With snow swirling around outside our house, a 'research story' from academia may amuse www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4108867/Stonehenge-was-giant-concert-venue.html.

A prof called Rupert, who does a bit of DJaying on the side, asserts that Stonehenge was a prehistoric rock concert venue. There doesn't seem to be anything other than comparative acoustic evidence for this assertion, but never mind. Try mentally populating Avebury or Stonehenge with Bono, Geldof and Annie Lennox look alikes. What causes would they have espoused? So much 'research' seems like recyclable column inch filler. Do these people get grants?

Speaking of Avebury, we once stayed in a delightful B&B on the Kennet run by a retired Marines officer. At breakfast our fellow guests, a sleek Californian couple who had 'retired' in their forties, announced that they were witches who had come for the Solstice. Try that conversational gambit over a boiled egg and toast.

Our central heating system broke down yesterday. It was so cold that even the fire I lit never seemed to emit enough heat. Since I was reading a rather good biography of General Wavell, I toughed it out in the spirit of those times. After returning from the Ballet, my wife called British Gas with whom we have a HomeServe agreement. Apparently they could only come on Tuesday (tomorrow) because they were inundated with calls from "arthritic octogenarians" and "you don't sound like one". Flatterers. Would it make a difference if I had gout? A cold? Flu? BUT, for an extra £3 a month payment, we could ensure the 'same day' service we thought we were paying for anyway. Welcome to Rip Off Britain 2009.

Sky News, which I increasingly watch rather than any other, showed IDF footage of a bomb hitting a mosque in Gaza. The commentary drew attention to a series of secondary explosions, indicating that the mosque was a weapons dump. Over on the BBC 10 o'clock news, Jeremy Al Bowen, as he is known in some quarters, showed the same footage, choosing to ignore the IDF claim about the secondary explosions and thus giving the impression that Israel egregiously bombs places of worship. The BBC also prefers to show a handful of demonstrations against Israel (and no doubt will do the same when the usual suspects gather in London today) rather than reporting the grave divisions in Arab responses to the crisis. There being no mention of Egyptian or Saudi condemnations of Hamas rocket attacks.

Over the years I've come to really like Jools Holland's New Year bash- last year he had Sea Sick Steve (Bryan Appleyard still has my CDs by the way so I haven't heard him in a while) and this year Martha and the Vandelas, Duffy, and a girl called Tin Tin who were all great. The distant reverberations of the riverside firework display added bass notes. If any one still has any money, you should also head to Ronnie Scott's to see Ray Gelato- a Louis Prima like saxophonist and singer who looks uncannily like Robert De Niro in Casino. That will give you the needed uplift to face 2009: Mister Policeman Don't Touch Da Bananas. And yes I remained sober so this morning I'm full of beans.

My resolution is to do more gardening this year- both in our tiny outside yard, and on the third floor terrace. According to a wonderful book we were given called London's Secret Gardens, tree ferns are good for height and shade.

Anyway, a Happy New Year to all Standpoint readers and subscribers!

The eyes of the world are currently focused on Gaza. Although many commentators have linked Israeli military activity to the forthcoming elections, few have remarked that Palestinian elections are also scheduled. The reckless decision of Hamas to call off its ceasefire and continue firing rockets at Israel may be part of an attempt to compensate for its woeful misgovernment in Gaza, conditions which would normally send voters back to Fatah.

Meanwhile, this news from Pakistan http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear/ is is equally worrying since the Swat Valley is only 100 miles from Islamabad.

 

Much as I love Australia, it does have more things that can kill you than anywhere else. I've never been tempted to swim there for reasons all too apparent in this story from today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/28/australia-sharks-attacks although my wife has happily swum at Byron Bay. I liked the sound of Mr Guest- clearly a philosophical sort of chap, until he was eaten that is.

I'd like to wish readers a very happy Christmas and may 2009 be better than most people say its going to be. Who needed Whitards anyway when there is the marvellous Algerian Coffee Store on Old Compton Street (which does mail order for those who don't live in London).

Having recommended Sharia law, and then the views of Karl Marx on the reification of mere things, one might have thought we could get to the end of the year without hearing from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has grabbed a few headlines, again, through oblique reference (it is ever thus) to a letter which the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote in 1931 to the German Centre Party chancellor Heinrich Bruening. This consisted of the usual thin theological opacities against making a fetish of economic policy- in Bruening's case the stringent measures he took to get Germany through the Depression.

Now Bruening was a complex figure- a former WW1 machinegunner and highly educated economist. Those who apologise for the reckless welfare spending indulged in by earlier Weimar governments tend to call him the 'Hunger Chancellor' who made things so bad that people turned to Hitler. They overlook the role of the period of hyper-inflation in 1923 in impoverishing huge numbers of middle class Germans who then switched their political allegiances in the late 1920s away from the two liberal parties and the conservatives. Others lament the fact that Bruening came a hundred yards from the finish line of his marathon. Still other historians, Henry Ashby Turner in the van, lament that one of his successors General Schleicher did not have the guts to impose a temporary military dictatorship.

I can't see the point of Williams conjuring up poor old Bruening (who died in 1970 after years of UK and US exile) except to get headlines by vaguely intimating the threat of Nazism. That is absurd, for reasons I gave in a piece in the Sunday Telegraph last month. What exactly is the Archbishop saying about the two sets of economic "solutions"- spend our way out and get taxed later or control the Behemoth of public spending Brown has encouraged- being offered by Labour and the Conservatives? He doesn't seem to realise that there are a lot of views about Bruening, or what would have been most likely to avert the January 1933 outcome. 

Not content with this nonsense, the Archbishop then complacently floated the idea of dis-Establishing the Church of England, only to row back from the thought in the next sentence. However obsessed nowadays with gays and the like, the CoE is actually one of the few entities that give this country (England) a common cultural identity. Oh and he appears to like his ghastly old Stalinist namesake Raymond Williams too. How cosily Left-wing he always sounds.

As has often been said, Williams is a typical academic. In other words he chucks ideas around in a completely irresponsible fashion, without any regard for their wider political consequences. Some say he has written a marvellous book on Dostoevsky- what a pity he entirely lacks that great writer's capacity to examine the false gods of the age.  

Following on from my post about libel tourism, the Washington Post has an excellent piece http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/20/AR2008122002096.html about another unremarked scandal involving British lawyers and judges- namely their obstruction of attempts to extradite terrorist suspects to the US (and France).

A good report in today's Guardian Media section on the scandal of libel tourism http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/18/mps-demand-reform-of-libel-laws. and how a small group of MPs plan to terminate this. We should all wish them well in this endeavour, although the sheer number of lawyers in our legislature may well become an obstacle.

On a related matter, I was encouraged by the way in which members of the Mumbai Bar are refusing to act on behalf of the sole surviving terrorist; in contrast to the gadarene rush of British lawyers to defend British jihadists and their penumbra of apologists. Apparently the lawyers of India still have moral compasses and responsibility towards the wider public interest.

