A tragic day for Pakistan and for democracy

In my previous post on my hopes for next year, I omitted two things. One, that steps would be taken to get to grips with the Palestinian problem and second that Pakistan, after the elections on January 8th, would take the first steps back to democratic rule.

The first of those always had little hope of success and the second has today received a massive body blow with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the country's prime opposition leader.






In exile for so many years, she took an enormous risk in deciding to go home and contest the elections and the size of that risk was made apparent only days after her arrival in Pakistan when a suicide bomber exploded a device that killed 140 of her supporters in October.

Al Quaeda was blamed for that attack and now the question is being asked - who is responsible for this successful attack on the woman seen by the west as the best hope for Pakistan's future as a democratic ally.

There is no doubt that she was hated by Islamic extremists and with good reason. She had promised that, if elected, she would allow US led search and destroy teams to comb the mountain areas of Pakistan to find the Al Quaeda elements who take refuge there. There is no doubt that she was a considerable threat to them.

Some people are blaming President Musharraf, even though he has himself been a target of attacks. A cousin of Ms Bhutto said angrily tonight that it was astonishing that the President had always survived such attacks unharmed while Ms Bhutto was killed. He seemed to be suggesting that the Presidential attacks were a convenient smoke screen to draw suspicion from the government.

I would think this is unlikely. Far more likely, and extremely worrying, is the likelihood that within the inner sanctum of Pakistan's government there are those, sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism, who are passing information on.

Whether the elections on January 8th will now go ahead is debatable. What is clear is that a country which was already dangerous and unstable has been plunged into even deeper turbulence with the murder of a very brave woman who must have known the risks she faced in going home. This assassination is a tragic day for Pakistan and for hopes of a democratic future. My hopes for the coming 12 months have got off to the worst possible start

My Christmas hopes

I am writing this on Christmas Day morning and thinking about the state of the world and the news stories which have filled the pages over the last year. I am thinking about my hopes for 2008 and how likely they are to be fulfilled.

The first of these is clearly that something positive comes out of Iraq. Well clearly whatever does happen its not going to be along the lines which Bush and Blair hoped for at the the time of the invasion nearly five years ago. The British have virtually quit the occupation, leaving the south of the country in the hands of the Iraqi security forces..although that is generally accepted to be a bit of a joke. The Islamic fundamentalist groups are simply biding their time. In the north the situation looks different but only because of a gigantic infusion of American troops..who cannot stay forever in a situation where they are clearly performing a holding operation. This may have given the Iraqi factions themselves a chance to grow in strength and stem the tide of Al Qaeda but the killings still go on and I'm pretty sure that when the Americans tire of playing Canute, the country will dissolve into a factional war.

Maybe Iraq will, eventually, cease to exist as one state and revert to the tribal homelands of Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Marsh Arabs it was before the British created it.




My second hope is that there are real, positive moves made on climate change. The two biggest flies in the ointment on getting a concerted world effort going are China and the USA. The US was shamed into signing an agreement it didn't want to sign at the last International Conference in Bali, but when you have an unwilling signatory who just doesn't want to appear to be the party pooper, how confident can one be that the Americans are really going to try to stick to targets..because for the citizens of the USA those targets are going to be very electorally unpopular.

It is one of the world's biggest headaches because it needs all of us acting together to effect any changes in our planet and yet there is not even any uniformity on whether man made emissions are the main source of the problem, thus encouraging countries like the US in its hesitancy to commit to stringent targets.

I hope that whatever political problems lie in the way, every country in 2008 will see the necessity for stringent control of carbon emissions.




In the United Kingdom, I hope Gordon Brown - who began his Premiership so well and finished 2007 so falteringly - will get his act together and get some decent ministers with real intelligence in the key jobs and put the Labour Party back on a firm footing. I think Brown's instincts are better than Blair's - he just needs to ensure he has the troops to carry them through.




And lastly, though there must be so many issues out there, and very parochially, I want to see closure on the issue of Madeleine McCann. I hope the little girl is found, one way or the other, alive or dead - but surely anything is better than a child being spirited off into the night and loved ones never hearing of it or from it again, never knowing its fate. I know many children around the world have disappeared in these circumstances but sometimes it is easier to focus on one as a token of hope for all.






On a lighter note I have just started a fun job as an internet radio DJ and Im enjoying that immensely so I hope that goes from strength to strength in 2008.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

My respect for Brown diminishes by the day

Well the honeymoon is most certainly over for our now not-so-new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who seems to have lost the sure footedness he showed in ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer and in his first few days as Blair's replacement.

The first signs of indecisive behaviour came with the 'will he, won't he' go to the country in an election two months ago. It was clear from all the sound bytes that such was his intention until he looked at the polls, received a shock....and bottled it. He should never have allowed election fever to gather in the first place.

Then we have the issue of Abrahmas and the donations. Hain and the despicable Harman pocketing the money while no-one told Brown...and no one queried the legitimacy of what they were doing? I don't believe any of it. Peter Watt resigned as Labour General Secretary after admitting he knew what was happening was illegal. Its squalid and shameful. And Brown must ultimately carry the can.

Then there is Iraq. OK we have reduced troop numbers there but we have done so in such a way that no one is happy and everything clearly has been done for political 'arse saving' and not with any constructive military phasing.

Then the police. How on earth could Brown allow a situation to develop where Scotland's police get a complete 2.5% pay raise, backdated to September as recommended by the committee who arbitrated on pay awards, but the police in England and Wales lose virtually four months of that because of the government's refusal to backdate it. It's petty, it's mean and it's a drop in the ocean of our national expenditure. Why piss the police off when their case is supported not only by their command structure from Chief Constable down but by the pay committee which made the award. Brown is here confusing strength with stubborn short sightedness...and it's a weakness that Blair, at the height of their angry disagreements, has referred to as a flaw in Brown's character.

Also this week we have had the signing of the European Union Treaty which replaced the failed Constitution. It binds European states together in a common political purpose without actually creating a unified European state. There are 27 European Union leaders and gathered in Lisbon this week were 26 of them shown at a ceremony signing the new treaty, photographs of the back slapping occasion circulated in all the newspapers throughout Europe.



Only one leader of the 27 nations was missing. Brown. Because he had a 'prior engagement' with some Commons Committee which could have been rescheduled. Instead he flew to Lisbon and signed the treaty alone with not a camera in sight. Why? Because many people in Britain, and especially on the left of the Labour Party and the right of the Conservative Party (oddly) are passionately against the Treaty. But we have agreed to it. Our Government is a signatory. So why cannot our Prime Minister fly out to Lisbon with pride and publicly commit this country to a new direction in Europe rather than skulking off quietly and doing so in private? He clearly did not wish to be seen in celebratory mood lest his critics savage him when he got home.



