An unlikely stitch-up, but Assange gets all the glory while young Bradley is held out to dry

The Wikileaks/arrest of Julian Assange saga rumbles on. Assange has now been granted bail after well-wishers stumped up £250,000 surety and on condition that he lives at the house of one well-wisher and doesn’t leave. Although I am less than convinced by all the claims that Wikileaks is striking a blow for freedom, I still suspect that somehow Assange is being stitched up, or is in the initial stages of being stitched up by the U.S., which never takes too kindly to being made to look stupid. But having said that, just how they want to do it is not very straightforward. All the ingredients are there, but it somehow doesn’t quite hang together.
The ingredients: Assange is accused of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, but the charges are later dropped. He had reportedly asked to see the evidence against him, but none was provided. He reportedly asked the Swedish authorities whether he could
leave the country for Britain and they agreed. One alleged rape claim is being made by a campaigning feminist who had previously published on the web polemics urging women to ‘get even’ with men. She was the first woman Assange slept with in Sweden on a trip there. A few days later, Assange slept with another, who then contacted the first, and I must admit that the thought has crossed my mind that the first, the campaigning feminist was rather angry that Assange should have turned to a second woman so quickly. As to the rape allegations, here is an interesting article:
The new round of rape and sexual assault claims followed one Assange was in Britain, and Sweden then applied for his extradition and issued a warrant for his arrest. He has, I don’t think, yet been formally charged, but then I don’t think he can be until he is in the custody of the Swedes. Then, so the conspiracy theory would go, Assagne is extradited to the U.S. for a severe judicial bollocking before he is locked away forever.
There are reports from the U.S. that some congressmen are urging for the drafting of a law under which Assange can be charged. This seems to me rather arse-about-tip: it strikes me that revenge would be the prime motivation for doing that, which is understandly. However, revenge was never a principle in law.
Now for how it doesn’t really hand together: if the U.S. feels Assange has a case to answer, why not applied to have him extradited directly from Britain? They are seeking, in a ludicrous case, the extradition of a Gary McKinnon, another chap who upset them by hacking into the Pentagon website and thus demonstrating how poor its cyber defence was. In fact, hurt pride seems to play a major part in both cases, and it might easily be possible to show that America’s dented ego more or less drives its foreign policy.
Then there is also the fact that of all the European countries which might, in some theoretical conspiracy, be amenable to doing the U.S.’s bidding, Sweden, a liberal-democratic country with tendencies to left-of-centrism, comes rather low on the list. It is also quite unlikely that a campaigning feminist in that liberal-democratic country would feel inclined to help out the U.S. All in all, Sweden and the U.S. are unlikely bedfellows, and it does seem rather unlikely that they have entered into some unholy alliance.
Other aspects about the whole affair which strike me as rather odd are that Assange was held in solitary confinement while he was in custody in Wandsworth prison. Why exactly? Then there is also the angle that a certain Bradley Manning, the chap suspected of having provided Wikileaks with almost all of the batch of confidential cables, is in deep shit, far deeper at the moment than la Assange, but rather fewer people are getting their knickers in a twists about him.
On Radio 4’s Today this morning we had John Pilger, a prominent left-wing commentator of this parish and cheerleader of all things left, and Janet Daley, a prominent right-wing commentator and cheerleader of all things right. I’ve always thought of Pilger as something of a self-seeking prat who rather enjoys his status as journalism’s lefty. But on this occasion I am inclined with some of the points he made. But, damn it, I also feel obliged, in all honesty, to agree with some of the points Janet Daley made, although the piece on Today and the joint interview with both was rather spoiled in that two issues — Assange’s arrest and possible extradition to Sweden and then possibly the U.S., and the whole Wikileaks leaking were conflated, which didn’t lead to much clarity. For example, Daley made the point, one which on the face of it is quite reasonable, that just as journalists such as herself and Pilger are entitled to keep their sources confidential — and (although she didn’t say so this morning) just as Wikileaks is entitled to keep its sources confidential — so the assorted diplomats whose candid comments were published by Wikileaks are also entitled to some confidentiality.
I must admit that I have a gut feeling that Assange is being stitched up, although exactly how I really couldn’t tell you. And to put that feeling into perspective, I regard the guy as something of a pillock and Wikileaks, as far as some of its claims are concerned to be fighting the good fight, as a little more dodgy than they angels they profess to be should be. This one will run and run.

. . .

And what of Bradley Manning? Well, apart from knowing the guy’s name, I have just had to search the net for more details about him — apparently he is something of a computer whizz — which must speak volumes about the relative importance these two characters, Assange and Manning, have. One is ‘sexy news’,
the other isn’t. Why not? Perhaps Manning is better covered in the States — one report I found says that the ‘city of Berkeley (would that be the same Berkeley which has the famous university?) wants to proclaim him a war hero. Manning’s problem is that the U.S. really is the country where 99 year sentences for laughing at the president are commonplace — well, you know what I mean — so the future looks very bleak for him indeed. There was an interesting item on Radio 4’ PM programme last night claiming that a substantial amount of money Wikileaks had promised to donate to Manning’s defence fund had still not been paid. That, if true, only goes to show how much they value him.