I am not sure what to make of the British pilot who on reaching a fog bound Paris after taking off three hours late from a fog bound Cardiff decided to turn homeward since he was not qualified to make low visibility landings. Apparently this was what legally speaking he was obliged to do. Had I been one of the passengers- many with kids going to Disneyworld- I would have had to be given placidol to calm down.....but, what if the plane had crashed on arrival? I did wonder how many other pilots are flying around with incomplete qualifications to do this or that, or can't fly in, say, rain or thunderstorms. On a related matter, which pilot accent do posters think is most reassuring? We once flew into the Shenandoah Valley in a very small plane during a thunderstorm. The turbulence swayed the thing sideways as well as up and down. Pre-9/11 the cockpit door was open where the pilots were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. Ever since this near death experience I've always found American accented pilots very reassuring. Ditto Malaysians for reasons I cannot explain. Others say a British accent has the same effect.

Various commentators have been mystified by the healers (actually one- Bilal Abdullah for his accomplice was an aeronautical engineer) turned killers who tried to murder clubbers in London and passengers at Glasgow airport. There is a very good piece about the plot by Stephen McGinty in today's Scotman newspaper. In fact, many terrorists have been medics- George Habash and Wadid Hadad come to mind- since the days of the Russian populists turned nihilists. It has often been said that frustrated altruism turns to violence and combines with a training that encourages emotional detachment. Others, notably the Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta, have noted the affinity between certain rules-based applied sciences to religious fundamentalism. And indeed I've met a few engineers and mathematicians who are Evangelical Christians of a dogmatic kind.

What most struck me was that Dr Abdullah claimed he was motivated by the carnage of Iraq. We can discount his claims that he merely wanted to frighten the British with a bit of fire and smoke. Of course there is no meaningful connection between events in Iraq and the murderous desire to kill two lots of people attending a company cocktail party and an 18th birthday party in a West End club. Except of course if some deep cultural hatred and resentment was at work in Abdullah's mind towards a society that had given him (and his colleagues) the only real chances they had in their lives.

We loved Just What Happened- a week in the life of a Hollywood producer juggling two projects and two ex-wives. There are many good movies about the motion picture industry- think The Player- but this was really funny in a low key sort of way. Among the producer protagonist's problems were a louche British director (think Keith Richards with pretension) refusing to cut the end of a film in which a dog is shot after the test audience is horrified, and Bruce Willis refusing to lose weight or shave off a preposterous beard. Terrific.

Earlier in the day we went to the National Gallery's Renaissance Portraits show. There are some splendid major works, like Jan van Eyck's self portrait, two Titian popes, and a Raphael picture of two male friends- but I loved the bust of Niccolo Strozzi by Mino da Fiesole, a Durer drawing of a fat friend, Pontormo's bravura drawing of himself in his underwear, which is a perspectival masterpiece, and the two or three portraits by Lorenzo Lotto who I had not heard of. The exhibition seems incredibly well-planned and visitor-friendly. Easily the best show I've seen all year. And Elberry, have you lost a little dragon by the way, as its chained up next to a fetching lady in one of the pictures.  

The reports on the fourteen people picked up by Belgian police before the EU summit are sketchy. Some of the men concerned seem to have returned from jihadist training in Afghanistan/Pakistan and one had been 'green lit' for a suicide mission.

One is the second husband of Malika al Aroud, a Belgian citizen of Tunisian extraction. After a youth spent in miniskirts and taking drugs, Aroud became a born-again fundamentalist, nowadays only her brown eyes peep out from under the full black garb.

She met her first husband Abdessater Dahmans who took her to Afghanistan where he joined Al Qaeda. The point about Dahmans is that he was one of the two westernised assassins posing as a TV crew who murdered Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001. This was designed to preemptively remove the one ally the US would have used after 9/11. Afterwards, bin Laden sent her US$500 to settle a debt he owed the late Dahman, together with a tape of the latter's last message to a wife who was not let in on the plot. Aroud is a very dangerous individual. Clearly we need to know much more about the jihadis in Belgium- just a short train ride away nowadays. I'll update this one.

Apparently the Moon is going to seem huge tonight due to a perigree- the opposite of apogee I gather. Nice word that perigree. It will be 28,000 kms closer. I once saw a very low lying Moon that was the colour of a blood orange over Blackheath. Perhaps Elberry was up to his old tricks?

Meanwhile, why is cleaning the oven the worst household chore? Polishing brass candlesticks is fun. I hate that feeling of my arms disappearing into the dark dirt. I've just made it worse by snapping off a shelf support- the mere prospect of dealing with the grime having made me get physical. Since I face the wrath of Mrs B, who has yet to notice that I cracked the ceramic tooth brush mug last week, it was up and down six flights of stairs to peer into the grime for the exact model number to give to Neff........grrrrrr. More to the point, I have never found so-called self-cleaning ovens any use. I tried one on a big oven we had in California and the thing looked like a pigeon had exploded after I had finished. Does anyone have a SENSIBLE idea of how to clean an oven other than calling a firm that does nothing else? And while we are dealing with the practical- what about rings from cold glasses on a Cuban mahogany table? I dimly remember a TV programme in which retired butlers knew all this stuff. Help me Jeeves.

Today's Times has a report buried on p. 67 about the conclusions of the Business and Enterprise Select Committee about this country's bleak energy future. Because of chronic underinvestment for a decade or more the generating network is so 'decrepit' that we will lose a third of capacity in the next twelve years. Worse, we have gas storage facilities for 13 days as opposed to Germany (99) and France (122). The lack of storage impacts on our ability to neutralise extreme volatility in prices. Meanwhile Gazprom are quietly buying up interests in Algeria- our only alternative source of liquified gas. You wonder what this government has been doing. Squandering more and more money on a broken welfare system that it should have reformed along the lines proposed by Frank Field a decade ago, while failing to ensure that we won't face a situation where the lights go out.  

The UN investigation into the assassination of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri seems to be coming to conclusion and the report is said to be due early next year. The former German lead investigator had to leave Beirut in a hurry after he was notified of two concurrent plots to murder him, and various witnesses seem to have disappeared. But the Canadian in charge now is a steely man.

The report is likely to place the blame on Assad's brothers, Syrian intelligence officers, and a couple of collaborating Lebanese generals. But will justice be done? The US is keen to lure Syria away from Iran, the test being a peace deal with Israel for which the price will be return of the Golan Heights. Syria may be allowed a continuing influence on its neighbour. Israel itself is said to be keener on keeping Assad and the Alawite sectaries in power than in whoever the majority Sunnis might elect to replace them. Odd to be ruled by a sect that is hereditary rather than based on conversion or proselysation. This is why some suspect that a Libyan/Lockerbie compromise may result in which some low level Syrian operatives are handed over and sentenced in Holland, while the chief culprits get off. Anyway, a fascinating clash of justice and realpolitik which will leave a lot of Druze and Christians unhappy.

The Latvian security service has discovered a novel way of dissuading those who spread gloomy news about the state of the country's economy. The Sunday Times reports that a 32 year old economist was arrested and questioned for two days after questioning the stability of Latvia's 26 banks. A musician who cracked a joke about the strength of Lats was also arrested. This policy would appeal to my wife who shudders every time Robert 'Crack of Doom' Peston bobs up on screen. With MPs being arrested, I suppose anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I've bought myself a hat. A rather nice brown trilby. Fascinating to see the hatter's shop, and how it was steamed into shape with a half-open electric kettle. I've never worn hats, but reckon that at 53 I can get away with it, provided it is raining/snowing so much that visibility (and self-consciousness) are reduced to zero.

