DUFF & NONSENSE!

Size doesn't matter - honestly!

I have a confession to make.  It's embarrassing, even shame-making, but it must be admitted.  I do not have a very big one!  I know that because from time to time I have caught glimpses of other blokes and theirs are much bigger than mine.  Even worse, and this is very hard to admit, there are some girls who have bigger ones than me!!!   So what can I do about my brain?  (Er, sorry, what did you think I was on about?)

I have just had a glimpse at the brain of Richard J. Bird through the medium of his book Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought.  It has taken me several weeks to get through it and my brain is hurting.  It is a laughable impertinence for me to attempt a summary.  It is also fairly risky for me to attempt it because there is a decent chance that I might have misunderstood it.  Nevertheless, I will try and give you the central theme of the book for two reasons.  First, if he is right, his thesis is of huge importance.  Second, and more trivial, if he is right, he has blown Darwinism out of the water by offering a wider and deeper explanation of life that incorporates its place in the existence of the universe.  (You can see why my brain hurts!)

In essence, he is proposing that life forms emanate from iteration, that is, the constant repetition of informational equations at the genetic level which are dynamic in that they incorporate the result of the preceding equation into the subsequent equation producing fractals.  This phenomena is familiar to students of chaos theory who are aware that given a sufficiently long series of iterations, suddenly and without warning, new and strange forms appear.  If this is correct, it goes a long way to explain the absence of intermediary species and the (relatively) short time that complex life forms have taken to evolve.  Or to put it another way, Gould spotted the difficulties of stasis followed by evolutionary explosion but could not come up with a satisfying explanation.  Dawkins, just denied the whole thing and insisted on slow, steady, inch-by-inch evolution.  I should add, that it leaves Darwin safe in the minor proposition that within species, like his beloved finches on the Galapagos Islands, micro changes to physicality will take place in differing locations.

Anyway, my critics keep asking me to produce an alternative to Darwin's theory which of course I cannot do with my little brain, but Mr. Bird certainly has.  Whether or not he is right, we must wait and see.  Irrespective of all that, I urge anyone with an interest in these esoteric matters to read this book.  It is formidable, particularly for those 'O'-level maths failures like me, but it can be understood, just, if taken in small doses.  I need hardly add that I would be very interested in any critiques that people come up with.  Perhaps by the time you have read it, this post might have sunk out of sight, so please just e-mail me and I will resurrect the subject.

He's my brother - so long as he doesn't live next door!

I want to discuss racism.  The reason is that where-ever I appear amongst the 'Trot-lot Tendency', sooner or later, and usually sooner, I am dismissed as a racist.  I never mind because I am comforted by the undoubted fact that none of them really know what they mean by it, they simply chant it like a mantra, or more probably, like a slogan which is usually the limit of what passes for their political thinking.  Today I would like to dig a little deeper.

I wanted to begin by defining the term 'racist' but as soon as I started to think about it, I realised that as the predilection is as old as Mankind, it changes from age to age, and from place to place, and thus defies specific meaning.  Primitive Man possessed well-honed instincts for survival that led him to be exceedingly wary of strangers who were usually assumed to be a danger until they proved otherwise.  It is a matter of some wry amusement, to me, at any rate, that it was probably (free) trading that broke down the barriers of suspicion between tribes, a truth that has been entirely missed by the sophisticated bien pensants of the 'Trot-lot Tendency' in this age.  The ancients, as we all know, more or less despised any peoples they conquered and turned them into slaves.  A few thousand years later, the Europeans emulated them to a certain extent, but not totally, when they conquered the primitive peoples of different parts of the world.  (I know it's a bore, but for the sake of the 'pox-doctor's clerks' who subject my writings to the sort of textual analysis the Curia spent on Gallileo's theorems, let me make clear that by "primitive" I mean the opposite of sophisticated and it does not imply that in any way these people are somehow less human.)