Instead he has taken the coward's way out...and it's another bum decision. It ranks with the days of Thatcher when we were reluctant members of the EC and seemed to adopt a permanent petulance about any aspect of European policy. The man is showing an incredible lack of control over his cabinet and I am beginning to get a little worried about his hand on the tiller of British politics.

Then again maybe it's my age. I am so sick and tired of the cynicism in politics, the disingenuous half truth at best behind nearly every decision, the cruel and inhuman way we cheerfully assisted in slaughtering 100, 000 souls not so long after our now deceased Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, talked about a new dawn in ethical foreign policy.

Frankly, having been a passionate and dedicated socialist since my teens, and seen the sorry state into which my Labour Party has descended, I really have reached the point that I don't give a stuff who runs the country. They are all opportunists and medicocre attention seekers. A plague on all your houses, say I !

British leave Basra with a whimper not a roar

It has been announced that the British will formally hand over Basra, the most important area of their remit, to the Iraqi forces this coming Sunday despite three car bombs going off in Amarah, a province the British handed over to the Iraqis in April, on Wednesday killing 41 people. Although the bombs did not affect Basra directly it must have been an uncomfortable reminder of the 'success' British policy has had in their previous areas of responsibility.

How different it all seems from the comparatively breezy days when the British Army was giving the US tactful reminders on how to win the hearts and minds of the populace by wearing caps not helmets, making friends with the kiddies and strolling round town almost like tourists. Well that worked for a time but soon the chickens came home to roost and the British army was forced into a siege mentality in Basra from which it never managed to escape.


British tanks hit by shells in Basra


Back in August of this year, a senior US official criticised British policy in Basra, driven by Gordon Brown's political needs, of pulling too many troops out too quickly. Now if we forget for a moment that the whole responsibility for this mess lies with the United States for invading the country in the first place and stick to a purely objective military analysis, the critic does seem to have been proved right.

As I have said in previous articles, and again forgetting the moral rights and wrongs of being there in the first place, we never had enough troops to do the job properly. Thanks, mainly, to Blair's desire to please America and to our blind political refusal to accept that our military commitments with a small standing army are stretched to breaking point. I feel sorry for the guys on the ground and total contempt for the politicians who put them there.

Not for the first time the British army has found itself between a rock and a hard place and is now having to hand over Basra with as much dignity as it can muster - and after the heady enthusiasm of four years ago that can't be much.

It is grim and laughable to see the news headlines now. Under Saddam, whatever kind of monster he may have been to political opponents, women walked the streets of Iraq's cities freely, many in western clothing. Girls were educated in some of the best schools in the middle east. Now, in the wake of Bush's 'invasion to bring democracy', the British leave Basra in the hands of radical Islamic militias, many of whom it seems have infiltrated the very army we are leaving in charge.

Slogans are now painted on the walls of Basra warning women that if they do not wear wear full Islamic dress they will be beaten or even killed. Four women have been murdered in Basra already. The city is factionalised and divided. People live in fear. Is this what we committed the lives of British troops to bring about? Thanks to modern media coverage its not even possible to support a political lie. Now they are saying 'we are leaving a tolerable situation', 'we never promised total success' etc etc. The truth is that the dissidents have won.

At least, in the north of the country, America has succeeded to some extent in halting the advance of Al Queda and other insurgents by the changed policy of literally saturating northern Iraq with American troops, a policy the British could never hope to emulate. And so our troops, who deserve to have been treated better, are leaving Basra with a huge failure sign invisibly hanging over their heads...not because of any shortcomings on their part but simply because the political planning was short sighted and dumb. A similar disaster is waiting to happen in Afghanistan where the Taleban are not standing to fight but disappearing into the mountains to regroup. It's their country and their terrain. They will just wait it out and come again as they have done with every occupier that preceded them.

Is there any good news from Iraq. Well sure there is! Surprise, surprise, oil production is higher than even pre-war levels it was announced today AND the conquerors of Iraq are taking an ever increasing number of millions of barrels pouring money into the coffers of THEIR oil companies of course. Oh and of course those self same conquerors have taken responsibility for Iraq's oil revenues, promising to spend the money wisely, but many questions have been asked about how and where that money has been spent.




Well, Blair and his pathetic little puppy dog act have gone, and Brown is at least getting the British out of a hole even if that upsets our friends and allies across the pond. But they won't be too upset for long. It's been a far costlier war than that bastard Rumsfeld promised when he thought the only casualties would be thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children..and who gave a stuff about them? Instead America has lost nearly 4000 dead since the 'war' began and had nearly 30,000 wounded.

However I'm sure the Bush administration, and especially the supporters of the Project for the New American Century, who were responsible for the initiation of this ghastly crime against humanity will feel its all been worth it. After all they've got their hands on the oil for the first time since Iraq nationalised its oil in 1972....just what they really wanted all along!

United States kidnap law is beyond the pale

At an appeal court hearing in London this week, a lawyer working for the American government made a devastating revelation in such a low key environment that it would hardly have created a ripple had not 'The Times' picked up on it and decided that the story deserved wide circulation..and I emphatically agree.

It was a case involving Stanley Tollman, a director of Chelsea Football Club and his wife, Beatrice, who own the Red Carnation hotel chain and are fighting extradition to the United States where they are wanted for bank fraud and tax evasion. During the hearing Lord Justice Moses (yes honestly!) asked Alun Jones QC, representing the American government, about an attempt to forcibly abduct the Tollman's nephew, Gavin, from Canada, on related charges, in 2005.

It was here that Mr Jones quietly dropped his bombshell. He admitted that US agents felt they had carte blanche to kidnap anyone from another country who was wanted in the United States for a criminal offence. Mr Jones conceded that the United States was 'low key' about this particular activity because governments 'did not see eye to eye' with the US on this matter. The judges asked Mr. Jones for clarification of the American government position and he replied that apparently it was a federal law going back to the bounty hunting days of the 1860s and had never been rescinded.

The judges, clearly startled, asked about the impact of extradition agreements on this behaviour, as, of course, there is an extradition treaty in existence between the US and the UK and it is clearly expected that the proper channels will be pursued.

Mr. Jones replied that extradition was only one channel viewed as legitimate by the US authorities and, although it might be considered that forced abduction to the US without fulfilling such niceties was improper to say the least, the problem lay with the jurisdiction of America's Supreme Court. Once a wanted criminal was on American soil, the Supreme Court had no power to legislate whether consequent prosecution was legal because of the means of getting him there. This left the US Government free to pursue a covert operation across the globe...including the United Kingdom.

