More concerts in France, and I open my big mouth to diss - slightly - the World’s Greatest Novelist

I’ve been here in Illats, south of Bordeaux, for a week and it is hot. Yes, I know it is also hot in Old Blighty, but it is a little hotter here. The heatwave in Britain is most probably something of an aberration – in several years time folk will be talking about ‘the summer of 2013’ as we still talk about ‘the summer of 1976’ when we were all encouraged to stop pissing and pooing to save water, eat off palm leaves to save on the washing up and to recycle our G&T ice-cubes (sounds impossible, I know, but you would be surprised what skills you can acquire quite rapidly when needs must).

Not that there will be any ‘water-saving measures this summer, however dire it gets and however burnt to a cinder lawns throughout Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Hampshire become. The government would simply not dare after all the floods and rain we had until three weeks ago. There must be enough water down there in our acquifers (or whatever the technical term is) to last us two or three scorching summers, so a hosepipe ban is surely oompletely out of the question.

I am staying, as I have been for, I think, the past three years with my stepmother’s aunt and accompanying her to concerts. Her husband isn’t interested (and, anyway, he has been ill these past few days, although he is slowly recovering – according to the doctor ‘there’s a lot of what he’s got about among old people in these temperatures’). Because my aunt stayed home to keep an eye on here husband last week, I went to the first concert, on Thursday evening, on my own. It given by a group of seven singers who call themselves Scandicus and sing late 15th, early 16th music a cappella. It’s not to everyone’s taste but I like that kind of music a great deal. The next concert was by Maxim Vengerov and a pianist called Itamar Golan (I looks rather like what I should imagine a Mossad field agent would look like – he looks liked the kind of toughie you wouldn’t want to mix it with).

They played duos by Beethoven, Schubert, Franck and Saint-Saens, followed by two encore pieces by Brahms, both thoroughly rousing, designed, I suspect, to get the audience to demand a third encore, which we got. It was a gentle piece by Faure designed to calm us all down again and indeed we did and afterwards all went quietly. My aunt commented that she though Vengerov had gained weight and that his fingers seemed thicker, especially around the joints, and as she had a sister who developed appalling arthritis and gained a great deal of weight because of the steroids she had to take, was wondering whether Vengerov, too, is developing arthritis.

There was to be a concert on Saturday, but that was cancelled, so our next concert is tonight. Apart from attending those concerts I have been doing very little (which suits me well). Yesterday, we went off to Bordeaux and called in on a 92-year-old former colleague of my aunt’s, a Liverpudlian woman who met and married a Frenchman just after the war and has been living in France for the past 62 years, but still hasn’t lost he Scally accents. She also rates in my book because she can still laugh at the silly jokes I sometimes hear and pass on to her which my aunt will treat with sheer and disdain. (An example: a chap went to the doctor and asked him whether he could give him anything for persistent wind. The doctor gave him a kite.)

My aunt, who is 82-years-old, is rather crotchety these days and anything not being exactly in the place she is accustomed to it being has been earning me a stern rebuke on each occasion, even though I have no idea I had done wrong. There are several things I always look out for and have done so for the past three years – ensuring the lavatory seat is down if I take a leak during the night, for example, and not overfilling the kettle (a bad one, that), but even though I say so myself, I am a considerate guest, never take anything for granted and am getting just a tad cheesed off at being treated like a naughty, rather dense schoolboy. But she is 82, after all, and naturally I say nothing. Lord knows what I shall be like at that age, if I ever actually get there.

. . .

I have just finished reading The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I bought the novel after seeing the film and was rather taken by it. And I only saw the film because I had watched Bad Company with Jeff Bridges, which was rather good, and was looking for other films by its director, Robert Benton. His film stars Anthony Hookins, Ed Harris and Nicole Kidman and is a reasonably entertaining potboiler. Actually, that’s unfair. Hopkins and Harris are both good actors and give great performances. Kidman was thoroughly miscast, but I didn’t realise that until I had read the novel.

As for that novel, well I should say straight off that it is more complex than the film. Indeed, like many films ‘of the book’ it is more a film based on material presented in the book. One character, in particular is wholly excised from the film’s version, a young female and highly ambitious French professor called Delphine Roux. Oddly, although she is well-realised in the novel, she did strike me as being something to close to a plot device for comfort, and doesn’t really even make an appearance in the novel until the last quarter. And dare I say this? After all Roth is now regarded as one of America’s ‘great’ novelist hand has been ‘awarded prizes’, not least the Kellogg’s Golden Wheatflake for producing literary masterpiece after literary masterpiece while starting each working day on a bowl of cornflakes.

But in my extremely humble, though it has to be said, firmly held opinion, The Human Stain is rather overwritten. It has to be said that given Roth’s talent for the telling phrase what he does supply in excess paragraph after paragraph is very readable and very entertaining, but I sincerely feel his novel would have gained by being trimmed by a third and perhaps even a half. The trouble is that for the past 40 years, it seems, novels in America are sold by weight, so there is no reason for a writer to limit himself. And given all ‘the prizes’ Roth and others have received, I dare say there is a tad too much deference in his publisher’s office when Phil (or one of their other star novelists) turns up with his or her latest manuscript. (‘Do you know, Philip, I hardly thought that it could even be possible, but, by God, I do think this is even better than your last novel!’) Anyone reading this might or, more probably, might not have read The Human Stain, but I would love to be able to hear another’s point of view.

Anyway, what do I know?

. . .

Yesterday, I took a little time out and made my own way home from Bordeaux. I was looking for a pleasant bar with a shady courtyard where I might sit quietly on my own and enjoy a cigar or two and a glass of lager or six. As it turned out, and despite meandering through the countryside as I mad safe, I couldn’t find any, so I settled for a small bar in Podensac, the slightly bigger town near where I am staying. The Tour de France was on the telly, but inside the bar was empty. Outside, on the street, were four tables, and I can confirm that

1) the French also have the chavs (‘les chavées’, perhaps), and

2) that the bloody awful love affair the Westen world now has with getting a tattoos all over your body is doing exceptionally well here in the corner of south-western France. The pic below, in keeping with the bar

(though I did still manage to enjoy my cigars and lager) was taken on the way back from ‘la toilette’ at the back to my table.

And then there was me: I decided to bite the bullet and throw off the veil

It’s a strange thing writing a blog such as this. Over the years – I’ve been writing it since late 2009 – it has been a bit of this, a bit of that, and most recently nothing more than one punter among a million cyber punters giving his two ha’porth worth about what’s in the news. That, I’m the first to admit, makes me the equivalent of some digital pub bore. When I started this blog, I thought it might simply be the continuation of the written diary I kept from around 1981 to 1995.

