapsed into a sorry heap once regicide had been committed and – John Major’s frankly bizarre election victory in 1992 notwithstanding (Major didn’t win, Neil Kinnock lost) that is why they didn’t get even a sniff of power for another 13 years. And even then they could only manage it by forming a coalition with the Lib Dems. (That, ironically, was, I am prepared to argue, an incredible stroke of luck in that the more outrageous Conservative dinosaurs were forced to keep quiet if they wanted their party to form the government. I doubt there would have been stable government in in Britain had David Davis become Tory leader: although he is a much different man to Edward Heath, Britain would now be going through a similar nonsense as it did in the Heath/Wilson years. I’ll maybe argue that another time.)
Love her or loathe her – and I do neither – only a dishonest fool would deny that Margaret Thatcher was a one-off and did more for the country while leader than many a PM before or since. Now for the hate mail.

The Mitt, Newt, Rick and Ron Show - the current Yankee response to good old English cricket

For certain kind of Englishman (of which, obviously, I am one) one of the better spectator sports around is the quadrennial hoopla the United States goes through as it elects a new president or re-elects the old one. I recently wrote about cricket and indicated that it wasn’t the most intuitive sport to get your head around, and much the same is true of the apparently ramschackle process the U.S. has adopted to elect a president. The vote itself is in November and the winner is inaugurated in January. But the race itself starts several years earlier when various would-be contenders to be nominated as their parties candidate begin to test the water to see whether they have a realistic chance of gaining the nomination or whether they are vainly – in this case in two senses – pissing in the wind. As the current president (and I’m sorry, but I refuse to dignify the post with a capital p – the Yanks are too self-important as it is) is a Democrat and is seeking re-election, it is a line-up of Republican hopefuls are who doing all the baby-kissing and God-fearing and hoping to persuade all wings of the party that they are the man – the two women would-be candidates have already dropped out – who can take on the incumbent and win.
Once would-be contenders have convinced themselves – or been convinced by others that by putting themselves forward they won’t necessarily make a complete arse of themselves by coming last; and once they have assured themselves that they a sufficient number of rich fuckers are prepared to part with the necessary moolah to pay for the whole shooting match, it’s on to the next round when all 50 states decide who should be the one man or woman to stand for their party. I think.
What makes the whole process so thoroughly entertaining is that by the time you think you have got the hand of the whole primaries system, something occurs to demonstrate that you are not even off the starting block and haven’t a clue as to what is going on. In some states only registered Republicans can vote for whoever they think will make the best candidate, in others any registered voter – whether

Republican or Democrat – can vote. In yet others, interested parties get together in smaller caucuses to discuss who they think it should and then nominate one of their number to pass on that decision to a higher caucus. And, undoubtedly, every last word I have just written by way of explanation is complete nonsense and doesn’t even begin to describe the process. That’s what makes it all so highly entertaining.
The origins of such a convoluted process – that should be of such convoluted processes – lie in the evolution of the United States, with each state becoming part of the Union at a different time and having, in the meantime, evolved it’s own method. Seen in that light, the complications of the process are understandable if not comprehensible, i.e. blame the mists of time. The U.S. citizen’s right to ‘bear arms’ and keep as much lethal weaponry in his house as his psychopathy will allow is similarly understandable, although to use lily-livered Europeans utterly incomprehensible.
In those far-off days when ‘obesity’ was still a purely medical term, in many of the less populated states those eligible to vote didn’t see their neighbours from one month to the next, so getting together to decided who should pursue their interests in the coming presidential election was something of an occasion. Given that everyone and their four-year-old now drives a car – it goes with the collection of handguns one is obliged to own, apparently – and that hardly anyone lives more than a few hundred yards from their neighbour, it all makes rather less senses, but as a Brit I am on thin ice here, and would be well-advised to exercise discretion when it comes to discussing the full range of Yankee foibles.
. . .