Putting it in general terms, I suppose you could say that from time to time some individual members of a group consider themselves inherently superior to members of another group.  In the abstract this might (or might not) be immoral.  In practice, I doubt it can be gainsaid because even a member of the leadership of the Anti-Fascist League would hesitate before volunteering to change places with a Borneo tribesman.  They would (unusually) be wise in doing so, because, amongst other things, the difference between 'primitive' and 'sophisticated' is the difference between living for three score years and ten, or dying around your 38th birthday if you're lucky!

There are two other causes of group antipathy.  The first is warfare.  The only mitigation with this method of engendering group hatred is that it disperses almost as quickly as it arises.  In our own history of the last 200 years, loathing of the French was quickly replaced by revulsion of the 'Huns'.  To be accurate neither feeling has totally disappeared but today only a mild dislike and distrust remains.  The second is mass immigration.  'The Shock of the New' applies further afield than modern art!  By and large, most people like things to go on much as before and any threat to the status quo is going to produce feelings of high anxiety bordering on fear.  These feelings are not to be despised not least because they might well be justified.  Group 'A's' cultural baggage is as precious to it, as Group 'B's' is to it.  That is why Enoch Powell was absolutely right in saying that it is the numbers that are important.  'Swamping' an area is bound to produce fear and resentment amongst the indigenous population.  There is nothing immoral in their feelings which would be exactly reciprocated were the situations and locations to be reversed. 

So much for an abstract of the problem, but it begs the question as to how one deals with it as an individual.  Here I must resort to analogy or metaphor.  When we go down to the very lowest scales of observation and view sub-atomic particles we see a certain type of behaviour.  As we draw back and look at atoms and molecules we see an entirely different phenomena, and yet this set of objects is made up entirely of the former particles.  Yes, yes, not an entirely satisfactory analogy but it's the best I can come up with off the cuff!  My point is that it is necessary to view, if you like, the body politic, and the individual.  (Most people do this instinctively.)  A prudent man, or a group, will observe the intruding group and, to use the current military jargon, carry out a threat assessment.  If he (or they) concludes that the incomers are very definite threat to the things he (or they) holds dear, he (or they) will fight.  If he merely dislikes it but can put up with it, he won't.  To say that any of this is 'immoral' which is implied in the term 'racist' is exactly like the Christian church saying that sex is immoral.  It is all part of the human condition.

But now we need to consider the individual to individual relationship.  "Speak softly and carry a big stick" always strikes me as good advice.  In other words, do not be provocative, indeed, strive to 'do unto others as you would that they do unto you' - but keep the big stick handy just in case!  This behaviour applies even in the heat and hatred of war, and governs, or at least, should govern, the treatment of POWs and civilians.  In the culture of modern Britain, of course, good manners are sneered at, not least by those commissars from the 'Trot-lot Tendency' whose only delight, as far as I can judge from their writings on the web, is to swagger their crude, foul-mouthed nastiness and, so to speak, spit 'in yer face'.  I have been taken to task for admitting my habit of using slang expressions for other peoples, such as, 'Mick', 'Paddy', Taffy', 'Paki', 'Yankie', 'Jock', 'Froggie' and so on.  I do so in the happy knowledge that they, too, have slang expressions for the English, to which I have absolutely no objection.  Of course, good manners and common sense come into it.  Were I to be introduced to an elderly Catholic lady, I would not dream of referring to her as a 'left-footer', equally, I don't call my Jewish accountant a 'Yid', not just because he's a friend but because I actually like and admire the Jewish people as a group.  What is utterly risible, trivial and childish, is when the likes of Larry, 'lenin' and 'Snotty McShot' accuse me of being a racist because I refer to them as 'Paddies', or 'Micks'.  That is to utterly debase the attack on those individuals who are seeking political power by whipping up hatred against coloured people simply because they are coloured.  The undiluted vitriol of pure racism deserves and needs a higher calibre of opponent than those three stooges!

