Join me on an exciting journey of discovery to sort out the bullshit from the bollocks (part 1)

An occasional series (part 1) of those weasel words and phrases which insinuate their way into all our lives, but tend to mean rather less than they claim to. It has been sparked by an email I’ve just received from Adobe Systems urging me to sign up for a seminar where they will be trotting out their newest products and, I should imagine, hope that I shall part with some of my hard-earned shekels to become the proud owner of  one of them. So pride of place and top of my list comes the phrase Adobe used:

1 Get the inside track - No, not really. When you join a gaggle of several tens of thousands worldwide who also received an invitation to ‘get the inside track’, you aren’t getting the

‘inside track’ on anything. You’re just becoming one of a very large and very amorphous herd. If I were being charitable, I might concede that ‘to get the inside track’ could be taken to mean ‘get more details on’, but I’m not feeling charitable and, anyway, I’m 99pc certain Adobe and others use the phrase to make you think you’re one of a select and exclusive few.
A related phrase is ‘sneak preview’. A preview it most certainly is, but when it is a ‘sneak preview’ of, say, the latest EastEnders plotline (US, Brazilian, German and readers from other countries, please fill in you own soap), you are doing nothing more sneaky than joining several million other morons who have nothing better to do with their time.

2 Exciting - Yes, that one, when what is described at ‘exciting’ is usually less ‘exciting’ than a bad wank. One of the silliest uses I have come across was in the Daily Mail, several times in fact, which billed an ‘exciting dry cleaning offer’.  I think you paid for the dry-cleaning of your clothes, but buttons were dry-cleaned gratis. This one is very popular with ‘financial institutions’ PR operatives and civil servants: banks will simply re-package existing rip-off savings products, call them ‘exciting’ and hope you won’t notice it’s the same old cack. Civil servants are addicted to announcing, for example, and ‘exciting new health service initiative’ and an ‘exciting development in sewage disposal’. Often the ‘exciting development’ is also ‘a departure’. A real departure would be if for once the didn’t resort to bullshit.

3 Going on a journey of discovery - This one is much loved by ‘life coaches’, any number of lifestyle gurus, self-help charlatans, psycho drama instructors and a great many of their aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. The only thing you discover once you have completed the journey - and not always immediately, as these folk are adept at tapping into our infinite capacity for self-delusion - is that your wallet is now considerably lighter.

4 Find your inner [whatever] - This one is rather like being invited to go on a journey, in this case self-discovery. This is another favourite of self-help gurus and other cynics who prey on your unhappiness with any number of imaginative ways to turn it into hard cash, which, naturally ends up in their bank accounts. By far the most pernicious I know of are those crooks from The Church of Scientology. I you walk in off the street and fill in one of their personality profiles (as I once did out of interest - I wasn’t at all unhappy at the time), you will always be told that you are a complete psychological mess and that - for a price, of course - they can help you ‘find yourself’ and become happier. The very sad thing is there are many, many people out there who are unhappy - in fact, all of us at some point in our lives have been deeply unhappy - and what they need is true understanding, help, good advice, sometimes medication and some way to resurrect their feelings of self-worth. What they don’t need is for some Scientology fuck to reinforce their low-esteem in order to turn a fast buck or ten.

Incidentally, I shall not, as some might expect, launch into a wholesale and ineffably silly condemnation of counselling, whether it is provided by a medically trained counsellor (trained in psychology and psychotherapy) or someone properly and responsibly trained. Certainly, there are charlatans out there, but, I suspect, rather fewer than your average Daily Mail reader would appreciate. There are many who do excellent work, and are worth their weight in gold. I know from personal experience. It is always difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and, as a rule of thumb, it would be most sensible first to contact your GP or doctor and get a recommendation. But if you are low, don’t just grin and bear it. Remember that statistically (I think I have this figure right) one in three or four of us suffers from depression or a related condition at some point in our lives. Don’t ignore it. You can always be helped in some way. But please don’t mix it with the fucking Church of Scientology.