Since the round of primaries started two weeks ago – a fortnight ago in Brit parlance – several would-be contenders, including the women, have thrown in the towel. That means by the time Super Tuesday arrives – on March 6 this year – and primaries are held in a number of states, it should be a lot clearer who the viable candidates are. I think it will boil down to a Mitt Romney and a Newt Gingrich - American names also provide us supercilious Brits with no end of amusement – we prefer our politicians to be called David, Nicholas and Edward, although now that our colonial past is rapidly catching up with us, there are already several Tariqs in the Commons and fine, upstanding chaps they are, too (he said carefully, with one eye on the jungle of equality laws now in place which make discussion in Britain something of a parlour game, ideally played only by lawyers). I think a chap called Rick Santorum – another silly name – is still in the running, but as he would like to see all homosexuals boiled in oil once all their limbs have been torn off, I suggest that his long-term prospects are limited. There is also a certain Ron Paul – decent name, decent chap as far as I can tell, but a Michelle Bachman and a Rick Perry have called it off, as has Sarah Palin, who as far as I am concerned gave loopiness a bad name, was weeded out long ago, apparently to almost universal sighs of relief among the more serious-minded Republicans.
My money is on Mitt Romney. He strikes me as not the flaky sort and comes over as presidential, which is undoubtedly

down to some very intense coaching be whatever bods are paid enormous sums to undertake such intense coaching. He might be a Mormon and I might think that Mormon theology is just too deep in la-la-land for comfort, but as I was born and brought up as a practising (the ‘s’ is correct in UK English, by the way, it’s just another of the spellings which distinguish us sophisticates from our colonial cousins) Roman Catholic, I would be well-advised to keep quiet on matters of loppy theology. Furthermore, Mitt looks to be the one who could take on Barack Obama and beat him. Most recently crawling out of the woodwork is said to be some scandal to do with taxes, but I know no detail on that so I shall let it pass.
A great deal less to my tastes is the other main contender, a Newt Gingrich. From what I have heard Newt is something of a hypocritical little shit who was actively pursuing an

adulterous affair at exactly the time he was trying to hound Bill Clinton out of office for his philandering. Actually, I think ‘hypocritical little shit’ is putting it a little too mildly. After the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries Mitt seemed to be in poll position, but then the hypocritical little shit known as Newt took South Carolina, which through everything into disarray. At some point I heard that in that past the candidate who took South Carolina invariably went on to become his party’s candidate, but perhaps it is now yet a universal rule. Roll on Super Tuesday.
Incidentally, I read somewhere that with several of his mistresses, Newt would only engage in oral sex because he felt he could then argue that he hadn’t ‘committed adultery’. My dear friends in America, you don’t want a cunt like Newt running your country (although under Bill Clinton it seems you did).

. . .

An interesting and well-made four-part documentary about Vladimir Putin started on BBC 2 a few days, which has the virtue of being informative. I’m looking forward to the next three parts. More once I’ve seen them.

And old fart writes: ‘Euthanasia? Over my dead body!’ And sweet Mandy gets yet another look in. If you’re reading this, Mandy, ask me out

Having reached the venerable age of 114, I’m bound to meet the truth halfway and admit that I am - my good looks notwithstanding - no spring chicken. But physical age apart - I would say ‘temporal’ age if it didn’t sound a little fatuous - there are one or two things which distinguish us 114-year-olds from one another. That is to say some 114 could be well over 160 given their asinine grumpy, complaining outlook on life, whereas others, if the light is right, could well pass for 85, given that they have, somehow, retained a sunnier, younger, more optimistic outlook (though if they live in California, all bets are off). And I like to think - and here I am obliged to take a deep breath - that I belong to the second group, that I am not the oldest old fart on the block, that I have, somehow, retained that sunnier, younger, more optimistic outlook on life which so eludes some my fellow travellers on the train of life.