"Pillars of the Community" by Henrik Ibsen

I must make clear immediately that, not only have I not studied the text of this play, I haven't even read it!  My comments are based on the production I have just seen at the RNT which featured an adaptation by Samuel Adamson.  This business of adapting Ibsen is a practice that needs to be watched.  Arthur Miller 'adapted' An Enemy of the People and quickly realised that at the end of the play its 'hero', Dr. Stockman, far from being a tribune of the People, is actually a single-minded fanatic.  Miller, with the skill of a fish-filleter, carefully trimmed the text to ensure that Stockman remained the People's champion that Miller wanted but which Ibsen definitely did not!  Next year, I am directing Ghosts from an adaptation by Richard Harris.  I am in the process now of comparing his text with the translation by Michael Meyer, the acknowledged expert on Ibsen, and so far, the impression gained on seeing Harris's version on stage, that it was a first class piece of work, has been confirmed.  As for Mr. Adamson's version of Pillars of the Community, it seemed to flow without any of the slight awkwardnesses of language that sometimes occur with a straight translation.  However, there was the use of one or two words or phrases that did not seem quite right to me from what little I know of the rigid society of 19th century Norway.

The play is a relatively early Ibsen in which his destructive bile had not yet risen to full, spiteful maturity.  The provincial and highly religious society that he despised with such venom is, of course, given a good pummeling, but in this play it is a slightly diffused attack, the large gallery of characters blurring the focus.  Besides, the play is a sort of satirical comedy in which everyone, having avoided the potential tragedy that hangs over proceedings, ends up more or less happy but nothing and no-one has really changed.  The central enigma in the play is Karsten Bernick, a morally and financially corrupt shipbuilder and local entrepreneur, played, superbly, by Damian Lewis.  Ibsen wisely refuses to commit himself, and thus, us, to a particular view of this man who is made all the more human by his virtues and his vices.  I should add, for the benefit of my 'Trot-lot' readers, that Ibsen is no kinder to the particular tribune of the People in this play, either.  He is the shipyard foreman and proto-shop steward who, in the end, is complicit in Bernick's villainy.  What is especially interesting in this play, is the evident love/hate relationship with America that developed in Ibsen, and I suspect, most of his fellow countrymen.

The production as a whole was excellent, with that terrific 'company feel' to it when you gather together a bunch of very good, experienced actors who obviously respect each other.  There was not a weakness in any of the playing.  Damian Lewis, who hitherto, I had only ever seen on the TV, commands his stage with, apparently, little effort.  I can't wait to see him tackle some of the big classic roles before Hollywood gobbles him up.  One tiny thing struck me as I watched, and that was the use of big arm gestures.  The golden rule in acting is that if you are going to make a gesture, make it big, and they followed that rule to the letter.  Mind you, it needed 'big' acting because the stage at the Lyttleton is enormous.  At 'my' tiny theatre, we never stop complaining about how small our stage is, but when you have a play set almost entirely inside one room and the stage is huge, it raises all sorts of different problems, for example, how can two characters 'converse' with something like 25 feet between them?  To be honest, I don't think the set design for this production quite worked but should it go on tour to smaller provincial theatres, it will be better.

There are very few performances left for this production, although given the excellent reviews and the full houses, it might well be re-run later, or even be given a West End outing.  It deserves it, and I urge you all, if you can, to see it.

Neitzsche was right, apparently!

Bad news.  God is, indeed, dead!  A few posts down I informed you all that that latter-day Lady MacBeth, 'Bionoc', had not posted anything for a month and I hoped, not too fervently, that it wasn't anything terminal.  Alas and alack, she's back.  We can only hope that she and 'lenin' do not become more intimate than merely sharing a blog.  The thought of their off-spring would make strong men tremble!

