DUFF & NONSENSE!

Swing High, Swing Low

Well, since my recent posts in which I advised an ungrateful nation to bring back the rope a bit smartish before the bodies of the victims actually blocked out the sun, there appears to have been what I can only call, in rather bad taste, a knifing spree.  Apparently every other pimply, weedy 'youf' goes out 'tooled up' with a Bowie knife or equivalent.  Only the other night we were regailed with  CCTV footage of three 'youfs' ambling up a street before suddenly pouncing on and punching to the ground a totally unsuspecting victim.  Having chased away his friend, one of the 'youfs' returned and, completely without provocation because his victim was almost unconscious, stabbed him repeatedly like an inexperienced amateur actor in a production of Julius Caesar, except this was deadly real in all senses of the word.  There was no apparent motive, merely that "As flies to wanton boys [... they] killed him for their sport".  I can only ask, yet again, of those who oppose the death penalty, even in an uncertain world, is it likely that that 'youf' knowing he might hang would have stabbed his victim so readily?

On a similar subject, I was somewhat surprised by a story today concerning another 'youf' who led a young Belfast girl into the countryside, punched her unconscious, raped her and then battered her to death.  I always assumed that they were somewhat more stringent over in 'Proddyland' but all he drew was a so-called 'life' sentence with a minimum tarrif of 15 years.  Just 15 years!  He will only be 42 when he gets out and even fitter and stronger than he is now and definitely more woman-hungry than ever.  Can anyone of wit, intelligence and even a modicum of sensitivity not agree that such a sentence is derisory.  More, it is a cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on the living relatives.

Hang the bastards!

The manifesto now standing ... Part III

(Having painters in the house is the equivalent of moving, than which there is nothing more agonising except, possibly, attending a Respect/SWP  rally!  Happily all is done and I'm back in business in my brightly painted study in the attic although whether that will lead to an improvement in my prose remains doubtful.)

I think my main criticisms of the Euston Manifesto can be summed up in two interrogative words - 'Why' and 'How'?

The 'why' is important for me to understand because I am a nationalist and before Larry faints at the word I had better explain it.  It means, to me, that whilst I do not like or admire 'us' without reservation, on the whole, by and large and taken all in all, I prefer 'us' to 'them'!  So, whilst I do not wish 'them' positive harm (unless they give cause!) I do believe that 'our' foreign policy should be based entirely on 'our' national self-interest - and, yes, I do realise that national self-interest is a matter of judgement upon which men of goodwill might disagree.  Even so, attempts to rescue other nations from their folly or their bad luck simply out of altruistic morality is only ever going to safeguard our interests on a co-incidental basis.  And anyway, how do we know, for sure, that their situation is so bad that it warrants interference of a murderous kind by foreigners?  It might seem obvious to bien pensants inhabiting the ivory towers of academe or Islington, but my knowledge of history tells me that things are usually very much more complicated.  Let me give an example.  Much is made of the 'plight' of women in Afghanistan (and other Muslim countries) whose treatment under their prevailing culture (irrespective of any particular regime) is a standing affront to the 'feministas' of the west.  But can we be sure that the majority of the women concerned actually desire a change?  When they look upon the behaviour of western women via the good offices of satellite TV, do they sigh and yearn for their chance to get blind drunk, drugged and sick in the street every Saturday night and to be preyed on by men who will impregnate them and then leave them?  I don't know, but I bet that none of the 'Eustonites' do, either!  When you pose questions like that to those intrepid internationalists who seem to know best what is best for other people, you tend to receive the equivalent of the taxi driver's response, "Well, it's bloody obvious, innit?"  to which I can only reply that it is not at all obvious!  I have some ideas on what would be a sensible polity for this country of ours based on my life here and my knowledge of our history and culture but I have no similar 'qualifications' for deciding these matters for other people.  Mind you, none of that (unexpected?) modesty would stop me from invading them, putting all their men to death and selling their women into slavery (or whatever ravings Larry and his ilk come up with) if that unlikely course of action would further British national self-interest, by which I mean the modern equivalent of 19th c. deep-water ports, coaling stations and the like.