Essert-Romand. Day nine - still raining, but we were compenstated by a short trip to Morzine where I managed to buy a cheap umbrella for three times what it was worth. Then a rather tasty supper: chicken breast with tarragon in white wine and cream sauce with braised chicory

Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Great day yesterday - for the second day in a row it rained, though to be fair it was not pelting down but only that soft, elegant, chic rain which makes visiting France so utterly delightful. So the brother and I decided the time had come to mooch around Morzine for a while to see just what delights that ski resort town might afford us in the depths of off-season. Well, not a lot, as it turned out. We drove in at around 1.30 in the afternoon, and as we arrived the rain began to fall again. (We had set of from Essert-Romand during what was, in fact, just a lull in the rain. We thought it was the end of the rain for that day. Obviously, it wasn’t.)

Parking in the marketplace (a delightful spot and highly recommended for those looking for somewhere to park in the off-season - loads and loads of space and hardly another motorist to contend with). My brother Mark was fully prepared for the rain as his very, very expensive North Face jacket (he has about ten of them) came with a hood. My rather cheaper Yves Saint Laurent wind-cheater (don’t worry, I bought it in a sale for just £20 about seven years ago) on the other hand did not. All the shops - and I mean all of them - were shut, but finally I came across one of those resort tat shops which was just opening again after lunch. (When I say ‘resort tat’ you must understand that any and all the tat available her in bling-bling Haut-Savoie is, of course, ineffably chic, elegant and French and knocks our good, honest British tat into a cocked hat.) So I barged in (the lights weren’t even on) and bought for bloody 6.50 euros exactly the same umbrella I have bought in Bayswater for as little as £2.99. Shouldn’t grumble, I suppose, because it was undoubtedly a far more chic and elegant crap umbrella than whatever I bought in Bayswater. And that, dear friends, was it.

We walked further into town and although one or two restaurants were empty, no shops were and by far the liveliest thing we saw was a flashing blue neon cross which informed all and sundry that if you had a headache, diarrhea or any other ailment which didn’t require hospitalisation it, the pharamacy it belonged to, would be only to glad to sell you whatever medication you need. Unlike our good, honest British supermarkets which will sell you enough paracetamol to kill a regiment, you have to buy all that kind of thing at la pharmacie. That supermarkets can now sell you shampoo and toothpaste apparently came about by presidential decree in 1985 after the French parliament had initially overruled an EU directive ensuring that both shampoo and toothpaste could be sold over the counter in all member states. (He took the view that if France were to have any kind of meaningful confrontation with the EU, it would be better to do so over some matter of greater importance than the general availability of shampoo and toothpaste. Good man!)

By a quarter past two, we had decided that enough was enough and made our way back to the car, but not until Mark spotted a noticeboard advertising coming attrations at the local cinema and various bars and was outraged that all - all - were horribly out of date and referred to attractions which took place in August, many over seven weeks earlier. But I managed to calm him down and we drove back to the local Carrefour where he had is picture taken in the photo booth in readiness for our trip to Lyon tomorrow to collect his emergency travel documents. Oh, and I bought créme fraîche and a baguette for tonight’s supper - chicken breast with tarragon. Mustn’t forget the really important details. Below is a picture of me enjoying myself.

. . .

I cooked supper tonight and it was superb. We had chicken breast with tarragon and, at my brother's suggestion, braised chicory, which I had never eaten before - I've only had chicory salad - and which was also worthwhile. But it is the chicken breast I am proud of because it was a dish I created on the hoof.

I've cooked roast chicken with tarragon before but rather than cook a complete chicken, I decided to use chicken breasts and after that I was on my own. All I did was to use a sharp knife to make a pocket in each breast and then I liberally sprinkled the inside with dried tarragon. I would have use fresh tarragon, but the local Carrefour doesn't stock it. I heated olive oil and butter - slowly, so as not to burn the butter - and when a small piece of chicken sizzled nicely, indicating that the oil and butter were hot enough, seared boths sides of each breast till they were brown. I then stuck a lid on the pan and left it on a low heat for a few minutes before, on impulse, I added a little vin bourru, which is a local white wine (in a region not known for its white wines. I'm sure any white wine, which is not too acidic would work. The chicken was then left to steam in the wine while I braised the chicory, again in olive oil and butter.

Once both sides of the chicory halves were slightly browned, I again put on the saucepan lid and the whole lot onto a low heat. I had put two plates to warm in the oven, and after about another 15 minutes, once the white wine had reduced a little, I took out the chicken, left it on the plates in the oven and added creme fraiche to the white wine with a little, very little, French mustard. All I then did was to heat up the creme fraiche until it was bubbling. I then served the chicken and chicory with the sauce. And even though I say so myself (for want of anyone else to sing my praises) it was gorgeous.