The leader of a middle eastern country much in the news at the moment is better known, to the cognoscenti, for acquiring the world's largest collection of the cards tarts leave in telephone boxes. That he never apparently called any of them- as far as one knows- may or may not be significant.

And yes, since some may have wondered, I've been incredibly busy juggling work on my new book, with updating Blood and Rage to incorporate something on Mumbai.

 

This story http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30kristof.html?_r=1 in the New York Times concerns one of the thousands of women who have had acid thrown in their faces in several South Asian Muslim countries after divorcing (or otherwise offending) their husbands.

 

Nine counter-terrorism police arrived at the Kent home of Tory shadow immigration minister Damian Green and arrested him. This decent and intelligent man was held for nine hours in a London police station, and questioned about leaked Home Office documents connected with such immigration scandals as illegals being employed as 'licensed' security guards.

This is on a day when it is emerging that Anglo-Pakistani Islamists were among those captured by Indian police in Mumbai. I have a piece in the Mail today on the attacks. You'd think the British police had more urgent tasks- regarding the involvement, yet again, of British citizens in terrorism- than poking around in the affairs of an MP whose role is to examine government policy on behalf of the public. Perhaps they could follow up stories in India Express about one of the masterminds of the 2007 Mumbai railway attacks being in Birmingham?

Senior Tories are talking about Stalinism, and comparing the arrest with the practices of Robert Mugabe. They are right. And the public should back them in finding out how high up the order to arrest Green goes. If any Home Office minister was involved- and Ken Clarke and David Davies think it likely- then this is one outrage too far.

In the new trading circumstances I've been receiving emails from department stores I rarely enter, offering 20% discounts with the VAT reduction factored in. An enterprising wine merchant even rang the other night offering special discounts. My wife tells me there are discount vouchers galore on the internet should one need a new handbag. Since massive consumer debt is at the heart of this government's irresponsible handling of the economy, i.e the poor being bombarded with credit cards, blank cheques, and huge loans for a decade or more, I shall be avoiding all shops, as a solo protest against what amounts to a cynical attempt to make the national party carry on- both the party 'party' and a government that thinks it is perpetual. Speaking of protests, I wholeheartedly endorse Charles Moore's decision to donate his BBC license 'fee' to Help the Aged. The quicker we are rid of that awful, bloated, complacent organisation the better. On a related matter, today's TLS has a brilliant piece by George Walden on boosterism in modern British culture, while discerning Frederick Raphael has picked Blood & Rage as one of his books of the year.

Reviews of Frederick Spotts' new book on artists and writers in Vichy France remind me of how much has been written already about what Cocteau, Coco Chanel, Maurice Chevalier or Picasso did or did not do in Paris under the Germans. I suppose the lure of celebrity accounts for much of this interest, since I can't imagine book after book devoted to left-wing railwaymen. Interestingly, while the latter frequently sabotaged trains carrying compulsory labourers to Germany under the STO programme, not one of the eighty-five trains used to deport Jews suffered such upsets. Anyway, my bigger point is whether we do, or should, expect higher ethical standards from artists, entertainers, musicians and writers? This question makes a nice change from the stuff about Brand and Ross.

A big rush last night to get into a packed showing of 'Burn After Reading' the new film by Joel and Ethan Coen. Its a black comedy whose thread is a fitness centre employee, Linda Litzke's (actress Frances McDormand) obsession with having having plastic surgery. This intersects with the firing, because of alcoholism, of one Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) from the CIA. He explodes at the man sacking him: You're a Mormon. Next to you we all have a drinking problem!'. His wife's divorce lawyers mislay a disk with his pathetic attempt at a memoir, which the 'Hardbodies Fitness Center woman and her vacuous colleague (Brad Pitt) think is a top secret document which they can use to exort a finder's reward. They then try to sell it to extremely perplexed members of the Russian embassy, who dismiss the information as 'drivel', a nice comment on Cox's entire career. Cox's wife (a paediatrician who loathes children) is having an affair with a serial lothario, brilliantly played by George Clooney, who also alights on Linda through a computer dating agency. He claims to be a Federal Marshal, although he has never fired a gun in his career. The scene where he shows Linda the sex machine he has built for his wife is terribly funny, as is his priapist's constant urge to go jogging to work off his surplus sexual energy. The extortion bid goes wrong- somehow George Clooney ends up shooting the Brad Pitt character by accident- and Cox himself goes completely mad. He is eventually shot by the CIA after he has taken an axe to the boss of the gym who has fallen in love with his employee and been persuaded to snoop in Cox's former home. The Clooney character's wife (the chilly author of children's books) is also having affairs and duly divorces him. The film is extremely funny, with Cox stupefied that such morons could be trying to extort money from him for intelligence he can't believe exists. The CIA bosses- one brilliantly played by JK Simmons- assume something fishy is going on, and dispose of bodies along the way just in case. And they end up paying for the plastic surgery so the consumer wins out in the end. Cox's paralysed and mute father is a former State Department official who silently observes Cox's breakdown and his complaint that everywhere has been taken over by bureaucrats. So do the classical monuments of Washington DC through which the action passes. There is probably a serious point being made here, but the film is really an almost perfect farce in which the plot makes little sense at all.   

Piracy is making the headlines and I have a piece on the latest incident in today's Mail following on from my article in the current Standpoint. The latest news is that an Indian Navy ship. the INS Tabar, has sunk a Somali pirate mother ship after the pirates fired on her. This should be adopted as a universal rule of engagement by all warships in those waters. The UN Security Council should also urgently support a US and French motion enabling naval vessels to enter Somali territorial waters to pursue and stamp these people out. Time to show extortion does not pay.

I've just re-read, The Silence of the Sea, a novella written in 1944 by the French author and illustrator Jean Bruller under the pseudonym Vercors. It consists of a monologue delivered by the fireside to an unwilling old man, the narrator, and his niece, upon whom a young German officer Werner von Ebressac, has been billeted. He's lame, handsome, francophile, and a composer in his former life. The monologues, about how wonderful France is, elicit no response from the old man and his niece. The words themselves are like an imperialist assault, akin to a bore failing to pause for breath. Eventually, after a trip to Paris where he encounters old student friends turned soldiers who have gone raving mad in their desire to destroy France's spirit, Ebressac has a sort of breakdown and requests a transfer to the 'hell' of the Russian front. The silence is a metaphor for the silence into which all decent writers slipped during the occupation- in Buller's case by becoming Vercors. All of 47 pages his book is amazingly well crafted, and tells one more about life under occupation than many longer books.

As a lurophile, which I hope is the fancy term for cat lover, I was heartened by the news that one George was reunited after thirteen years with his Californian owners thanks to someone having the his chip scanned. The owners said he hadn't changed much, and still delighted in bounding at light flickering on the walls. Here we have a different problem. Our resident hunter-killer duo, Stanley and Flo, have taken to raiding a primary school's ecological pond and dragging frogs into our house, as well as any stray mice, and on one grim occasion, a live bird. The mouse that stood on its hind legs while 'Clyde' Stanley coldly gazed down at him, waiting for 'Bonnie' to polish it off, was especially affecting so I rescued it and desposited it outside.