I should make clear at this point that I wrote privately to three supporters of the Euston Manifesto to ask whether, if they had known beforehand that Saddam did not have WMD, it would have changed their minds concerning the invasion.  They all made clear that, speaking for themselves, it would not.  'Shuggy' , a 'Eustonite', seemed to imply that his brand of internationalism did not imply military methods of regime change which I find difficult to reconcile with this passage from the manifest: "But if the state itself violates this common life in appalling ways, its claim to sovereignty is forfeited and there is a duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue."  But if he, and other 'Eustonites', insist that military intervention is not necessarily the only way to achieve their ends then we can move on to my second question - 'How'?  Economic sanctions, as was pointed out in 'Shuggy's' comments box, usually have the effect of cementing the existing regime into place and impoverishing the very people one seeks to help.  One commenter countered this with the example of South Africa but because I was temporarily 'off air' I could not point out to him that there was a considerable difference between the Christian-imbued Afrikaners, many of whom found it difficult to reconcile their religion with their treatment of the blacks, to say nothing of the huge English influence; and, say, the Taliban fanatics who see martyrdom for themselves and everyone else as a reward devoutly to be desired.  So I ask again, how? How do the Eustonites intend to execute their interventionist policies other than by military means?  And having intervened, how do they intend to hold the ring?  There is only one answer and if they're honest they will own up to it - British and American bayonets!  And here we come to another morality that seldom seems to concern the 'Eustonites', the morality of sending our servicemen to their deaths in furtherance of a moral imperative that may or may not be shared by their fellow countrymen and almost certainly is not shared by your average British squaddie.  I write this with some feeling having been just such a squaddie in my 'youf'.  I do not wish to be unduly sentimental here.  When you take the Queen's shilling you bloody well do what you're told to do by the Queen's ministers and if you don't like it, well, you shouldn't have taken the money!  As a young soldier I would have gone off happily to fight anyone, anywhere, and damn the reasons, but to be young is to be foolish. It is incumbent upon those older and wiser and in places of responsibility not to waste young lives for the sake of an idea!  The philosophy of the 'Eustonites' may or may not be admirable but one thing is for sure, it is not universal.  I would go so far as to say that the huge majority of people have no wish to go to war for the sake of any idea, let alone the ghastly notion of the 'International Brotherhood of Man'!

I would like to end on a more positive note by putting forward my own tentative theory of how the west should proceed.  It seems to me that certain states are harbingers of terrorists whose hatred of the west makes them a threat to us.  There is only one nation in the world that has the capability of dealing with this situation and that is the USA.  Hence my earlier statement that the absolute bottom line of British grand strategy is to remain closely linked and allied to America.  That does not require us to follow slavishly every twist and turn in American policy as one president succeeds another but we must try very hard never to be seen by them as an outright enemy as the other Europeans are perceived.  As for the American armed services (and ours in our small way) , they must develop what I can only call a hit and run capability, that is, the means to mount as quickly as possible an invasion force capable of invading and overthrowing a hostile regime.  (Actual invasion might not always be required, they could simply stand off and use modern weapon systems to pinpoint attacks on government buildings.)   However, having removed the regime they should depart as quickly as they came and leave the inhabitants to sort out their own affairs.  Some might point out the dangers of 'changing nurse for fear of something worse' but they fail to understand the psychology of the situation.  Political leaders, even fanatical ones, rarely wish either to lose power or to die themselves!  We should take note of the Israeli tactic of pinpointing attacks on cars carrying Palestinian terrorist leaders.  Like 'a hanging in the morning' it concentrates the mind wonderfully!  It will only require one or two examples and the lesson will be learnt.  During pax Britannica virtually every nation in the world had a port through which its trade flowed and from which its government derived its revenues.  The British had the capability of sailing a 60-gun ship of the line into a port and reducing it to hardcore in about half an hour - I exaggerate, of course, but you take the point, as did the rulers of the 19th century, by and large, which is why it was called pax Britannica.  That is the sort of strategy that the west needs to adopt.  Needless to say, the policy of the 'Eustonites' in advocating more and more so-called 'international law' will only hog-tie us from doing what is necessary without hindering the rogue states in the least.

This is my last post on the Euston Manifesto.  I know I threatened to carry out a semantic nit-picking exercise but I can't be bothered and anyway, it deserves better than that.  I wish to stress that in their dispute with the hard Left I am entirely on their side and wish them well - but not so well that their romantic 'folie de fraternite' ever holds sway in the councils of the west.