It is the first time that a lawyer representing the American government has made it clear that this policy can apply to anyone wanted for criminal offences anywhere in the world. The news came as something of a shock to politicians and to human rights campaigners. Before this announcement it was considered that 'extraordinary rendition' as it is called, applied only to terror suspects whose continued freedom posed a threat to American security.

There has been a hue and cry over those, particularly the rendition flights to Egypt and Turkey which have involved using British facilities en route but at least there was some understanding that the Americans perceived such people to be a danger to their lives. This is clearly not the case with bank fraudsters and tax dodgers and the revelation has created a wave of anger in the UK.

Patrick Mercer, a Conservative Member of Parliament has said, “The very idea of kidnapping is repugnant to us and we must handle these cases with extreme caution and a thorough understanding of the implications in American law.” Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “This law may date back to bounty hunting days, but they should sort it out if they claim to be a civilised nation.”

So far there has been no statement from either the British government or the US Justice Department but it seems to me that this situation is outrageous. It is not right for any one nation, particularly the world's most powerful nation, to go stomping round the globe ignoring protocol, ignoring the rights of anyone who has residence under another country's jurisdiction and dragging them off to the United States.

It's no wonder that the Americans will not participate in any International Court of Justice - because of course they would be in the dock on issues like this. The issue of terrorism is a very serious one and the issue of rendition of suspected terrorists is an issue which should be dealt with separately but when the criminals are clearly those who could be processed through the system without any risk to life and limb, then the Americans should stop this practice.

What is clear to me is that no civilised country does its reputation any favours when it continues to pursue a law coined 150 years ago in order to dodge the time and inconvenience of paper work in pursuit of suspects for 'civil' crime. It's not the way to behave and it's up to every individual country to make its representations to the United States on this matter, but I hope the British government does so forcibly and makes its own view clear that if any such shenanigans take place on British soil there will be rapid and serious consequences for the 'special relationship'.

If it wasn't so tragically sad it would be funny!

Yesterday, to the relief of her family, and everyone in Britain who had been following the story, Mrs Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old British teacher, arrived home in the UK after a nightmare ordeal in which she was tried and imprisoned in a Sudanese court for allowing the children in her Khartoum infants class to name a teddy bear Muhammad - the name of Islam's most revered prophet and , of course, thus an insult to the religion.




It took a visit by two British Muslim peers who sought, and gained, an audience with the President of Sudan, to gain a pardon and immediate release for Mrs. Gibbons, a woman who was described by her Muslim teaching colleagues as 'an inspiration, a woman who had such a way of communicating with children'. She had, apparently, attempted to get the interest of her young class by getting them to think of names for the bear and so many Islamic boys are named Muhammad (that's OK apparently) that the name was the clear winner. The poor woman found herself in trouble only when one of the boys told his parents, innocently, about the naming of the bear and the parents felt this was such an insult to the faith that they had to inform the security services.

Mrs. Gibbons was arrested, tried and jailed for a short term but that didn't stop the fanatics. The least that was demanded was a public flogging and indeed, Rent-a-mob was out in Khartoum last week demanding that she be re-tried and the death sentence imposed. Fortunately they were just a set-up job by a few extremists but this has caused major diplomatic ructions over something so - on the face of it - stupid.

For once the Muslim Council of Britain, which I have in the past criticised for its equivocation, was clear in its condemnation of Mrs. Gibbons arrest, for which I admire them. They said, as we all believed here, that this was a tragic and well intentioned blunder with no attempt to insult Islam. It seems that much of Sudan thought the same and there did seem to be an inclination to get out of this without losing too much face in appearing to give in to British demands for Mrs. Gibbons' release.

There seems to have been a recognition, in Sudan and in Britain, that there was more to this than met the eye and that Mrs Gibbons was being used as a means of working off two targets of anger. First the UK has refused to supply Sudan with military equipment unless they allow independent observers into Darfur where the situation is now appalling. Second, and perhaps more directly linked, the Unity School at which Mrs Gibbons taught is an independent school which works on a type of British based curriculum and teaches all children - Islamic and Christian children together. Hard line Islamic fundamentalists have long opposed the continuation of this practice and the naming of the bear gave them a perfect opportunity to make a big issue.

All this seems so silly - and I have no wish to single out any one faith for particular criticism - but I do think it highlights how much of a stranglehold religious beliefs of any sort can take on the minds of human beings. I honestly believe that religion is the most destructive force in the world and does far more harm than good - always has. At present Islam is in the firing line for what are perceived to be inhumane practices and attitudes linked to religion but don't forget that the Christian Church has had its fair share of atrocities all in the name of the true faith. More people have been killed in the name of religion than in any other single cause.

I don't believe that God, Jesus or Muhammad - if any of them had the power accredited to them - would have sanctioned much of the stuff that is going on in their name. If only, in my dream world, we could abandon all this deference to some deity and look at how we relate, as human beings, to one another, wouldn't the world be a better place?




Would this have solved the whole problem?

Labour Party in moral free fall

The Labour Party, of which I was once a keen and passionate member, is in crisis..worse than crisis..it is in moral free fall. I believe the rot started with Bliar and his easy avoidance of all the codes that had kept Labour on the straight and narrow in his relentless pursuit for money. There was Bernie Ecclestone, cash for honours and other indications that 'New Labour' was prepared to turn a blind eye to where money came from provided it benefited the Party.

Then Bliar finally sailed off into the sunset to be replaced by new squeaky clean Gordon promising a new safe pair of hands administering a sound ship.





What has happened in the last few months? Problems over immigrant numbers at the Home Office - carefully concealed by Jacqui Smith. Problems with 25 million address and bank details lost by Revenue and Customs, government labs leaking foot and mouth, and now the third General Secretary in as many years has resigned because he knew that £600,000 had been donated to the Labour Party illegally. Peter Watt seemed to be a good, sound competent Secretary, yet here he is suggesting that he defied the rule book which he of all people should have been aware of..and now he has quit.



Does anyone really believe that Watt is other than the fall guy in all this?. Hot on the heels of Watt's resignation, that pathetic excuse for a Deputy Leader , Harriet Harman, announced that she would 'send back' £5000 she got from the same source as the £600,000 to fund her Deputy Leadership campaign. No suggestion that she should resign of course! Yet her loss would be of considerably less severity.