Poem #10

Strictly speaking, this is not a poem, it is dramatic verse but I am nudged into publishing it for several reasons.  'Deogolwulf', the merciless host of  The Joy of Curmudgeonry, has, with Hannibal Lector-like relish, taken his scalpel to modern poetry in a post entitled 'Poppycock-Poetry'.  This reminded me that over recent months I have been tardy in offering you some of my favourite verse.  By co-incidence, just recently, a young actor of my acquaintance facing auditions for Drama School sought my advice on how to analyse Shakespearean iambic pentameters.  One of his possible audition pieces was, by chance, one of my favourite Shakespearean soliloquies, that spoken by Angelo in Measure for Measure.  For those not familiar with the play, Lord Angelo, a lawyer, a puritan and an enthusiastic persecutor of sin and sinners, has power of life or death over a young man whose sister comes to him to plead on his behalf.  She is a nun!  At some point, in a long scene of intense, intellectual debate between the two of them on the subject of the law versus Christian mercy, this cold, implacable man suddenly ceases to look at her as just another legal supplicant, and instead, looks at her as a woman.  Irritatingly, as I found out when I directed the play, Shakespeare, in his usual oblique, enigmatic way, gives very few clues as to exactly when 'sex rears its ugly head', he leaves it to actors and directors to work it out.  The interview ends with Isabella, the nun, exiting and leaving the shaken Angelo to speak his thoughts, thus:  (NB: for some reason due to copying and pasting from 'Word' with which 'Typepad' does not agree, some lines came out underlined and I simply do not know how to remove them, and also, some of the spacing has gone wonky.  Sorry!)

ISABELLA:  'Save your honour.  (Exit)

ANGELO:  From thee, even from thy virtue!

What's this?  What's this?  Is this her fault or mine?

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Ha!

Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I

That, lying by the violet in the sun,

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be

That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary

And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!

What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?

Dost thou desire her foully for those things

That make her good? O, let her brother live!

Thieves for their robbery have authority

When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,

With all her double vigour, art and nature,

Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite. Ever till now,

When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.

There you have, 300 years prior to Freud, an exact description of the psychological pathology of a man whose sexuality is only aroused by female purity and whose only desire is to desecrate it.  Angelo's only, very slight, saving grace, is his analytical skill and honesty in looking into his soul and acknowledging the corruption that is there.  Reading that passage, I am reminded yet again of the truth of the saying that Shakespeare is a man about whom we know very little but who seems to know everything about us!  For those of a thespian bent, I have attached a breakdown of the soliloquy that I sent my young actor friend, with my notes included.  I am not suggesting that these notes constitute the 'right' way to deliver the lines, only 'my' way.  Differing interpretations, of course, being what makes theatre so fascinating:

('Save your honour!)

This is Isabella’s exit line and in view of what follows, it is deeply ironic.

From thee, even from thy virtue!

Elide ‘even’ to ‘e’en’ and the line scans with the half-line above.  Angelo says it to himself as she exits.

What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!

You have to deal with the strange ‘Ha!’ in the short line.  It works if you imagine Angelo working himself into a fury at the abyss that has suddenly opened before him so that at the word ‘most’ and the explosion of the ‘Ha!’you are left breathing heavily so that you can take the long pause indicated by the ultra short line as you get a grip of yourself.  It is important to show that this hitherto cold, implacable man is capable of great gusts of passion.

Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season.

Now he is calm again and has a sudden flash of self-knowledge tinged with disgust at himself.  You should try the last line with a curl of the lip – he has looked into his own warped soul.

                                                   Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!

In the very brief pause before the first half-line, perhaps a quick shake of the head, almost clearing your mind for this next insight, and as the awfulness of it dawns on you through the lines you are almost crying with despair on the ‘Oh, Fie, fie, fie!’  And don’t be afraid to milk that ‘Oh’, it is almost a wail of despair, stretch it and then hit the short words like a hammer.

What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live!
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves.

After that bit of passion, the mood changes back to introspection as he tries to work out what these forces are that are working on him. Take it reasonably slowly, show the audience you are thinking the thoughts.

                                                What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?

Then, in the brief pause, a startling (to him) thought, ‘What do I love her?’ Then a gathering yearning, almost Romeo-like, and the last line, stretch the ‘is’t’ and the ‘dreeeam’ to help get the intensity of his feeling across.

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Another, almost disbelieving shake of the head as he comes out of his romantic reverie and realises he has been snared. Build up the power of the passage right to the climax at the end, and then …..

             Subdues me quite. Ever till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.