The manifesto now standing ... Part II

I ended the post below by pointing out the folly implicit (proudly proclaimed might be more accurate) in the 'moral' imperative of the 'Eustonites' to change the regime of any nation whose dictatorial rulers infringe the Charter of Human Rights. Of course, the signatories are intelligent people and have no intention of going to war with most of the rest of the world but that leaves them with the problem of choosing.  Why Iraq and not Zimbabwe?  Why Afghanistan and not Kazakhstan?  There must have been factors that influenced the decisions.  A choice was made, but on what grounds?  Why, of course, it was our old friend, international power politics!  Iraq and Afghanistan posed a military threat so they had to go.  At this point I am tempted to write 'plus ca change mais ... ' but that old bully, George Orwell, forbids it.  Instead I will simply suggest that the 'Eustonites' are rather like a bunch of fastidious Mrs. Bouquets uneasily aware that coarse, rude 'Uncle Real-Politik' whom they have carefully locked in the attic might break free and embarrass them.

But now I would like to pose a deeper question: Are all dictatorships inherently "A Bad Thing"?  And its implied opposite: Are all democracies "A Good Thing"?  (I hardly dare venture too far into these deep waters but confine myself to a paddle in the shallows whilst recommending readers to visit 'Deogulwulf', here and here plus the comments, for the sort of erudition you won't find here!)  If the first proposition is true then it seems to me that a good deal of the Roman empire must be written off, to say nothing of the rule of, say, Queen Elizabeth I in England.  For those of a more republican disposition, which probably includes a fair number of 'Eustonites', are we to write off Cromwell's despotic rule as an 'evil empire' that should have been overthrown by foreigners?  As for the second proposition, well, personally speaking, I can hardly bare to watch as just about everything I thought was admirable in English society has inexorably crumbled and decayed when it hasn't actually been torn down and trampled upon by savage, uneducated plebeian boots egged on by corrupt, lying politicians expert in bribing the 'People' with their own money.  Is post-modern Britain the exemplar that the 'Eustonites' wish to inflict upon the rest of the world?  If so, one can only mutter with the poet, "Poor world [...] what would thou do?"  Surely it must be obvious that different societies and cultures will develop and change, for better or worse, in their own way and in their own time.  Are British and American bayonets really necessary?  And can we be sure that they will actually help the process so devoutly desired by the 'Eustonites' and not hinder it or even set it back?

Mind you, this Manifesto does provide me with a wry smile.  My guess is that most of the signatories take a dim view of the British empire but, in essence, what is the difference between those muscular Christian Victorians who ventured forth, with bible in one hand and Lee Enfield in the other, in order to teach the 'Fuzzy-Wuzzies' the virtues of the British way of life and the compassionate rule of the 'Great Queeen Over the Sea'; and the eager 'Eustonites' stepping over the bodies of British and American soldiers waving copies of their wretched Manifesto ?

Finally, on the subject of bayonets, dead soldiers and teaching the natives democracy, I have one very hard question for the 'Eustonites' - how?  Iraq and Afghanistan are the test beds and I want to know how the 'Eustonites' intend to set about changing societies that have developed to what they are now over a thousand years or more?  Some of the more naive American neo-cons (and perhaps some 'Eustonites, too) thought that simply giving the people a vote w0would be enough.  Well, it's patently obvious now that it isn't!  These countries aren't going to change their ways unless you establish an immensely strong military power and hold it for 200 years as the British did in India.  Even so, one then risks emulating the words of a (fictional) American general in Japan after the war who barked out, "I'll teach these bastards democracy if I have to shoot every one of them!"  The 'Eustonites' bleat that neither Bush not Blair had made any preparations for the aftermath of the war.  Almost certainly true, but the question is, what methods would the 'Eustonites' use to impose their aims?

This brings me to the end of my generalised attack on the Euston Manifesto.  Later I will pick some particular nits contained in the wording of the document.  Warning! I, or at least my study, is about to be redecorated and so I may go off the air for a while.

The manifesto now standing at platform one, two, three and four ...

Your regular up-to-the-month-or-there-abouts news and comment service is about to bring you the thoughts of chairman Duff on the Euston Manifesto.  (Do stop yawning at the back, there!)  I realise that everyone else and their uncles have already commented but I like to think that my mind is like a fine old claret that matures over time and is better sampled late than early.  For the sake of my readers I shall divide this commentary into two parts.  The first will be filled with the sort of sweeping generalities for which I am famed the length and breadth of my study and which is entirely appropriate in view of the equally sweeping generalities contained in this Manifesto.  It would be easy to sneer at this, as I shall do, but to be fair most political/philosophical statements of intent have to be couched in such terms.  Anyway, no-one loves those nit-picking, pox doctors clerks of a Marxist bent whose only delight lies in never-ending textual analysis, so I will leave my nit-picking to the second part of this commentary where it can be safely ignored by the sensible and pounced upon by the pedants.