That diary proved useful, especially when I was going through a horrible end-of-romance and needed somehow to sound off. There were other things in it, but that sole fact, that it was at heart merely a litany of ‘poor me, oh poor poor me’ gripes and the second sole fact that my writing is unreadable (I won’t describe my writing as ‘illegible’ because that implies it is messy and slovenly which it isn’t, in fact when viewed from a distance it is rather attractive. It’s just that it is so difficult to read that even I find it very hard to decipher) means that I have never read a single entry and I’m certain never shall. It was written in hardbound A4 ledgers and they are now, about 12 of them, sitting in a box in Guy’s House, a renovated very small cottage at next to The Hollow, which has now become nothing more than a depository but which could easily be converted into living accommodation – in fact, when it was renovated a small bathroom with shower was included for that specific purpose, although who it was intended should live there I really don’t know.

The problem with a public blog such as this is that it is no longer private, so I don’t feel able to record private thoughts and happenings. It isn’t that I have anything to hide, but as far as privacy is concerned, it is not and cannot be the equivalent of a diary. I know that at least three people I know read it every so often (my sister, a friend I worked with for a long time until he retired about a year ago, and another old boy of the Oratory who I don’t I have never actually met but who, in an odd way, I feel I know a little) occasionally dip in and read my latest ramblings. Apart from them I know, courtesy of Google’s stats service, that folk in Russia, Germany, France, the US, Turkey and even China dip in, probably as a result of googling a certain topic and happening on it. How many of them are regular visitors I don’t know. But maybe I should bite the bullet, maybe I should, every so often, use this more as a diary as well as sounding off in full pub bore fashion about this, that and t’other.

Were I to do so, I would record that I am feeling, and have been feeling for some time, curiously flat. I don’t know why, but I am conscious that recently in my life – this is the only way I can put it – activity is compensating for action. I seem to be going through the motions. My week is neatly divided into four days of work and three days of being at home. I enjoy being at work and I love being at home with my children, but I am very conscious of the routine.

Highlights – make that ‘highlights’ – occur on Tuesday mornings when I check online to see my wage has arrived in my main bank account so that, given the direct debits and standing orders I have set up, I shall not inadvertently overdraw, followed by a second ‘highlight’ on Wednesday mornings when I check online to make sure the various standing orders, all of which are to pay bills or top up other accounts intended to pay bills when those bills are due have functioned as they should. Every Wednesday I work a single shift and head off west, home to Cornwall. I invariably stop of at a pub in South Petherton if there’s football on Sky, or in Sticklepath, on the edge of Darmoor, if there isn’t, for a couple of pints of cider and a cigar or two (and, by the way, I always buy them abroad where they are a damn sight cheaper and tonight smoked my last two).

Then it’s the routine at home: drop in on my stepmother, who had a stroke six years ago, to pick up a shopping list, do her shopping and later spend a little time with her; doing the quiz work I do for the Mail for a little extra cash that night; Fridays droping in again (I see her every day as she only lives five minutes’ walk away) followed by quite a bit of time-wasting. Saturday is always rather overshadowed by the fact that I’m off up to London the following day when the week starts again. It’s not an onerous regime and I am very conscious that in many ways I am quite lucky.

Yet for quite some time now I have been feeling flat, understanding in my heart that activity, which is fundamentally superficial, keeps my mind off the fact that there is no action. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who feels like that. Perhaps it is merely a function of age (you might have gathered that I am no longer a spring chicken and am, for example, utterly invisible to the pretty young and youngish women I encounter every day.

When you are young, you seem to imagine you face a lot of problems, many of which have more to do with a certain insecurity and a hidden lack of confidence than any real problems (although that is not to belittle those young folk who do face real problems – we are getting more and more aware of the incidents of sexual abuse of the young taking place which a great many young, for one reason or another, feel unable to reveal to anyone and so suffer horribily in silence.) But those, essentially mundane problems are not things you would necessarily discuss with anyone, except perhaps a good and close friend. But they are a concommitant of ‘growing up’. What you do have, as a young person, however have is your hopes and your dreams. Those dreams, I’m sure, could well almost always be bollocks, but that isn’t the point. The point is that you don’t know that they might well be bollocks, you don’t know that there’s a lot more to life, that there are a lot more difficulties which you will face and which you will or will not overcome. Who knows, you might well have the wherewithal to realise those dreams against the odds. Many do.

What you don’t yet know, don’t even suspect, is that quite apart from not being the most important individual alive – every so often we in our salad days suspect that that is the case – that there are several tens of individuals in your own small circle; several hundred in our immediate community; several thousands living locally, several tens of thousands a little further afield and several billions the world over who feel just as keenly as you do that they are the centre of the world. And with all those egos clashing against each other you can bet your bottom dollar that things are not going to pan out as smoothly as you would like and, when you are young, expect. (Naturally, the strength of this conviction of being the centre of the world will vary from individual to individual and, more pertinently, from culture to culture. I believe the Chinese don’t have anything close to the notion of ‘individuality’ which we spoilt brats in the West have, but on a personal level I’m sure each one of those billions lives in China will feel ‘special’ even if they are not treated as ‘special’. ) It does, however, never leave us.

We still all feel we are the centre of the world. Unfortunately, that world seems at some point to become ever smaller and so what does leave us are those hope and dreams. Ask yourself: just what hopes and dreams does my 76-year-old stepmother have who suffered a stroke six years ago and who now, where once she was a very active woman who spent many hours a day in her garden, is now more or less confined to her armchair and kept amused by Escape To The Country and Bargain Hunt? Precious few, I should imagine.

This whole entry was sparked this even when I came home, at around 8pm, and found my younger brother, with whom I stay when I am in London, flaked out and gone to sleep. I worry about him. He might now be 55, but he has taken to describing himself as ‘old’. Good Lord, what is he talking about! Yet it was the catalyst to this, the ramble above, and I have decided to start posting a rather more personal blog. It will not, however, appear here, but in the blog adjacent to this which I have I have called My Second. Feel free to dip in once I start posting entries, but be warned: it might be messy and horribly self-indulgent.

Christ, what a ramble. But, oh well.

Arab spring? Apparently, if we all make a great, co-ordinated effort and all fart in unison, we can bring peace, tranquillity, freedom and democracy to the Middle East

A few years ago I heard this description of a standard journalistic technique: ‘Simplify, then exaggerate’. That is largely what we do all the time. So, for example, you might come across a headline such as ‘Can farting cure cancer?’ in the health section of your average middle-market tabloid, something like the Good Health section of the Daily Mail. ‘My, my,’ you think, ‘now there’s good news. I do seem to fart quite a bit, and if I develop cancer - why, it might not be all that serious after all! Must read on.’ So you do read on and gather that the vast majority of those of had been cured of their cancers - an astonishing 100pc in fact - farted at least once a day. Significant or what!