Bright winter sunshine on this day of national remembrance. I shall be thinking about three uncles who died in the Great War and who are buried at Tyne Cot and Knightsbridge Cemetery at Mesnil Menart. Harper Collins have just brought out a beautiful book on Lutyens and war memorials by the way. Do I detect a subtle shift away from the 1960s tendency to regard the First World War as pointless as epitomised in 'Oh What a Lovely War'? Imagine a Germany as powerful as it was after Brest Litovsk and how long an armed truce with that vast entity would have lasted. We probably would not have had Hitler's war, but war with the 'restless Reich' there would probably have been. Anyway, you can read my thoughts on the long-term consequences of the war in the last of the pamphlet series the  Guardian is running this week. I think it appears on Saturday.

Others are celebrating the 150th anniversary of gin and tonic, favoured drink of many of my American acquaintances. Apparently the Indian tonic did away with the Hogarthian tawdriness of gin (lane), indeed it made it seem medicinal because of the (insignificant) dosage of quinine. While I like Indian tonic water, and sometimes drink it on a hot day, my feeling about gin was influenced by descriptions of it as vaguely oily and unpleasant in Orwell's 1984. Now I know there are many fine London gins, but I've never been able to shake my dislike of it. That probably accounts for my cheery disposition since it is allegedly a mood depressant.

Very wet Sunday afternoon so to the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain. Mankind as meat is the gist of it, a bit like walking into an abattoir. I used to like his work a lot, and there is still much to admire in his handling of colour and paint or the way he defines a sinister sort of space. Some of the paintings of animals are brilliant, notably 'Man with Dog (and drain)' and some pictures of baboons. I also liked the room which combined photos of his studio- which give a new meaning to the phrase that a room 'looks like a bomb went off'- with some of the images he collected (a lot from the Algerian War) and his comparatively rare drawings and sketches. But I felt that there was some falling-off in the last few decades of his life as the pictures became too slick, as if they were intended to blend with the decoration in rich peoples' homes. The gold frames confirmed this impression of value added. Nor could I see that his many studies of popes did much to improve on the Velasquez originals. At the end I wondered whether the shock effect of Bacon's work had been muted by the ubiquity of bodily functions, post mortems, and graphic sex in our popular culture. Pictures that resulted in complaints under obscenity laws (the one of two figures wrestling in grass) in the 1950s wouldn't raise a WI member's eyebrow today. Anyway, for those nostalgic for a certain louche London life in the 1950s this is the show to see- quite possibly no one has painted the physical impact of a long night in a bar to such effect. Too bad so many of his sitters didn't last the same distance as the artist despite his penchant for paying the dustmen to beat him up: 'We've come about the bins Mr Francis' being a story told by an artist friend of mine who knew him. 

Today's Guardian has a brilliant review of 'Hunger', the latest British film to sentimentalise the murderers of Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein. See here http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/nov/03/hunger-bobby-sands. No need to see the movie after reading this outstanding piece. I'd recommend Gomorrah instead. It is the polar opposite of every Hollywood gangster movie. The public housing is unbelievably squalid, the countryside polluted with toxic waste dumped on behalf of northern industrialists, and even haut couture is not free of the Commora's attentions. The fate of the Chinese sweat shop owner who tries to sneak into the trade is chillingly instructive. Although the Commora make 500,000 Euros a day just from drugs, none of the bosses in the film lead enviable lives. They are huge thugs with gold chains and fake tans, living in shabby flats and unremarkable suburban homes. One of them has the sort of artificial voice box of someone with throat cancer. At the end of the movie the makers noted that 4,000 people have been murdered in Naples by these criminals. That's more than the death toll from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I suspect that the Provos more properly resemble the men shown in this film than they do the haloed characters of every British movie about the Troubles. Great that Gomorrah is tipped to win the best foreign film Oscar. Perhaps Hollywood will think again before it sentimentalises Irish murderers too.

Thanks to intelligence operations which apparently commenced in September, there was no US election commentary from Osama bin Laden. Websites used by Al Qaeda to broadcast his pronouncements were chased out of a succession of countries.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has an interesting essay on Stuart Levey's War as they call it, a Treasury Department official who like Charlie Wilson has single-handedly brought pressure to bear on banks, insurance and shipping companies trading with Iran. The method involves warning them of a catastrophic 'reputational crisis'. It seems to be working, whether in Dubai (the equivalent for Teheran of Hong Kong to China) or Switzerland. Even the Chinese have quietly stopped financial dealings with Iran. All those glitzy villas on the palm banks will remain unoccupied if the owners are likely to be scrutinised by the US Treasury. Although, predictably, various dubious Iranian banking entities continue to operate in the City of London, as Fran Abrahams reported on an outstanding BBC 'Financial World Tonight' report some months back.

Now if, as seems likely, US military measures against Iran are not under serious consideration, it is incumbent on all those who advocate robust diplomacy (and that means the Europeans) to ensure that sanctions are accelerated, particularly in the fields of oil and gas whose fruits Ahmadinejad has been spending on his electoral clientele as if there is no tomorrow. The 'its good to talk' approach is no solution (the Iranians have run rings round the IAEA and the three EU stooges, and have outfoxed five successive US presidents); there have to be fixed time limits on no-condition talks, followed by stringent sanctions that will deepen Iran's economic crisis. These have to be targetted at the estimated 80% of the economy which is in the hands of the military and Revolutionary Guards. Not only is Ahmadinejad evidently under some physical or mental strain, but one of his key ministerial appointments has been rejected by parliament for claiming an Oxford honorary degree he never had. Apparently the whole government may collapse in the wake of this crisis on the grounds that if a certain number of new ministers is reached it has to be subject to reapproval by the clerics under the peculiar dual-control constitution.

Meanwhile, New Zealand newspapers report postive developments in Indonesia where the men responsible for the two Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 are about to face firing squads. As I have long advocated, the West needs to broaden its focus on the Muslim world out towards relatively moderate nations with huge populations. 

Pierre Claudel's Il y a longtemps que je l'aime is built around marvellous performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein. Its about two sisters, the older a doctor who has completed a fifteen years stretch for killing her incurably ill son, and who returns to a family that has renounced her. The relationship between the sisters, and the two adopted Vietnamese children of the younger one, and how the film depicts middle class life in provincial Nancy, are very well achieved.

Over at New Culture Forum, Peter Whittle has some good suggestions about what a Tory government should do with the BBC. They follow a couple of excellent pieces by Charles Moore and Bruce Anderson in the Telegraph on Saturday and Sunday. Oddly enough, one of the programmes I despise most, Late Review on BB2, came up trumps on Friday night. Four American guests proved more sophisticated than Kirsty Walk could handle, used as she is to the usual third-rate British leftist stagers. Regardless of their nominal political affiliations, the Americans dismissed Matt Frei's warm up package on the 'culture wars' (which Wark absurdly claimed commenced with the election of George Booooosh) as naive and unsophisticated, and then proceeded to balanced discussions of culture and politics. At the end, one of the smartest of the four squeezed in the thought that European audiences might now realise that not all Americans are morons. Brilliant stuff.

 

The Royal Academy Byzantine show (reviewed in the latest Standpoint by Michael Prodger) is really worth a visit, even though it was packed and the objects are small and far away within glass cases- a problem if your eyesight is not good. I thought the ceramics and textiles were the most fascinating exhibits, though there is a splendid bejewelled icon of St Michael clutching a little gold sword too.