I confess that to begin with I hesitated to enter the Euston Manifesto.  As any old policeman will tell you, 'domestics' are best left to the warring parties.  As 'domestics' go, this one between the Bolsheviks and the Menshaviks, or was it the Socialists and the Communists, or perhaps it was the soft Left against the hard Left, no, no, I remember now, it's NuLabour against SWP/Respect, has been going on for over a century.  The Euston Manifesto is merely its latest, er, manifestation.  As some-one who loathes Socialism I find myself in the position of the man in a pub watching two louts go outside for a fight; the only sensible course is to offer to hold their coats and whenever the fighting flags, urge one or other of them to 'give 'im one for me!'

Still, even a lazy old re-reactionary like me must try and do better than that.  After all, should SWP/Respect ever seize power (and that's the only way they will ever do it) they will almost certainly have me shot!  I know I'm an old codger now but it's amazing how precious life becomes when you realise yours hasn't that much longer to go!  So, returning to my pub fight metaphor, perhaps a better stance for me would be to cheer on the 'softie Leftie' whilst picking the jacket pocket of the 'hard Leftie'.  What I am trying to say here, in my usual long-winded way, is that we are not choosing here between the good Doctor's famous louse and a flea.  The hard Left is a lousy flea of the worst, diseased kind and should be stamped on where-ever it appears.

Also, whilst I'm in conciliatory mode, there are two sentences in the Manifesto with which I wholly agree: "For we embrace also the values of free enquiry, open dialogue and creative doubt, of care in judgement and a sense of the intractabilities of the world.  We stand against all claims to a total - unquestionable or unquestioning - truth."  I'm not quite sure what is meant by "creative doubt" but as I am, myself, despite my blustering style, constantly crippled by doubt, creative or otherwise, I will let it pass.

Well, that's enough 'Mr. Nice Guy'!  Now I will consider the remainder of this apparently warm, fluffy, goody-two-shoes of a document.  The 'onlie begetter' of the Euston Manifesto was the Iraq invasion, not the 'sainted' Norm (amongst others) who was only the mid-wife (if you will forgive my gender confusion).  At this point it is necessary for all of us to try and remember what we knew before, and what we know now.  At the time I was in favour of invasion because I believed that Saddam had WMD and was likely to allow third parties to use them against us (by which I mean the west).  The more he refused to allow inspectors a free hand, the more I believed he had something to hide.  I only began to doubt when he failed to use them against our troop concentrations in Kuwait prior to the invasion and by then it was too late.  Today, I am prepared to give Bush and Blair the benefit of the doubt and think that they, too, were convinced at the time.  Also today, I am forced to confess that I was wrong in my assumption, and it is of little comfort that so was most of the rest of the world, and a good number of those who maintained he had no WMD before the war did so from a variety of motives not all of which were trustworthy.

However, for many of the signatories to the Euston Manifesto (and for all I know, perhaps Blair and Bush, too), WMD was not the sole casus belli, they had another motive - regime change!  Please don't misunderstand, I'm all for a bit of regime change but only if it is for the purpose of furthering the interests of the west.  (At this point I had better make clear that when I use the expression "the west", I mean the US and the UK.  I believe this relationship to be of the highest level of importance in terms of grand strategy for this country, of which, more later!)  For the 'Eustonites', however, there is a more urgent imperative - regime change for its own sake simply because the head of state is a cruel dictator.  The folly of this proposition is obvious when you consider that the vast majority of the nations represented at the UN are cruel dictatorships.  Thus, such a policy automatically puts you at perpetual loggerheads with most of the rest of the world!

(This is taking even longer than I thought and the little 'Memsahib' is flexing her muscles, so I will post this now and finish the remainder tomorrow - I hope!)

"Quelle courage!"

My post below touched on the courage of the American torpedo planes at Midway who pressed home their attack despite overwhelming odds.  It has caused me to muse on the differing qualities of bravery.  There can be no doubting our admiration for those men but somehow, I suggest, one doesn't have quite the same feelings concerning the kamikaze pilots of the Japanese navy.  Even less do we admire the modern-day suicide bomber.  And yet, to all intents and purposes those American airman were committing 'suicide', indeed, as 'Ghengis' points out, only one of the thirty eight crew members survived.