. . .

I had included two pictures with this entry, one of Assange and one of Manning. From the picture I have found, Assange looks rather like an unpleasant sleazeball, and Manning looks like a naive idealist. We all know how photos such as these can be horribly misleading — there is any number of pictures of Adolf Hitler being nice to his Alsation dogs — so I merely make those comments in passing. But I know who I would prefer to spend a night in the pub with and it ain’t Assange. I really wish I didn’t feel he is being stitched up. But . . .

. . .

Finally, it is with a great deal of sadness that I have to report that Britain is back where it was last year, in snow hell, also ‘dubbed’ ‘by the nation’ Snowmageddon. But, do not despair, the world is heeding us in our hour of need: there have been food parcels from Siberia, several tons of socks from the good folk of Switzerland, the Austrians are saying special Masses and as I write there are very reliable reports that womenfolk the length and breadth of Scandanavia have formed knitskalga, the traditional knitting groups so beloved by the Swedes, Finns and Norwegians (though not, apparently, by the Dane who are far more concerned with writing petitions to the Vatican pleading for the immediate canonisation of Julian Assange), to turn out around-the-clock woolly sweaters in a variety of colours and sizes which will then be flown into Britain by the Red Cross (the Red Crescent will be making the deliveries of special halal sweaters to Bradford, Blackburn, Leicester and other towns where our Muslims brothers have taken up residence). It’s at moments like this that it is a joy to be alive.

The horror that is Wagner and Shutter Island

One could argue that a feature of great art is that it can be hugely divisive: some think it’s great and others think it’s not. An example would be the music of Richard Wagner. And I chose it because to my ears it is excruciating bombastic nonsense verging on complete tosh. Sure, he has some nice tunes, but if you whistle the particular melody you like - try The Flying Dutchman - you’ve finished the relevant bit in about five seconds. Then you have to put up with another 20
minutes of supercharged bollocks. (Thomas Beecham once observed that Wagner ‘had his moments - about one every 15 minutes’. Someone else said that you can listen to an hour of Wagner, look at your watch and find only five minutes have passed.) I would prefer to have my fingernails torn out one by one than be obliged to sit through one of his interminable operas, and I am not alone in that view (I heard a novelist called Susan Hill saw more or less the same thing on the radio just two days ago). What is supposedly great about Wagner’s music eludes me utterly. Perhaps I have cloth ears. Perhaps I don’t. As a rule I am more attracted to baroque music than all that Sturm und Drang Romantic stuff, and Wagner is that to a bloody T.
Yet I am also bound to admit that there are many who do feel he is great and that his music is great, and they flock along to a performance of one of his operas in their thousands and - very odd - enjoy the experience. Then, of course, there is the man himself, an appalling anti-semite, a parasite who until he finally began earning money when he became famous, was happy to live off others and have them pay his bills, a man who would often seduce the wives of those friends and colleagues, and a man who was insufferably vain and conceited who, literally, believed the world owed him a living. Unfortunately, none of that has any bearing on his music either way.
I mention this because I recently saw on DVD a film which I regard as great art, but which has divided critics and the public alike. The Daily Telegraph’s reviewer, Sukhdev Sandhu, wasn’t at all impressed and gives it just two stars. The Daily Mail’s film critic, Christopher Tookey, on the other hand, gives it an almost unprecedented five stars and cannot praise it enough. And I am firmly with Tookey. The film is Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese, and I would urge everyone to see it. What I think is so great about it is that it pulls off a trick which is fiendishly difficult to pull off. A clue: the very last line spoken in the film pulls the rug from under your feet and throws you right back where you started. And the line is spoken just after another line which is highly ambiguous, pointing the film both in one direction and its opposite.
Shutter Island has been criticised for being obvious, with many claiming they spotted ‘the twist’ after a mere ten minutes. Well, if they did, they weren’t paying as much attention as they thought they were. What I feel is unique about Shutter Island is that there simply is no conclusion, no resolution. And to produce a film which has none, but which still leaves the viewer - well, this viewer at least - feeling that he has not been cheated is a remarkable achievement.


. . .

OK, I will admit that I’ve heard - on the grapevine, that kind of thing - that musically, Wagner was in some ways innovative and that there is some ‘magic chord’ which he came up with which - well, according to some, music was never the same again. (I bet it wasn’t). The point is that despite my crude, opinionated, ever-so-right-of-centre outlook (see entries passim), deep inside me beats a tiny liberal heart which quite often persuades me to be just a tiny bit more open-minded than I care to be. And at this moment, that liberal heart has persuaded me to concede that in musical history - I’ll put it no stronger than that - Wagner is said to have been something of a milestone. There, I’ve said it. However, that doesn’t in the slightest alter my view that his music is nothing but a god-damn awful racket and if a never again heard a single note written by him, that would still be too soon.

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’.