Dick and Dora guide you through the euro crisis, why China now thinks Marx wrote a crock of shit. And have a good laugh at a silly name

LATE UPDATE: This is how Germany is reacting.
And on it goes. Spain is now in the firing line of government bond speculators with the ‘yield’ on its bonds rising. This has led the credit ratings agencies to lower Spain’s status, which, in turn, will force up the interest it is charged to borrow money. I had only a vague idea what ‘yield’ was until a year or two ago when I came across a very clear explanation. It was this: a government bond promising a (say) 4pc interest is sold for £1. That means that after one year it will pay back £1.04. That is if things are going well. But if things are going badly and those who hold the bonds fear they might not get their money back, they will play safe, sell them now. However, those they sell to will know the score (that the seller is playing safe and wants to sell – it’s thus a buyers’ market) so they can offer less than £1. Say, for example, they buy at 80p, when the bond matures they will still be paid £1.04, which is a damn sight more than 4pc of the money they stumped up. Thus the bond is ‘yielding’ more. And so when the headlines read that ‘yields’ on government’s bonds are rising, you know things are bad for that government. Of course, the risk those buying the bonds are taking is that the government might become so insolvent that it cannot afford to cough up the cash it owes: thus the usual equation, the higher the risk, the better the prospect of making a good profit.
A consequence of falling bond prices is, of course, that when that government wants to borrow more money and issues more bonds (all too often to pay off debts it already has – you thought only individuals can be that daft), it will be obliged to offer a higher ‘return’ – a better interest rate – merely to attract buyers. And if those new bonds are also eventually offloaded at a lower price than their face value (a ‘discount’), the yield will be even higher. It is that kind of downward spiral Spain now soon find itself in.
I must apologise for my Dick and Dora mini lecture in economics. There will be some of you for whom this kind of financial jargon is second nature and who will regard my exposition as something of an insult to their intelligence. But there will also be others who are like me – who can be slightly bewildered by it all and who need to understand it from the ground up. All too often in the past I have thought I understood something, only to discover when I was asked to explain it to someone else that I merely thought I understood it. That is something of an acid test: if you can explain something clearly and succinctly to someone else, the chances are you know what you are talking about. If, on the other hand, you find yourself stumbling, usually within just ten seconds of starting your explanation, be honest: you didn’t understand it at all.
The problem is compounded in finance (rather than economics) because a fair degree of deliberate obfuscation goes on to put a rather better gloss on matters. If you read about a company being ‘highly leveraged’ or ‘highly geared’, just substitute the words ‘owes a lot of fucking money to a lot of fucking people’ (delete the gratuitous expletive if you like, it’s all the same to me) and you will have a clearer idea of what is going on. Of course being ‘highly leveraged’ and ‘highly geared’ sounds a lot more stubenrein than being ‘deep in fucking debt’, although what puzzles me is that the only ones kidded along by such euphemisms are those who are of no consequence whatsoever (i.e. you and I). Those who are of consequence – lenders, investment banks, hedge funds and rival companies – aren’t fooled for a moment.

. . .

Also in the firing line, apparently though surprisingly, is Belgium. In its case, the awful and cynical ‘money markets’ out to wreck the EU (as some believe. Do they wear black masks and carry six-shooters strapped to their waists?) are concerned that, as silly as it might sound, the country doesn’t actually have a government. Obviously, someone somewhere is making some decision, probably a legion of Belgian civil servants, but if push came to shove and ‘government-level’ decisions were demanded by the European Central Bank and possibly the IMF, the phone would ring and ring and ring, but remain unanswered. Not a happy state of affairs, though one which has carried on for six months. Because one credit rating agency has shifted Belgium’s rating down from stable to negative, it is now being seen as possible future candidate for an EU bailout. Given the country’s lack of leadership, it is an irony that the
EU’s headquarters are in its capital and that it was one of the ‘project’s’ original cheerleaders. Oh, and a former Belgian Deputy Prime Minister (in a time when the country was still capable of agreeing who should form the government) is the first European Council president Herman Van Rompuy (a name which to British ears sounds rather silly. A cheap shot, I know, but I can rarely resist cheap shots. Here’s another, that old joke: name three famous Belgians other than van Damme, Simenon, Herge and that painter chappie everyone knows. You have as long as you like, longer if necessary). The media, never shy about either cheap shots or catchy acronyms in new habitually referring to the defaulting nations as the PIGGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece. My view is that it is not a question of whether the euro will collapse into several rounds of recriminations, but when. Anyone who is even on nodding terms with a knowledge of the German psyche will know that the nation’s goodwill – as opposed to its government’s goodwill – and its willingness to substitute the riotous lifestyle of southern European ne’er do wells is not infinite. And I really don’t blame them.
Van Rompuy rather blotted his copybook a few weeks ago when he announced that the EU faced ‘a survival crisis’. Yes, Herman, I think we all know that, but the trick is for a politician to brazen it out until the water is already lapping around his ankles. Anything else, and the crisis just arrives a lot sooner. Must try harder.


. . .

Ironically, the ‘banking crisis’ had absolutely nothing to do with fundamental economics or sophisticated ‘financial instruments’ or any of the other hi’falutin, virtually incomprehensible jazz that high finance resorts to in order to throw us off the scent. It was nothing but the lowest scummy human behaviour of turning a fast buck while the going was good. On the back of the insane rush to allow everyone and his pet goat to ‘get onto the housing ladder’ before prices rose any further, mortgages were handed out like sweeties at a children’s party. But it wasn’t what caused the crisis. The debts – I can’t remember the bullshit phrase used to avoid using the term debt, but I do know it involved the weasel word ‘collateralised’ which can mean anything but actually means nothing – were bundled up and sold to others – and a nice commission was earned on the sale. But don’t feel sorry – not that anyone does – for those who bought them, for they only bought them up in order to do exactly the same: they divvied up all the debt they had bought, repackaged it, a bit of this with a bit of that, then they, too, sold them on – and they, too, trousered a handsome commission. And so on it went for several years. They all knew that at some point it would have to stop, but they also knew they would not be obliged to pay the bill. And so it was: ‘Our banks,’ the governments pontificated, ‘are too big to fail. If they fail, we fail, and we cannot afford that.’ And so they were bailed out with taxpayers’ money, although the taxpayer wasn’t ever consulted. Had he done so, the response would most certainly have been – though couched in more diplomatic language – ‘look, this is far, far too important to concern the little man. We know best.’ Unfortunately, they didn’t ‘know best’ when the scam of providing anyone with a mortgage who was prepared to tell the right lies was at its height. Despite many, many warnings – articles in the printed Press and any number of TV documentaries providing clear evidence that the mortgage industry was well out of hand, the government – in this case Labour – did nothing. Why, it will have asked itself, spoil the good times. People feel wealthy, so why be honest and spoil it by informing that that borrowed wealth is no kind of wealth?
I am quite prepared to concede that in his analysis of capitalism (or what I know about it, gleaned from here and there, the backs of cereal packets, that kind of thing) Karl Marx was spot on. We’re I think he came unstuck was in his prognosis – that capitalism will collapse in on itself – and in his suggestions for an alternative system. And my that conclusion is backed up by an impeccable Marxist body, the Communist Party of China. They, too, seem to have decided that making everyone middle class (except for the saps who must stay working class to service the middle class) is the way to go. And in the process they are busy creating the next world crisis. For when China’s housing bubble burst, it will be very bad news for us all.

. . .

It was off to Hamburg yesterday morning for the funeral of an aunt, my mother’s sister, then back to Blighty again last night and in bed by 7.45pm to finish watching Shutter Island, which is very, very good. Although the occasion was very sad, it was good to see my two cousins again, my uncle and my cousins two extremely attractive two daughters. It reminded me once again how I feel more at home doing things the German way and how in many ways I think I might be more German than English. Having said that though, I should also report that my nephew, the son of a German and my half-English, half-German sister spent a month and a half working in England last summer and told me one of the aspects he likes about England is that it is, by and large, freer and easier than Germany. Years ago, another German, a journalist who had settled in London, told me that what he particularly liked about England was that he could mix with and include in his social circle anyone he chose and liked. In German, he told me, he, as a professional, was obliged to stick to those like him. I merely report what he said. I cannot claim to know what he is talking about because when I actually lives in German, I was a young teen and wouldn’t really notice these things. I suspect that in some ways, were I to live in Germany, my attitudes, behaviour, and loud mouth would go down like a lead balloon.