Ms Harman claims she didn't know the money was a 'proxy'. You know what? I don't believe a word of it and I'm beginning to doubt every goddamn word this government says..particularly when it comes to funding, for its not an ethic they seem to take particularly seriously. The Conservatives have asked Harman why, in any case, she accepted this money after the Deputy elections were over, and the donor, one David Abrahams, is now being investigated over some attempt to gain planning permission for a major property development. The whole thing stinks of corrupt fiscal opportunism.

Despite the appearance of calm assurance with which Gordon Brown assumed the helm, he is now beginning to look like a man not in control of his Party - a grim irony given that he worked pretty hard to make Bliar look as if he (Bliar) had no control when Brown was Chancellor and making life difficult by plotting against his leader. Tony must be laughing his socks off.

But all the while the nation gets more disillusioned and while Brown appears to be captaining a sinking ship and having no idea where to steer it, the beneficiary is chinless wonder Cameron and his clueless Tories..now 14% ahead in the polls. Rarely have I seen British politics at such a low ebb..and after Bliar and Iraq thats quite something. Brown needs to get Labour's act together ..and fast! He could do worse than use the £5000 donation as an excuse to sack Harman and get someone decent in the Deputy's job!!

Rudd victory leaves Bush with few friends

The stunning victory for Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party was one of the most comprehensive annihilations of a ruling party in recent Australian history. Not only did John Howard's Liberal Coalition lose power after Howard had spent 11 years as Australian Prime Minister but it looks as if Howard is to suffer the added humiliation of losing his own Parliamentary seat in Sydney to former journalist Maxine McKew.





Prime Minister elect Kevin Rudd



Labor achieved a swing of 6.3 %, the second largest since World War II, and look to gain a phenomenal 30 seats in Canberra's House of Representatives. The battle was effectively won on domestic issues, as elections usually are, Howard having presided over the scrapping of a lot of workplace agreements on holidays and overtime for example,a situation the Australian voters signalled very early on they were not prepared to accept.

Outside Australia, however, the new regime will be recognised for its clear foreign policy statements which reverse Howard's long standing claim to be President Bush's stoutest friend. Rudd has sworn to endorse the Kyoto treaty which Howard, in company with the Americans, refused to do and he has also pledged to bring all Australian troops home from Iraq.

President Bush was among the first to send a telegram of congratulations to the new Australian leader and Rudd was equally speedy in thanking the President and resssuring him that Australia remained a firm friend and loyal ally. But before the ink dried on his congratulatory letter, Bush must surely have suffered a slight shiver of loneliness with regard to his middle east policy which now has few if any international friends. Howard stood shoulder to shoulder with the American government on nearly everything but the wind of change has blown very strongly across the southern hemisphere today..and its a change that seems to make many Aussies, particularly those celebrating wildly in London this afternoon, very happy.

One delirious young lady who gave her name as Anne said "After more than a decade I feel proud of my country once more." It seems to be the prevailing mood and the new young Prime Minister has a lot to live up to but he seems to relish the task.

For President Bush, however, on the last leg of his journey as US President, he must be looking around desperately for friends he can turn to. The landscape now looks very bleak indeed!

Are we trusting computers..and the people who run them..too much?

The recent fusion of our Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue, now called Revenue and Customs is at the heart of a massive data loss scandal where CDs containing 25 MILLION addresses of people in receipt of child benefit have gone missing. The data includes name, address, telephone number and bank details.




It doesn't take much thought to imagine what the consequences of this could be. In financial terms mass fraud could be enacted and people's details stolen and in social terms there is a concern that paedophile rings could now have access to the details of 25 million families with children. So the effects are massive, wide-ranging and potentially disastrous. The police have been called in and questions are being asked in Parliament, the opposition even suggesting that Chancellor Alistair Darling should be called to account.

Well I think that's ridiculous. It's not like the Met Police shooting where the whole methodology could be questioned from the top down. It is stupid to suggest that Mr.Darling could possibly have a direct responsibility for how a junior officer in the Newcastle office of Revenue and Customs chose to post a CD but it does call into question how blase we have become about computers, how much we store on them and how casual we have become about the awesome amount of data which is now held on one tiny file.

It seems that like most huge organisations there were a whole set of conflicting e mails went out from management about costs. The whole Revenue and Customs organisation has just been massively cut on staff and e mails had gone out about 'doing things cost effectively' and other mails asking that data be sent out ' as securely as is reasonably possible'. There seems to have been a huge opportunity for personal judgment about what that meant and one junior officer sent a CD out by courier, without any recorded delivery being paid for. I bet he has done this 100 times before and there has never been a problem. No one it seems laid down any hard and fast rule that said 'If you are sending private details of thousands of people you must always send recorded delivery, you must always..etc etc'

So, in a blame culture, who is to blame? The Government? The senior official who has resigned over this, the junior officer who made what is now considered a mistake..although its probably worked fine many times previously. The postal service who lost it? Who? Its not clear.

Some things are clear though. Too many organisations hold too many details about us which are not sufficiently audited by an outside body to see if they are necessary. Once we have computers we are acquisitive. We are also sloppy. Years ago when we had hand written letters, copies were kept in filing cabinets and locked away. Now you see CD's in IT departments, some containing thousands or millions even of people's details, lying in in or out trays.

The British Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has welcomed a move by the Govermment which was introduced this week 'after the horse had bolted' which allows his department now to visit organisations, unheralded, and check that they are in compliance with Data Security regulations. Before the Government made this hasty change the Information Commission had to book an appointment to check compliance. What use is that?

I think this current scandal is the tip of the IT iceberg and we need a total shake up in our complacency about handling the personal details of others. Too many organisations, the Police, the Vehicle Licensing Authority, Health Service, credit card companies, social services etc etc have way way too much information on everyone..and what this Revenue and Customs glitch shows is that much of it is processed in a very cavalier fashion. Major changes are necessary ..and soon...but government seems more concerned with recording even more information about us rather than worrying too much how that information is protected. I hope this is a wake-up call.

Politics is such a game of subtlety and stealth

I was thinking yesterday, after listening to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech at the Guildhall, just what a subtle maze of coding politics really is. The Lord Mayor of London's banquet is traditionally the occasion on which the Prime Minister of the day sets out his vision of the world and indicates the priorities he sees as facing the British Government over the coming year.

Mr.Brown's priority, it was quite clear, was to restore Britain's relationship with the United States. Since he succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister 4 months ago, his every action on the foreign policy front has seemed determined to place as much distance as possible between Blair and himself, and in the process, ruffling the feathers of our closest ally.