I think the answer lies in the very word 'suicide'.  How often have we read of suicides in the news and, amongst a myriad of responses, the thought occurs that it was a selfish act, almost, one dares to presume, a cowardly act.  This harsh judgement is mitigated by the knowledge of the victim's distress and suffering but even so, one sees the relatives and friends who must somehow carry on through this 'vale of tears' despite their pain and shock.  The suicide bomber raises no sympathy except amongst the fanatics who share his or her cause.  Nor do they merit any admiration for courage.  After all, the American flyers wanted to live but took the risk anyway.  Similarly, one's admiration for the kamikaze pilots is diminished by the knowledge that there was no longer any risk for them, they had already made their decision to die before they stepped into their planes.

Deliberately, I have avoided all mention of morality.  A man can be brave in a morally dubious cause.  Nor, in this context, do I have anything to say on the subject of terrorism.  Terror is a legitimate form of warfare and it takes many forms.  The courage of its practitioners depends on the circumstances.  Thus, an IRA bomber who plants explosives in a London street and makes off is not at all brave, not least because his only penalty if caught is a few years in the slammer.  On the other hand, if he tried to break into the SAS HQ at Hereford he would deserve the Republican equivalent of  a VC, even if it would almost certainly be posthumous!

Shit happens!

I apologise for the rather crude title whilst confessing my weakness for American argot which is, somehow, so very accurate.  I was reminded of the phrase by the talk I gave last week on the subject of three naval battles, one of which was Midway.  I think that all Marxists should be made to study military history instead of that tedious and mostly useless social history that has been designed in sundry Polytechnics to bolster the silly notion that you can create entirely spurious classes of people and then ram them all in willy-nilly, plus, the even sillier notion that such a thing as 'historical inevitability' actually exists.  Even the briefest skim across most military campaigns will instantly inform you that, indeed, 'shit happens'!

Take Midway for starters!  In late 1941(*), the Japanese sneaked up to Pearl Harbour with their magnificent and ultra-modern aircraft carriers and unleashed a terrific attack on the American fleet moored in harbour.  The media of the day flashed the story round the world complete with pictures of rows of sunken Yankee battleships and immediately declared it to be a stunning Japanese success.  Anyone today who suspects the media is less than an accurate reporter of events need look no further than this event for proof because, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbour was a stunning Japanese disaster.  Quite apart from the crass stupidity of poking a giant in the eye with a sharp stick whilst he is desperately trying to look away, the folly was compounded by the metaphorical 'shit happens' that I refer to in my title in that the American aircraft carriers, by a complete fluke, had sailed away the day before on an exercise.

Most Japanese thought the raid had been a marvellous victory but not the cold-eyed strategist, Admiral Yamamoto, who knew that it was now crucial in 1942(*) for him to provoke the Americans into a battle in which they would be forced to commit their aircraft carriers so that he could put right the glaring error from the Pearl Harbour raid by finally destroying them as a fighting force.  Oddly enough, Yamamoto, whilst appreciating the enormous importance of naval air power, was still a big battleship man at heart and probably failed to appreciate that by sinking all those useless American battleships the Japanese had actually done the Americans a favour!

He chose Midway as the target knowing that those two tiny atolls almost literally in the middle of the Pacific were absolutely crucial to the American defence of Hawaii.  They stood as an early-warning outpost for any Japanese fleet movements, and, as a refuelling base for American subs who would then range westwards to ravage supply ships feeding and fuelling the extended Jap armies round the western Pacific rim.  Any thrust at Midway would have to be parried and when the American carriers appeared, Yamamoto would crush them.  His plan was, arguably, too intricate and he wasted resources in a futile diversionary raid northwards into the Aleutians which fooled no-one.  For the attack on Midway he had a 4-carrier task force coming in from the NW and an invasion force coming in from the SW.  He and his battleship task force lurked back to the west waiting for the American forces to appear at which time he would pounce.

"Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted", said Bonaparte, a lesson well learnt by Yamamoto who arranged for a long-range seaplane to be met at an RV amongst some sandy shoals by a sub, there to be refuelled to give it the range to reach Pearl Harbour and see if the American carriers had sailed.  The first 'shit happened'!  The Japanese sub reported that two Yankee seaplane tenders were already anchored there so the Japanese recce was cancelled.  Yamamoto had also arranged for a line of subs to be placed along the likely routes of the American fleet but then the second 'shit happened' because there was a delay in the maintenance service of the subs and they were delayed.  The Americans, having broken the Jap naval codes and realising the urgency, had already sailed and were the other side of the sub line before it was in place.  Thus the Japanese had no idea that the US carriers were already close to Midway.