FOur o'clock and the BBC is still deliberating over the 'preliminary report' about remarks made by Ross on the answering machine.........ACTION THIS DAY as Churchill had it is evidently an alien concept to these people.

A British man has been ordered by his landlords to take down the Halloween decorations outside his house because they are scaring too many people.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081614/Man-ordered-Halloween-decorations-scary.html. The second set of pictures are very, very amusing. That trick or treat stuff wends its way here tomorrow. Neighbouring children tend to cut the external phone line if you don't hand over sweets- all vaguely reminding me of that excellent film Straw Dogs. Having armed police just outside doesn't seem to deter them.

Amusing to see the non-debate on last night's Newsnight about the Brand/Ross affair. No BBC executives dared show up. There was no room either for any of the BBC's many critics. Instead there were three 'comedians' who all agreed on the BBC's continuing need to dare. I suppose that's the clever line to take if you hope they might commission a new show or a new series of Dead Ringers. Attempts were made by some bland suit on this morning's Today programme to blame everything on The Mail. More amusingly, the BBC is using footage of two different audiences going into radio shows to insinuate that Britain is 'divided' over this 'controversy' along generational lines. It isn't. We know plenty of thirty-somethings who think Brand and Ross are disgusting and disgustingly overpaid too. I can only conclude that the BBC bosses think we are all idiots who do not spot these multiple sleights of hand. Abusive telephone messages (especially to seventy year olds) are, methinks, a criminal offense.

Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove did us all a great service last week by drawing attention to the BBC's introductory laudations to 'our greatest living historian' Eric Hobsbawm as he claimed that all his prognostications had come true. He's the ghastly academic Stalinist who has inched his way up the Ruritanian ladder to a Companionship of Honour by giving the general impression (though not physically in 1936 in Spain) of right-on sentiments as well as books that seem remarkably dexterous on Chile, China or Venezuela for any one who knows nothing about them. Being the father of Sarah Brown's former business partner probably helped with that one. Last year I had the misfortune of being seated at a table opposite the professor at a dinner in honour of my friend Niall Ferguson. Hobby and I contrived not to exchange so much as a glance or a word as I eagerly scanned his face for evidence of the Reaper and recalled another dinner where some brave soul shouted out 'free Pinochet, jail Hobsbawm'. Had I been told of this seating plan, I'd have avoided the entire evening. The BBC's enthusiasm for Hobby is all the more bizarre since it was on a BBC programme, years ago, that he assented to interviewer Michael Ignatieff's proposition that had the 'noble dream' (lie) worked out in the Soviet Union, the deaths of twenty million people would have been justified in the end. Let's hope Michael Gove is equally attentive to the Marxisant clients and clones Hobby has helped place up and down British academia, who then go on to corrupt the sort of people recruited by the BBC.  

I don't know about commenters on this blog, but I resent the use of the compulsory license poll tax to pay huge sums for these two to behave in the most asinine manner. Are they simply monsters who the bosses of the BBC are afraid of, or worse, do their antics reflect the mindset of BBC management? I don't listen to BBC Radio 2, but I'd be interested in hearing from those who do.

I suppose I'd better add to the remarkable publicity a gathering of French medievalists has attracted because of their controversial 'revisions' of the collective (British) memory of Agincourt. One of their claims seems pretty uncontroversial- namely that there were more English (and Welsh) troops than the French, who's numbers were inflated to the absurd figure of 150,000 by English chroniclers. Agincourt was turned into a fine WW2 propaganda film, modelled, I recall on Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky which was made in the late 1930s. This is not the first time that the British 'few' have faced 'fewer' opponents after historians have gone into the matter. The air war historian Richard Overy has long demonstrated that in the Battle of Britain, the RAF had significantly more fighter pilots than the Luftwaffe, partly because of volunteers from the Dominions, Ireland and USA, but also significant numbers of Czech, Polish and French exiles. There was also no significant difference in the numbers of aircraft on each side, although the British produced more fighters. You can also see how figures for how many of x or y were shot down are flexible, once you've read any first-hand memoir by a WW2 fighter pilot. They are not sure if they hit the enemy or whether it was a comrade, and they don't really know in many cases whether the plane went down or limped home. I hadn't realised that it only took fourteen seconds pressing the button to empty the eight machine guns and/or canon, on a Hurricane or Spitfire. And all at 300mph too.

The other aspect of the medievalists conference -namely of accusing the British of 'war crimes'- is more dubious. This is part of the on-going 'legalisation' of the past, with which comes the compensation culture. Now I am sure, or rather fairly sure, that there were codes of conduct on medieval battlefields, where, if memory serves, the object was to capture high value targets for future exchange by ransom. But codes ain't laws, and they were only observed by one class on medieval battlefields. The Prescott's of this world (welshmen in this case) simply slit the knight's throats after they were prone. The fact of the matter is that for thousands of years warfare was a Hobbesian affair, and it serves no purpose to re-impose standards of conduct derived from the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare on societies which had no inkling of such things.

 

 

The crusading investigative magistrate, Judge Baltasar Garzon, is at it again. Readers will recall that he tried to extradite General Pinochet in 1998 and prosecuted the Argentinian navy officer Adolfo Scilingo. He has done sterling work against Eta and al Qaeda too.

A couple of weeks ago, Garzon commenced criminal proceedings in relation to Franco-era executions in Spain itself, and has ordered the exhumation of 19 mass graves, one of which contains the remains of Federico Garcia Lorca. This is part of a wider attempt by the socialist government of Zapatero (who's grandfather was shot too in the Civil War) to 'revise' the policy of tactical amnesia that smoothed the transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975. That deal worked until now, and was essential in securing army and police agreement to the transition.

Every single Spanish person I discussed this with in Madrid earlier this week thought this was a disastrous course of action. No significant figure responsible for Francoist atrocities is alive- although Garzon is insisting that the Interior Ministry prove that some 35 generals and ministers are actually dead. Lorca's family queered the judge's pitch by saying they would prefer the poet's grave to remain undisturbed.

Although it is not being honestly reported here, Spain is facing massive economic problems, not least after the construction boom turned to bust, and because huge Latin American investments are turning sour. Worse, from Zapatero's point of view, Sarkozy has refused to invite him to major economic summits. These investigations are a cynical and spiteful attempt to distract attention from this looming crisis.

In addition to being a Leftist show pony in the manner of Michael Mansfield QC, Garzon is also blatantly biased. One of the TV interviewers I met on Wednesday was a Basque girl who's great grandfather, the playwright Munoz Seca, was shot by firing squad in 1936. The person who ordered his execution was the then Communist leader, Santiago Carrillo, who (born in 1915) is still alive, having transformed himself from Stalinist to Eurocommunist, and now to Social Democrat. Nuria Ferrer told me that when she was asked to interview him, she refused, saying she 'would have spat in his face'.

These investigations may help Garzon in his quest for the limelight and to resume a political career that broke off when he was a junior minister in a former socialist administration. Many Spanish people of all persuasions wonder whether reviving the fears and hatreds of the Civil War is a price worth paying.

The new film, and Stefan Aust's book, are contributing to the de-romanticisation of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Of course, romanticisation of the self was the essence of their problem, as it ultimately is of most of the world's terrorists past and present.