Brown' s decisions to pull British troops out of Iraq, in addition to allowing his ministers apparent rein to criticise the Bush Administration and to indicate that, from now on, Britain would be nobody's lap dog, seem designed to appease those in the Labour Party and in the country who wanted a new independent assertiveness by Britain. It seems to have worked and Brown's standing in the polls benefited as a result.

But yesterday, at the Lord Mayor's banquet, Brown clearly and with very definite forethought, took a different tack. It was a bit like one half of an engaged couple telling the other, "I know I've been a bit cool with you recently because I don't want you to take me for granted...but I still love you really."

He clearly stated that he had 'no truck' with Anti-Americanism either here in the UK or among our European partners, clearly signifying to Washington that he was not becoming sympathetic to any Franco-German resistance to American influence.

He supported the case against Iran suggesting that Britain and America - and the rest of the EU - should act as one to resist Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But then, having suggested that the US and Britain should act together to limit Iran's nuclear expansion, he clearly set out what steps he believed should be taken by both countries to achieve that - and none of those options included the use of force.

The speech was quite a cleverly thought out one in that it said, quite warmly, 'America you are still our best pal' while clearly and politely indicating what steps Britain believed 'best pals' should take next with regard to troublesome foreign powers.

It is an interesting conjecture whether these 'best pals' would stand together should the US decide on military action against Iran. Somehow I doubt it, and the manner of Brown's speech seemed to imply 'and don't compromise our friendship by suggesting it'

Can the Met kill an innocent man - and NOBODY be accountable?

Yesterday the Metropolitan Police was found guilty of breaching health and safety regulations when they shot dead Brazilian immigrant Jean Charles de Menezes on a train at Stockwell tube station on July 22nd 2005, two weeks after the suicide bombs that killed over 50 people on three trains and a bus. The facts are now known. The police had been keeping watch on a block of flats where Hussain Osman, a terrorist suspect, lived. Tragically for him, Mr Menezes lived in the same block and, when he left home to travel to Stockwell, police became confused.



Jean Charles de Menezes

The result of that confusion was that armed officers pursued Mr. Menezes onto Stockwell station and then onto a tube train where he was shot seven times at close range with special bullets designed to flatten inside the body rather than go straight through. These were officers trained to kill and fully intent on doing so. Nothing was left to chance - except that they got the wrong man.

Now the time was very fraught. Fifty five people had been killed two weeks before and the capital was on a knife edge. The police were only too conscious of the awesome responsibility of preventing more deaths of innocent people and knew only too well that their firearms experts might be called on to deliver fatal blows in a situation which was far from normal.

But however fraught the situation, however much the police were under strain, they undoubtedly screwed up big time - and an innocent man lost his life.

At the outset of the case, the prosecution outlined NINETEEN areas in which the police failed to take adequate steps to prevent the kind of tragic accident which ultimately occurred. The police denied these failings but the jury ultimately found the Met guilty and they were fined a total , including costs, of around half a million pounds.

Now nobody wants witch hunts against an organisation which is paid to protect the public, and which they were quite clearly trying to do. But Mr.Menezes was an equally innocent member of that public..and he lost his life. Of the nineteen failings highlighted at the start of the trial many were highlighted as operational failings. The litany of accusations is filled with the expression 'failure to communicate'. There was confusion over what the strategy was between the control room, the surveillance team and the firearms officers. There was no contingency plan for dealing with and clearly identifying people who left the flats other than the suspect. Official briefings were described as 'inadequate'. There was a failure to stop Mr. Menezes before he reached the tube station at which point armed officers considered they had only one option. The shift Commander, Cressida Dick, was not kept fully informed about the whereabouts of firearms teams, despite the fact that her decisions were ultimately decisive.



Cressida Dick

Now the jury made it clear that they don't hold Commander Dick responsible for what happened. The Home Office has made it clear that they don't hold her boss, Chief Constable Sir Ian Blair responsible either and he will continue as London's top policeman despite the Force having been found guilty of serious and grave failings which led to a man's death.




Now Sir Ian seems to be a decent kind of a man who has the best interests of the public at heart. I am sure Commander Dick is of similar mind. They are good conscientious police officers.

But they are also in positions of responsibilty. Responsibility for what turned out to be a day of chaotic communication failure which had tragic consequences. If neither of them was responsible for the picture of indecision and muddle which has emerged from July 22....then who was? Surely it is not right that Britain's most powerful police force can so mishandle a suspected terror operation which led to a frightening assassination of an innocent man without someone carrying the can?

Yet thats the way it looks. The Force is nailed for half a million pounds by a jury as being completely culpable in a man's death yet NOBODY pays the price? It used to be considered honourable for bosses in this situation to fall on their proverbial swords but maybe our politicians have themselves set the trend for committing appalling errors of judgment yet failing to resign.

I suspect this affair is not over yet and, although Sir Ian is reputed to be a top class policeman and his loss would be considerable, he might do well to think further about the viability of his position and the integrity of his Force.

A decision which should be applauded

The British Government announced today that from next year every schoolgirl in the country between the ages of 12 and 18 would be offered the opportunity for free vaccination against the virus which, it is calculated, is responsible for 75% -80% of cervical cancer.

In deciding to do this they have gone beyond the minimal steps recommended by health experts and, in doing so, I believe the government deserves to be congratulated.

It is calculated that the initial scope of vaccination could cost £100 million and the later 'catch up' effort up to a further £200 million.

The United States has already begun such a programme but at a State's individual discretion, Texas being the first to begin such a scheme. Predictably, given the mix of cultural and religious strands of opinion in the US, critics (primarily right wing Republicans) have managed to halt such programmes in some states mainly on the basis that such a facility will encourage promiscuity. Presumably they prefer their women to die horrible deaths as opposed to enjoying sexual intercourse but I can't see the same problems occurring in Britain where so far the public reaction seems to be overwhelmingly in favour.

It will be 20 or 30 years before the effects of the vaccination are really able to be assessed but there is great confidence that the move will bring a sharp downturn in the cases, and consequent deaths, from cervical cancer.

Well done the UK government for taking this particular bull by the horns and having the courage to spend the money on such a comprehensive medical programme.

Why are the English so good at plucking defeat from the jaws of victory?

This weekend we have had two sporting contests in which English hopefuls offered so much only to let us down at the final hurdle. The first was the World Cup of Rugby Football in which England, against all the odds, reached the final. They had been playing rubbish rugby all the way up to the competition and, indeed, in the first round league system they lost to South Africa 36-0. But suddenly they came good. They scraped through to the quarter finals and there, against all expectations, they beat Australia - a complete turn up for the form book. In the semi finals they beat the hosts, France in another storming performance. But having reached the final they weren't quite good enough, losing again to South Africa but this time only 15-6.