So by a journalistic process tried and tested on innumerable suckers for a great many years - the creative use of statistics - a new truth is established: farting might well cure cancer! But note well the word ‘might’ - that is your get-out clause. When your conclusion is not only questioned by doctors and researchers - well, not questioned but described as 24-carat cack - you can airily point out that you were only suggesting that farting might help to cure cancer. You weren’t claiming it definitely could cure cancer, oh no, a great many other treatments are also involved, but as statistically an astonishing 100pc . . . you are already more than halfway out of the woods in as far as all sensible people have already completely lost interest in your argument and written you off as just another unscrupulous hack.

Before you run away with the idea that the technique of ‘simplify, then exaggerate’ is one only employed by the good folk who cobble together the health section of your average middle-market tabloid, something like the Good Health section of the Daily Mail, take a good look at the health sections of other newspapers; and then take a good look at all the other sections of you rag of choice. And don’t restrict yourselves to our printed media: radio and television do the same, both in Britain and the rest of the universe. It’s known as ‘lazy journalism’ and it is very, very, very effective. Please don’t run away with the idea that it is only ‘middle-market’ papers who use the technique: here in Britain The Times uses it (though in my view The ‘Thunderer’ is more middle than up market despite its pretensions and the pretensions of its readers), as do the papers read by all saints, the Guardian and The Independent.

There is this touching idea here in the ‘developed’ world that the task of the journalist is to bring the truth to the people, to ensure our freedoms and, generally, to be a thorn in the side of the nasty folk in authority whose every waking moment is given over to coming up with new ways of restricting those freedoms. Wrong. The task of the journalist is to make the paper or programme he or she is working for as interesting as possible in order to attract as many readers, viewers or listeners as possible to allow his or her bosses to charge those taking out advertising space in the paper or in an ad slot top dollar. So running headlines such as ‘Can farting cure cancer’ is not quite as daft as it seems.

As for ‘lazy journalism’ - and the irony is, of course, that the phrase is usually used by politicians smarting from the fact that yet again they have been caught with their fingers in the till, so we are here dealing with a vary bad case of pots and kettles - dreaming up catchy phrases is another useful technique. So, for example, for many years a child born outside marriage (the quaint phrase was once ‘born out of wedlock’) was known as ‘a bastard’.

Then, about 30 years ago (it might well only have been 29 years ago, so don’t hold me to a figure) a sub-editor on The Sun came up with the phrase ‘love child’, which sounds a lot nicer than ‘bastard’. A ‘love child’ is, of course, no different to a ‘bastard’, but that isn’t the point: the point is that a ‘love child’ - the implication being that the child is the result of a true, romantic love worthy of Heloise and Abelard rather than just a drunken shag in the back seat in the pub car park - is far more acceptable. But what is notable is that today girls proudly refer to their ‘love child’, thereby implying that there is something far nobler about the little tyke than one born to a married couple, and the phrase has become part of our language, all thanks to a sub who was good at his job.

Another such phrase, one which was just as vacuous as ‘love child’ but which helped to shape how a nation thought, was invented after the death of Princess Diana. She, a perfectly pleasant though apparently rather dim young woman, became ‘the people’s princess’. The phrase was said to have been coined by one Alastair Campbell, an ex-tabloid hack and the then prime minister Tony Blair’s press secretary cum henchman. He knew what he was doing and as far as I know ‘the people’s princess’ is still in current use. What fascinates me is how two or three little words can seemingly alter the mindset of a whole generation. And here are two more little words which seem to have completely bamboozled us: Arab Spring.

Oh, the optimism, hope and promise conveyed by that phrase: after decades of tyranny (the fact that the tyrants in question were firm and extremely useful allies of us here in the West notwithstanding and it really is in very poor taste that you should now mention it), the peoples of various Middle Eastern countries were finally on the verge of breathing deeply the fresh air of freedom: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven!’ This was it: democracy, that panacea for all ills from cancer to farting, was about to be introduced in the Middle East. The people would now have their say! The people would now be allowed free and fair elections! Yes it was an Arab spring!

Well, I have no idea who came up with the phrase, but it is now obvious that it is in very poor taste indeed. To put it bluntly: Arab spring my arse! This is not to suggest that the countries involved would have been better off sticking to the bastards who ran them (sorry, ‘love children’ who ran them), but it is to point out how frighteningly effective a vacuous phrase like ‘Arab spring’ can be.

The reality is, if not worse, hardly any better. Libya might now have rid itself of Colonel Gaddafi, but law and order regularly breaks down in Tripoli and Benghazi where assorted and mutually antagonistic militias vie with ineffective government forces for control. Syria might well be seeing the last of the Assad family, but the horribly disparate bunch opposing him, lazily referred to as ‘the rebels’ as though they were a coherent opposition, are from what I hear equally as unedifying. Most recently Egypt, which saw a president elected in what was seen as a free and fair vote, is now once again under military rule after a coup, though a coup apparently welcomed and approved of by Egypt’s urban liberal elite, so we have now been introduced to a novel concept: the good military coup.

As I pointed out in my last entry, black can apparently be white. Well! So much for the ‘Arab spring’. Yet, there are undoubtedly a great many in the West who are not too concerned with detail and are far more partial to a catchy phrase and who still think: Arab spring, eh, so it really is coming good at last. Dream on.

. . .

It would, however, be unfair of me not to mention Tunisia. That country also had a revolution, followed by elections in which a mildly Islamic government was returned to power, and as far as I know things have so far worked out. Fingers crossed.

When black is, in fact, white. Or when a military coup is not a military coup because the urban liberal elite say so.

Now here’s a pretty dilemma to keep all those who think themselves on the side of the angels happy: a military coup has taken place in Egypt which has removed a democratically elected president, but not only has it not been condemned by assorted liberals and those who dress to the left, it has even been welcomed as a Good Thing. So is it Long Live Military Coups after many, many years of hissing and booing whenever some swarthy general or other seized power ‘to preserve’ stability? I rather doubt it, actually, but over at the Guardian here in Britain - and on papers of a similar persuasion in other countries - there is quite a lot of confusion.

Today the get-out clause has been - that is the means by which various folk have been bending over backwards and arguing that, you know, in special circumstances, and purely as an exceptional case, you understand, I mean that is important and it is imperative that this is not regarded as setting a precedent, black can, on occasion be white - that President Morsi, for that is he, was not governing on behalf of everyone, that he had not - despite only being in power for a year - improved the economy and that generally he was not the kind of chap good Guardian readers in the more affluent suburbs of Cairo would have in for a G&T and nibbles.