Nagumo was the commander of the Jap carrier task force with four huge, modern aircraft carriers capable of carrying 80+ aircraft each.  On the morning of the attack he arranged for his recce aircraft to take off early and fly a very specific series of flight paths that would allow them to cover an enormous area of Pacific to the east.  And here the third, the final and the most devastating piece of 'shit happens', happened!  One of the planes had engine trouble and took off 30 minutes late.  If it had left on time it would have flown over the US carriers but in the delay the Americans had moved on and were completely missed.  Nagumo had split his attack force into two waves.  The first, armed with anti-airfield ordinance hit Midway to soften it up for the invasion; the second, remained on board armed with anti-ship ordinance in case the Americans appeared (although this looked unlikely given the recce reports of no sightings!)  The first wave returned reporting success but insisting that Midway needed another pasting to make it safe for the invasion fleet to come in.  Nagumo, having no reports of any American ships, ordered the second wave to have their ordinance changed to anti-airfield.  This had nearly been completed when the first flight of American carrier aircraft arrived in the form of a flight of torpedo-attack planes.  These poor men had to fly low, straight and slow in order to launch their weapons,  making them an easy target for Nagumo's anti-aircraft gunners.  To add to their woes, the CAPs (Combat Air Patrols) always maintained above every carrier, swooped down like hawks on sparrows.  The Americans never stood a chance but with unbelievable courage every plane tried - and every plane was shot down without causing the Japs even a scratch on their paintwork!  But the effect they had was electrifying.  Nagumo knew these were carrier aircraft which meant the US fleet was nearby.  In a panic he countermanded his order to the armourers, telling them to take off the anti-airfield weaponry and reload with anti-ship.  By this time his first wave was landing and being re-fuelled and re-armed on deck.  At just that moment, a flight of American dive bombers at the very limit of their fuel range quite literally stumbled over the Japanese carriers.  They dived in relative safety because the CAPs had all come down low to deal with the torpedo attackers earlier and were low on fuel and ammo.  All the Jap carriers were crammed with planes, fuel lines and loose ammo.  It only needed one hit from a bomb and the whole lot would go up in an instant.  That is exactly what happened; first one, then two, then three blew up and sank, and the fourth was caught later in the day and was also sunk.

The heart had been ripped out of the Japanese fleet, not just in terms of carriers, but even more in the loss of hundreds of experienced aircrew which the Japanese navy was never able to replace adequately.  You could say that seven months after they started their war, the Japanese lost it - but then took four(*) more years and two atomic bombs before they owned up.  And all because an engine went faulty for half an hour!  The historicism of Marxism is always an indication of its total stupidity and brings to my mind the very wise words of another American, Benjamin Franklin, to which I add my own words at the end:

• "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse," the General was lost; and for want of a General, the war was lost!

It's the missing nails that always get 'em!

(*) Correction: I am grateful to John (see comments below) for pointing out (yet another) howler of mine concerning dates, which have now been corrected, thus invoking the shade of the late Miss Purves (History, 1950-55) whose constant refrain, "Details, Duff, details!" will be inscribed on my headstone along, probably, with my incorrect dates of birth and death!  My blustering reply to her that I was a 'big picture man' deserved the withering scorn it drew down on itself! 

Ghosts #2

It is now less than a month to the audition.  All of Ibsen's great plays depend utterly on the quality of the acting.  You might think that that applies to all plays and you would be right to a degree but some plays leave room for what I call 'directorial flash', that is, fancy staging, lighting and sound effects that can dazzle an audience and distract them from less than top rate performances.  Alas, Ghosts offers no such opportunities.  This is a claustrophobic 5-hander in which what is not explicitly stated is as important as what is.  This sub-text can only be indicated to the audience by very detailed playing, exchanged glances, pauses, body language and so on.  All those tiny moves need to be learnt and practiced by the actors in exactly the same way they learn and practice their lines.  So who turns up for my audition is crucial!

One part of theatre whose importance I cannot overstress is music.  Whenever possible I like to play an overture during which the house lights dim to near blackout so that the silenced audience is forced to listen.  Music sets a mood faster than anything.  We are blessed at the RSS with some very talented people and not the least of them is a young man called Mark Bannister MBannister75@aol.com.  I could not tell you the difference between a crotchet and a quaver but I can describe to Mark what it is I'm after in ordinary English, and he has the remarkable skill to translate that into superb music.  Anyone requiring music for film or theatre, please contact Mark.