Take my wife, for example: it might not be particularly gallant to say so, but she is not just a glass-half-empty type of women, she is so bloody negative about everything that she gives pessimism a bad name. Matters are so bad, in fact, that any number of dyed-in-the-wool local pessimists, people who wouldn’t have a good word to say about the Devil, will cross the lane rather than cross swords with her. It brings them down too much. Why is he telling us this, you ask, why is he being so open about it all? Simple. Not only does she not read this blog - as part of a broader strategy of not taking the blindest interest in any aspect of my life - but she wouldn’t even know how to turn on a computer. So the chances of her finding out that I am blackening her name with abandon and without ruth are closer to zero than the chances of Iran’s President Amadinejad being guest of honour at a bris. Am I exaggerating? Ask my sister, late of Istanbul, now resident in Warsaw. (I managed to convince her of the usefulness of staying one step ahead of the law.)

So being a - rather good-looking, quite charming, if somewhat raffish - 114-year-old but of a younger persuasion, I am concerned that I don’t develop that awful and awfully boring habit of complaining about everything, because complainers piss me off. At this point my wife might feel inclined to make another guest appearance, but I feel you already have the picture and if there’s one thing worse than perpetual complaining, it is banging on a little too long. (The danger is that people might start to ask themselves: who’s the problem, her or you?)

I know you will be familiar with the type: they insist that not only do trains run half as efficiently and punctually as once they did, but people have forgotten the importance of manners (especially on trains, apparently), progress - ‘so-called progress’ - is anything but, why do they insist on

©Heath

printing everything far smaller than they used to, time was once when a pint of beer/glass of wine/quick shag in the local brothel didn’t cost an arm and a leg and - a favourite of gentlemen of a certain age - pissing used to be so much easier (and you were able to empty your bladder in one go - there was none of this getting up and going to the john every 30 minutes. Bloody progress!

The gentler sex - and whoever thought up that phrase had a bone-dry sense of humour - have nothing to be smug about: one old bat of my circle who is way into her 90s complained to me the other night that she had not been propositioned in over 40 years. What was becoming of the male sex? she wondered.

The thought occurred to me that given the amount some of us less-than-young folk complain, there might well be something in this euthanasia malarkey. I mean it is the latest thing. Once folk use to show off to each other about where they were spending the summer or the winter. Then they hoped to impress those more gullible than themselves by apparently having far more ‘disposable income’. Now, given that quite a few are of ‘advance years’, they hope that espousing modern thought and being au fait with the a latest thinking might demonstrate that although they quite often look it, they are not wholly dead. And in the Year Of Our Lord 2012 there is surely no more modern thought than that we should kill off all our old folk before they become a burden and start to cost us some serious money.

Naturally, there are quite a few who are not quite as gung-ho about this ‘euthanasia’ (and will it be long before some bright PR spark attempts to popularise the doctrine by launching an ad campaign promoting ‘youthanasia’?). But there are more than enough folk who like to think of themselves as ‘quite bright’ and listen to Radio 4 far more often than is good for them who are rather taken with the idea. ‘Why,’ they ask rhetorically, ‘should I not die when and how I wish if I am suffering from incurable cancer?’

Now I don’t doubt that for some very ill people life can being unbearable. But nor do I doubt that in many cases a compassionate GP (that’s your doctor) has done what he or she felt was the kindest thing to do. But what is new about all this talk of ‘mercy killing’ is not that we are debating the morality of it, but that we are seriously debating whether it should be codified. And that, seemingly arcane point, is what I find most disturbing. On the one hand we bang the drum about ‘the right to life’ and our ‘human rights’, on the other we are quite prepared to sanctify abortion as a means of birth control rather than any of any number of perfectly rational and acceptable alternatives, and we are seriously debating the pros and cons of killing off our old people.

I can already hear the objections to my argument: euthanasia will and must be voluntary, its proponents will proclaim. To which I respond: that is your ideal now, but once you have conceded a little ground, you will, sooner or later, be obliged to concede a little more. What will ‘current moral thinking’ be 50 and 60 years down the line?
Yes, I know that what I have just written is one of

We know, we know, but it really is
what he would have wantedthe mainstays of almost every reactionary argument, but that doesn’t mean there might not be a grain of truth in it (and I dare not even start discussing the biggest of all in moral philosophy which can be described in many fashions but will I shall here describe by way of a question: just how seriously can we take our moral code if it can be reformulated almost at whim given what the current ‘current thinking’ might be?)