There is, unfortunately, no suggestion that he has been getting heavy-handed and that his secret police have been banging on doors in the middle of the night and carting off those inimical to the regime. That’s a shame as that would have made the coup just a little easier to justify. In fact, apart from being quite open that he would like slowly to develop Egypt into more of a Muslim state Morsi doesn’t seem to have done much wrong. Well, there was something unacceptable about him: he wasn’t to the taste of the urban liberal elite of Cairo and other cities.

It is important to remember that Morsi was voted in by a majority and that there were no suggestions, at the time or since, that his election was in any way tainted. The word is now - after all the coup must somehow be justified, especially as it is being supported by that urban liberal elite - that many who voted for him only did so because the other choice was a former prime minister under former president Murbarak and that Morsi, as the acceptable face of the Muslim Brotherhood, was the better bet. So that’s OK then, is it. I must admit that I can understand that point of view and that aspect of the dilemma, but it is hugely and utterly irrelevant.

The thing to do - as Morsi’s supporters have been pointing out these past few days - is to do what folk in other democratic countries do: wait until the next elections and demonstrate your disapproval with your vote. Why should Egypt and Egypt’s urban liberal elite be any different? As far as I am concerned one indication of how phoney it all is - that in an honest world black is never white - is that a great deal has been made by those of that urban liberal elite that ‘there were loads of woman of all ages among the protesters’. This was a rather sly way of suggesting that of course Morsi’s supporters were wrong ‘uns because in some ill-defined way they were against women.

In fact, one particularly inane comment from a Guardian reader in its comment section was that ‘Morsi supported and encouraged female genital mutilation’. Well, all I can say is that wasn’t the Morsi championed by the urban liberal elite both in Egypt and over here when he was standing as an alternative candidate to the former prime minister. That claim is rather more recent. And it also sits rather uneasily with credible reports that there were quite a number of sexual assaults on women demonstrating on behalf of the liberal elite.

The radio news have been full of discussion as to whether this was a coup or not. Some argue that it wasn’t, that it can’t be, because it is just the previous revolution of two years ago being concluded. And, in a sense, that is true, but it still doesn’t not make it a coup. I know too little about the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi to judge whether he ‘would have been good for Egypt’ or not, but I do know from what I have heard on the media that he was and is very far from the kind of dictator Assad in Syria or Gaddafi in Libya were.

At the end of the day it is just another demonstration of the fact that when push comes to shove principles aren’t worth really worth a dime: we can drone on about them until we’re blue in the face but in essence they are merely something the leisured West talks about when they are not debating ‘the human condition’. I, for one, am not going to pretend that black is white just because it suits those ‘on the side of the angels’.

Why the widow in Helmand is no different to the widow in Kettering

When you try to find out how many people have been killed in Afghanistan since the Coalition started its operations there after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York and go, for example to iCasualties.org, you’ll get all kinds of figures: deaths broken down by nationality, by province, by year and by month, and you’ll even, if that’s the kind of info you’re after, find the names of those who have died. It’s pertinent, however, that all these deaths are ‘Coalition’ deaths and what you won’t find is a figure for the number of Afghanis killed, whether they were ‘hostile’ or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Try googling the phrase ‘Afghanistan deaths’. That’s pretty comprehensive, isn’t it, and should surely take you to the sites giving you the information you want.

If like me you want to find out specifically how many Afghanis have been killed - whether ‘hostile’ or who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - you’ll come up empty-handed. Listed are sites giving you ‘military deaths’, ‘Coalition deaths’, the number of UK soldiers killed and the number of US soldiers killed. For anything else, you’ll have to dig a little deeper. I did, and this is what I have found: Wikipedia’s page ‘‪Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)‬’ begins ‘The decade-long War in Afghanistan (2001-present) has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians directly from insurgent and foreign military action, as well as the deaths of possibly tens of thousands of Afghan civilians indirectly as a consequence of displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, and crime resulting from the war.’

The Coalition mission, let me remind you, is called ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. For the record a total of 3,343 of the Coalition forces have died, of which 2,245 were from the US, 444 from the UK and the rest - 654 - were ‘others’, that is members of a force from other countries who were strong-armed to take part by the US and its junior partner - let’s not kid ourselves - the UK to give the whole bloody pointless exercise a spurious respectability - you couldn’t otherwise really call it a ‘coalition’, could you.

Now you have the figures, let me pose a simply question: how does 3,343 compare with ‘thousands, possibly tens of thousands’? It doesn’t, does it. Oh, and an estimate by a former British ambassador to Afghanistan, ‪Sherard Cowper-Coles‬ (that’s Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles to you Americans and no, he didn’t grow up on a council estate in Northamptonshire, not with a name like that), is that the whole shooting match has cost the UK around £40 billion since 2001. Lord knows how much it has cost the US.

There have been a great many critics of the West’s invasion of Afghanistan - I might as be honest and call a spade a spade - and I am by no means the first. In response our governments here in Britain are always on the back foot. They will try to justify their action - started by Blair who, as far as I can see, never let pass an opportunity to suck up to Uncle Sam, such is his mysterious pathology - by point out out ‘how many schools have now been built’, that ’30,000 girls now attend school’, that Afghanis can now take part in elections’.

These three points, and others they make, are undoubtedly true - and admirable - but don’t take us for fools, please. Those justifications are all post-hoc. Dubya Bush didn’t wake up one day and realise that his mission in life was to ensure girls as well as boys in Afghanistan deserved a good education, and that, by jingo!, he was going to make sure they got one, whatever the cost in human lives and hard cash. He sent in US troops - would invaded Afghanistan really be inappropriate here? - because

Success! The Coalition can demonstrate progress is bringing enduring freedom to the people of Afghanistan

‘intelligence’ suggested one Osama bin Laden, the evil genius behind the destruction of the Twin Towers was holed up in a cave in the mountains on the Afghani/Pakistani border. And Blair, ever eager for the brownie points and with one eye on his epitaph went in with him. It was only when - yet again - the West came horribly unstuck in Afghanistan, as did the Soviets before them, that in view of the mounting number of Coalitions deaths and other casualties it began coming up with all kinds of bullshit to ‘justify’ its military action there - making sure Health and Safety legislation was adequately observed, clamping down on blatant disregard for planning laws, that kind of thing. Ordnung muß sein!

It was always going to end in tears, of course, and now the Coalition, finally acknowledging that it is on a hiding to nothing, is trying to persuade the Taliban to enter ‘peace talks’. The Taliban, of course, who know a three-legged racing stallion when they see one, aren’t really that bothered. Why should they be? OK, so they have ‘an office’ in Doha, Qatar (and, I don’t doubt, adequate expenses accounts to go with it) and a website, but it will take all the skills Sir William Todger and Trent Buckweed (a the British and American diplomats leading the talks) can muster to avoid giving the impression that ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ is just another embarrassing fuck-up in a long line of embarrassing fuck-ups.