Nichi Vendola, the latest ‘coming man’. Gay, poet, communist, catholic - he pretty much covers all the angles

The histories of every country in the world must be littered with the corpses of ‘coming men’, and it is surely true that if you are a politician and have been declared a ‘coming man’, you have almost certainly been handed the black spot. I remember the Tories under Margaret Thatcher were riddled with ‘coming men’ who were reckoned by those ‘in the know’ to be Maggie’s most likely successor. And, of course, of those thus named, not one made it. The guy who actually did, one John Major, was never, to my knowledge, counted as a ‘coming man’ before he won the leadership contest which was organised after her assassination.
Driving up to London this morning, for my weekly stint hunting down rogue commas on the Mail’s features pages and ensuring all traces of humour are removed before publication, I was listening to the latest edition of Radio 4’s Crossing Continents, one of the many radio podcasts I download onto my iPod and then never listen to. Actually, that isn’t true. I do listen to some, but there are many which never get a look-in and are deleted unheard after several months.
That edition was a profile of a ‘coming man’, a Nichi Vendola, the current governor of Apulia, and thus one of Italy’s ‘coming men’.
(Incidentally, I am bound in honour to exclude many BBC journalists from my many rants against hacks. Perhaps it is because of the nature and history of the BBC as a broadcaster, but its foreign correspondence are, almost to a man and woman, journalists whose work I admire. Especial mention should go to those correspondents who work in dangerous parts of the world: names which come to mind are Hugh Sykes, Lyse Doucet, Barbara Plett and Olga Guerin, but there are many, many more. Their advantage is that as BBC radop is under no commercial imperative to bump up the listener figures, they can get on with the job with the minimum of bullshit.)
But back to Nichi Vendola: all I know of the man is what I heard this morning, and as far as I am concerned it is far too early to tell whether of not he is a good egg. That, of course, has no bearing whatsoever on whether he will successful in his aim to become Italy’s prime minister.
He is usually described as a gay poet who was once a communist but is now a catholic. He has twice served as Apulia’s governor (and is now in his second term) and it seems many on the left in Italy hope he might revitalise them. He is very popular with the voters, and as a gay activist getting himself elected governor of what is described as one of the most conservative of Italy’s provinces is some achievement. He joined Italy’s Communist Youth Federation
when he was 14, but has now renounced its excesses, although he seems to be rather clever in appealing to all sides. Thus in the programme he is quoted as being in favour of ‘globalisation’ because the proletariat are all over the world and if they are to be helped to throw off their shackles, it must be done ‘globally’. He was quoted as saying that the exhortation was not ‘workers of Italy unite’ or ‘workers of Western Europe unite’, but ‘workers of the world unite’. Very superficially what he says makes a certain sense, but dig only a little deeper and analyse it just a little more rigorously, and it turns into a certain kind of nonsense, if only because the word ‘globalisation’ and the notion behind it refer to world trade, and when people use that word, they are most certainly not engaging in Marxist dialogue but something which would have infuriated Marx. I might, of course, be very wrong and that encouraging ever more globalisation is top of the list of every left-wing group’s agenda. On the other hand, our Nichi might well be talking complete bollocks.
Vendola was profiled in Bari, where, as I have said, he commands a great deal of support, and then the reporter (Rosie Goldsmith, who spent a week with him) followed him to Turin, where took part in a conference of politicians and businessmen, and the Milan, where he endorsed the candidate his party is putting forward to contest the election for the city’s mayor. In Turin, according to Goldsmith, he was treated like something of a rock star. But the verdict of many of the businessmen whom he addressed was that he is a fine speaker who eloquently defined the problems faced by Italy, but was rather short on possible solutions. In other words, he talks a great game.
Back in Bari, there was other criticism along similar lines: that he is not actually very good at the nitty-gritty of local administration, and that much of what he does is done with one and a half eyes firmly on the politics. So, for example, he is opposing the privatisation of Apulia’s aqueduct (said to be the largest in Europe and vital for the region), even though in doing so he has put himself on a collision course with Berlusconi’s government. Well, there’s no harm in doing that if you are a politician who wants to make a name for himself on the national stage. But the criticism was that the aqueduct is in dire need of repair and maintenance which would cost far more than is available from local funds, but which would be adequately paid for if it were operated privately.
Then there is Vendola’s now very public Catholicism. How he manages to square that with his communism is not at all obvious, but it does go down well with the folks on the ground. He is quoted as saying ‘the most important book for a communist like me is the Bible’. Sounds good – but what does it mean? Not a great deal, I suggest, and would seem to be part of the group of vacuous soundbites of which claiming that ‘globalisation’ is necessary to boost the lot of the proletariat is another.
Describing the man as a ‘poet’ is also reckoned to be rather effective, as it conjures up sensitivity, emotion and creativity. But when politicians are described as ‘poets’, it is all too often forgotten that there are bad poets as well as good poets. And when an Apulian publisher was asked for his candid opinion on Vendola’s poetry, he pleaded to be allowed not to comment. And that is rather an eloquent response in itself.
But I am not Italian, and for all I know Nichi Vendola is a great guy who will, in future, play a leading role in ensuring the country’s trains start to run on time again. And perhaps he, too, might fall victim to the curse of the ‘coming man’.

High jinks from our young, and the young grow old: plus ça change . . . Oh, and the day I almost started my own riot

High jinks in London yesterday as assorted students showed their displeasure at the Government’s plans to charge them up to £9,000 a year for their courses. They will be lent the money and will be obliged to pay it back once they have graduated and are earning more than £21,000 a year. I have no idea how many students turned up outside Parliament and proceeded to lay waste to the area as MPs debated the Government’s plans, but they were certainly in their tens of thousands. They seem to have enjoyed themselves a great deal, ripping up paving stones to smash up and throw at the police, setting fire to whatever might catch fire (not a lot in deep mid-winter) and, it seems, attacking the Prince of Wales and his good lady wife as their car passed through the area.
The first things which must be said is that, despite the claims, this was not primarily a demonstration against the planned fees but an opportunity to try to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the Conservatives and their Lib Dem catamites, who have agreed to keep keep them in power. For the fact is that Conservatives are not popular with young people, they never have been and never will be. And if our students and would-be students are so upset at being charged for their university education, why did they so meekly acquiesce when the charges were first introduced by Labour several years ago and the principle was first established that from now on they must pay? There was barely a peep out of them. But then the fact is that, broadly, Labour, as the party of the left, are the good guys, and the Tories, as the party of the right, the bad guys. The Lib Dems are, as always, an irrelevancy. (Incidentally, it was suggested today on the Week In Westminster (Radio 4, on all good radio sets) that perhaps the Tories are using the Lib Dems as fall guys for many of the unappetising decisions which have to be made. To which I reply: does the Pope shit in the forest? That’s where Brian Cowen and his buddies went wrong. They didn’t form a coalition with the Lib Dems.)



But it’s a fact of life that the young tend to the left and as they age, faced with a mortgage, loans, keeping up with the Joneses, career-building, unexpected pregnancy and other assorted ‘life event’, they invariably drift to the right. You, my dear reader, whoever you are and wherever you are reading this, know as well as I do that in ten years time the vast majority of those rioters will be boring fucks with mortgages and aspirations who wouldn’t dare rock the boat even if their life depended on it.
It is certainly true that those few who most enthusiastically took to smashing up the roads ‘to demonstrate their displeasure’, do not need an excuse to turn violent. Years ago, I had personal experience of such people and it was not pleasant.
I was at Dundee University and something of a layabout. I wasn’t an anarchist or a druggie or a politico or anything like that, but I was not a model student. I didn’t take part in demos (fighting apartheid was the big cause then) and the lefties thought I was right of the centre, whereas those on the right thought I was a lefties. I was, in fact, neither. The one principle which guided my life was anything for a laugh, and if a toke or five on a spliff was involved, so much the better.
One day Tony Benn came to the university to give a speech in the big lecture hall of the social sciences building. Benn, who might still have been calling himself Anthony Wedgwood-Benn – I can’t remember – was a Labour minister and thoroughly disliked. Although these days he is Mr Cardigan and everyone’s favourite elder statesman and reasonable to a bloody fault, in those days he was regarded by the Tories as a dangerous socialist, but, ironically, regarded by leftie students as an establishment stooge and not left-wing enough. Anyway, I have absolutely no idea why, but I organised a spontaneous ‘demo’ of about 15 people, and we sat at the back of the lecture hall banging our fists on the desks and chanting Give Peace A Chance. It was quite ludicrous that I should have been the ringleader because I didn’t have a political bone in my body. I was just having fun. But word spread and we were joined by others until the group at the back had almost doubled. I can’t remember what happened to the meeting, although we might well have brought it to a premature close, but I do remember my gaggle of 30 or so protesters returning to the students' union where we were joined by others who had just heard of the escapade.
And then I noticed something quite odd: the good-natured gaggle had subtly transformed itself into something quite different. It was now a rabble baying for more trouble. It was a mob. It wanted blood. And it was very ugly. It was no longer a group of individuals but an entity of quite another kind and there was absolutely nothing good-humoured about it. I remember being rather stunned by this very sudden transformation. As the instigator of the original disruption, it had, after all been, my group for a short while, but now I wanted nothing to do with it. I left there and then, and can happily report that those I left behind could think of nothing else to do, and slowly the mob went their separate ways. But it was very odd and it did teach me something about humankind.

. . .

It is standard journalistic practice to blame ‘a violent element’ when protests such as the one yesterday spin out of control, but I believe it is very much the case. It’s a sad fact that 90 per cent of us are sheep who can be led and manipulated with frightening ease. The Communists and the Nazis both made use of that. There need not be many, but those few are not like you or I. Several years ago, four or five were jailed after turning to quite sickening violence, ostensibly acting on behalf of animal welfare. Prince Charles and his darling lady wife Camilla (the ‘Duchess of Cornwall’ – I am dearly hoping that at some point in my life - though I am running out of time - I will be offered a knighthood so that I can turn it down) were being driven through London to some premiere or other (probably not Les Miserables) when they were caught up in the protest and their car was attacked. Apparently, someone managed to get his arm into the car and punched Camilla in the stomach. What exactly does that have to do with protesting against the rise in college fees? Every country has these lunatics, people who simply want to get violent and don’t need an excuse. If you are angry about being charged tuition fees and want to demonstrate that you disagree with the Government’s decision, smashing the window of the Roller Charles and Camilla are being driven in and punching the good lady in the stomach strikes me as a novel and, ultimately, futile way of putting forward your argument. You are more likely to persuade the neutral bystander that you are utterly uninterested in the issue at hand and merely want to perpetrate a little gratuitous violence. I am something of an openminded chap and always willing to be proved wrong but on this one I think you might feel inclined to agree with me.