We ate it with a fresh baguette. Try it.

Censorship among the Great and Good: there ain’t nothing quite like a hypocrite, and the saintly Guardian leads the way. There is, it seems, one rule for them and quite another for us. And no one quite does ‘sandwich short of a picnic’ quite like our Lib Dem friends

Today I was subjected to an appalling and quite breathtaking piece of hypocrisy perpetuated by the saintly Guardian, the self-appointed defender of free speech and all things right and just. But let me simply provide the facts and a couple of screenshots, and you can make up your own mind.

This morning, while still in bed, I had been surfing the papers and came across the story of Alexander Lebedev, the media entrepreneur, owner of The Independent and London Evening Standard. Several readers had already left comments, one of which read: Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.

I responded to it. I wrote, although I am in no position to quote myself verbatim as my comment was subsequently removed by a moderator, that the comment was rather simplistic and par for the course of too many comments left on the Guardian website, but that, to be fair, ‘comments left on the Telegraph website were equally simplistic’. I added that such comments reflected the low standard of political discourse in Britain.

And that, dear reader, was that. No obscenity, no libel, nothing. But minutes later a Guardian moderator decided to remove my comment on the grounds that it did not ‘abide by ‘community standards’.

I responded to the deletion, which had thoroughly surprised me because the only element at all possibly objectionable might - just might - have been the suggestion that some contributions to the Guardian comment facility were ‘simplistic’. Being very bemused by the deletion, I added four more comments over the next few minutes. And that, I thought, was that.

Yet, returning to the website about 45 minutes later - and on a different laptop (on a works laptop as I had been working), I discovered that not only were my subsequent comments missing, but that my entries had been removed wholesale so that there was no trace whatsoever of my four comments. In other words although the first comment was deleted, my entry remained with the explanation that the comment itself had been deleted. But the story was very different with my subsequent comments: every trace had been removed so that a reader would not even know that comments had been made which had subsequently been deleted. Furthermore, I was also informed that any further comments I made would be pre-moderated - which is rather a neat way of informing me that they would be censored.

The very odd thing was that all I had done in those subsequent comments was to point out the irony that the Guardian, which prides itself on upholding principles like the freedom of speech, repressed any comments which suggested it itself might be guilty of unwarranted censorship.

So that you can judge for yourself, here are snapshots of the original posts and below each snapshot is the text as I am sure you will not be able to make out very clearly what I had written. I was able to take these snapshots, because the particular page on my personal laptop had not been refreshed, my comments were still to be seen i.e. this was the state of the page before my comments and any hint that they had once existed were removed. Here are the screenshots and below each is the text as you might not be able to make out what is written. My transcript includes literals as it was copied and pasted from the original Guardian web page.

First there was

11.06am
(The initial comment I regarded as simplistic): Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.
Then

11.26am
My response, which was subsequently deleted because, apparently, in did not ‘abide by community standards’.

A little while later, after I found my comment had been deleted

11.40am
I’ve had a very innocuous - very innocuous - comment removed by a moderator because I criticised a reader’s comment as ‘simplistic’ and pointed out that similar comments on the Telegraph website are all too often equally simplistic. And that was it. So much for the Guardian’s doughty defence of free speech. The explanation was that my comment contravened ‘community standards’ which implies what I said was somehow offensive. It was nothing of the kind.
What are the chances that the Guradian’s defenders of free speech will also remove this contribution?
(which, as it turns out, they did, although the reader would remain oblivious of this).

11.41am
Incidentally, ‘replies may also be deleted’ is the very dubious icing on the cake.

11.43am
It would seem even mild criticism of the Guardian and/or its readers ‘contravenes community standards. Must try much harder, lads and lasses. Defending freedom is just a little more difficult than that.

And finally my rather forlorn request to the moderator to clarify the matter:
11.53am

Moderator: Would it be too much to ask that you re-instate the comment of mine you deleted and let readers themselves judge whether of not it was acceptable. I ask because two readers have already recommended my follow-up comments, which would seem to imply that the censorship of my initial comments was, at best, over-enthusiastic.
I also criticised comments made on the Telegraph website as ‘simplistic’ and said they and comments here marked a pretty low point in ‘political discourse’. How on earth can any of that be offensive and from which sensitive Guardian readers (of which I am one) must be protected.
Can’t they make up their own minds? Isn’t making up your own mind and being given the freedom to do so an essential principle of a democratic attitude to the world? In your case, apparently not always. It would seem, going on your response that we are free to think and speak as you please.