What of those Afghanis deaths, both ‘insurgent’ and civilian? Our oh-so fragrant Margaret Thatcher went purple with rage during the Falklands War when BBC observed that that ‘the widow in Portsmouth is no different from the widow of Buenos Aires’, but I am on the side of the BBC and as far as I am concerned the widow in Helmand province is no different from the widow in Cardiff or Scunthorpe or Wichita’ or wherever else the dead squaddie was from. And this might also be a good point to record that if you want to blame anyone for the fuck-up don’t blame servicemen and woman sent out there: blame the politicians and their PR folk who like to think a conflict or two always looks good in a biography.

I am, of course, pissing in the wind. By railing against the rampant hypocrisy conveyed by casualty figures that record ‘Coalition’ deaths in minute detail but don’t record a single Afghani death I am doing nothing more than making myself look like a naive twat. It’s life, Patrick, it’s the way of the world, dear boy, has always been thus and shall always be thus, no go and lie down and think no more on it.

But...

(Not for the first time) I earwig. And very little joy with the Prince track, thanks to Warner's no bloody piracy policy. Well! Then there’s more middlebrow ‘original British drama to whinge about and I have a good word to say about Richard, Duke of York, better known as Richard III

I am currently sitting in a pub after work and eavesdropping on another conversation and I can’t say it makes fascinating listening. What it does do is remind me how people – and I’m sorry to say that also includes me – are so able to believe their own bullshit so easily. I try not to, but I’m certain I don’t succeed.

At the next table (we are outside the pub under large umbrellas, which is all for the best because it is also raining, with me here because I want to smoke a cigar with my pint of Addlestones cider, though why the two I am eavesdropping on are out here, I can’t say, because neither is smoking) is a middle-aged woman and a young chap. He is 26. I know that because he has said so. From what I can gather he is a friend or acquaintance of her son Justin. I first notice her when she jumped the queue at the bar (it’s the Devonshire in Marloes Road, Kensington) while I was waiting to be served. We Brits are always at a loss when that happens and don’t know what to do. Well, actually, I do know what to do, but in the interests of peace and quiet I don’t do it. But it did rather piss me off. It wasn’t that I was desperate for that pint, it’s just I don’t very much like folk who jump queues.

I went outside and sat down and only then noticed it was the same woman. What made my ears prick up (and a word to those who might not have gathered: hacks eavesdrop – it’s sometimes called earwigging – a lot. We don’t do it for any particularly reason, but we do do it) was when the young chap, who seems to be on some course or other – from what he has does said he’s at ‘art school’ - declared that he wasn’t yet to convince that his plan to get an education was necessary who his career path would pan out – he might well decide at some future date to ‘open a shop’. The next thing I hear is that he is working – I assume as an intern, but I don’t know how these things are arranged – as   MP’s researcher. A little later he was talking about perhaps guiding his ‘career path’ into becoming a ‘special advisor’, though quite how that works out with also ‘opening a shop’ I really don’t know.

Here are a few more details in no particular order: later this year he’s off to New York where his brother now lives (and presumably he’ll be staying with his brother. His brother is only a year and a half older than he is, studied art history, but decided to get a ‘real job’ and now works for Vogue. His brother has his own office. Through his father, the young chap has relatives in Italy, and his mother is – in his words – from a well-to-do family in Ireland. While he was talking about his family, the woman – and I still can’t work out exactly why she is having a drink with him (she’s no looker, but might have been about 30 years ago). He, and presumably his brother, went to Westminster, her son, presumably Justin, went to St Paul’s. She is, for some reason, definitely flattering him.

He’s planning to do a Phd, but he hasn’t started yet, but apparently ‘people start to take you a little more seriously’ when they know you are going to do one. He got a First. He’s thinking of applying to Harvard. She has some kind of ‘network’ and he is going to be added to her ‘big list’. No idea what it is. At all. It doesn’t help that my hearing isn’t what it was. And now I’m getting bored with earwigging/eavesdropping. I’ve not heard anything interesting, and all really. He’s now talking about possibly joining the Civil Service or perhaps ‘going into lobbying’. I’ve always been rather baffled by folk who plan a ‘career path’. I never had one, but then that is possibly no surprise. They are now leaving. They’ve now gone. So much for earwigging.

. . .

Well, posting the Prince track here was a waste of time. It seems – quite understandably – Warner don’t like folk listening to tracks for free which they otherwise would have to pay for. But you can still hear the track I’m talking about here.

. . .

A new three-part series has started on the BBC here in Britain which confirms the BBC’s undoubted ability to produce middlebrow drama with high production values. So high are those values, in fact, that they remind one of nothing less than the sumptuously filmed ads for Hovis and other well-known products.

The series is called The White Queen and follows the fortunes of Lady Elizabeth Woodville, a ‘commoner’ with whom King Edward IV fell in love, Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, and Lady Anne Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwich, known as ‘the Kingmaker’, and wife of Richard III, he of the gammy arm - apparently - and a crooked spine - definitely (his skeleton was recently dug up from a car park in Leicester.

I’ve only so far seen the first episode, the one about Elizabeth Woodville, and I might - or might not - be bothered to see the second. My reluctance is due to the fact that however much the BBC might like to trail the bloody series as ‘original British drama’, it is pretty average stuff. (‘Original British drama’ sounds like one of those descriptions invented by the bright lads and lasses in the publicity department which, on reflection, means less and less. As opposed to what: ‘unoriginal British drama like, for example, Hamlet and Coriolanus? The Rivals? Lady Windermere’s Fan? Forgive me for pointing it out, but in their day all these plays, and many more, both good, mediocre and bad, were ‘original’. So what does ‘original’ mean? But in Middlebrow Land it does sound good.

The Sunday Times did the same (and perhaps still does, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t read it) when they would trail something as ‘an important new series’. Important? How would we know? And the Sunday Times is also responsible for its crass ‘Rich List’. In a similar way the Guardian, Observer and The Independent compile spurious list such as ‘the 50 most influential gays and lesbians in Britain’. Who, except those on the list and their friends and hangers-on, gives a fuck?

But back to The White Queen, or rather Richard III. I am no historian (the only ‘important’ date I know is November 21, 1949. It’s the day I was born in the Peppard Road, Caversham), but from what I know of Richard, it seems unlikely the his character suddenly underwent some kind of transformation and that a man renown for insisting everyone - his nobles as well as his commoners - being subject to the rule of law while he was governing the North of England for his brother Edward IV and generally being known for his loyalty and courage, should suddenly become an absolute bastard. He was, let us remember, proclaimed king by the majority of nobles because they felt he was the only man able to keep the peace in a country which was fed up to the back teeth with war.