I didn’t set out to rumble on about euthanasia when I started this entry (and I am rather taken with my own joke about ‘youthanasia’), but it is a question we should settle sooner rather than later. The obvious objection is that unscrupulous beneficiaries might well hold off from outright murder - our modern caring police officers are rather good at tracking down that kind of thing. But they might feel less dainty about trying to persuade Mum or Dad that they should ‘consider others’ and see whether or not dying sooner rather than later would not be such a bad thing. And, who knows, if the aches and pains are playing up rather more one day, Mum or Dad might well thing they have a point and sign on the dotted line where in previous days they felt less inclined to do so.

But I should like to raise the more refined point: just how much can we claim to respect life, as we all too often claim to do, if we are seriously considering whether euthanasia ain’t all that bad?

NB I am not against abortion at all. But I am against the wholesale and unthinking demand for ‘abortion on demand’. In many case abortion can and is wholly justified. But killing a foetus just because ‘having a child now’, for example, is financially inconvenient, does strike me as pretty bloody repulsive. But those who think I am something of a pious prick might like to read this previous entry.

. . .

Like any modern man/woman/person with a link to ‘the public’, I keep an eye on my statistics. In my case the link is this blog. In other cases the man/women/person involved (and how soon will it be before we are obliged, on threat of several years in jail, to refer to the other as ‘the entity’?) might be an actor, a writer, a politician or a snake oil salesman. What we all have in common is, when we are feeling grand and on top of the world, is a desperate desire to know whether ‘they’ are amused, convinced, persuaded, ready to buy or simply ready. And when, on those rare, but all too dreadful occasions when we don’t feel on top of the world, we are equally desperate, but on these occasions demand any proof or even evidence that they haven’t sussed us, that they haven’t realised that we are total and utter charlatans, have defrauded them and that we are no more, and often far less, than they are. (That last is something they must never come to know.)

So being as just as egomaniac as you are, although with, perhaps, rather less justification, I look at my stats once and often twice a day. They tell me how many times my blog has been read, where readers live and what particular entries they are reading. And top of the list is this one. WThe title might not seem obviously attractive, and what exactly those who seek out this particular entry want to know is not immediately apparent, but when you realise that the entry also includes a picture of one Mandy Rice-Davies, the universal (well, sort of) interest becomes a little more understandable.

Young Mandy (I am going by the picture below of a very attractive young women, but as she was born on October 21, 1944, she is approaching 70, so ‘young’, though a gallant word to use, is rather pushing it) gained ‘notoriety’ (as in she was found

out) in the ‘Profumo Affair’, but as she is subsequently quoted as observing that her life since those heady days has been ‘one slow descent into respectability’, she is forgiven everything, although even the notion that we should ‘forgive’ her is curiously offensive. I like to think that a young woman as attractive and witty as she was then (many South Walian women have a certain kind of wit which I find attractive, although in truth I am attracted to many women who have that kind of wit and not all of them come from South Wales. In fact, they often come from everywhere – it is that particular spark I like) grow into attractive and witty middle-aged, then older women. Well, that isn’t necessarily true, but a boy can dream. Here for all the Mandy Rice-Davies addicts is that picture again as well as one or two others I have been able to track down. And, Mandy, if you ever get to read this, why don’t you buy me lunch? Or me buy you lunch? Whatever.

Cameron starts latest England v. Scotland cricket Test with a googly, Salmond blocks. Surely it's now time for tea? As for those damn, nasty Yankees/Ruskies . . . (delete as applicable and where your prejudice takes you)

I am now way into my 90th decade but it is only in the past three or four years that I can claim even to have started understanding the game of cricket. When I was younger, it used to bore me rigid, and I mean bore with a B. But with the technical advances in TV coverage I began to see the action from several different angles and in slow motion and little by little I started to get just the vaguest inkling of what might be going on and so I began to watch it a bit more. It was now no longer a case of sitting in front of the TV (or, on one occasion, in Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, where a gang of us had sloped of work early to take advantage of the post-4pm free entry and to down a pint of beer or three) watching a game in which apparently nothing happened at all for what seemed like days on end. You found yourself wondering whether to give it up as a lost cause and switch to the other channel - in those days there were only two - when suddenly there was a split-second flurry of action as a wicket fell. This excitement was then followed by several minutes of watching a group of men in white shirts and white trousers standing around talking to each other as the dismissed batsmen left the field and was replaced by a new batsman, before we were obliged to put up with several more days of nothing happening.