But no such luck, and after posting that comment/plea to the moderator, I discovered that my recent comments had all been deleted as well as any trace that they had been made. And it’s worth bearing in mind that no so long ago the Guardian made a big song and dance about publishing the Wikileaks material in the interests of free speech. And now, what with the Metropolitan Police demanding that two of its journalists reveal their sources in the News of the World phone hacking scandal, the Guardian is one again girding its loins in the defence of ‘free speech’.

I regard the whole incident as quite bizarre and way over the top. Exactly what did the moderator or moderators involved object to? That some of the comments posted on its site were simplistic? That the Guardian might well be guilty of censorship? If the latter was objectionable, it is doubly ironic that the way it was dealt with was to censor it. Would anyone care to point out where I overstepped the line? Because I really do not know. Was I sexist, racist, did I use unacceptable profanity, was I blasphemous, had I perpeutated a libel. Well, no, not as far as I could see. All I had done was suggest that the Guardian was being hypocritical.

But it seems that at the end of the day there is one rule for the Guardian, and one for the rest of us. I do so loathe hypocrites. Bear that in mind the next to the good folk at the Guardian posture and beat the libertarian drum.

PS Incidentally, to add insult to injury I am now informed my comments ‘are being premoderated’. So when is censorship not censorship? Well, it would seem it is not censorship when the Guardian does the censoring. Initially, I was quite prepared to put the initial deletion down to an over-enthusiastic moderator. Now it is beginning to look as though the censorship if systemic and part and parcel of the Guardian’s modus operandi. Oh, I do so hate hypocrites.

. . .

Is it any wonder that the Liberal Democrats – Lib Dems to those of us in the know – are generally regarded, although obviously not by other Lib Dems, as bunny-hugging, allergy-prone figures of fun? And if that sounds like a loaded question, it is because it is a loaded question.

This time last year I came across a quote from a female Lib Dem at the party’s first since it formed the Coalition government with the hated, loathsome and, some say, utterly fascist Tories (who, by the way and I have it on good authority, regularly eat babies for breakfast).

‘I didn’t,’ this woman announced loudly, ‘vote Liberal Democrat to form the government.’ To be fair, one does know what she is driving at – had she added ‘in coalition with the Tories’ her outburst would have made some sense. (And you’ll already have noted, if you take any sort of interest in politics, that only the Lib Dems refer to themselves as ‘Liberal Democrats’. To the rest of us they are and always will be Lib Dems.)

But that kind of inane comment does seem to typify our liberal friends. And inanity seems to be par for the course. Within any group where power is to be had, so that includes the fascist Tories and looney Labour, there will be more than enough bitching, back-biting, intriguing and outright lying to see most honest and decent men through to Christmas 2015. This year the ‘sensation’ is a book by some chap called Jasper Gerard (who’s name rings a bell, although I can’t quite think why) which claims among other things that party leader Nick Clegg does all the housework at home, Chris Huhne harbours a secret ambition to turn professional Formula 1 driver and that Vince Cable is an MI5 plant keeping tabs on everyone else. Naturally, such claims must always be taken with a large pinch of salt, well, but . . .

Generally speaking, Lib Dems, the ordinary ones you meet in the street come in three flavours:

Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Tory (because the Tories are - I don’t know, you know - well, it’s like this, you see, scratch your average Tory and - well, to quite blunt, I’m not like that, you know, I mean at the end of the day one must, simply must, stick by what one believes in and the Tories, you know, well, you know …)

Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Labour (I really do agree with a lot of what they say, but, you know - I mean they might now have banned fox-hunting but they haven’t done anything about vivisection and animal rights, and we all know that it’s those dinosaur unions who are really running the show, what with their fat expense accounts, they’re as bad as all those fatcats they pretend to hate …)

Then there are men and woman like Mathew Wheeler (pictured below). I’m only assuming he’s a man (as in he’s a man rather than she’s a man) because generally speaking