So what about the ‘Princes in the Tower’ you ask, and the fact that he stuck them there? Well, we should remember that the Tower of London was used as a sanctuary as much as a prison, and one - for me quite convincing - suggestion is that Henry Tudor, something of a opportunist, had the two princes murdered once he had beaten Richard at Bosworth as he regarded them as future trouble. If you are looking for two-faced, paranoid, murderous bastards, Henry Tudor, better known as Henry VII, is a far better candidate than Richard III, and England being the dangerous place it was for many more years to come, it was the victor who wrote the history. But the fact is we shall never know.

Finally: I give you Prince and one of his songs which (for me) stands above the rest (and perhaps it's not quite what you might expect)

There was are recent entry here in which I trailed Prince, but so far never got around to writing it. So here it is. Prince was once one of my bands (the others were The Kinks, The Beatles and Steely Dan), but like almost everyone else, including those three, he seemed to go off the boil just a little as time went on, though it has to be said that Prince off the boil is still ahead of many at their best. Someone once pointed out that after the few years around When Doves Cry and Kiss, he seemed to have lost his gift for striking lyrics.

Then there was the problem - well, I regarded it and regard it as a problem, that because he was so musically gifted, ironically he had a tendency to coast when, for example, he was doing a funk workout (or what was thought of as funk in the Eighties and early Nineties). Perhaps, like too many ‘stars’, he began to believe his own bullshit. Something similar seemed to have happened to Stevie Wonder, who, as far as this punter is concerned really lost his way after. Anyway I gave up buying ‘the latest Prince’ a long time ago, mainly because he had stopped stretching himself. But I still have quite a few of his CDs though I must admit I don’t listen to them half as much as I used to.

This track is from a CD called The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, which was just a collection of recordings he had knocking around which he allowed

Take a listen (and, by the way, I think the UN, the Yanks, the Brits, the Russians, the Chinks, the Frogs, the Krauts and whoever else is available should put aside their differences for a moment and get together to institute a universal ban on the use of the word ‘reality’ in any song. Ever, even if it does rhyme neatly with ‘spoke to me’ and ‘fantasy’).

Syria? Leave well alone. If they want a punch-up, stay well clear. And what about those rumours of affairs and sex: Alastair Campbell, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Wade, Tony Blair and Wendi Deng?

The word in these parts is that Cameron is planning to ask Parliament here in Britain to agree to Britain supply the Syrian rebels with materiel rather more ‘lethal’ than the various bars of soap, advice and toothbrushes that have so far been flown out of RAF Wherever, and that when he does so, a sizeable number of Tory MPs as well as a sizeable number of Lib Dem and Labour MPs will oppose him. And good for them. I am also opposed, though I feel rather uncomfortable with being in agreement with Tory MPs for one and Lib Dems and Labour MPs for another.

Some say it is sheer madness for Britain to throw its hand into the ring militarily while it is actively engaged on reducing Britain’s armed forces to a chap in a tin hat and a pop gun on Brighton beach. But that is not the reason I am against it: I am against it because at issue here is that, as is glaringly obvious to me, though to loads of other people as well, that what began a couple of years ago as protest by some Syrians fed up with the regime has now evolved into being nothing less – but nothing more either, if you get my drift – than a murderous sectarian punch-up between Sunnis and Shi’ites. And why the bloody hell should Britain or anyone else in Europe for that matter pick sides in that one?

As usual, the standard arguments are being trotted out: ‘People are dying, children are being massacred’ (by both sides as it happens – there are no ‘good guys’ in this particular spat). OK, so where as the Western World’s conscience when people were being killed and people were being massacred – and, by the way, still are – in the Congo? Nowhere. The most we could do was to wring our hands as in organising innumerable United Nations resolutions ‘deploring in the strongest possible terms’ the situation in the Congo. And you always know the United Nations and its members simply haven’t a clue what to do when they get around to ‘deploring in the strongest possible terms’ anything.

Admittedly, they did organise the mobilisation and deployment of a UN peace force, but as it was under strict instructions ‘not to get involved’ and in the event was obliged to stand by as villagers were massacred, it was as useful as a chocolate teapot. The best interpretation I can put on the most recent Western moves is that at the end of the day it is all just a game of chess, that they believe that if Assad can be convinced we are ‘serious’, he will be more prepared to take part in peace talks.

However, the trouble with that particular argument is that with the new involvement of – Shi’ite – Hezbollah and the pledge, yesterday, by Iran to send 4,000 soldiers to Syria to bloster Assad’s forces, and the subsequent announcement that Saudi Arabia will now also step up is – which, you can bet your bottom dollar, will amount to more than a few maps and those non-lethal bars of soap and it is now promising to supply the rebels with anti-aircraft guns – it is now so glaringly obvious that neither side is interested in reaching some kind of accommodation and that the idea that the Western world could achieve anything by imposing pressure on Assad is dead in the water.

Then there’s the rather uncomfortable, though pertinent, fact that no side in any conflict will be in the slightest bit interested in ‘talking peace’ unless they have reached the point where they are persuaded that they can no longer win militarily. And even then both sides must be so convinced for peace talks to start and to have any chance of succeeding. So what the hell is Cameron up to? What difference does it make whether or not he – or anyone else – is using chemical weapons? Is massacre just a tad more acceptable to our precious liberal conscience if it is achieved by non-chemical mean? This might sound horribly cold-blooded, but it isn’t intended to be. Let me get back to my original observation: that the ‘civil war’ in Syria is now no longer anything of the kind. It is now most certainly a sectarian.

Even that begs the question: exactly why does either side – the Sunnis and the Shi’ites – even want to get involved in a sectarian conflict now? I don’t know, and I can’t even begin to speculate. So let me bring this back closer to home: why for the sake of God does Britain want to get involved? Why. When it comes to killing, torture and massacring both sides have proved themselves to be as bad as each other. And a supreme irony is that thug that he is, Assad is actually more tolerant of his minorities – Christians, various Muslim sects and gays – than most of the militias making up the rebel forces ever promise to be.

. . .

Years ago when I was still in short trousers I would occasionally hear a news bulletin on the radio and would hear talk of the Baghdad Pact. What it was is now no longer relevant. And that is more or less the point. A little later – this would have been in the late Fifties, when I was still in the first decade of my life – a certain Col Grivas was operating and his struggle for EOKA was giving Britain a good deal of grief and costing it a good many lives. I remember at the time being a little bit worried.