Apparently the Iranians have just tried to beat the record for the world's largest sandwich by stuffing 2000lbs of turkey into a thing 5,000 feet long. Unfortunately before the Guiness Records people could verify its dimensions, some Tehran citizens scoffed the whole thing. Meanwhile game has made a welcome reappearance. We've already had grouse and some delicious partridges and will be moving on to pheasant next weekend. People say its healthy food- but does that include the bread sauce or breadcrumbs marinated in blood? Yesterday I managed to buy Swiss Chard instead of cavallo nero for a pasta dish that caught my eye in a Rick Stein cookery book. Oh well it won't be my problem....see below: 

Next week I'll be in Madrid where I'm promoting Sangre Y Rabia for four days. My Spanish publishers Taurus always cram a lot in to the schedule, but they've left ample time for what I regard as some of the best restaurants in Europe, especially the cellar like place next to the Cortes. Apparently I'm going be on a chat show run by my war correspondent buddy Hermann Tersch, a living legend of a man......will report how it all goes. 

I urge you to read this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/10/17/do... remarkable piece by George Walden. He puts his finger on the malaise of the times.

On the Today programme the Mail's Quentin Letts was getting a bit of stick for being nasty to Mandelson, although I don't recall his parliamentary sketch being especially vicious. They wheeled out a lesser sketch writer who had just written an appreciative piece of His Lordship, marginally less sickmaking than one that appeared by an old friend of Mandelson's in the Telegraph. As it happens, I think Quentin Letts is easily the best parliamentary sketch writer around, and the only one who makes both of us laugh out loud every time. Its a bit like reading Wind in the Willows set in a swamp. Meanwhile, newspapers fill with Mandelson's doings on a yacht owned by a Russian billionaire, about whose affairs the former EU Commissioner was handling a complaint from Czech and Italian businessmen. Having conceded he may have had a drink on the boat, Mandelson revised this to a week-long stay. Go for it Quentin! And shame on those writing the puff pieces for Mandelson.

I've been reading a lot of books with the title May this to June that 1940 by the veteran US-Hungarian historian John Lukacs. After a while they all seem samey, with too much speculation about Churchill and Hitler's respective intentions. However, he did turn up one thing that was fascinating, namely that in mid-July 1940 Churchill thought that Hitler might not try to invade England at all, and would instead turn eastwards, which is precisely what Hitler thought of doing at the time so as to bring Britain to its knees in a roundabout way with a 'five months' campaign in Russia. The other interesting exercise has been reading Churchill's speeches in the monumental Robert Rhodes James (six volumes) edition, where sentences that stand out in posterity are virtually lost in the original. I was surprised to see how the 'never in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few' is almost unremarkable in the lengthy original overview of the conflict in which what was then pinprick bombing of Germany gets more space. Anyway a typical historian's day, unless you are Andrew Roberts, and get to go to a lot of parties.  

Canadian newspaoers report that in Kandahar, for which their troops have responsibility, the Taliban have switched tactics from IEDs to assassinations. Specifically they have killed the official responsible for widows and orphans, and the city's charismatic female police chief. The explicit goal is to rub out anyone connected to foreigners or anyone with any degree of intelligence, triggering a local brain drain. This will leave a residue of mindless helots who may be more biddable to their message. The Germans and Soviets tried this in occupied Poland. Meanwhile according to the Croissant website, in Pakistan's Baluchistan, three girls and their mother and aunt, have been shot and buried alive at the insistence of a tribal jurga cum sharia court for having the temerity to choose spouses (in the three girls case) other than their cousins, the complicity of the mother and aunt guaranteeing their deaths too.

Before I come back to Afghanistan in a later post, I can't resist mentioning the film Gomorrah which is brilliant. Naples is probably my favourite European city, although I have a weakness for Madrid, about which more later this month. One of the more memorable experiences was the decision to avoid the two young muggers who were sizing up my wife's handbag in the old town by taking a turn down a narrow alley. We kept looking up at the windowless buidlings on either side until the sound of shingle-like crunching beneath our feet led us to look down at a carpet of crushed syringes. We had wandered into what I believe addicts used to call a 'shooting gallery'. Luckily I'm more a combat boot than a sandals man even in hot climates. Depending on your view of my character, you can either imagine me carrying Mrs B or encouraging her to recall those childhood ballet lessons where you dance on your toes. Anyway, everyone I know who has been to Naples has been mugged or robbed or had their car stolen, but its a great place, with a fantastic archaeological museum- the two bronze warriors, the black runners with white eyes, and the Pompeian murals stand out- and light on the bay that I am already yearning for as winter comes. Try the Hotel Vesuvio on the quay if you want real style. A good view of the rubbish.

Comment pages are filling- for example today's FT- with opinion pieces about whether or not the West should get out of Afghanistan. Rather than inflicting my views on anyone, what do commenters think should be done?  

In a sinister sign of the times, the FT reports that the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act has been used by the Treasury to freeze £4billion of Icelandic assets in this country, so as to exert pressure on Iceland's government to compensate savers in the failed Landsbanki. Are they going to sequester Hamleys and House of Fraser? It is as yet undetermined whether such knowing investors as local government authorities, who are rumoured to have put millions into such accounts, will be compensated too. Why individuals should wish to put money in Icelandic accounts is their affair, but it is unforgiveable for councils, which presumably have advice about the strength of any given economy, should have recklessly done the same with public money. Before we allow the government to venture down the road of legislation anticipating large scale terrorist outrages, we should be looking at how to contain the damage done to our liberties by the legislation already passed, which inlcudes councils using anti-terrorist laws to snoop on welfare fraudsters and people who do not observe recycling laws. Meanwhile, those nice Russians are offering Iceland £3billion to help them out of the mess. Iceland, I recall, was a founder member of NATO.

 

Because of other pressing concerns I haven't been following every twist of the current economic nightmare. However, today is explained by an excellent piece by the Independent's City and Business Editor, Jeremy Warner: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jeremy-warner/jeremy-warners-outlook-treasury-fiddles-as-markets-crash-953716.html which also puts the blame squarely on this awful government's past mistakes (1998 Banking Act) and dithering in the present. This view is in no way influenced by JW being my oldest friend- he just writes authoritatively and interestingly about these subjects in a paper that manages great business coverage with paltry resources. Mine's a large one Jeremy. 

Elsewhere, on the Daily Beast, Andrew Neil points out that instead of benefiting governments which pretend to be competent, the present mess will result in a tidal-wave sized backlash by voters against every incumbent government, especially if they try the 'global forces' line rather than accepting local responsibility. New Labour can crow about the putsch that is behind them (remember David 'big beast' Miliband anyone?) but most people have already tuned out from the faces they have had enough of. What a pity so many people are going to be ruined by the time the electorate gets a say in the matter.

The BBC did its best to put a negative spin on the Conservative Party conference, with 'Newsnight's' Michael Crick reduced to filming dustbins brimming with empty champagne bottles so as to insinuate a Brideshead culture. No cameras were present, of course, at the 3am booze up in Manchester, where Labour pre-empted Ruth Kelly's resignation, and nor did little Crick go sniffing around the bins like some rat in a cheap suit. The programme ended with some end-of-the-pier light entertainment, with a silly competition to rank post-war prime ministers. The trouble is, the light entertainment has become indistinguishable from the programme's reporting and interviewing style- 'oh no he won't, oh yes he will'.....last night we had three Liverpudlians on 'KULTCHUR' including some priceless lines from singer Holly Johnson about why he found Sibelius and Wagner difficult. The level of discussion was what might find in the staff room of a primary school........