Note that the first line is deliberately short!!!!!  Take the pause at the beginning (if you have earned it by building up the tension in the preceding passage!) and change the mood completely.  He has lost, surrendered and in the last line and a half he indicates his rueful acknowledgement that he, too, is human.

Eastenders

I have just watched an episode of Eastenders.  For foreign readers, this is a daily 'soap' of mind-numbing triviality combined with a story line that is less believable than a Walt Disney film, or Homer's Ilyad, take your pick.  I am forced to (half) watch this unending series of tosh because the little 'Memsahib' is addicted and quite often our supper co-incides with the TV programme.  Any complaints from me are likely to produce a 'shock and awe' retaliation in the form of a burnt supper (even if it's salad!), so I tend to keep schtum!  Tonight, the 11th November, such a co-incidence occurred, and as usual I tried to ignore it as I wondered if I could get away with reading a book at the table, when, gradually, insidiously, the episode began to intrude, then grip and finally, captivate me utterly.  It featured one of the characters taking his Grandma, who has, I gather, acted as a surrogate mother to him, over the channel to the Normandy beaches for Rememberance Day.  In flash-backs, we learnt her story of first-love with a young soldier, the accident of pregnancy, their hasty marriage, and, of course, his ultimate death on those bloody beaches. 

I was moved to the verge of tears.  I tried to dismiss it all as mere sentimentality, but then reminded myself that sentimentality is based on exaggerated feelings, where-as this episode was based on tens of thousands of real life and death actualities.  It was the reality of the thing that effected the emotional response.  It was a perfect example of what fascinated Shakespeare, the way that theatrical imagination can become 'reality'.  I have just such a 'reality' in my memory from a TV programme from some years back, in which a very British (in the old sense of that word), very middle-class lady in her 70s, was interviewed about her relationship with a young fighter pilot in WWII.  She described how they had met when she was serving as a WAAF on a fighter base.  They fell in love and managed, during the ferocity of the Battle of Britain, to seize a weekend away in a country pub/hotel.  Of course, she made clear that as they were not married it would have to be separate rooms.  A few days later he was killed.  At that point in the interview, her eyes glistened and she swallowed several times.  My immediate thought was, what a waste, but in retrospect, I now think what a magnificent gesture of self denial it was.  An example of rectitude and principle that stands in absolute contrast with modern life in which the Self must be satisfied on a constant basis and without regard to morality.

Anyway, well done to all concerned at Eastenders, for providing a gleam of gold amongst the dross that is pumped out via the 'tube'.

Lies, damned lies and statistics: the sequel

A picture’s worth 1,000 words …

(click to enlarge)

Notes: -

1.       The columns in shades of red – 1979-2002 – are the regime’s annual death tolls over its 24 year existence.

2.       The columns in shades of green – 2003-2026 – are the coalition’s annual death toll, actual and projected, over the same time period of 24 years.  The projection uses the on-going Iraq Body Count death-toll and assumes no improvement over time so as to favour the Stoppers.

3.       The Lancet figures include a substantial number of deaths due to the lingering effects of sanctions, which should be counted into the regime’s death-toll but are included against the coalition to favour the Stoppers.

4.       The figures for the regime are minimums per the source - http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.html - and therefore the most favourable to the Stoppers.

5.       The figures for the coalition are from Lancet and Iraq Body Count - the two sources preferred by the Stoppers – and are double counted in 2003-4 to be most favourable to the Stoppers.

6.       The regime killed 1,262,500 Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis over 24 years; the coalition 388,000; the difference is 874,500.  In other words, there will be 36,438 more Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis alive per annum over the next 24 years, equals just over 1,000 per month, than would otherwise be the case if the regime had been left in place.

… or 1,000 lives a month.

Son of Duff

Makes yer proud to be British!

I'm all over-come.  Gone all sentimental, soppy and emotional.  Yes, me, the Generalissimo of real-politik.  Perhaps you think I have been watching too much Disney (or that equally awful old cry-baby, Arthur Miller) but not so, I have just watched the principal exchanges in the Commons between the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary on the subject of the 'Terror' legislation.  Both men were generous in giving way so that one saw and heard a good cross-section of the flotsam and jetsam of the chamber and thus could judge why some were swimmers and some were sinkers - and, no, I didn't miss the 't' out of that last word! 