Mathew is a man’s name although, again to be fair, you can’t really tell with the Lib Dems, who are much more open-minded on these matters than the rest of us. Now, I’m as liberal as the next chap (‘guy’), and if a man or woman wants to cover themselves in tattoos and look like a complete fucking idiot, well, by all means do so. But in cases like this, I really do think the chap’s local PC Plod should make an unannounced visit to his house and take the place apart for as long as it takes to incriminate him in something nasty. Then – this is the clever bit and I don’t doubt our Authorities will sooner or later adopt my strategy – he will be told: start supporting either Labour or the Tories (we really don’t mind which) or we shall lock you up forever and throw away the key. It might sound drastic, inhumane even, but believe me, it’s the only language such people understand. Coalition indeed! You knew there was something wrong with them as soon as they did well in the election and decided to do something sensible for a change.

Incidentally, Mathew Wheeler’s suit is a nice touch. What do you do if you have your body covered from head to toe in tattoos? Why, wear a suit, of course. Who says Lib Dems don’t have standards.

Let’s dither shall we and fuck up the world for everyone, not just Europe. On yer bike, Geithner!

I can’t claim to to be particularly well-versed in the magic of economics but I do know one thing: much of what seems difficult is just economists using shorthand and jargon to do nothing more sinister than save time. But when City wideboys do the same thing, it is, of course, sinister: they would rather we didn’t understand what is going on. So, for example, a firm might be described as ‘highly geared’ or ‘highly leveraged’, and that can sound rather impressive, can’t it? In ordinary language, though, the kind you and I might use when bumping into each other in the supermarket, that means simply that the firm is deeply in debt (of ‘deeply in debt’, to give it a modicum of dignity).
That is not necessarily a bad thing, but knowing that the company you work for or, perhaps, in which you own shares, is ‘deeply in debt’ rather than ‘highly geared’ would certainly concentrate your mind a little more.

Something similar, a similar wilful obfuscation, is going on with the eurozone crisis (of rather, as it’s a Sunday morning and I’m feeling a little more charitable ‘eurozone crisis’). To many the ‘crisis in the eurozone’ might sound rather complicated and many might feel happier to leave it all to their leaders and politicians to sort out - they understand that kind of things better than I do, such honest citizens tell themselve.

Actually, there’s nothing whatsoever complicated about the eurozone crisis. And leaving it to our leaders and politicians to sort out is simply making matters worse. There is an even more banal aspect to the whole matter: the crisis is not even essentially economic. The crisis is rooted in the fact that the leaders of the eurozone countries, who would have us believe they are desperately working day and night, seven days a week, to solve the crisis, know full well that there the crisis could be brought to an end rather smartly, that there are two solutions, two very obvious solutions. The real crisis is that they simply haven’t got the guts to resort to either solution. The real crisis is political.

It would be unkind, and dishonest, of me to play down the difficulty facing our leaders and politicans, those esteemed and intelligent lads and lassess who most recently met Wroclaw, Poland, to procrastinate a little but more, and where they told one Timothy Geithner more or less to fuck off when he urged them to stop dithering and get on with it. Geithner, the head of the US Treasury Secretary, had gatecrashed the party because although the US is in the economic shit, a eurozone crash would - well, let’s be honest, will - drop it in even further in the shit. But European politicos, especially French politicos, don’t like being told home truths by what they still regard as Yank upstarts. Hence the advice to Timmy: fuck off, Geithner. I’m absolutely certain no one used those to very useful words, but that’s what they said. And that rather coarse response takes me right back to the essence of the crisis.


The essence of the crisis is exactly what Geithner was complaining about: our leaders are dithering as few leaders have dithered before recent history. They know exactly what they could do: either form a fiscal union of the ten EU members in the eurozone; or kick Greece out of the eurozone. What they should not be doing, because it only makes an extremely serious situation even worse, is prolong the agony. But that is exactly what they are doing. They simply haven’t got the gumption.


I really should repeat that both solutions are difficult and nasty, and the first - to form a fiscal union - is more or less impossible to adopt politically, let alone economically. So they know, and we know, and they know that we know, and we know they know we know, and crucially a very, very worried Timmy Geithner knows that the only way to draw a line under the ‘crisis’ is what is tactfully referred to in the press as a ‘disorderly default’. In the language we use in supermarket chit-chat that is to tell Greece the time is up, get out of the euro, re-adopt the drachma and stop ruining it all for the rest of us. (Naturally, the time has long gone to repeat the wise observation that ‘Greece should never have been let into the eurozone in the first place’, but that hasn’t stopped a great many ‘commentators’ every so wisely repeating that very observation. In it’s futility, it’s rather along the lines as Abraham Lincoln wisely observing: ‘I really shouldn’t have gone to the theatre that night, I really should have had an early night.’)