It wasn’t that I knew what was going on, it was just that I didn’t have much of a sense of geography or proportion, and I was concerned the troubles would eventually land up on my own doorstep. But then again: who, a great many will be asking, was Col Grivas and what was EOKA? And that question is also the point. I have a 14-year-old son whose main interests, as far as I can see, are computer games.

What is the ‘Syrian conflict’ to him. I’m sure, in between killing zombies while playing Call Of Duty VI and Portal, he will have gathered that something is going on, but is he worried? Certainly not at all as much as me. And, given that all the horror – for most certainly is was horror for many Cypriots at the time Col Grivas was operating – connected with EOKA is now largely forgotten, will young Wesley (for that is his name) be writing a blog in 40 or 50 years time in which he records as I did about Col Grivas that there was an awful stink in Syria, but that ‘is now all forgotten’? I really don’t know, though I pray to God it will be. Perhaps I am fretting too much. Perhaps Cameron and Obama and Hollande have got some subtle game plane underway and that it will all come good in the end. But, you know, my immediate comments not withstanding, and given the very different dynamics of a far more globalised world, I’m really not that too certain it will.

. . .

When I first came to London in 1990, I was, in a sense, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the city, and became acutely aware of just how insignificant I was in the scheme of things. Admittedly, I was suffering from a period of depression (though, I must add, nothing quite as bad as many others suffer, however horrible it was for me at the time), but I don’t think that was the reason. The reason was that the circumstances I found myself in, looking for somewhere to stay, simply highlighted that I was insignificant, utterly insignificant. But then we all are. Most certainly most of us do have some signifance in some context or other, the context, for example, of our families and our immediate work colleagues, but at the end of the day we are nothing more important than the smoke I puff out each time I take a drag on my cigar.

Similarly, we bloggers, from the most basic blogger such as myself, to the ‘informed’ such as all those media correspondents who are also obliged to blog, are, at the end of the day, utterly insignificant. What I write here is trivial with a capital T. My concerns about Britain getting itself stupidly involved, however apparently admirable its motives, in a war which is none of its business, are equally insignificant. What do they – my views and opinions – matter? How do I matter, except to my two children, my wife, my stepmother, my brother and sister. What do you matter, except to your family and friends? Admit it: you don’t.

. . .

Finally, I can’t resist passing on a rumour, and I stress it is merely a rumour. A week or two ago, Cameron hit the headlines in on Sunday paper when he was told of an affair which affected Downing Street. The first rumour I heard was that the affair which so disturbed Cameron was between Andy Coulson, once his press bod and formerly an editor of the News of the World, and the then editor of the Sun, one Rebekah Wade (aka Brooks). Today I heard another rumour, which adds a little spice to the whole shooting match. It is that not only was Rebekah screwing Coulson, she was, at the same time, also screwing one Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press bod. Though whether this was before, during or after Blair was rumoured to be screwing Rupert Murdoch’s soon to be divorced wife Wendi Deng I really haven’t heard. And nor do I know.

And what do the Men With A Conscience do about Erdogan? Ponder that while we all prepare for World War III and Obama and Cameron opt for equal-opportunity slaughter. And purely in the interests of universal prurience, I pass on a rumour. I stress ‘rumour’ (I know which side my bread is buttered on)

Given that one of this blog’s many self-imposed tasks it to test to the limit the integrity of all those who think of themselves as Having A Conscience and Knowing What’s Best For The World (even if the world disagrees), here’s a cracker: what should be the official Man With A Conscience line on Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, he of the OTT response to the protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim Square?

By all accounts he’s a bit of a tough nut and shows every sign of getting tougher. Universally acclaimed by all Men With Conscience’s (aka Thinking Men) when he was first elected, he strengthened the economy, improved the living standards of many in rural areas whose living standards were in dire need of improvement and pledged that, although he had islamist inclinations and his was a kind of vanilla islamist, soft and cuddly, that kind of thing, he would demonstrate that islamist bods such as himself could be just as democratic as non-islamist bods. He set about neutering The Generals (sorry, that’s Greece - I mean the Army) whose democratic credentials weren’t half as well-defined as his apparently were and who were far to fond of grabbing power ‘in the interests of the country’ (isn’t it always?).

(NB - ‘?).’ - without the quote marks, of course, they are just intended to isolate the ‘?).’ - is that allowed? Looks horrible, but strictly I think it’s correct. One for the pedants. Back to Mr Erdogan.)

These were thought to be Good Things, and another Good Thing he undertook was to come to some kind of arrangement with the Kurds, who until then had been imprisoned. Erdogan decided there must be a more fruitful way of dealing with the issue. He had also been imprisoned himself under a previous regime, so that, too, helped to burnish his credentials among those Men With A Conscience for whom that kind of thing is important.

Over the years, however, Erdogan has become something of a headache for his liberal champions. He was first elected in 2003 with a rather attractive majority, and has since been re-elected twice, each time with an increased majority. That, surely, is a Good Thing. The people have spoken and what they said was ‘Erdogan’s the man’. The trouble is that over the past ten years our hero - well, not mine - has grown rather fond of being in charge. I’ve read that more journalists are languishing in jail in Turkey than in China and that you have to be rather careful in public with what you say if it isn’t something along the lines of ‘that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he’s the man, isn’t he, aren’t we lucky to have him!’

In the past few weeks it has all come to a head: as far as I know there were two catalysts for the unrest in Turkey. The first was when folk heard that the government planned to build a shopping mall in one of Istanbul’s parks, and the second was when the government brought in restrictions on the sale of alcohol (and Erdogan declared rather loftily that people who drank were ‘alcoholics’). You wouldn’t think either issue was great enough to spark off the protests and, of course, it wasn’t. Not only were there protest rallies in Istanbul and Ankara but in several other cities, and it would seem reasonable to assume that it was Erdogan’s autocratic approach to power which they were protesting about.

Now here’s the rub for all those who like to think they are on the side of the angels: there was never a suggestion during any of Turkey’s previous general elections that they were in any way fixed. And at those elections, Erdogan was returned each time with an increased majority. In other words more Turkish voters thought he was a good egg than didn’t. And what’s the liberal line on elections: why, the people must be heard. The dilemma, of course, is what does the Man With A Conscience do when he doesn’t like what the people have to say?

 . . .

From my small and insignificant corner of the world here in rural, rustic, delightful and today rather chilly North Cornwall, the arrangements for staging World War III seem to be progressing rather well. Today’s news that America Is Going To Get Involved in the civil war in Syria is surely a turning point. Given that the forces of president Assad are now known almost certainly to have used chemical weapons in attacks on the rebels, they have crossed ‘a red line’ and president Barack Obama is finding it nigh-on impossible to resist calls for the US to assist them.