The second example is perhaps even more stark. The wunderkind of the Formula 1 car racing world, England's Lewis Hamilton, in his first season at senior level, managed to amaze the racing world by, apparently, having a virtually unassailable lead in the World Championship with two races to go. He would have been the first racing driver ever to have won the world championship in his 'rookie' year. But he blew it. He blew it in China two weeks ago with a horrendous mistake and today in Brazil he blew it again - though in fairness part of the problem was the car.



Now in both these cases, fair minded critics might say that both the England rugby team and young Hamilton did far better than anyone ever expected them to but that's rational, objective logic. My passionate sporting heart says why do English sports persons and teams always fill us with so much expectation, bring us to the brink of near hysterical national pride....and then break our hearts. It happens every time!

Is my life really safe in THEIR hands?

For the last twelve years, I have suffered from ulcerative colitis - a nasty, rather frightening disease which, because symptomatically, it resembles bowel cancer, needs to be identified quickly and treated urgently. The disease is incurable and life long, but it can be controlled with the right treatment. Fortunately thanks to a good early diagnosis and good treatment, my life is infinitely better than it was at the time the disease was diagnosed.

So why my rather dismal title for this piece? Well today I went for my biennial appointment at the hospital, my usual nerves even more strained than usual as I had been alerted on my previous visit that this time I faced having to make an appointment for a colonoscopy - not the most pleasant of experiences but one which I accept is intregral to an early alert for cancer - and colitis sufferers run a much higher risk than the average human being.



So when the consultant had asked me a few fundamental questions, made notes on my weight and then dismissed me with a 'see you in two more years', I experienced a deep sense of relief at first, then I plucked up the courage to ask about the promised colonoscopy.

"Oh we've scaled those back," he said, "and now, until you're 65, we arrange one every fifteen years."

Well my immediate relief was tinged with a sense of concern. Fifteen years? For someone with colitis? I'm sure they get a lot of information from blood tests and so on which are mandatory on each visit, but I am both surprised and concerned that the NHS is now leaving this very important investigatory process for so long between examinations.

I am pretty sure that this is not the situation in the United States for example where people at risk are examined in depth far more frequently than that. I'm sure the Health Service will say that, given other supporting evidence via blood and urine tests, there is no need for colonoscopies on a more frequent timescale - but I am really hoping that this is driven by a rational look at necessary procedures and NOT by the lack of resources to do the job!

"The Big Feartie frae Fife " +

...That is the label Alex Salmond, First Minister of the Scottish Government, has pinned on Gordon Brown for his decision, after weeks of vacillation, not to call a General Election in November. Under the British system Brown had no need to call an election until 2009 but he has invited scorn and ridicule by playing up to the suggestion that he was ready to seek a personal mandate from the British electorate - until he saw the opinion polls which showed Labour's lead having evaporated.



A wise move therefore not to jump over a cliff to your doom when there was no need, many may say, but others would ask why Brown flirted with the cliff edge in the first place..and I would be among them. In the few months he has been Prime Minister, Brown has shown sure-footedness in dealing with Iraq, America, the foot and mouth situation and the terrorist threat. He was beginning to get a reputation as a formidable Prime Minister.

Now he has shown an incredible degree of naivety by hyping up the likelihood of an election only to draw back from the brink at the last minute. The Labour Party may bluff and bluster that it never intended to call an election, that it was all media hype. They may also claim they have forced the Tories to reveal their hand with regard to policies.

But underneath all that, the image that remains is of a man who thought he would win , then decided he might not, and chickened out. This was not one of Gordon Brown's better moments and it will take some time to repair the image of a calm, confident clear minded decision maker, I'm afraid.


+ = 'Big coward from Fife'

Why I won't watch the Olympics

Well I'd have plenty of good reasons not to bother.

Should China have been given them anyway bearing in mind the country's appalling human rights record?

Hasn't the whole thing become just one disgusting junket for the International Olympics Committee with one nation after another falling over itself to offer more and more incentives, bigger and better wining and dining for these pampered officials?

Isn't the whole bidding process just another link in the chain of corruption that sees tax payers money squandered in paying vast fortunes for the privilege of hosting an event which will bring dubious, if any, long term benefits to the hosts..and based on past evidence...possible bankruptcy?

Then, of course, having mentioned corruption, there is the main singular overriding reason. It stinks! Stinks to high heaven of athletes having sullied themselves in secret drug-taking in order to win medals at what should be the honourable pinnacle of sporting prowess. Lying, cheating, hiding what they are doing because the urge to win at all costs transcends any concept of honour and decency.

The latest in the dock is Marian Jones, once considered the greatest female sprinter in the world. Rumours have circulated for years about Jones ' drug taking and all the time this woman denied them emphatically. Even when she was at high school and won her schools athletics prizes she had to be defended in court, successfully, against doping charges.



She had a relationship with Tim Montgomery, with whom she had a child, Montgomery himself a world record holder who was banned for life after admitting to being a drugs cheat. Her coach has admitted administering performance enhancing drugs to all his athletes. So Marian Jones, all her athletics career, lived in a druggie stimulants world. Its only a pity that she wasn't caught early in her career before she disgraced the Sydney Olympics by cheating her way to a record haul of medals...all of which will now undoubtedly be stripped from her.

But that's too late for the athletes who were denied their rightful place on the winners rostrum. Hell they were probably on drugs too so what does it matter? Marion Jones joins a long and hardly distinguished list from all across the world

When doping tests were introduced in 1968, two Olympic athletes were found to have taken illegal substances. By the time we reached Athens 3 years ago it was up to 24. Well that's bad enough, but quite clearly the number discovered is merely the tip of a very large iceberg. The standards of testing have improved but so has the ability of coaches and athletes to hide the use of performance enhancements by a clever and careful timing of exactly when they are administered.

Basically any sense of the Olympic ideal has long flown out of the window. Today it is just a huge money making racket for all concerned and for the athletes who win medals, the consequent fame and the big money contracts make cheating well worth while.

The sport is corrupt. Rotten to the core and as far as I'm concerned the Beijing Olympics can go hang. I'd rather watch paint dry.

A credit to womankind!

On Sunday the Women's World Cup of Association Football came to an end with the Germans retaining the crown they won four years ago, beating Brazil 2-0 in the Final. The much fancied USA team, beaten by Brazil in a semi final of incredible skills,took third place by beating Norway 4-1.

More than the results themselves, the whole competition has put women's football firmly on the map and given it respectability. The standard of play has been incredibly high and has firmly buried the idea that women's football is 'a joke'.