A ride through London town becomes rather an
unpleasant night out for our future king and his missus as the locals get very restless

. . .

Being a fully-paid up member of the cliché industry, clichés are dear to me (at the end of the day, come rain or shine, when all is said and done, clichés are worth their weight in gold.) We hacks are always urged to ‘avoid clichés like the plague’), but the truth is that they are our lifeblood, our stock in trade, and to ignore them would simply be stupid. It’s not that they simply make our lives easier (it ain’t easy being original, so I’ve long ago given up trying to be) but because the public is familiar with them, they are comfortable with them and expect them.
I like to think that a cliché is not just a phrase, but that the notion of clichés can be extended to include our behaviour. So it is surely something of a cliché that a businessman should screw his secretary and marry her after divorcing his wife. Or that some of us guys ‘fall in love’ with the first girl they screw. (In my case it was my second, Sarah Hunter. She jacked me in after a while and, as is the way, I was devastated. She went on to screw a trendy psychology lecturer, a real tit call Martin Skelton-Robinson and then his wife. You might put it down to sour grapes that I should describe him as ‘a tit’, but anyone who calls his newborn son ‘Judas’ is a complete tit in my book. I should add, perhaps in mitigation, that this was at the end of the Sixties.)
I suppose what I am getting at is that just as a phrase becomes so hackneyed by overuse that it gains the status of ‘a cliché’, some behaviour is so predictably commonplace that it can gain a similar status. Thus, in the sense that I am suggesting, some attitudes can also gain the status of ‘cliché’. And, unfortunately, I am now at the age - 61 just under three weeks ago - where I am in real danger of having clichéed attitudes. In my defence, I am very aware of the danger and do my utmost to steer clear of them, but but as far as I can see, that is as futile as attempting to ‘steer clear’ of death.
Perhaps I am being a little harsh on those my age, but too many of us do seem to be living clichés. I would dearly like to exclude myself from that, but in all honesty I can’t. I have got to the age where new words and phrases are beginning to irritate me (e.g. we no longer ‘appeal against’ a decision, we simply ‘appeal’ it, which sounds wrong to my ears, but I am bound to admit that usage of that word has changed and that I am the one out of step. Then there’s the response people give when you ask ‘how are you?’ ‘Good’, they say, which just sounds plain daft to me. I would say ‘well, thank you’.)
All this is an almost excessively long-winded way of getting around to describing my thoughts about the modern take on giving presents. Yesterday my daughter - who is only 14 - texted me while she was on her way to school to ask me to buy her some Christmas cards to give to her friends - bloody 80 cards! 80! Then there is the amount of presents children get these days for Christmas. It is obscene. Three years ago, when we hauled out the sacks my children use as Christmas stockings to fill up again with small gifts, I discovered at the bottom of one a present which one or other of my children had not even opened. I try to instill in them the notion (which I firmly believe to be true) that the more you have, the less you value what you have, but whether or not the message is getting through, I really don’t know. When I was a child, we got one ‘big’ present from our parents, then something practical, like a pair of gloves. We would also get small gifts from grandparents and, perhaps, godparents. But these. The reason I started off this ramble with a reference to clichés was that surely it is a cliché to do what I am doing: ranting on about how ‘the younger generation’ takes too much for granted and how the whole ‘present-giving’ seems to have got completely out of hand? It has probably got a great deal to do with the fact that, for most of us at least, times have become ever easier over these past 60 years, with the recent - and now concluded - era of easy credit boosting the impression that we are all rather affluent.
Yet part of me still firmly believes that ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’. The ‘younger generation’ is not at all that different to us old farts. They are simply younger. I dislike my two children more or less as a matter of course switching on the TV as soon as they get up, and tell them so. But all I hear when I tell them so if my father ranting on at me. And guess who also would have switched on the TV more or less as a matter of course were early-morning television available when I was young? Just the one guess, but I’m sure you’ll get it right.

. . .

I’m pretty certain that finding a Daily Mail cartoon funny is a sure indication that retirement can’t be long away. So it is with some shame that I admit that every so often one or two of them do amuse me. Not Garfield and not Fred Bassett, certainly, but Chloe, which sometimes has to be toned down a little to avoid offending the middle-aged sensibilities of readers (why is it that as people grow older, many pretend they never had sex?), The Odd Streak and one called The Strip Show.
I wasn’t at all struck on The Strip Show when it first appeared, but it seems to have gained confidence and can often hit the button. The strip below, which appeared last week, particularly appealed to me. It is a slow burner, but all the better for that. The key to it is in the discrepancy of price. When I first read it, I wondered ‘What the bloody hell is/are ‘dote/dotes?’.

© Michiko
If, after reading it, you’re still wondering, this strip is not for you. Another Strip Show strip I enjoyed a few months ago simply showed the exterior of a building, the home of The Double Entendre Club. Outside the main entrance is a sign which reads ‘Members only’.

Adams moves south as Tweedledum and Tweedldee blow it. And is Assange being stitched up? Just the one guess, please, but I'm sure you'll get it right

There was an item of news just over two weeks ago which, I think, surprised quite a few people. It was that Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a MP in the House of Commons, had resigned his Assembly seat and announced that he would stand for election to the Irish Republic’s Dail at the next general election. (And my apologies to anyone who would like them if I get some of the terminology wrong. There was a time, when I was working subbing shifts on the Irish desk of the Sun, when I could write Taoiseach with my eyes closed. Now I have to look it up again.) I suppose those more informed or even involved in the front and backwaters of Irish politics, both north and south of the border, might not have been surprised and will have heard of Adams’s plans some time ago. But I am just a common or garden pub bore who, though he takes an interest in many matters, is less well-informed than he might be in many matters, especially Irish politics. So I remembering thinking when I read the news: I wonder why?
That occurred to me again tonight walking home and listening to The World Tonight report on the emergency budget in Dublin. Everyone is demanding an immediate election (although I’m sure Fianna Fail, who have even less to lose than they have to gain, will drag their heels on that one, knowing full well that each and every one of them will be out on his or her arse by the time the polls close.) After Brian Lenihan had presented the budget, the Opposition got up and, as is tradition, condemned it out of hand. It was then I remember thinking that Fine Gael, who accepted wisdom would assume would regain many seats and be a senior partner in any future coalition government, might also perhaps not be looking forward to an election quite as much as one might assume. And then it occurred to me the Gerry
Adams, who is nothing if not wily (and rather wistful in my picture), realised that Sinn Fein’s time might finally have come to score at the ballot box rather better than it has so far.
I’ll repeat that I know less about Irish politics than I do about nuclear physics and what I write is simple conjecture. But it would also make sense. In Britain, the Tweedledum/Tweedledee nature of our system has meant that first Labour would form the government, then it would be the Tories turn, then Labour again, for many years ad nauseam. That has all changed now that the Conservatives were obliged to form a coalition with the Lib Dems. Could the Republic also be facing a its own realignment in its politics? After all, the Irish might reason that one lot is as bad as the other, they’ve both screwed things up and allowed the bubble to blow up before it burst, and that the time has come to give Sinn Fein a chance. It already has many local politicians.
Adams, who is not getting any younger (is any of us?) decided some time ago that real progress towards a fully independent Ireland was more likely by democratic means, and standing for election as TD for Louth, believing that the voters are mightily fed up with the usual suspects might well be part of his game plan.

. . .

Why is Adams routinely referred to as a ‘barman’ or a ‘former barman’? Yes, I know that working as a barman was the only full-time job he had held down until he was elected to the the Commons ond the NI Assembly, but anyone who knows even very little about him will know that describing him as a ‘barman’ and implying that he sort of kind of, kind of sort of drifted into politics is complete bollocks. I suspect when he is described as a barman, it is done, when it is done, as a subtle – or even not so subtle – means of putting him in his place, of implying that he, and thus the ideas he stood and stands for, are rather jumped up and not worth taking seriously even for a moment. In the great British scheme of things, the job of 'barman' is not rated very highly. 'Oh, Blair, was a barman, but that was when he was a student in Paris, old boy, not the same thing at all.'
On the matter of the IRA, I must be a little careful. My dad could be moved to fury in a matter of seconds by any talk of what he and others referred to as ‘sneaking regarders’, so out of respect for my father I shall try very hard to avoid being seen as a ‘sneaking regarder’.
However, I can’t deny that what Adams, McGuinness and others were doing was not in essence different to what Menachem Begin did in the Forties, and what Hereward the Wake did many centuries ago. The problem I have with both the Republican and the Loyalist groups was that all too often too many of them were, whatever their political activities, also heavily involved in outright crime – drugs, robbery, prostitution.
To put my comments into perspective, I am obliged also to add that growing up in Berlin between the ages 9/10 and 13, the son of a German mother and attending German schools for four years, and then, when I came back to live in England, returned to the rather dismal life of a British public school (heating wasn’t turned on until November 1 however cold it got, and even then it was never enough. And the food was awful), I have never actually felt very British.
So the conviction that the provinces of Northern Ireland must forever be a part of Great Britain has never take root in my soul. (My brother Mark once told me of the old Soviet notion of its Jews as ‘rootless cosmopolitans’. Hmm, I remember thinking, I would mind being one of those, and, to be honest, it is a description which gets quite close to how I feel. The only drawback is that it might seem a tad conceited to describe oneself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, especially as this ‘rootless coosmopolitan’ now lives next to a farm in the depths of North Cornwall with nothing but cattle and mud for neighbours. But all this is way of the track.)