The BBC is also celebrating the PM's masterstroke of recalling Mandelson from Brussels. Heaven knows, they'll need him. They couldn't quite find the right form  of words to welcome back Margaret Beckett from her sojourn with the Elgin marbles in the BM.....Now she's a real heavyweight. Watching one of the allegedly brighter members of the Brown government discussing future economic strategy, he said: 'When we find one (a policy), it will be proactive'. That may be my candidate for epitaph on Labour's grave.

The estimable Barnabas Fund usually concerns itself with Christians persecuted in non-Christian lands. However, it now draws attention to a disturbing story from the West Drayton Removal Centre (UK). 28 years old Moftah Abdulghani who fled Libya after converting to Christianity, is awaiting the outcome of an appeal after the failure of his application for asylum here. Last weekend he was almost beaten to death by Somali and Yemeni Muslim detainees after they observed him leaving the Centre's makeshift church. He has now been moved to another detention centre where he is being kept in isolation to prevent similar attacks. His attackers should be put on the first planes out of here, assuming they will not face criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, its farewell to the pc Pc Sir Ian Blair, and hello again to Peter Mandelson. Peregrine Worsthorne once recalled sitting next to Sir Ian at an Oxbridge dinner. It took half an hour to realise he was not some third-rate sociology professor rather than Britain's top policeman. The alacrity with which Livingstone rushed out to defend Sir Ian suggests that Boris Johnson was right to give the top cop the heave-ho, assuming he wasn't about to be suspended anyway in the wake of Sir Ronnie Flanagan's report on his business dealings. The mayor is elected by us Londoners and of course he should have a major say in who is in charge of the Met if he feels that the Commissioner is too distracted by multiple investigations to do his job. As for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's defence that he has important national responsibilities for counter-terrorism, that job should be hived off and given to someone else with sole responsibility for that problem. Last night Michael Heseltine made mince meat of her on Question Time over this very issue. Mandelson's return is part of Brown's attempt to refocus the cabinet on the economic crisis. Give him a few months to settle in and his main talent, for compulsive plotting, will be darkly in evidence.

Its the anniversary of the Munich agreements. And I'm reading Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal written over three months in late 1938:

"But once again

The crisis is put off and things look better

And we feel negotiation is not vain- Save my skin and damn my conscience.

And negotiation wins,

If you can call it winning,

And here we are- just as before- safe in our skins;

Glory to God for Munich.

And stocks go up and wrecks

Are salved and politicians' reputations

Go up like Jack-on-the Beanstalk; only the Czechs

Go down and without fighting".

Meanwhile he listened to the sound of wood being chopped as the trees were cleared on Primrose Hill for anti-aircraft guns and the royal parks chiselled with trenches to use as bomb shelters. The newspapers are so filled with economic disaster (although the Mail has a nice ten ways to cheer yourself up thing this morning) that I have taken refuge in what must have felt like a real crisis....

Terrific essay  http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/09/29/080929crat_atlarge_menand in the New Yorker about Lionel Trilling, with such lines as 'he resented being understood under the aspect of anything so insufficiently nuanced as a category'. And 'I have one of the great reputations in the academic world; this thought makes me retch'. After a dispute about a dissertation, he unilaterally refused to teach graduate students again. God knows I know how he felt. Why are US magazines able to turn out such good pieces as this essay?

Elsewhere, Nick Cohen has a revealing piece in the Observer about the Nixonian-Stalinists of New Labour, plotting nastinesses over too many drinks. Sounds like the Beavor's Retreat bar at the LSE where sundry malicious drunks used to congregate to plot, many of them happily carried off by cyrrhosis in the interim.

Finally, I hugely admire the Dutch publisher-owner of Gibson Square, whose fine list includes Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips and George Walden. Incredible then that three Islamists should have tried to burn his house down because he took on a controversial novel, which, DISGRACEFULLY, was rejected by Random House, after an academic in Texas not only queered the author's pitch with a report, BUT ALERTED UNSPECIFIED MUSLIMS about the book's contents- see today's Observer which, to its credit, doesn't irresponsibly print the poor Dutchman's address. As in the Danish cartoons affair, it is the role of such middle managers of global Islamist outrage which is really sinister, but one scarcely imagines them working as profs at the University of Texas. I hope the alumni and donors there take a very, very keen interest in this chain of events, the one means of checking academic license.

Churches in the vicinity of Wall Street are reporting an increase in besuited visitors to lunchtime services. According to the Reverend Mark Bozzuti-Jones of Trinity Church, 'the economic crisis is a reminder that we cannot put our faith in riches, that we cannot put our faith in money'. He is also getting requests for help to pay the rent. 'People are just sitting there, praying or crying and definitely exhausted'. The churches are mounting workshops called 'Coping with stress' or 'Navigating career transitions'. The Wall Street Synagogue is also dealing with former employees of AIG. It was founded in 1929 as it happens. I wonder if the many churches in the City of London are experiencing a similar upturn?

Meanwhile, the archbishop of Canterbury has adopted the Marx was right line. He can always be relied upon to follow the left-liberal herd, and he has. Now leaving aside (!) the fact that Marx was responsible for a political ideology that killed 80 million in the last century, I am not going to be as uncharitable about beardie weirdie as I usually am. All he has drawn attention to is Marx's insight into the reification of things, which he rightly says is synonymous with idolatry. In this case, money becomes real, and the people ghosts. I don't actually object to religious leaders commenting on our moral condition- if they are there to do anything, it is just that. The problem with beardie is that his 'political' interventions are so of a type- unlike the far finer commentaries of Jonathan Sacks, to my mind the most impressive religious figure in contemporary Britain.  

I'm in Copenhagen tonight and tomorrow if any Danes are reading this. I'll report back on developments in Denmark on Friday.

Apparently Waitrose is hoping to stem the tide of those middle class shoppers departing for Aldi and Asda by introducing the cheaper cuts of meat not widely seen since the 1950s. Pigs trotters are going to be big, at about 90p a go, along with bath chaps and oxtail. We may even witness a revival of tripe- that ghastly thing I remember the smell of bubbling in milk and onions from that decade, although I have since eatern a heavily spiced version in Palo Alto. Some enterprising person has also decided to reprint the century old Workhouse Cookbook, with its recipes for GRUEL, which will be handy for those of us who have read about it, but are unsure of what it consists of. Now while I can just about stomach a kidney or two, and like calves liver, and at a pinch, oxtail, I have always drawn the line at brains, cheeks and trotters. Am I missing something here? And why stop with the 1950s? Surely powdered eggs and spam might be even cheaper? Personally I'm keen on soups, chiefly so I can slurp them up in Churchillian fashion, exclaiming 'good soup General' as the great man himself did on every occasion according to the marvellous diaries of Alan Brooke. Mrs B has long since found this joke tiresome. Soups don't cost much to make and you use a lot of vegetables. Meanwhile our doughty PM and his Chancellor are off around the world organising the fightback against a financial crisis Darling equates with the war on terrorism- a term the government has actually proscribed. The fearless duo are going to set the world's financial system to rights. I don't think so. For this sits oddly with US plans for a giant assumption of toxic debt, including that of British banks with substantial US operations, as well as Deutsche and UBS. I haven't forgotten either an excellent BBC4 radio programme by Fran Abrahams, about how despite all the talk of curbing financial activity in London connected with terrorism, very little has actually been done to stop this place being a souk where the jihadists can get their money and get away with it. Do pigs need trotters to fly?