The competition started badly, giving succour to all the male dinosaurs who said it was a pantomime when Germany beat Argentina 11-0 in the very first game, the poor Argentine goalkeeper performing in a way which gave all the 'knockers' some weighty ammunition.

But from then on the competition improved in leaps and bounds until by the time it reached the semi final stages I was glued to the screen, loving every second of the matches..and I never ever thought I would say that about women's soccer. The competition has been a real eye opener for me and for a lot of other men too, I believe, in how far women's football has progressed in relatively few years.

OK back in the early 90s when the women's game was in its international infancy, much of the cruel joking could be justified. They looked clumsy, they couldn't trap a ball and much of the shooting looked like 6 year old's on a parks pitch. But that was before, certainly in Europe, proper leagues were introduced and a careful training and development scheme was put in place. But after that first world cup, when the women began to come through training schemes and had proper coaching academies the standards increased in leaps and bounds until we saw the results over the last two weeks of genuinely gripping competition.

OK you still get the 'knockers' in the pubs...'they wouldn't beat a men's non league team' etc etc...No maybe not. But why do we constantly compare women's sport against what men can do. It should be judged on its own merits and its own rate of development - and those have been fantastic.

It was interesting that some of the good and bad things inherent in the male game found their way into the play of their female opposite numbers. The American girls were strong, fit and very athletic..as you would expect American sports persons of either gender to be...but perhaps, this year, lacked a little finesse and harmony as a team. The Brazilians were fluid, wonderfully skilled attacking players..but they angered, particularly, their American opponents by celebrating joyously after getting a US player sent off in somewhat dubious circumstances, and were capable of nasty, niggling little fouls a la South American tradition. The Germans, eventual winners, played rather like their male counterparts too. They lacked the Brazilian flair but they were grimly determined not to give them space, not to give the ball away and to play in a disciplined team ethic..and it worked.

Abby Wambach (United States) testing the Brazilian defence


Anyway a wonderful competition...congratulations ladies on doing your gender proud..and may your game go from strength to strength!

The winning German team celebrate their World Cup Final victory

Are we tainting art with our own dark guilty fears?

At the beginning of this month, police in Northumbria seized a photograph from the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art before it was due to be exhibited, on the grounds that it possibly contravened Britain's child pornography laws.

The picture is owned by Sir Elton John and called Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing. It was taken by the celebrated American photographer Nan Goldin as part of a collection of works that have been exhibited all over the world without comment. The picture shows two young girls dancing, one standing over the other with her legs apart and the other child naked on the carpet. Both children are clearly caught in a moment of childlike delight.



Nan Goldin

The objections to the picture are the usual ones. First that the standing girl has her legs apart - reasonable I would have thought if you are standing astride another - but the Witchfinder Generals of the 'lets seek out paedophilia wherever we can find it' lobby see this as a posed sexual posture. The lower child has no clothes on and her genitals are visible. Like no one has ever seen a child's genitals when it runs around naked on a beach...as frequently happens..and no one in bygone years has cared a toss.

Visitors to the gallery - and viewers of the BBC news - were shown the picture yesterday - with the lower child's genitals suitably covered of course - and nearly all of them said they couldn't see anything pornographic about the picture, though a couple did say that if it was their children they would be a little uncomfortable about the picture being on public display. But that's different. Sure its important to get the permission of the parents before any pictures of children are shown to the public and I'm sure Ms Goldin did that as part of her commission.

But thats not the issue. We are now saying that pictures of children caught in play where their gyrations might appear to SOME adults to simulate sexual posturing constitute child pornography in the repressive backwater that the United Kingdom is becoming.

The police statement said 'The picture could appeal to paedophiles'. Well if that is to be the criterion adopted for prosecutions then I suggest that a message is immediately sent out to all snappers of baby photographs, all beach photographers, all mail order catalogue distributors etc to withdraw any photographs of children that might excite any one person at any one time - and of course that would be all photographs of children.

Michele Elliot, the director of 'Kidscape' was on record saying that the picture had to fall within the scope of prosecution because the children 'could not give consent'. Consent to what? Presumably being photographed in a 'sexually provocative posture'. But its only sexually provocative if the mind of the adult viewer sees it that way..and is Ms Elliot suggesting that all photographs of children have to be carefully staged to satisfy the prude lobby? I am beginning to believe that the likes of Ms Elliot are becoming tainted in their judgment by the hideous circumstances of some children with which they have to deal every day. Rather a case of 'When you work in a sewer you tend to smell shit everywhere you go'. It's understandable but it doesn't contribute to a positive and objective analysis.

There is no doubt that children deserve to be sensibly protected but are we not going through a terrible dark age in terms of our fear of paedophila to such an extent that it is becoming totally irrational? It is not for nothing that this obsession with seeking it out under every stone has been termed 'the new witchcraft'. Many of the stances taken remind me of the old joke about the guy sent to the psychiatrist because he was sex obsessed. The psychiatrist draws squiggles, loops and circles and asks the guy what they remind him of and to each he says 'sex'. When told he has an unhealthy sexual obsession, the guy replies indignantly, 'Me? It's YOU who keeps drawing all the dirty pictures!'...and thats how I see some of the well intentioned but to me sadly misguided people who take critical stances of photographs like this.

I can only hope that someday soon the hysteria and the ballyhoo surrounding this subject will drop to a reasonable and rational level, that the public will find some new moral outrage to obsess them, that the very necessary child protection agencies will be able to do their job free of this heavy cloud of panic and paranoia, that people like Michele Elliot will get on with doing the job I'm sure she does excellently, that of protecting vulnerable children, and not allowing her obsessions with child abuse to make her the knee-jerk media mouthpiece on this issue ...and that photographs like Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing
can be assessed honestly and openly on their merits as works of art.

It's OK to be BRITISH again!

I've just watched the first Labour Party Conference speech by our new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and quite an impressive speech it was too. He will never raise the roof in the way Tony Blair could at his most messianic and inspiring - it's just not Brown's style - but I do like the way he tends to focus on specifics as opposed to 'feel good' concepts.



Oh there were a few of those 'feel good' moments too but not quite in the 'I have a dream' Martin Luther King manner which Blair managed at his most convincing. Brown concentrated on a fairly hard hitting message, promising tougher laws on carrying guns, selling alcohol to under age kids and a return of the Matron to hospitals...a Matron with clout who can demand higher standards of cleanliness from hospital contractors and a threat of contract cancellation for those who don't live up to standards. This message is sorely needed with a vast increase in MRSA infections in hospitals across the country.