. . .



"You don't fuck with Uncle Sam!"

As of earlier today Wikileak’s Julian Assange is banged up in some jail or other in London ready to face a court hearing as to whether he should be extradited to Sweden to face criminal charges. Those charges relate to one-night stands he had with two women in August, and both are now claiming that he is guilty of ‘raping’ them as ‘rape’ has most recently been defined in Swedish law. From what I have read, the sex he had was consensual with both women, that one of the woman more or less pursued him after seeing him on television, and the other woman is claiming that he purposely split a condom. That same women is also on record as urging her sisters to give the bastard men in their lives hell if they step just one inch out of line, or what the sisters regard as being the line. All in all the developments in the Assange/Wikileaks affair are as murky as murky can get.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. various excitable politicians (and, I don’t doubt, a great many rabble-rousing radio shock jocks) are agitating for Assange to be extradited to face ‘spying’charges. Some are even calling for him to be ‘executed’. This is all rather ridiculous, but also rather worrying.
I wasn’t particularly impressed by all the leaking of embassy cables and don’t think it achieved anything, except some light amusement at the embarrassment of assorted politicians. All the claims that it was the democratic empowerment of the people blah-blah, is, as far as I am concerned 24 carat bullshit. (Note to pedants: yes, I know bullshit can't be 24 carat, but you know what I mean.) The Americans looked particularly stupid given how unbelievably lax their security was, and they have obviously taken very badly being made to look very silly in the eyes of the rest of the world.

The revelation of the locations and details of various installations considered ‘vital’ be the U.S. was admittedly pretty bloody pointless, and if I had to sum up the whole affair in one word it would be ‘bollocks’. But having said that, I really don’t like seeing Assange well and truly stitched up. And that is what is happening.
He is now too high-profile to be grabbed in broad daylight by the CIA and flown off somewhere on one of those infamous ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights – so much for all the ‘freedom loving’ bullshit we get far too much of from the U.S. – and doing so would be impossible. But the rape allegations in Sweden, though they appear to have come about independently, will be manna from heaven for the U.S., and I don’t doubt its embassy in Stockholm will be squeezing Swedish government’s nuts without mercy to ensure Assange is extradited from the UK to Sweden so that the U.S. can then extradite him themselves.

I suggested earlier that had Assange been made Russia or China looks stupid, they would have had no compulsion at all of getting rid of him. The only difference with the U.S. is that it feels obliged to cover its arse and make itself out to be doing things correctly. But be in no doubt, it will not rest until Assange has been banged up somewhere for 99 years without parole. No one makes Uncle Same look stupid and is allowed to get away with it.
The BBC is reporting that he was refused bail. That, too, is odd, as there is surely little chance he will skip the country. But then he didn’t just make the Yanks look very silly. The Brits also looked pretty daft. I suspect pressure has also been exerted on Switzerland, which has reportedly frozen Wikileaks accounts.

Britain - and the Daily Mail's - class obsession (again) and what's Wikileaks up to now? Then there's the Guardian's singular brand of hypocrisy

And on it goes, Britain’s obsession with class and how – allegedly – all we all really want to be is ‘middle class’. Just days after I first posted about the Daily Mail’s own bee in its bonnet, on page 15 of the edition published on Monday, Dec 6, 2010 we get ‘(strapline) As it’s revealed 60 per cent of them went to public school . . . (main head) Why are today’s pop stars so posh?’ You can read it here.
Quite apart from the fact that the piece is crap anyway (the writer, David Thomas, who is called upon when the Mail want to publish a ‘humorous’ piece is to humour what McDonald’s is to cooking), it is rather difficult knowing from which direction it is coming. Is it ‘hooray, more of our rock stars are toffs’ or ‘boo, more of our rock stars are toffs’? And neither stance would sit comfortably with the Mail’s ‘we want to be middle class’ obsession.
As for the substance of the piece, it is full of bull. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones weren’t working class. Rock stars did not come ‘rampaging out of the back streets of industrial towns and the council estates of inner-city London.
Some might have, but most certainly not all. I would have thought that the parents of McCartney, Lennon and Mick Jagger would have been mortified – as only the middle class can be mortified – to be described as working class. Read the piece for yourself and decide whether you think it is bollocks or bullshit.

. . .

As for Wikileaks, the most recent revelations do rather question its motives. I have not yet read anywhere what it purports to be doing and what it hopes to achieve, but revealing the locations of vital installations ‘whose loss could critically affect US national security’ (according to the BBC) does strike at least me as rather odd. Is it in the public interest to do so. Wikileaks and its main man, Julian Assange, only seem to have access to confidential U.S. embassy cables, not any from, say, Russia or China. But it is fair to ask whether Wikileaks would be quite as industrious in publishing what had come its way were those cables to be Russian or Chinese, and also quite how long the chap would stay alive had he done so.
Say what you like about the Western world, but its security services aren’t quite as ruthless when it comes to ‘neutralising’ opposition as the SVR and, I suspect China. I think the only people who still claim to believe that the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was not murdered by the SVR in 2006 is, well, the SVR.
I’m not too sure what the Guardian is doing publishing every jot and tittle which comes its way courtesy of Wikileaks, including the list of ‘vital installations’. It like to portray itself as a journal of record which is on the side of the angels, but the truth is that however true that is or not, it is also a commercial enterprise jostling for position with other papers.
Technically, it is owned by a non-profitmaking trust, but quite how much that affects its commercial decisions is not clear. And I suspect that publishing all this stuff from Wikileaks will have got just as many cheers from the circulation manager, advertising staff and finance director as the assorted idealist who make up its editorial staff and readers. It is, after all, far easier to sell a half-page classified ad to a punter when you can assure him that because of rather spectacular editorial comment, a wide readership of that day’s issue is pretty much guaranteed.

. . .

I should like to point out here that I do not dislike the Guardian because I earn my daily crust beavering away as a sub on the Mail (whose editor is known to spit blood at the mere mention of that paper), but because that paper’s holier than thou stance does get right up my nose. For example, a standard ploy used by the saintly Guardian to publish prurient stories in all their salacious detail unearthed by the redtops (usally the Sun and the News of the Screws) is to do so under the pretext of ‘look at what those awful tabloids are printing now’. That allows its readers to get the full story as well as to maintain the condescending attitude to newspapers which they believe aren’t quite as ethical as the Guardian.
Fuck the Guardian. I do so dislike hypocrites.

. . .

Enough paragraphs, Barry?

The shocking truth according to Wikileaks. (Well, up to a point, Lord Copper). Fifa's crims see off England, and paragraphs: don't you love then!

We’ve all read the assorted U.S. diplomatic cables from Wikileaks which we’re told are embarrassing governments and politicians the world over and, like me, you might have been mightily amused. This morning the paper’s are revealing the former EU bigwig Chris Patten was horrified by Vladimir Putin’s ‘killer eyes’. There’s the claim that Italy’s Gary Berlusconi took kickbacks from the Russians, that the Saudis begged the U.S. to bomb the living shit out of Iran, that the Yanks decided after one year that Gordon Brown was a hopeless Prime Minister, that Karzai - the role model to end all role models - thought the British were useless. And on it goes.
I have to report that I am neither shocked by these candid comments and cheering Wikileaks to the rafters, nor shocked that what were intended as private communications between diplomats should be publicised, thereby undermining trust, confidence, relationships, the integrity of cat food, bus tickets the world over, blah-di-blah-di-blah . . . What does shock me, although ‘shock’ is rather over-egging the pudding, is the amateurish carelessness of the U.S. which means these secret cables were available to, reportedly, at least two million government personnel the world over and just crying out to be leaked.
Despite all the Yankee fascination with the biggest, the fastest, the most expensive etc and coming on to the rest of the world that they have got it sussed (where ‘it’ is more or less anything you can think of), they are still apt to get that crucial, vital detail wrong. In this case it was ensuring that confidential views and opinions whose value lay in their being candid remained confidential. By allowing two million people and their dog access to them seems rather to miss the point.
(Similarly with the invasion of Iraq: you feel it was never properly thought through, and now, several years and thousands of deaths later - both American and Iraqi - the situation there is still pretty bad. The crucial, vital detail: why bloody do it in the first place? I’m sure Bush and his staff would be able to trot out this and that by way of spurious justification, but the fact is there was absolutely no need or reason to invade. My suspicion - and it is so far-fetched that it is both highly unlikely and eminently probably - is that George Bush Jnr agreed to some neo-con voice whispering in his ear that ‘showing Saddam whose boss’ was the thing to do because it might impress daddy, one George Bush Snr and a former president. As I say, the suggestion is quite ludicrously silly but also not half as daft as it sounds.)
I have heard on the radio and read in the papers the reasons why this stunt by Wikileaks is both very necessary and highly irresponsible, and you know, dear reader, I find I can’t get too excited either way. On the one hand, I find all talk that what Wikileaks has done empowers the voter, advances democracy, is a necessary counter to increasingly high-handed government action and all that kind of thing nothing but overblown, hi’ falutin waffle verging on bullshir. On the other hand, and although it does to a certain extent undermine relations between governments by making them look very silly indeed, it does not harm at all that they should be made to look very silly indeed. There is never the wrong time or place to taking our politicians down a peg or two.
I would also be very surprised indeed if the Americans, the French, the Saudis, the British, the Germans, the Iranians and everyone else were in the slightest bit surprised by what has been revealed. Individuals might be embarrassed, most certainly, but are we really supposed to believe that the foreign ministries of the various different countries were somehow taken by surprise that they weren’t quite has highly esteemed by their counterparts as they thought they were? If diplomats around the world aren’t cynical and highly suspicious, not only of their supposed enemies but also of their supposed allies, they shouldn’t be doing the job. I can’t remember (as though I ever knew) who first claimed that it was a diplomat's job to travel abroad and lie for his country, but it seems to me to be a fair enough job description.
So the suggestion that intelligent men and women in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London, Madrid and Rome are in despair because others are saying unkind things about them is more than rather silly. Does Valdimir Putin really give a flying fuck that Chris Patten thought he had ‘killer’s eyes’?
One positive outcome of this whole Wikileaks affair is that the Yanks will undertake a mass cull of staff involved in keeping these communications confidential (‘assistant heads will roll’) and do their very best to ensure that, in future, they do remain confidential. And once the world’s diplomats are satisfied that the opinions and views and whatever tittle-tattle has come their way and which they would very much like to pass on will not be broadcast from the rooftops but will remain entre nous, normal service will quickly and quietly be resumed.