In amateur theatre we have to work very differently from the pros, particularly the state-subsidised pros, for one very good reason - time!  We simply do not have the time for long leisurely rehearsals in which the cast can indulge in abstruse debates on the meaning of this, that or other.  Consequently, I always have my productions blocked before we start so that I can tell the actors from the beginning where they will enter, move and exit.  This is not written in stone and during rehearsals awkwardnesses can be smoothed out but it is essential to have a plan mapped out before you start.  This is easy in a 5-hander, not so easy with a Shakespeare with 25 roles!  Anyway, 'the game's afoot' and I will keep you posted on progress.

What passes for 'normal service' will be resumed shortly!

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I am conscious that I have left one or two topics, and commenters, hanging in limbo.  In the past fortnight I had to work on a two talks on the Waterloo campaign and the Waterloo battle.  This week, I am trying to brush up on another talk entitled "Three Naval Battles: Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway."  Consequently my mind is not on this blog.  Also, to be strictly honest, my mind keeps shying away from the topics that are concerning me.  I want to comment on the Euston Manifesto and at the same time respond to 'Son of Duff's' praise for a democratic liberal governance whilst trying to come to terms with two fascinating discussions over at 'The Joy of Curmudgeonry, here and here.  Lacking the single-minded force of an intellectual who has succeeded in convincing himself, my mind is a dither and such internal arguments that I can sustain result in 'on the one hand' and 'there again on the other hand' muddle.  Next week I will try and sort myself out and in the meantime I will give you post #2 on Ghosts.

A belated "Happy May Day" from the 120 million

In the 20^th century Socialism slaughtered approximately 120 million human beings.

Lefties are fond of cheesy depictions of the mortality rates for “imperialist / capitalist” wars – the www.iraqbodycount.net site is one example.  So being rather fond of cheese (and cheese-eaters for that matter) I thought I’d conjure up a little fromage of my own for your “back-to-work Tuesday” delectation.  What does a number like 120 million actually look like?

Move your fizzog up to the screen and look inside this letter “o”.  If you get close enough you’ll see there are 9 pixels.  Imagine each pixel is a human being.  So we have Gran and Gramps times two (on Mum and Dad’s side), plus Mum and Dad and three kids, equals a family of nine.

Now most screens have 1024 by 768 pixels or higher these days, so let’s say an average of 1,000,000 pixels.  So for the National Socialist holocaust it’s six computer screens.

But for Messer’s Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al you’ll need to take a stroll into your capitalist high street and find the nearest Dixons or Currys.  When you find one with a wall of screens 11 up and 11 across in the window you’ll be looking at the extent of Socialism’s great achievement.

Thanks Karl.

Son of Duff

And if you don't hang 'em - flog 'em!

I spotted this on the Civitas web-site and plotted a couple of little charts to visualise what’s going on.

The first chart shows, on the left, the European countries sorted by the most crime ridden at the top and the least at the bottom.  Notice Blighty shamefully second from the top.  In fact, the close relationship between the battle-axe wielding Norsemen, Anglo-Saxons and Huns and a granny-bashingly high crime rate, is mirrored by the observation that any country with a shoreline on the Med seems almost blissfully crime-free.  Must be all that olive oil and sunshine.  With the exception of the Irish - which might lead one to wonder if it’s a Proddy / Catholic thing?

To see that neither explanation is correct we look at the right side of the chart.

Here we see the “lock ‘em up” figure per 1,000 crimes for the countries listed – and notice the strongly inverse relationship with the crime rate.  The “give ‘em another chance” Northern softies suffer the consequences of a soaring crime rate, while the “chuck away the key” Southerners enjoy a low crime rate, Mediterranean cuisine and agreeable weather.  Bastards.

Chart 1 - click to enlarge:-

Now some of you lily-livered Northern pussies might be worrying about the costs of a spiralling prison population on our collective privy purse should we decide to toughen our custodial sentencing to enjoy a reduced crime rate?  To investigate that we can look at the second little chart I’ve prepared for you.

Chart 2 - click to enlarge: -

The blue line shows the increasing severity of sentencing: ‘Soppy Swedes’ on the left and the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ on the right.

As we already know the purple line shows the dramatic fall in the crime rate associated with tougher sentencing.

The yellow line shows the effect on the prison population.  Initially the prison population rises and then appears to fluctuate around an average of 100 prisoners per 100,000.  The black polynomial curve uses a maths technique to smooth the fluctuations and displays the trend: a steady rise, flattening out and then an actual fall in the prison population.