Among the things that make one ashamed to be British- Russell Brand for example- the mean-spirited treatment of the Gurkas ranks pretty high. The Daily Mail has been campaigning on their behalf, with a corruscating piece by Stephen Glover the other day. Despite the fact that 45,000 of these extraordinary men have died, and another 150,000 been wounded fighting for this country, the government (and presumably it is the dysfunctional MOD) is equivocating about allowing two thousand of them to reside in this country or to receive medical care for what are often serious injuries. In a typical piece of New Labour lawyer reasoning, the government claims that 2,000 of these men should be denied such rights because the Gurkas HQ, down to 1997, was in Hong Kong, and that therefore they have no 'significant' ties with Britain. Some of them don't even get the pension which is already one sixth of what a British soldier receives. I would have thought that charging a Japanese machinegun nest was a 'significant' display of affection for the country that recruited them. Gordon Brown has ghost authored a few compilations called 'Courage'. His government's disgusting treatment of the Gurkas shows that this is just a PR stunt, and that it does not really care about our armed forces. There are many reasons to seek the ouster of this failed government, but in this household its eagerness to take in every passing Somali or francophone West African, while refusing entry to these brave Nepalese, has become the clincher. Whatever one thinks of Liam Fox, he would not behave so dishonourably. The costs of such a measure would be a fraction of the vast sums Labour has squandered to keep its north-east client base happy by sustaining Northern Rock.

An elderly Nigerian Islamic preacher, Mr Mohammedu Bello Abubakar, has been arrested in Bida and charged with with 'unlawful marriages'. He has 86 wives who have produced more than 170 children. He claims he has always treated the wives equally. A sharia court will endeavour to get the number of wives down to four or he will be evicted from his home. Now the possibilities for me to make some sexist blunder are endless, so I will merely confine myself to Mr Abubakar's likely problems. Does he buy airport duty free size bars of chocolate to ensure that all 86 get their rightful triangle of Toblerone? Trips to the shops must look like an army on the march. The children alone would constitute dozens of football teams, in fact he could have his own mini-league. Mr Elberry can provide us with other possible scenarios from the Abubakar bed room - a real case of desperate housewives-since conjugal rights must be a problem given the wizened frame of the preacher and adultery is a capital offence. Oh what fun we are going to have if sharia creeps further in here.

Half past five and a grey blanket of cloud is squeezing the light out of central London. The leaves on a huge chesnut tree outside are absolutely still and seem especially jagged today. My imperfect hearing can just distinguish between the muffled roar of aircraft coming down to Heathrow and the hum of rush hour traffic. Feels as if a storm is on the way since there is no bird song. What further financial horrors will be on the news tonight? How many more young bankers will do the cardboard box walk tomorrow? You see- I have humanity!

I couldn't bring myself to wade through all the stuff about Brown and Labour in the Sunday papers. How long does this nonsense have to go on before we, the voters facing dire economic conditions, get a chance to choose another government? Why is this man still prime minister? The amiable Alan Johnson has long been my choice, but apparently he ruled himself out on Desert Island Discs, on the grounds that the top slot was above his capabilities. He seems relaxed in himself.

Apart from Nick Cohen's column and John Ware's revelations about GCHQ and the Omagh bombing, I was stunned by a brief life style interview with our Chancellor. Apparently he scoots back to his native Edinburgh every weekend, so as to climb hills and listen to Pink Floyd.........nothing wrong with Edinburgh or hills of course, though most of us grew out of Pink Floyd after Dark Side of the Moon. What struck me was the dread and gloom Darling expressed towards having to work in LONDON, a place he obviously does not like. I wonder how pervasive this feeling is in a cabinet packed with Scots. Surely the bonnie banks beckon?

The Saturday Telegraph had a good piece about the creators of The Wire, one of who is a detective turned teacher. When it comes to dishing out honours, I hope the brilliant Hackney born actor who plays Stringer Bell is recognised, rather than the usual crowd of showbiz hasbeens and lovies.

 

I strongly recommend Ron Suskind's The Way of the World, published by Harper Collins and Simon Schuster this month. In addition to its extraordinary revelations about, for example, how the CIA's own Germany station chief encouraged the German intelligence service to deny the CIA access to the Iraqi defector 'Curveball', a key source about WMD, presumably at the instigation of the Vice President, it has remarkable things to say about the flow of moral energy, and how human contact and giving without hope of receiving may do more to defeat terrorism than many of the current blunt strategies. Since Suskind's earlier One Per Cent Doctrine was one of the best books about life on what Cheney called the 'dark side' after 9/11, it is a major achievement on his part to have bettered that. Its a beautifully constructed book too, which like the film Babel, weaves together apparently unrelated stories from across our so interconnected world. 

The Evening Standard diary had a gem of an item last night about Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair's sister. Ms Booth, who is apparently a little bit famous for having much to say, described Gaza, where she went to protest the Palestinian cause, as like a concentration camp, its population starved like the people in Darfur. The piece is accompanied by a photograph of the ample Ms Booth at the check out desk of a supermarket brimming with food. The location? Gaza City. Ms Booth did not see fit to mention the reign of terror Hamas is responsible for in the strip- that is people beaten up by police for praying outside politicised mosques, or Palestinian journalists attacked for not towing the Hamas line.

Anyway, enough of her, I have a big essay in today's Mail about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. I wouldn't recommended calling the cell phone number.

Apparently our little twerp Foreign Secretary was taken aback by the tone of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in a recent telephone conversation. According to a Foreign Office spokeman, 'it was all effing this, and effing that. It was not what you would call diplomatic language. It was rather shocking'. Precisely, Mr Lavrov, former head of Russia's UN representation, told the callow Miliband 'who are you to fucking lecture me?' I warmed immediately to Mr Lavrov for telling one Labour minister what the rest of them shouldl be told every time they nanny on about drinking, lagging pipes or smoking.

The highlight, for me, of the Melbourne Writers' Festival was a session on small magazines, with Philip Gourevich, the talented editor of Paris Review, and the editors of The Monthly and Griffith Review, both of which are full of fascinating pieces- including a great essay about Don Bradman and the early cult of celebrity. Philip has a new book out called Standard Operating Procedure which shows how the Abu Ghraib photos do not quite tell the story those who use them think they are telling. I also did an hour live radio conversation with Orlando Figes on the subject of Evil Regimes, and then a separate thing on cultures of terrorism in a huge theatre. Anyway, the real highlights of my trip were reading Geoffrey Blainey's History of Australia- a beautifully written and witty book which invites European readers to ponder a continent in which most of us lived in, say, Denmark or Sweden, and the rest of it was virtually empty. He's an incredibly talented historian who is a delight to read. I much preferred Melbourne to Sydney. It seemed ve