. . .

But what of this Julian Assange chappie? Who he? What’s his game? Is he really some idealist intent on making the world a better place? Are the rape charges against him politically motivated or does he have something to answer for? Answers, please, on the usual postcard (and I shall this time not repeat the usual joke). As for Wikileaks itself, what is its motive? Revealing information which might be ‘in the public interest’? It doesn’t quite ring true, does it? And the revelations it has made and is still making, end up rather flatter than I’m sure their revelation was intended after just a few moments consideration. There are, admittedly, several which are important: the claim that the UK was ‘overruled’ when it objected to the U.S. using British airbases on Cyprus when flying ‘suspects’ off to Hell. It must be very uncomfortable for the world to know that it was ‘overruled’ by the Yanks. I mean, how sovereign is that? Then there is the obvious question as to why we simply didn’t close the airbases to American military traffic. And just how strongly did the UK react when it was ‘overruled’? I get the impression that when it discovered the purpose of these rendition flights, it raised a mild objection (‘It’s not really on, is it, sir? I mean these chaps might be innocent.’), but when the U.S. ‘overruled’, the UK meekly acquiesced. (‘It was just a suggestion, sir.’)
But what of the other revelations? So the Saudis urged Washington to bomb the living shit out of Iran. But it didn’t, so just how important is that revelation? Berlusconi is said to be taking backhanders from Comrade Putin (who has ‘killer eyes’)? Is anyone actually surprised (if it’s true)? Has that claim actually damaged a man who hereunto was regarded as having a character as pure as a baby’s bottom? There’s the claim that Sarkozy is a bit of a prima donna. Are staff at the Elysee Palace shocked that the truth has been revealed. Then there’s the scurrilous rumour that Germany’s Angela Merkel is steady, unimaginative, reliable and risk-averse. My strong suspicion is that - if true - the vast majority of the German voters will be greatly relieved. Who wants a national leader who stays up all night boozing, gambling, whoring and likes to play Russian roulette in his or her spare time? Well, apart from the Italians and the Russians?
Sorry, but do the maths and I’m rather more inclined to give Wikileaks and E for effort than the Nobel Peace Prize. Sorry, chaps.

. . .

I was rather amused by England’s dismay that it wasn’t chosen by Fifa to host the 2018 World Cup. Not weeks earlier our newspapers and television united in an unprecedented attack on the 22 members of the governing body and accused them of being thieves, killers, rapists and — not to make too fine a point — that all too often they behaved in ways which did not behove a gentleman (many have been extraordinarily rude to their tailor). That wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever, said England. Maybe our press and TV did go over the top a tad, but, you know these things happen, don’t they, and anyway it’s all water under the bridge and Fifa has assured us it won’t be held against our bid.
Well, that strikes me as being naive far, far, far beyond the call of duty. For blow me down! Fifa decides not to award the 2018 to England! Up until then, of course, we had been full of it: we won’t get it in the first round of voting, they kept saying, but then that’s not important: in the first round all the utter no-hopers are eliminated and the real business doesn’t start until round two and possibly three. And then, well, then we’ll pick up all the votes we didn’t get in the first round and Bob’s your uncle.
He wasn’t off course. In the event, England won only two of the first round votes - one of which was the vote of its own representative on the board - and off we were sent to join the utter no-hopers. Not even bonny Prince William and the two most important Davids alive today - Beckham and Cameron - could swing it.
In hindsight we should have done what Russia has obviously done and distributed the used fivers where they were wanted. Russia got the nod even though Vladimir Putin, her current prime minister, couldn’t be arsed to fly out from his palace in Moscow to Geneva to shake a few hands. Well, it is now pretty obvious why he didn’t: he knew he didn’t have to. The sports and bribes department of the SVR knows what to do with a few million roubles when needs must, so Vlad stayed home knowing that it was all in the bag even before the vote was taken. And England?
Spain and Portugal also lost out, though they did progress far beyond no-hopers league. I should imagine that - Russian bribes apart - Fifa wasn’t too optimistic that by 2018 Spain and Portugal weren’t provinces of the Greater German Empire, what with the euro doing so remarkably well, and all. I have heard a rumour that our Iberian cousins did try a bribe, but when Blatter and his gang realised it was to be paid in euros not roubles, they lost all interest. Well, that’s understandable, isn’t, it?
England will now have to content itself with knocking six bells out of Australia’s cricket team and bring home the Ashes. Never mind that, by general consent, Australia were ill-advised to make up their squad from the most promising fourth-former of Woolla-Woolla Academy instead of chose players from the ranks of seasoned professionals down under, England has what it takes. And when they do bring home the Ashes, won’t we bloody know about it.

. . .

I have been ever so gently rapped over the knuckles for not splitting my blog entries into a sufficient number of paragraphs. I’m informed that it makes reading the blog just that much harder. So, today’s innovation: more paragraphs. The change will, of course, go through a pilot stage and will be introduced strictly on a trial basis, and if feedback is such that the majority of readers prefer fewer paragraphs, so be it. They will be done away with. But I’m sure you’ll all agree that we should all be forwarding-thinking and embrace change - not for itself, of course, but for the progress it can achieve. And what is life about if it isn’t about progress?

Preaching to the converted: utterly pointless. So a warm welcome to the Spectator and the New Statesman