Clarke put up a robust and coherent case but was fatally flawed by two weaknesses.  First, it was clear that the 90-day requirement was entirely at the behest of Chief Police officers.  No-one in government had come up with that period of time, they simply swallowed whole what the coppers told them.  I have made clear, here and elsewhere, my exceedingly dim view of the calibre of men who occupy the top jobs in the police service, but even if I thought more of them, I would suggest that it is lazy and inept for government ministers to simply accept their demands without demur.  Clarke's second weakness was the obvious fact that he, himself, would have been content to settle on a figure that the vast majority of the House could have agreed on, and that it was the intervention of the PM, no doubt hurt by the prints telling him in bold headlines that his leadership was holed below the waterline, and no doubt urged on by his coterie of spin meisters to go for a shoot-out at the 'HoC corral'.

Davis was impressive in his counter-arguments, indeed, all the more so for eschewing the usual party points and sticking to an intellectually respectable, but nonetheless, passionately held opinion that it was for government ministers, not officials, to propose, and that it was for the HoC to dispose, taking into account all those other matters, like liberty of the subject, Habeus Corpus, the further antogonisation of Muslim young men, and so on, which are not of prime concern to police officers.  I should add at this point, although it is not relevant to my main purpose here, that I am not a member of the Tory party and thus their leadership election is only of marginal interest to me, particularly as I have not voted for them since the early '80s.  However, everything I have read so far concerning Mr. Cameron disposes me to think that he is a Blair clone, and frankly, if I have to vote, which I probably won't, I think I would prefer the real thing.  Watching Mr. Davis, on the other hand, convinced me that, for good or ill, he is a serious politician with some clear notions of where he wants to lead his country should he ever get the chance.  In contrast, I suspect that Mr. Cameron would be led by his country! 

I still haven't got round to explaining my curious mood of soppiness.  It is quite simple, I thought the proceedings in the House on this matter were tremendously impressive.  Just recently there have been several attempts to discuss and define what it is to be British.  I think today's debate summed it all up.  The immensely intelligent, the truly stupid and all the in-betweens that go to make up our legislature were grappling with huge matters of policy, administration, philosophy and politics on our behalf.  They did so at a raised level which reflects great credit on all of them.  Anyone got a dry hankie?

Has Oliver Kamm finally left planet earth?

Might as well begin by making clear the nature of this post - it is an attack on Oliver Kamm.  However, in view of the phrase that is the catalyst for this post, I should make clear that it is a civilised attack.  I think of Oliver Kamm as an 'e-pal'.  I invent that neologism to differentiate it from the word 'e-friend'.  I do not know Oliver Kamm, I have never met him, and it would be wrong to imply a friendship, but he is some-one with whom I have exchanged the occasional opinion, and judged from his writings, with which I am mostly sympathetic, I think it is fair to say that we share a fellow-feeling, so 'e-pal' seems just right.

Now please don't ask me to provide the exact text, but some time ago, a matter of weeks, Oliver was putting up a stout defence of, I think, 'Tony' Blair, the war in Iraq and the general benefit to Britain of the liberal (please note, small 'l') consensus that has ruled our country for the last 30 to 40 years.  In the course of this, he used a phrase I quote from memory (always dodgy at my age and with my whisky consumption) to the effect that 'we are now a more civilised nation for it'.  My instant re-action was to reach for the Laphroaig!  My second re-action was to fear for my 'e-pal's' sanity!