The relationship between stricter sentencing and a negligible increase, or even a decrease, in the prison population on the right half of the curve may seem counter-intuitive. What’s going on?

An analogy reveals all.

In the 1980’s the golden haired Thatcher declared that she was going to increase the total revenue to the Exchequer by lowering our tax rates.  “What!?” exclaimed the economists, “How can revenue rise when tax rates fall?”  These were probably the same 364 so called experts who signed a letter criticizing her monetarist policies to combat stagflation - only to have to eat their words as both inflation and unemployment became history (along with their primitive Keynesian economics).

She realised that the increase in national taxable income stimulated by incentives, for example…: -

(1) To earn more by the working class (who still existed then),
(2) To earn anything at all by the Chavs,
(3) To not evade / avoid tax or offshore their earnings by the domestic middle class,
(4) To earn income in Blighty rather than abroad by the international middle class,

…would exceed the decrease in national tax rates, thereby yielding greater total tax revenue.  She calculated that Blighty had been operating on the sub-optimal right hand end of the Laffer curve – see Wiki for an explanation of the economic Laffer curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve .

She was right (praise be upon Her).  The Exchequer’s coffers never had it so good.

Now my proposition is this: that there is a Laffer curve for crime, which operates in the same manner as the economic one, the only difference being the x and y parameters on the axes.

Chart 3 - click to enlarge: -

On the left hand side, starting at the lowest custodial sentence possible - none - the prison population would also be none.  A million people locked up for zero time is zero prison population.  Crime levels would be extremely high reflecting the punishment leniency (see first chart).  If you then increase the severity to just one day in prison an enormous leap in the prison population would occur, the small sentence applying to the enormous crime base.  Even if you doubled the sentence to two days the criminal fraternity would be undeterred, the crime base would be largely unaltered but the sentence doubled, so the prison population would almost double.  Gradually the deterrence effect starts to make itself felt and the prison population growth rate slows down.  This is the part of the curve that Blighty is in now, as shown in the second chart: tougher sentencing equals an increase in the prison population, albeit a slowing rate of increase.

After the peak in prison population we then get to enjoy the ‘positive double whammy’ on the right side of the curve: a virtuous circle of decreasing prison population and crime.  With harsher sentencing the rational criminal class starts to seriously contemplate the balance of the ‘gain versus punishment’ equation.  The opposing effects on prison population of an increase in sentencing (lengthening prison stays on the one hand) and deterrence (decreasing the number of prison stays on the other hand) combine to offset each other at the peak.  Eventually the deterrence effect out-weighs the longer sentences and the prison population starts to fall.

This ‘tougher sentencing reduces prison population’ phenomenon is touched upon in the second chart (actual values of the Euro-states).  But due to Europe’s overall ignorance of the Laffer crime curve - and consequential sentencing leniency - it is not being enjoyed to its full potential.  Hence the only slight downward turn in the prison population trend on the right side of the Euro-states chart.

Also, we should observe that there are some criminals whom no punishment will deter – their stubborn contribution to total prison population is the blue line on the third chart.  In our times their number is bolstered by drug addiction.  So the virtuous right side of the curve is tempered somewhat: the prison population never falls to zero, but rather leaves an intractable rump of serial offenders in jail while the 'rational' criminals go straight.

But while Maggie’s Laffer curve becomes skewed by the nut-jobs and druggies in its crime curve manifestation, we should remind ourselves that at the virtuous right-hand end of the curve the crime rate is rock-bottom – see the first and second charts - on account of: -

(1) The habitual criminals coming out less often to re-offend,
(2) The “rational” criminals deterred.

And the prison population is less than the central peak, albeit not as markedly as Laffer’s taxation curve.

So what is needed is a huge toughening of sentencing to push us deep into the virtuous right side of the curve, beyond the 'Spanish Inquisition', so as to enjoy a low crime rate and a smaller prison population.

All this leaves Blighty’s latest crop of ‘experts’ - trying to reduce crime and the prison population by a moderate toughening of sentencing - and their ‘expert’ predecessors - who tried to reduce crime and the prison population by more lenient sentencing – both looking equally as thick as thieves.  Just as the Keynsian economic ‘experts’ of the 70’s did in the 80’s.

Unfortunately it is we who will pay the price until the Penny drops.  Just as the European economies did until the monetarist Penny dropped in 1979.

Son of Duff