Modern TV coverage changed all that and once I was able to see what was taking place on the pitch, I was able to try to understand the game more and more. And slowly I did. But I have every sympathy with every ‘foreigner’ (and as every Brit will assure you, the world is full of foreigners) to whom the game is incomprehensible nonsense. Let me qualify that: by ‘every foreigner’ I mean ‘every foreigner’ whose country didn’t at some point in the past have the great good fortune to be ruled by the British. There are some ‘foreigners’ who have more than taken a shine to cricket and because of this love of the game might well qualify as ‘honorary British’. I mean, of course, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, the Sri Lankans, the New Zealander, the Australians, the South Africans and the Zimbabweans. But generally speaking the other ‘non-British foreigners’, such as the Yanks, are utterly, utterly baffled by cricket and appalled that, for example, a game which at Test level is usually played over five days can end in ‘a draw’.

Quite apart from being thoroughly entertaining – that is once you know what the bloody hell is actually going on - the game of cricket is useful as it gives the outsider an insight – or rather can give the outsider and insight – into how the English mind works and how they like to go about doing things. And I must stress that I am talking about the English mind, not the Irish, Welsh or the Scottish minds, which are anything but English and to a large extent far more rational. (Yes, and the Irish – don’t believe any of that shite about the Irish being away with the fairies. It’s just another piece of disinformation put about by the English who in many ways can teach the Irish a thing or two about being away with the fairies. Proof? Just two words: Morris dancing.

That insight occurred to me two days ago when our esteemed Prime Minister and former Etonian David Cameron made the first move in the battle ‘to save the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ for which read ‘preserve England’s hegemony over these British Isles. Cameron and other unionists, of which there are more than makes me comfortable, claim it is threatened by the stated intention of the Scottish National Party and is leader Alex Salmond to hold a referendum to ask the Scottish whether they would like to declare independence. Cameron’s move came three days ago when he suggested that it might be ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘unlawful’ for the Scots to hold a referendum. To which the answer of this disinterested – although far from uninterested – observer is ‘Hmm’. Really?

Given that Britain doesn’t actually have a written constitution, any ruling on ‘constitutionality’ would consist, at best, of the opinion of several High Court judges who might or might not be to the liking of the Scottish Parliament and who might or might not (although very probably might or else they would not have been chosen to give their opinion) be in favour of ‘preserving the Union ‘. Alex Salmond is anyway, and unsurprisingly, having none of it: he has declared that whether or not Scotland decides to hold referendum is only Scotland’s business and doesn’t in any way rely on the say-so of the British government. And oor’ Alex also gave short shrift to Cameron’s other demand that if

a referendum is held, it should consist of one simple question to which the Scottish voters should give their yea or nay: do you or do you not want Scotland. He wasn’t falling for that one, either, because as the SNP knows well, there are those in Scotland who support outright independence and those don’t. There is also a substantial minority who don’t actually support outright independence but who most certainly want a greater devolution of power. So if the question is a bald: do you want outright independence?, the SNP fears, probably quite rightly, that it would not get a majority. But, dear reader, this is where I must bring the good old, utterly baffling, game of cricket back into the matter. Because at the end of the day our Dear Leader doesn’t give a flying fuck either way whether or not Scotland holding a referendum on the matter is ‘constitutional’ and whether or not a putative referendum consists of just one question or ten. What our Dear Leader really wants to do is simple: he merely wants to muddy the waters to such an extent and as early as possible so that quite soon no one knows what is going on. And if, unlikely as it might be, someone does know what is going on, he or she is utterly stymied in any debate on the matter because the opposite party will most certainly have another view entirely of what exactly is being debated. In that respect it is very, very much like a game of cricket: utterly baffling to the uninitiated and so arcane it takes well over 40 years even to begin to understand what it is all about. But it is most certainly very entertaining.