There are a few moments every day when each and every one of us is obliged to spend a little time alone. I shan’t be more specific than that because some readers might feel it would be a little indelicate, but if you don’t know what I mean, you might well be entitled to remedial help. Such moments alone can be regarded as a brief and necessary, though irritating, interruption as we go about the serious business of building our career. Or if, like me, you have given up all hope of every building a career, you can make the most of them and use them to snatch a little peace and quiet from the hurly-burly of being obliged to work for a living. And like me, you might also perhaps use those moments to catch up on a little light reading.
Working, as I do, in a newspaper office, there is always something knocking around which you can grab to take with you to read and this morning I spotted a copy of the Spectator and grabbed it to take with me. (Incidentally, there is a certain simple etiquette involved when picking up and taking a book, newspaper or magazine with you to that place where you will spend those personal moments alone.
You are not obliged to put it back where you found it. In fact, I should imagine most people would prefer you not to do so. So that would, of course, rule out taking with you first editions, reference books or hard-to-come-by reading material. Best stick to what will not be missed or which can easily be replaced, if necessary, by buying another copy.) I am not a regular reader of the Spectator. My brother and aunt are, but I find it, in a certain sense, quite insufferable. That doesn’t mean, though, that an occasional read doesn’t pay off and isn’t interesting – I wouldn’t have filched it from some feature writer’s desk if I thought I was about to spend the next five to ten minutes being bored out of my tiny mind – but there is something about the ‘Speccy’ which I find ineffably pointless. Anyone familiar with that magazine will know that its politics are right-of-centre, and given the overwhelming and almost compulsory liberalism of these past 15 years, the ‘Speccy’ might even be described as defiantly right-of-centre with an almost tangible tendency to unashamed fogeyism.
Many of its writers take a real pride in not ‘being modern’, in swimming against the tide, in being archaic. Everything which is even vaguely modern is ‘quite awful’. (‘I used one of those modern “mobile phones” the other day – well, I felt obliged to as my brother/sister/mother/father/wife/husband gave me one and it would have been rude not to – but what is the point? I mean, you poke around on them with your forefinger as you have seen other people do a hundred times and you pretend you know what you are doing, but all you finally get is some terrible noise in your ear telling you the whole exercise hasn’t worked. They are simple quite awful.’) As young men and women they will have adopted that kind stance as a pose, quite possibly to try to impress those they regarded as their elders and betters. Later in life (and later in life is always, unfortunately, far later than you ever thought it would be) the pose is not so much second nature as first nature. Its counterpart in politics of the left, and a magazine I similarly find to be ineffably pointless, is the New Statesman. The writers of that magazine also seem to take a perverse pride in harking back to the past, although in their case it is a past which consists, in their eyes at least, as a golden age of socialist triumphs, a celebration of the working man and when briefly society saw sense.For those it employs who are on the point of death, the Spanish civil war is praised as a beginning which came to nothing because of the combined forces of European fascism. Rather younger writers hail back to the glory days of the Seventies Labour governments before they were betrayed by the money men. And those the New Statesman employs who – boys and girls – who are just out of short trousers hail to the New Labour past as a lesson in what not to do (‘We betrayed socialism
by sucking up to the middle classes’.) At its most extreme the News Statesman is plain barmy, which might be typified by the occasional article claiming that Stalin might have been a bit of a wrong ’un who admittedly had a lot to answer for but he did succeed in dragging Russia out of the 19th and into the 20th century and we should, at least acknowledge that. But to be fair such out-and-out lunacy is pretty unusual these days. Mainly, its writers take an anguished look at how the ‘left is going wrong’, ask ‘what happened to our ideal’ and ponder ‘is there hope for progress’. (By the by, it might be illuminating and certainly very entertaining if at some point I compiled a list of all the young turks who fought tooth and nail to destroy the class system, bit who now, after many years of public service, find it rather comfortable indeed to spend their twilight years ensconced in lordly ermine. Plus ca change . . .
I must be fair, though, and concede that the New Statesman, and publications like it, are usually the first to champion and, in time, to help to bring about what, on reflection, are welcome changes to our values and morals. So, for example, being gay in Britain today is, as far as I know – I’m not gay, far easier than it was even ten or 15 years ago. To a far greater extent than ever before homosexuality is accepted (I shan’t describe it as ‘tolerated’ because I find such ‘tolerance’ quite offensive) as an alternative to heterosexuality, and the New Statesman and the Guardian are far more open to such changes than other publications.
But what I find utterly pointless about both the New Statesman and the Spectator is that they are always, always, always preaching to the converted. So when the New Statesman writes about how evil bankers are, it will be cheered along by its readers as though it had announced the Second Coming. And when the Spectator writes about how awful modern TV programmes are, it is similarly cheered along as though it had revealed an arcane truth. When the Spectator champions the Conservative government’s attempted reform of a welfare system which (even I agree) is horrendously complicated, inefficient wasteful and almost out of control, its readers will not only concur but insist ‘that chap Cameron isn’t going far enough by half. Not at all. He’s scared’. The New Statesman, on the other hand, which in an honest moment might quietly agree that what the welfare system has become is a dog’s dinner like no other, will still insist that the Tories’ attempts at reform are nothing buy a cynical smokescreen to do away with it entirely according to some shadowy ‘right-wing agenda’.
To a great extent these two magazines simply reflect that futile divide between ‘them and us’ (and you can identify both ‘them’ and ‘us’ with whoever you like as long as you acknowledge the dislike, contempt and, at times, seething hatred the one feels for the other). They also do what all partisan newspapers and magazines do – it doesn’t half boost sales – which is to tell the reader what it thinks the reader want to hear. (It is a very effective form of flattery: if you see your prejudices articulated by people you quietly suspect are rather brighter than you are, your self-esteem will briefly be boosted and for a short while you can be persuaded that you are not quiet the outright dunce you always feared you were.) But the Spectator and the New Statesman cannot be judged in the same way as other newspapers and magazines. For one thing their prime purpose is not to make money (which, believe me is the prime purpose of all our newspaper despite what they will tell you), but to provide a platform. Naturally, those who own them wouldn’t usually tolerate a loss (although a former owner of the Spectator, a millionaire, did just that) and would hope that ‘their journal’ at least paid its way, but they see themselves, in their conceit, as protagonists in their country’s political drama. (A ‘journal’, by the way, demands to be take far more seriously than a mere ‘magazine’, which is why the Spectator and the New Statesman regard themselves as ‘journals’.)
And that makes their preaching to the converted all the more futile. Surely to goodness if you believe your view if right and that the other man’s is wrong, you set about trying to persuade him. Yet it’s just as unlikely that your average Speccy reader will choose to plough his or her way through the New Statesman as a New Statesman reader will choose to investigate what the Speccy believes. That’s not the name of the game. Well, nothing bores me more than sitting around with a bunch of farts who all agree ‘that ‘- - - -’ is terrible, isn’t it!’ What I want is debate – honest debate, certainly – but real debate. And you won’t get that if the guy you are debating with you is four-square behind you. Unfortunately, it would seem that I am very much in a minority. And I don’t like it. Political ‘debate’ all to often degenerates into sloganizing and tribal insults. Well, if that’s your game, count me out. And that’s why the lavatory is one of the few places I will ever allow myself to be seen reading the Spectator or the New Statesman.

. . .

Further to my gibe about the brother and comrades who - no doubt against their better instincts but in the interest those dispossessed in whose cause they have struggled all their lives - have grudgingly accepted a peerage, I must extend some sympathy to those assorted lefties who can’t, in their private moments, deny they wouldn’t mind a bit of the action. Look, you struggle, worry, campaign, battle, fight, debate and agitate on behalf of the left for more than 30 years and all you have to show for it is a badly paid job as a secondary teacher, a run-down terrace house and a 15-year-old, beaten-up Ford Mondeo.
Your brother – who has no principles, absolutely none at all and who never worked at school or college - is now in the City earning millions selling ‘financial instruments’ and licking the arse of the ruling class, living in Surrey, two kids at private school and apparently enjoying it all. Where, where, where is the justice! Answers, please, on that traditional postcard, which you can yet again then rip up and throw away.

Drinking then writing, or writing and drinking? Just don't kid yourself. And then there's Wikileaks...

Just home from work after a drink with a friend who had persuaded me that as the weather was cold and miserable, we should treat ourselves to a whisky. I had a one to one whisky and Drambuie (officially a Rusty Nail, unofficially a Drambuies Shandy) and as that first went down well, I treated myself to two more. I don’t have far to walk home, and I had written at least three quite brilliant novels by the time I arrived there. Alan Bennett was once asked whether he ‘wrote when he drank’. No, he said, he didn’t, but he often ‘drank when he wrote’. This might sound as though the chap were being disingenuous, but there is a difference. In a way it’s related to ‘the urge to be creative’ and the ‘ability to be creative’. And the distinction between the latter two is probably a little clearer than that between ‘drinking and writing’ and ‘writing and drinking’. How often have you, dear reader (and forgive that rather arch address, but I am encouraged that bit by bit rather more people are reading this blog and I do prefer to address you directly) – how often have you walked home from the pub (the bar in Med countries), your belly full of booze and your heart full of optimism and faith in your talents and ability, and felt moved to create? You pick up your guitar and start strumming, you sit down at your desk and take out a pen and paper or you switch on your PC or laptop (as I have just done) and start writing, you find a pencil and start doodling or perhaps you even haul out your oils and start painting. And all because the booze has rather raddled your judgment and led you to believe that what you are now appreciating – the stars, the city lights, a woman’s beauty, the sounds, whatever it is must be immortalised, or at the very least, recorded. And how often have you read what you wrote, listen to what you recorded (something I have done far too often since computers and software made it all so easy) or look at what you drew and though: Lord what crap. Incidentally, as a former fan and long-term user of cannabis I should add that what I write here applies just as much to smoking, sniffing or, I suppose, though I have never tried it, injecting as boozing. The result is the same: if you are only in the slightest bit honest, you are obliged to admit that what you produced was unadulterated crap. But that is ‘writing while drinking’. ‘Drinking while writing’ might not necessarily be so unproductive, although there always comes a point where you are obliged to call it a day – or, more probably, a night – because the quality of what is being produced is becoming pretty dire.
I should imagine everyone reading this has, as I described above, had a skinful or two and persuaded him or herself that as far as artists go, they have the right stuff. But appreciation does not amount to a creatively ability and nor does a desire to be creative mean that you have what it takes. Any teen who has attempted verse and poetry will be all too familiar with the illusion that intense feeling equals high art. But no, it doesn’t. Intense feeling can lead to the creation of high art, but is by no means the same thing. As for booze, or cannabis or, I should imagine cocaine or heroin, the one thing they most definitely do is to cloud your judgment. That is why one of the best pieces of advice given to a writer is to write, then put aside what he or she has written for a day or two, and then to read it with a dispassionate and critical eye. You'll soon edit it down and might throw it out entirely. One of the best pieces of advice that one can take to heart is that it doesn’t necessarily matter who you bullshit as long as you never, ever bullshit yourself. Unfortunately, that is something all of us do all too often. I know I do, even though I know full well I shouldn’t. It’s at its worst when I think, as I tell myself, as I sometimes do, ‘you’re a pretty down-to-earth sort of chap, Patrick.’ It’s at the moment if thinking as much that I realise that I’m not and have quite a long way to go before I am. And even writing that last bit doesn’t change a thing. Or even that last bit. Or even that bit. Or even that. If you’ve been there, which I suspect you have, you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. If not, this blog isn’t for you. Oh, Lord.
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By way of drawing breath, I should tell those who might not know who Alan Bennett is who he is. He is a playwright and writer who first came to prominence as one of the four Cambridge graduates who wrote and performed a revue called Beyond The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. All four – the other three are Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – all went on to have successful careers of one kind or another. Cook and Moore are now dead, Cook ending his life as an alcoholic, and Moore having made several bad marriages. Miller went on to direct theatre and opera and has become a darling of the cultural London establishment (and, as far as I’m concerned, seems to take himself just a little too seriously). I have just looked up the history of Beyond The Fringe and learny a little more. The show was, in fact, put together by an impresario specifically to perform at the Festival. It didn’t actually do too well, but found success when it transferred to London. Bennett has become something of a grande dame in Britain about whom no one has a bad word to say. And he is remarkably unpretentious, with a very dry wit which is usually a delight. I have not seen any of his plays, but I have seen one or two of the films for which he wrote the screenplay, most notably The History Boys, which was based on his play of the same name. It was OK, and I suspect the – longer – play upon which is based was rather better. The film almost seems to proselytise for homosexuality, and I found that theme rather odd and a tad hamfisted at that. Bennett has in recent years come out as gay, although it is not quite as clear-cut in that as he was also linked to a woman for many years although quite what the nature of their relationship was I don’t know. Anyway, that is Alan Bennett. But back to ‘creating’ and the fact that boozing can make us think we are far better at doing what we want to do than we really are.