The official line is that the US (and Britain, because our homegrown Good Guy, one David William Donald Cameron) are keen that the slaughter now underway in Syria should take place evenly and fairly: we

 

Just a reminder of what dead children look like, in this case Syrian children (though whether they are victims of the Good Guys or the Bad Guys I really can't tell you)

can’t have Assad chalking up all the deaths. Putin and Russia (in Putin’s eyes the same thing these days) are broadly backing Assad, though they are under no illusions as to what a nice chap he is. It’s the naval base they have in the Med, courtesy of Assad, which might be a factor. I have to say that, Putin notwithstanding, I’m rather more in favour of the Russian insistence that the only way to settle the Syrian civil war is by diplomacy rather than giving the rebels enough weapons and assistance to ensure they can kill as many people as Assad’s forces. But then holed away in my small corner of rural, rustic, delightful and today rather chilly North Cornwall as I am, no one has yet seen fit to consult me.
 
There were two interesting and rather depressing items on BBC 2’s Newsnight last night, which each have a bearing on the war in Syria. The first, and by far the most serious, was how Lebanon is being sucked into the conflict, with the Shi’ite Hezbollah ensuring Assad’s forces could get

 

More dead children

off what was increasingly looking like the back foot and the backlash from Sunnis to this involvement. And that, really, highlights, a crucial element of it all: the continuing - since just a few years after The Prophet died - clash between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

The second was the vote in Iran - today - for a new president. The choices seem pretty narrow: a moderate hardliner, a hardline moderate and a hardline hardliner, although who eventually is given the rosette and gets to take home the cake is pretty irrelevant because the Supreme Leader has the final say on almost most things.

Now there’s a thing: a world war yet not a German in sight. Marvellous. And at least they are off the hook for a change.

. . .

Here is a rumour I really can’t resist passing on. I have no idea at all whether or not it’s true and must stress - with one eye on Britain’s libel laws and the other on my balls - that it is only a rumour I have come across (prominently publicised variously, for example here). But it it this: Mr Murdoch, who some of you know as Rupert and others merely as Mr Murdoch, but who all of us know is a leading light in the publication of our esteemed parish magazine The Truth, is reported to be about to divorce his third wife Wendi, known to many of us as that exotic bird who runs the local Chinese takeaway.

That, so far, is common knowledge. Now for the rumour. It is this that: Mr Blair, who some of you know as Tony and others as a former chairman of our parish council, has not just been swapping recipes for sweet and sour chicken with the delectable Wendi. Oh no. Far, far more. Pork is reputed to have been involved, too. But, as I say, it’s just a rumour.

Doom, doom, doom, that’s what I predict, doom, damnation, pestilence, grief, death and more doom. And if I’m wrong this time, who knows? I might be right the next

There’re really no secret to being a successful prophet of doom: all you have to do is to stick with it for as long as it takes, and sooner or later you’ll be proved farsighted. After all, a broken clock is right twice a day. And the public being the brain-dead set of cruds who will remember nothing whatsoever for more than a minute or two except what they saw on TV last night soon forget all the prophesies of disease and pestilence – or what in our modern world passes for disease and pestilence - which come to nothing. Eventually, of course, one will. And then one can jump on one’s high horse and speed through the massed ranks of dimwits boasting ‘I told you so! I told you so! Now see who was right!’

I mentioned once before watching a BBC documentary called The Great War – narrated by Laurence Olivier no less, so it must have been important – which was an in-depth, not to say interminable account and analysis of that terrible conflict, what led up to it – vanity mainly in Germany, conceit in France and pique in Britain – and what then happened. And what has stayed with me all those years was a shot of a crowded Brighton beach (Brighton beach in Sussex, England, not New York) taken in August 1914 when the country apparently did not have a care in the world. Then, when the first shots were fired – and the French cavalry went to war in full, colourful dress uniform – there was a general feeling that it would all be over within months if not weeks.

I’m not suggesting that we here in the West are in the same kind of insouciant devil-may-care state, but for a period when we are being persuaded that ‘times is ‘ard’, times are patently not all that hard. (Moral:

 

Don't forget, you read it here first! 

 

don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.) But then we here in the West are a rather mollycoddled bunch and times is most certainly hard in Syria. But then, you say, that conflict has been running for almost two years. Well, it has, but what strikes me as very ominous is the trouble in Turkey.

News programmes tell us that it was all sparked either by government plans to build a shopping mall in a site which until now had been a green park or government plans to stop people drinking. Well, to be honest neither explanation strikes me as good enough to account for five days of vicious rioting and an extremely brutal police response. And nor does it explain why rioting has taken place in three major Turkish cities. There are quite obviously far deeper feelings at play here which have now been given an outlet.

A Turkish commentator on the radio pointed out yesterday that when Recep Tayyip Erdogan was first elected, he was regarded, or at least, marketed as the democratic face of Muslimism (I won’t say Islam because that would be misleading). He was praised for neutralising the political instincts of the army and generally regarded as a Good Egg. The turning point came when it was made very clear to him by the EU that Turkey wasn’t really wanted as a member, and, says the commentator, he took this personally and gradually became more autocratic. Those who support the prime minister point out that he has been re-elected in what are accepted to be democratic elections three times. Would a reputed ‘dictator’ manage that? they ask.

The rioters respond by criticising him for an increasingly autocratic style of government, though I, of course, am in no position to comment on either claim. So far it’s all more or less a domestic affair in Turkey. What strikes me as dangerous, however, is that to the south of Turkey is Syria and that Turkey, which once had good relations with Syria, is now growing increasingly hostile.

In the past Turkey has stressed that it rules out no action at all if it wants to retaliate to Syrian aggression (this was after a few ‘mystery explosions’ in a Turkish village on the border with Syria. Should matters threaten to get a little out of hand in his cities, Erdogan might well consider taking Caesar’s sage advice to deal with domestic troubles by creating trouble abroad and taking the plebians’ minds off matters.

Then there’s Hezbollah’s increasing involvement in Syria, and for Hezbollah read Iran. Russia has already broaden the conflict rather by giving its support to Assad, and the fact that Syria hosts a Russian naval base will have something to do with the matter. Britain is getting all very gung-ho and is apparently champing at the bit to fight the good fight, but the U.S. – thank goodness - is very, very reluctant to get involved, not least because any involvement will clash with the coming presidential election the Democrats would rather not be at war when the country goes to the polls. Good to see Uncle Sam doing the right thing for a change, even if it is for the wrong reasons.

So there you have it: I predict doom. (Of, course, if you live in Somalia or the Congo, you probably don’t give two hoots what happens in Syria, you’ve got troubles enough of your own.)