Incidentally, it is also worth bearing in mind the French have long regarded England as Perfidious Albion and, as a rule, choose never, ever to trust us. Forget all that brave talk of the ‘English sense of fair play’, the British preference for compromise and how our empire was, at heart, a force for good. Forget it and hit hard the next Englishman who tries to oblige you to believe it. The English are as two-faced as the next man, but their good manners and courteous manner has fooled many. And that is where cricket comes in.

. . .

Talking of national ‘sports’ – you’ll understand why I use quote marks in a minute - one way of looking at the former global spat between the Yankee Dog and the Soviet Devil (the Evil Empire ©Ronald Reagan) was to consider that the Yanks preferred baseball and the Russians had a penchant for chess. This is not to say that the Yankees didn’t have their fair share of intellectuals with a gift for long-term strategy or that the Russian Soviets weren’t above indulging in solutions which demanded the application of brawn rather than brain power, but broadly I’ll ask you to let my description stand. So where Uncle Sam would delight in throwing money, manpower and the latest latest at a problem, Uncle Vanya was more inclined to think it all through and consider where this, that and t’other course of action was likely to lead him. I have to admit that neither approach was foolproof, and both the Yankee Dog and the Soviet Devil ended up on the losing side from time to time. And what makes the analogy of a Great Game even more fatuous is that it was never time-limited, so there was no point at which one could definitively say: Well, the Yanks/Ruskies won. Pedants might point out that the Yanks did win because the Soviet Union no longer exists and that Ronnie Reagan strategy of outspending them paid dividends, to which I will respond, rather inscrutably: Well, perhaps. And perhaps they didn’t.

There is a theory that the lads at the KGB were aware that the things in the Workers’ Paradise weren’t quite working out, that it was not so slowly going bust and that Change Was Afoot. Their solution was to be part of that change, and it has to be admitted that in many ways nothing much has changed in Russia. Well, some things have in that Mother Russia can now boast of ‘having a middle class’ – glory be! – and that car ownership is now more widespread, the queues outside the grocery shops no longer exist (as far as I know) and you have a real choice of which state-regulated TV stations you watch. On the debit side, of course, the country is still ruled by a self-interested, self-perpetuating oligarchy with close links to both big business and the KGB’s successors, the FSB , there is apparently no rule of law, the police are said to be pretty bloody corrupt and, the clincher, it still gets very bloody cold in winter and not very warm in the summer. Does it really matter whether the gang of hatchet-faced gents are now far better dressed and don’t belong to the Communist Party. No, it doesn’t.

Not that the U.S. has that much more to crow about. A wet little liberal like me still finds it hard to cheer on the Land of the Free when it means in practice that it is a land in which you are free to starve if that is the fate life has in store for you, be denied medical help if you are not insured and free to be just as ripped off as any middle-class chappie in the former Evil Empire. Yes, I’ll admit that analysis is pretty broadbrush – everyone will be given emergency healthcare and the Americans are enormously community spirited loathe to see a neighbour helpless and the vast majority of them will really put themselves out to help even a stranger – but I do get fed up with all the claims that the U.S. is God’s own country which the rest of the world should damn well learn to emulate. If the U.S. is so keen on sharing its capitalist wisdom, why all the millions spent on keeping out illegal immigrants who simply want their moment in the Yankee sun? I happened to be looking up statistics the other day and was not surprised to see that the proportion of blacks in prison or without a job is far higher than the proportion they form of the U.S. population. All things being equal, the two proportions should be the same. And I still get fed up with all the Land of the Free posturing when to this day the U.S. will not admit to being responsible for the genocide of several million Native Americans. But before the Russians start crowing ‘why, the bugger is on our side after all’, they might care to reflect on their own, more recent, genocide which was the great Ukrainian famine. Several million Ukrainians are thought to have starved to death in that episode of the making of the Socialist Dream.

NB. I am on no one’s side.