Just tonight, prior to me writing this post, I watched part (I couldn't bear to watch it all) of a detailed TV report on the case of a young school-girl slashed several times across the face by another young school-girl!  That was bad enough, but there was an even worse re-action to come.  The fact is that when I first read about this case I wasn't the least surprised!  Just another, every-day story of British folk in this, our brave, new, liberal world.  For the sake of my long-suffering, two and a half readers - still with me Larry? - I am not prepared to list the, not so much blots, as piles of excrement on our civic landscape in these enlightened days.  I would rather just ask Oliver to leave the, no doubt, elegant, Edwardian portals of his particular part of Hove and try the centre of Brighton on any Friday or Saturday night around the wee, small hours.  Failing that, he might care to take a peek into his local E&R unit to see our wonderful Nationalised Health Service ("The envy of the world" although no-one else copies it!) trying to cope with the drunken, drugged and violent 'youfs' and 'youffettes' produced by a combination of our wonderful nationalised Education service ("The envy of the...", oh, don't bother!), and our wonderful welfare system.

I asked some time ago on this site whether or not Oliver was a sif?  Those not familiar with the late, and very great, Bernard Levin may not recognise his acronym for a 'single issue fanatic'.    The sort of eye-ball swivelling loon that chases huntsmen across the countryside, or spends his time chanting slogans at the BNP (or the SWP, according to taste).  I warned then that Oliver was in danger of falling into that dread category with his single-minded defence of the biggest twister ever to slither his way into 10 Downing Street.  Blair's administration is rotten from the head down.  Thanks only to the "smelly socks brigade" from the gutter press, countless (I mean literally 'countless' because I lost count ages ago) members of his administration have been proven to be corrupt liars and they took their lead from their leader.  But, of course, you don't need to read Oliver's book (Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy ), you only have to read his blog to realise that he is an idealist, and thus, likely to confuse ends with means.  For example, he takes it as granted that democracy is, in the words of Sellars and Yeatman, "A Good Thing".  In other words, he starts on the basis that democracy is an innate idea in the human psyche and that 'everywhere, Man is yearning to be free'.  Simultaneously, he would demur (others would sneer, but that's not Oliver's style) at the notion that belief in God is "A Good Thing" because it, too, appears to be an innate idea in the human psyche, but let me not digress into religion, a subject on which I am more than usually ignorant, let me stick to political philosophy. 

To say that democracy is an ideal to be aimed at is to assume two things.  First, that it is, indeed, "A Good Thing" which may be true, but one's faith is tested severely watching the Western democracies slowly but surely disappearing into a mire of corruption, dissolution and licence.  Second, that other countries are ready for democracy now!  I am happy for better educated men than me to correct me if I propose that Iraqi society today is roughly where England was at the start of the Tudor regime.  Similarly, Afghanistan is roughly where we were in medieval times.  I can only ask what the England of those days would have thought of a foreign invader attempting to impose such democratic notions on their society?  I suspect Oliver would object (along with several other highly intelligent and learned objections) that the difference is that the Muslims of Iraq and Afghanistan can see, through the wonders of modern communications, just how wonderful life is in the Western democracies, to which I can only reply, quite so!

I have always been deeply suspicious of the American neo-conservative idea of spreading (for which read, imposing)  democracy on nations.  I supported the war on Saddam because I, along with Saddam, himself, and every other leader in the world, believed that he had some sort of WMD programme on the go.  On this occasion I do not believe Blair lied outright, he was a believer, too, but he certainly over-sold the proposition, putting it politely.  I also supported the war because I thought it was a shrewd strategic move to gain secure bases for American forces right in the heart of the middle-east.  It never occurred to me that the Americans were not going to follow the old British empire custom and install their 'own bastard' to grip the country whilst they set up their bases from which they could de-stabilise Syria and Iran, and be ready to intervene in Saudi when the fanatics took over the oil wells.  Now we have ended with the worst of all possible worlds, a shaky democracy that will collapse the minute we leave, and absolutely no chance of us holding onto a secure base from which to operate.

Some-one is to blame!  President Bush must take most of it, but 'Tony' Blair must take his fair share, and, I'm sorry to say, my 'e-pal', Oliver Kamm must accept his thimble full of responsibility as a popular and eloquent moulder of public opinion.

Christian trade!