Once again, I really must be fair: adopting that solution and doing the only sensible thing under the circumstances is also dangerous. A lot of banks would lose a lot of money, and it might spark the kind of paralysis we had in 2008 after the Lehman collapse when the banks had idea whatsoever which of them was solvent and which wasn’t worth a bent ha’penny and simply shut up shop to save their own skins (ironically those not worth a bent ha’penny doing so, as well, so that we never really found out which was which). On the other hand, it might not be as bad as we fear. But crucially, however bad it is, it would most certainly not be half as bad as what is going to happen when events become impatient with the eurozone leaders’ dithering and impose their own solution. The unkonw element in all this is, of course, the voters and citizens of each eurozone state, two of which have been dictatorships 22 years, three within the past 45 years, and two of which were dictatorships within the past 70 years. That is not to say that the voters are all looking for a strong man, but then dictators don’t always consult the voter when they grab power, usually ‘in the interest of the country’.

Actually, I really don’t think anything like that is going to happen. But really rather nasty civil unrest is already taking place in Greece, and there have been demonstrations in Spain. If things get worse, if we do, as some gleeful alarmists warn, get a ‘Thirties-style depression’, I rather think all bets are off as far as the brotherhood of man and universal goodwill saving the day. I rather think it will once again be every man for himself.

. . .

Anyone remember the celebrations and fireworks in January 1999 when existing currencies were dropped and the euro finally became the currency of eurozone members? Great fireworks. Lovely speeches. Marvellous sentiment. Oh, and the music! Lovely, lovely music, though not lovely enough, I’m afraid, to soften the heart of a grizzled old cynic like me. And it was those ceremonies around Europe which, in a way, highlight the corrupt core of the EU. Its leaders and bureaucrats are like an army in peacetime: sparkling bright uniforms, impressive weaponry, such a sense of occasion when they parade up and down the street in glorious sunshine. Oh, those parades! Makes you feel so safe! And don’t our officers look so smart in their heroic uniforms! Bliss was it in that day to be alive, but to be European was very heaven! It made one almost look forward to the next war.
To put it another way, the test of leadership is what leaders do in a crisis. And in this crisis each one has shown him or herself to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. Given what we already know about the EU - the corruption at the heart of the system which turns a blind eye to millions of euros going missing, the fact that I don’t think ever its accounts have been signed off because of irregularities - can anyone really take the notion of ‘a United States of Europe’ seriously any more? I rather think not.

Essert-Romand. Day seven - raining which, as true Brits, has rather cheered us up

Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Raining today, but I guess we’ll do what we’ve been doing every day: getting up late (Mark gets up late, I get up later, though at the time of writing we are now both up - Lord, this blog is interesting.) Then knocking about doing nothing till, probably, we’ll drive down to the local Carrefour to buy whatever. It won’t be booze, because we seem to have booze coming out of your ears. Before we came over and liking my tea, I went out and bought 80 PG Tips teabags, more than enough, I reckoned for at least two mugs of tea a day for both of us. However, this apartment, it seems, is almost exclusively rented by Brits. And what have all those Brits been doing before coming out? That’s right, buying bloody teabags, so at a rough reckoning there must be at least 400 teabags knocking about the place, everything ranging from bog standard builders’ tea, to Earl Grey, peppermint tea and even green tea. What I find a little difficult to understand is that one group of former tenants brought with them a huge bag of salt. Where on earth did they think they were going?
Started by holiday book yesterday, Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which is rather a good read. I’m still reading about

his early life when as a lad he witnessed his drunken father beating up his mother and was himself beaten. He was, apparently, a sensitive lad (pictured on the right, a private joke that) and deeply affected by it, and notwithstanding the murderous monster he later became, your heart has to go out to any unhappy child. Sorry to be soppy, but that really is the way I feel. If you want a better world, take care of the children, love them, respect them, care for them and then have a sporting chance of building a happier future for us all. Though I have to say, some hope.