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I hadn’t actually been drinking last night when I decided to write about the Wikileaks revelations, but on reflection I thought my views were rather crap and didn’t add my two ha’porth to this blog after all. But the whole affair still does make me wonder. First of all, how on earth can the Americans be so stupid as to have a system which reportedly allows something like two and a half million of their employees around the world – from enlisted men to I don’t know who else – access to the database of emails from diplomatic staff? It is breathtaking in its naivety. They have made themselves look remarkably silly, although I can’t really see that a great deal of damage has been done. What I find far more interesting is Julian Assange, his merry gang of leakers at Wikileaks and his motives. Why is he doing it? The obvious answer that it is all in the interests of ‘openness’ doesn’t convince me for one second. Just how ‘empowered’ are we for knowing what we know? Rather less than we might think. Of course, for the media this is a great story, but in all honesty there is not a great deal to it. I’m sure the Saudis are rather peeved that their private thoughts about the Iranians have been aired, but I would be very surprised if the Iranians were fully aware of those thoughts and have been for some time. Likening Russia’s president Medvedev as Robin to prime minister Putin’s Batman won’t exactly massage his ego but I can’t see anyone in the Kremlin losing any sleep over the matter. As far as Russia is concerned no one in the West has the faintest clue as to what is going on. In these past few days I have heard both that there is a growing ‘rift’ between Medvedev and Putin and that they are still the same double act that they always were. Both claims can’t be true, and I am more inclined to go with the Mutt and Jeff routine. But whatever the ture explanation is, Wikileaks revelations will do very little to alter the course of the river. As for the claim that U.S. diplomats were allegedly urged ‘to spy’ on Ban Ki Moon and other UN officials, the former British ambassador to the UN rather devalued it this morning on the radio. He pointed out that the diplimats were urged to do whatever ‘was possible’ and that they all knew full well that any outright spying and similar skulduggery was pretty much ‘impossible’ if they wanted to remain effective as diplomats. These revelations have most certainly caused the U.S. a certain amount of embarrassment, but they can live with that, and know they can live with that. What could be going on? Will we ever find out? You know, I don’t think we ever will.

The Brits are in a class of their own (though no compliment is intended). Where does this obsession come from?

Courtesy of Google Blogger’s stats facility, I know that although the number of those who read this blog can be counted in the tens rather than the thousands, they come from countries around the world. Each of those countries will have its own preoccupations and hang-ups, but the British obsession with ‘class’ must be unique.
It is a multi-lateral obesession: self-styled (I almost wrote ‘self-appointed’) ‘working class’ folk claim to loathe the ‘middle-class’ and ‘upper class’, ‘middle-class’ folk really do look down on those they regard as being ‘working class’, and some snobbish ‘middle-class’ folk who, for various reasons, do not like to be lumped in with other ‘middle-class’, will often describe themselves as ‘upper-middle’ class. That, of course, tells you nothing except that those who describe themselves thus are simply crass snobs. Finally, we come to the ‘upper class’, which, as far as I am concerned, is even more amorphous than any of the other ‘class’ groupings. Who are they?
Just how bizarre this British obsession is occurred to me again today when I was doing my daily morning online trawl through the newspaper (or at least the Mail, the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Sun). For today’s Telegraph carries a piece by Labour leader Ed Miliband on how ‘Labour failed the middle classes’. The piece is notable for several reasons: until the rise of that out-and-out charlatan Tony Blair, who might in many ways been a sandwich short of a picnic but did have a canny streak (he was canny enough to get out while the going was good and is now a multi-millionaire), Labour, on a good day, despised the ‘middle classes’, or rather purported to do so. That all changed when Blair realised that the traditional constituency of ‘old Labour’ — solid, honest, unpretentious working folk engaged in heavy industry boilermaking and living a grimy, but cheerful existence in row upon row of terrace houses — had long disappeared into the realm of myth. In their place, and, ironically, courtesy of the reviled Margaret Thatcher, was a wealthier, ‘more aspirational’ noveau middle class whose support Labour would need if it wanted to regain power. This Blair did successfully by dropping Clause IV of the Labour Party constituency (which stipulated that ‘All enemies of the solid, honest, unpretentious working man and woman must, under standing order One, be lined up against any nearby wall when apprehended and shot without mercy’) and admitting to driving a Ford Mondeo, on the understanding that the Ford Mondeo is the middle-class car of choice. But Blair could not afford to alienate Labour’s core supporters in the process and had somehow to keep them sweet, too, and so to woo those, he sporadically dropped his aitches (‘Hs’) to demonstrate that although he was the barrister son of a barrister who had attended the ‘leading Scottish public school’ Fettes, he could still mix it with the plebs when political expediency demanded it.
Since Blair’s ‘landmark speech’ in 1993 to drop Clause IV, wooing ‘the middle ground’ is now an accepted and quite vital political principle, which both the Left and the Right in Britain ignore at their peril. And this is exactly what young Miliband is doing in his Telegraph piece.
(Note to non-British readers: Ed is the younger brother of David, a former foreign secretary, who also wanted to be Labour’s leader, but who was pipped at the post by young Ed. David was very pissed off, believing the leadership was his by right. He is currently rumoured to be agitating against younger brother Ed in the hope that when and if young Ed fucks up, he might graciously take over the reins).
That 'wooing the middle class should be so important merely underlines how obsessed Britain is with ‘class’. The Daily Mail (who are, to a man and woman, marvellous, marvellous people producing a marvellous, marvellous paper — I know which side my bread is buttered on) has made Britain’s ‘middle classes’ is own and delights in it. Earlier this year it almost parodied itself when it declared there was now definite proof that Jesus Christ was middle class.
The story (if you can't be arsed to follow the link and find out for yourself, is based on a claim that what had previously been translated from the Greek as 'carpenter' should actually be translated as 'architect'. It seems Joseph, Christ's father was, in fact, an architect and, as every Daily Mail reader knows, architect are by definition 'middle class'. Thus, runs the subtext of the Mail story, Christ was 'one of us'. To put the Mail's pretensions into perspective, Lord Salisbury, who was Prime Minister three times at the end of the 19th century, once noted that the Mail 'was written by office boys for office boys'. No great fan of the Mail, then.
Then, last week, a day after Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton, the Mail's op-ed page rejoyced that finally — finally — a member of the middle class would be Queen and ‘save the monarchy’ (not that I knew it was in any imminent danger — no one tells me anything). In publishing these stories, the Mail is most definitely parodying itself, but, to be fair (as I say, I know which side my bread is buttered on) it is only providing its readers with what it feels its readers want. And if one thing is certain, Mail readers are desperate to be middle class and desperate to be reassured that the middle class are the salt of the earth. Desperate. It is one reason why they read the Mail.
All the other papers, of course, play exactly the same game: the Sun plays up its rough and ready credentials, because is calculates that is what will go down well with its readers; the Mirror still — still after all these years — bangs the working-class man drum; the Telegraph does the same as the Mail, with the added precaution that it pretends all its readers wear uniform (Telegraphy readers like to be seen as 'military men' or the wives of 'military men' or if not that, they like it to be acknowledged that, by Jove, they know one end of a rifle from the other). The Guardian portrays itself as being on the side of the angels because it knows its readers like to see themselves as intelligent, discerning people with a conscience who care ('Well, someone's got to'); the Independent attempts the same kind of thing but also plays, subtly, the middle class card, and The Times — well, as far I am concerned The Times gives the term ‘middle-brow’ and even worse name than it already has.
But I have gone off track: I was talking (ranting? rambling?) about the British obsession with class. I have a theory, admittedly not based on any research at all, that it all started with the Norman Conquest in 1006 when the indigenous Anglo-Saxons were treated as sub-human by the Norman invaders and a real hatred grew. And make not mistake, there is still something akin to that real hatred of ‘the other side’ abroad in this country today. There is, and always, will be a lot of loose talk about Britain these days being ‘classless’ Oh really?
There are in Britain something like five different middle classes, and none particularly likes the others. They will all get on famously in public, but in private when no one can hear them, all the old ‘class hatreds’ are resurrected. Some middle classes will not thank you for being identified with some of the other middle class. That is how the concept of ‘upper middle class evolved’: it is a haven for those who, in all honesty, could not describe themselves as ‘upper class’, but who still feel a tad superior and are damned if they are going to be lumped together with those they regard as in many ways below the salt.
So, for example, William Windsor’s bride-to-be Kate Middleton, the ‘middle class girl’ whose future as William’s queen so excites the Daily Mail, is the daughter of millionaire parents, who was educated Marlborough College in Wiltshire. She then went on to study history of art and speaking nicely at St Andrews University. In the jargon associated with Britain's obsession with class, she might well be entitled to describe herself as ‘upper middle-class’. Contrast her with other ‘middle class’ folk, who describe themselves thus because they earn comparatively well (in the lower bracket) and, crucially, want to describe themselves thus.
What is so odd about all of this is that it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with wealth and prosperity. It is almost like a caste system: it is how you behave and, in many ways, how you speak (although what with the spread of estuary English and the spread and adoption of many urban whites of immigrant speech patterns, that distinction is becoming increasingly blurred). Then there is the political dimension to ‘class’: some left-wingers — for example the comedian Mark Steele — insist on calling themselves ‘working class’ although they are now anything but. What to them is important is that they are making a political point (and bugger whether or not they are talking complete bollocks).
But the fact is that with the transformation of Britain’s economy in these past 40/50 years from a broadly productive industry into a broadly service industry, and the concomitant disappearance of almost all the country’s heavy industry, there is no longer a clear-cut ‘working class’ as there once was. But that has not spelled an end to this damn stupid obsession with class. And as it seems to have been going on since the Norman Conquest, I don’t think it will ever end.