Apologies for a lack of posting last week due to a mixture of social events, work (well, sort of work!) and a general ennui.  I know my use of a foreign word will infuriate the Orwell fans but sometimes, dammit, the French do have exactly le mot juste - bugger!  I've done it again.  Anyway, last week I was generally listless and slightly depressed, not helped by reading an elegant but mournful post on the Joy of Curmudgeonry, a deliberately ironic title if ever I read one!  Then, whilst passing an idle hour in the local library as the 'little Memsahib' fought her way gallantly round Waitrose (well, you can never do enough for a good husband, I say), I read an old copy of the Spectator and an article by the ineffably gloomy 'Dr. Theodore Dalrymple' (aka: Anthony Daniels).  Suffice to say that he is the exact opposite of whatever laughing gas is!  So all in all, a very November-ish week.

So I am doubly grateful for The Business ("Britain's only newspaper", says David .... who?) doing my thinking for me.  Their leader this Sunday was a sustained attack on the wickedness of Christian Aid, in particular, and the Trade Justice Movement, in general.  They begin by pointing out the historical context in which anti-free market forces have disguised themselves in various forms over the last century:

"After each ideological defeat – from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the failure of third-world Marxism to the rise of capitalist India and China – it has changed its name, its tone and its target. Those who cheered on the so-called liberation movements and the rise of a new Marxist Left in the 1960s, the strikes which crippled Great Britain in the 1970s and the Europe-wide anti-Cruise missile protests of the early 1980s, went on, with a new generation of anti-capitalist protesters, to spend the 1990s fighting globalisation. Now the enemies of economic freedom have a new guise. The so-called Trade Justice movement is the latest evolution of the species."

Now they are working to inflict their evil onto Africa which, God only knows, has suffered enough, surely!  I use the word "evil" deliberately.  There are two types of people involved in this monstrous movement, those who know exactly and precisely what they are about; and those who are so congenitally lazy and stupid that they are unable to think of anything that, when written down, lasts longer than a slogan on a placard.  I have remarked before that it is useful to remind oneself from time to time that the first and essential aim of the 'Trot-lot Tendency" is to make conditions worse, not better.  Only if people are impoverished and desperate will the conditions be ripe for the revolution they yearn for.  Thus, whatever the SWP and all the other groupuscles that proliferate in their strange, political petri dish advocate, you can be sure it is aimed to produce conditions of chaos, hunger and poverty.  Needles to say, the leading ideologues know this perfectly well, but, being clever (not entirely a compliment in the English language!), they make sure to keep it from the vast herd of ignoramuses that follow them. These supine sluggards are incapable of thinking, or analysing, they're only good for chanting slogans.  It is no comfort to know that their leaders despise them even more than they do the free-marketeers who oppose them.

As The Business points out, the anti-free market forces have cleverly seized on half a truth by mounting a campaign opposed to 1st world protectionism.  It is self-evident, even to the dimmest bulb in the cluster, that for Europe and the USA to deny their markets to the world is not only to cut off their noses but to remove their ears as well in order to spite their faces.  Somewhere 'out there', there is a statistic that will tell you how much your food bills would drop if we could buy produce on an open world market; suffice to say, it would be a dramatic drop!  It is the other side of the equation which carries the poison pill intended for the innocents of Africa.  This is the proposition that, having dropped all our tariffs, we should allow Africa to keep theirs.  'Government' (please note the inverted commas hinting at my doubt in using this word in respect of the gangsters who have stolen their nations) inspired tariffs between African countries, let alone those aimed at the West, are a huge drag on the whole of Africa's economy, but, of course, are an equally huge source of bribery, corruption and cash for the gangsters concerned, and all at the expense of the people - or those whom the Trade Justice mob keep telling us they care for.  Anyone who truly seeks the alleviation of poverty in the world should press for the removal of all trade barriers, and that includes the hidden ones that come disguised as tax reliefs or subsidies.

I still cherish the memory of the shocked expression on the faces of two elderly, and no doubt well-meaning, ladies who had the great misfortune to knock on my door soliciting contributions to Christian Aid.  A very short (for me!) diatribe ensued and happily they never called again.