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Speaking of supermarkets, there is most certainly a class distinction apparent in who shops where. Furthermore, each of those chains (or rather the ad agencies they employ to attract the shopper) is well aware of those distinctions. So Asda staff all wear a rather garish green apron and adopt a very matey attitude to customers as well as play on their store being ‘cheaper’ and providing ‘value’. Nothing will frighten off a class-conscious would-be middle-class shopper than being thought interested in value, the clear implication being they haven’t got quite as much money as they like you to think. Kate Middleton wouldn't shop at Asda and probably not at Sainsbury's. She would most certainly consider Morrisons and Tesco, mainly because they are pretty neutral. Sainsbury, latterly, tries to push itself a little upmarket but tends to shoot itself in the foot. When a branch opened in Bodmin, I went along as was delighted to discover it was stocking quite a range of different pates. Several weeks later that range had been reduced to two. Why, I asked. Because there's not call for a wider range, I was told. Bodmin, is not 'middle class'.
Then there’s Waitrose: unashamedly middle-class to their cotton socks. If you are looking for bread flavoured with olives grown in a certain valley in Tuscany, Waitrose is your heaven. There’s a rather funny joke about the mission statement of Sainsbury’s: to keep the riff-raff out of Waitrose. Says it all, really.

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Finally, there is surely some smartarse out there asking him or herself: exactly why is this chap pfpgowell so himself so preoccupied with 'Britain's obsession with class'? Could it be that he is, ironically, equally obsessed, which might explain this post?
Well, all I'll say to that is any more in that vein and I'll come around and break your windows, whether you live in the Ukraine, the U.S., Canada, Russia, South Korea or St Mabyn (which is just down the road. That's, possibly, an impeccable working class response, though the chances of a working class blogger using the word 'impeccable' are virtually nil.
Bring on the revolution, I might finally make a little money wheeler-dealing on the black market.

The magic of the market, or how you can pay whatever you like for the same radio (usually way over the odds). Oh, and bad losers, I loathe them

Now here’s a thing. If you have the good fortune to fly BA, you will, at some point, be informed that you can benefit from many inflight bargains, items which, according to the airline, are substantially cheaper if bought in the air than down below. One such item featured in the airline’s inflight magazine and also on its ‘BA Shop’ website is a rather neat and very useful portable wifi internet radio which also doubles as an FM receiver. It is small – only around 10cm by 7cm by 3cm – but the sound is exceptional for a radio that size. I know, because I own one. If you buy one onboard your BA flight, you are promised a bargain: the radio (BA’s is pictured left) is being sold for just £85, which, BA assures us, is £44 off the ‘recommended retail price’ of £129. I seem to remember spotting one in the inflight magazine when I shot off to Freiburg for Paul Meyer’s birthday bash. Or perhaps I am just imagining it. But at some point in the past few weeks I came across the radio again and decided I wanted one (at which point I must be honest and admit to being something of a gadget queen, which is why my previous criticism of other gadget queens was a little disingenuous). I don’t actually need one, but that – as I’m sure you’ll all agree – is decidedly beside the point. So I googled it, and came across quite a few sites selling that same radio. I stress that in all instances the radios offered for sale were identical, and my pictures will show that what is offered for sale is always the same model. Nothing much in that, you’ll be saying, so what is the chap burbling on about now? Well, it’s this. On the ebuyer.com website, these radios are being sold as ‘Foehn & Hirsch’ wifi radios by – well, not Foehn & Hirsch because that seemingly solidly German firm doesn’t actually exist: Foehn & Hirsch is a tradename of ebuyer.com. Their reasoning in choosing the name was, no doubt, that the German’s produce quality goods (which, by and large, they do), so the punter is more likely to buy their gear if they believe it to have been put together by efficient German hands. Dixons did a similar thing when all things Japanese were in and began marketing its own-brand gear under the ‘Matsui’ name. On the ebuyer website, you’ll get quite a bargain compared to BA’s bargain. It is selling its radio (left) at £30 off the rrp of £79.99 for just £44.99, which price is all the more remarkable because it has gone to the added expense of having its logo marked on the back of each radio. Quality or what? The identical model is also sold by a firm called Viewquest. and here it will set you back £79. Viewquest, which calls it’s model the WiFi 200 (why 200?) obviously does not feel obliged to pass on any saving to the punter. And on the Amazon site, you’ll find any number of people selling the very same model. Visit Amazon and you will see them for sale at £79, £89 and £99, prices all around BA’s bargain price of £85. That’s where I bought mine. If your are feeling very flush and think that ’bargain prices’ are just for the plebs — people like that do exist; they imagine that paying way over the odds for something marks them out as being rather superior — you could always visit the Langton Info Services, England website and pick up a 'View Quest Portable Internet Radio’ for a very reasonable £109.57, which really does make BA’s offer look like a bargain. If you have decided that you, as one of life’s more superior types, most certainly do want to pay over the odds, but not that much over the odds, buy your 'ViewQuest Pocket Wifi Radio (pictured) for just £89.99 at Firebox.com website. You might on the other hand think £89.99 is still just a tad expensive, but that £44 is far too cheap, and that £79.99 is about right. In that case chunter over to HMV.com and grab your radio there. Then there is a company called Sovos UK which informs the visitor that 'The Sovos UK Wi-Fi Internet radio receives a
prestigious iF Product Design Award!' You can marvel it this superb design on the right, although quite why its 'prestigious' radio is identical to that sold by ViewQuest, Foehn & Hirsch and many others and quite why it's version was singled out for a design award isn't made clear on the website. And anyway, if you want to buy one of these 'prestigious' radios, SOVOS UK redirects you to BA's online shop (see above) although I first came across the company I was browsing eBay where you are able to byt the radio for £80, a little cheaper than the BA Shop version. You can rest assured that it will be the identical to all the others, whatever they are called.
When I first decided my life would be incomplete without one, I did a little hunting and came across the radio on the Amazon site for £58. Ah, I thought, my kind of price, and I bought it. I now wish I had done even more hunting. Then, having used it for several days, it occurred to me that my aunt Ann, who lives in France and listens to Radio 4 a lot, might also want one. She already has two Logik wifi radios (one of which doesn’t work) but the great thing about these is that they are truly portable. So I had a look on eBay and discovered that they are for sale there from various people at a Buy It Now price of around £69. But some people were selling them at auction, and I bought another – boxed and brand new (BNIB in eBay jargon) for £42. Admittedly, had there been more competition, the price might have crept higher, but there wasn’t and it didn’t.
The point is that all of the radios, whether from ebuyer.com, Viewquest, BA or the dodgy chap down the pub are identical. All are made in China and none has any distinguishing feature, which allows them to be sold by anyone who wants to do so, under any name they choose to sell them. And they are also free to charge whatever they want, whether at BA ‘£44-saving’ bargain price of £85 or the £58.98 I picked my first one up at. Isn’t the market marvellous? It might explain the agony the eurozone is now going through. It seems you can now buy Irish, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and, most recently, Belgian govenment debts ('bonds') at rock bottom prices.

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Heard in the news this morning that Belgian bonds are already being eyed up as a bit dodgy. The 'euro contagion' is spreading. Also on the news was an appalling report that the cholera epidemic in Haiti is also spreading. I wonder if they are somehow related?

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One of the reasons why I bought a Samsung laptop running Windows (to but it into context, in addition to the two iBooks, one Powerbook and on works IBM Lenovo I had at the time. I have since sold one of the iBooks) was because since XP (I think, it might have been earlier) Microsoft has run an online gaming facility, including playing backgammon online around the world. And I do enjoy playing backgammon. The graphics in XP were pretty Mickey Mouse, but the Samsung came with Windows 7 is something else entirely, lovely graphics. But to get to the point: I loathe bad losers. All to often if, in a match of the best five games, an opponent knows he or she (but I’m guessing mainly he) is going to lose, he simply quits. I don’t do that. If I am going to lose, I lose. I’ll repeat: I loathe bad losers.