He talked warmly about the NHS and about our education system, he talked angrily about not enough being done for the poor wretches in Darfur, about not enough having been done in the last ten years about crime in our society.

But most of all - and what shocked many of the pundits - he talked about the importance of BRITISHNESS and its values. He talked about people who come to this country not only receiving the benefits of our system but owing something to it. He talked about the need for every citizen of the UK to share in the common values of decent behavior and respect for authority. It was, as some reporters said, a portion of speech that could have come straight out of the Conservative manifesto.

But thank goodness someone is talking about getting back to a standard of decent behaviour and punishing those who fail in their obligations. I'm pleased that he spoke about being British as something to admire and be proud of. I am a little sick of many of the 'politically correct' fringe who say we mustn't mention Britishness, we mustn't fly the flag, we mustn't advocate standards we admired in the past because that appears to be aimed at ethnic minorities.

Well I don't buy any of that. I think it's good and refreshing that a Prime Minister of this country talks about inherent British values which everyone, regardless of religion, colour, creed or culture is expected to adhere to. Good for Gordon. All I hope is that it's not yet more meaningless rhetoric just to capture Conservative votes ahead of an impending General Election.

Of course Brown will, for some time, be hit with the charge - 'You were Blair's right hand man for 10 years in government. How can you divorce yourself from that and pretend you have something new to offer?'

Well it's a charge thats quite reasonable to put - and one that has to be answered. Only time will tell if Gordon Brown can answer it convincingly enough to convince the electorate that here is a new direction, and a man at the helm who can be trusted.

So far though I think he's off to a very encouraging start

The delicate balance of public confidence

Following the United States mortgage problems which have create ripples of financial unrest all round the world, Britain, in the shape of the Northern Rock Bank, has caught a major cold..and it's an indication of how sensitive is the issue of public confidence.

British banking has been caught out, as Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England pointed out today, by the very measures designed to instill confidence in British banking ie complete transparency.



Northern Rock has been speculating big time in the mortgage market and probably overreached itself when the massive downturn hit the US housing market and Northern Rock was forced to ask the Bank of England for help. It's not the first time this has happened and is not necessarily a sign of disaster. Banks used to get a short term loan and then good management made sure they got back on the straight and narrow.



But this was in the days when Banks could approach the Bank of England discreetly, the terms of the loan could be agreed over coffee and investors would be none the wiser, thus consumer confidence would remain high.

Then the law changed in order to protect consumers and to ensure that all banking business was above board and transparent. The result of this was that the Bank of England could no longer lend Banks money covertly. The law states that all such transactions must be published.

And so the very Acts designed to protect banking worked against it. As soon as news was published that Northern Rock was going to the BOE for funds, so consumer panic began and the long queues of savers seen last week queuing round the block to get their money out despite almost desperate reassurances from the Treasury that all savings would be underwritten by the Government.

The headlong panic has stopped but the crisis is not yet over. Northern Rock has suffered a major blow to its reputation for financial competence and its shares continue to fall prompting rumours of a take-over by one of the big High Street banks.

Many people are saying that there could be a silver lining out of this, in that cheap credit could come to a sudden end and people might have to start living within their means. This in itself carries its own problems of course.

What is absolutely clear is that Britain's much vaunted banking system and its inbuilt consumer protection measures as supervised by the Financial Services Authority, has a massive hole which needs to be filled very quickly. The prime issue is the level of insolvency compensation offered by the FSA should a bank hit the rocks, and this is currently set at only £35,000 per saver.

This is clearly totally inadequate as the value of money goes down over time and there is an urgent need to examine this. A second factor is this issue of published lending. There probably ought to be some reference point which can sanction the bypass of overt lending statistics if it is considered that the BOE as lender of last resort needs to do so in secret in order to sustain public confidence.

It's a delicate balance but one that needs to be dealt with soon or there will be other banks and financial institutions caught in the wake of a panic just like Northern Rock.

Now Greenspan says it too!

For years, since America invaded Iraq, those of us - and there are many - who claim that the United States was motivated, not by some lofty idea of democracy or a desire to remove a terror threat, but by a desire to get their hands on Iraq's copious supplies of oil have been written off as cranks and 'commies' by both U.S. and British politicians and media pundits.

Now we have support from the unexpected quarter of Alan Greenspan, the former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, whose memoirs are released tomorrow. There are, contained within its pages, many criticisms of George W. Bush's economic policies but the real bomb-shell is the statement “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Mr. Greenspan goes on to say that it was believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to western oil supplies and thus had to be removed at all costs.



This has, apparently, provoked some consternation in Washington, where it has always been denied that oil supplies had any part to play in the decision to invade Iraq.

It has long been my contention that the right wing cabal which ran the Republican administration at that time saw a wonderful opportunity, after 911, to not merely go after the terrorists in Afghanistan but to secure oil supplies for the United States by getting rid of a troublesome despot with absolutely no connection to 911, under the guise of necessary defensive action. Whether this was with Blair's connivance or not it was certainly guaranteed to get the British on board. Any other story would have left America on its own as far as Iraq is concerned.

I may still be in a derided faction who will be accused of anti-Americanism for holding such cynical opinions. But its reassuring that I , and many others who feel as I do, now have such a respected American companion for company!

Is America facing a 'God - void' ?

Not my term but an expression used by Britain's 'Daily Telegraph' to describe the choice facing Republican voters at the next Presidential election in 2008. For the last thirty years the Republican Party has put forward a candidate for whom Christian faith is at the very heart of his personal appeal. George 'Dubya' Bush talked about 'Christ being his favourite philosopher' but there is a strong rumour that this is because it's the only name he could spell. Ever since the 1970s most Republican candidates have carried their Christian credentials around with them and thus had a massive inbuilt advantage from the strongly conservative church-going element that dominates the United States.

Now it looks as if things could change. Neither Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson are regular church goers and both are divorces.








John McCain has publicly scorned the 'evangelical wing' and is also a divorce. Mitt Romney is the only candidate who is deeply religious but Romney is a Mormon and that church does not find favour with many of the religious right, particularly the 'deep water Baptists'.

In fact, as the Telegraph points out, it looks like the Democratic Party has the 'God squad' edge this time with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama being regular church goers AND both only once married.






The fact that Mrs. Clinton is married to a serial adulterer with a taste for pretty interns is hardly her fault..but whether it will gain her sufficient sympathy with right wing America who hated her husband is doubtful..and of course she is a woman. Mr Obama on the other hand may be morally blameless and thus a sound choice for the faithful...but then he is black. Is the conservative core of white America ready for that?

The current fear in Republican circles seems to be not so much a swing to the Democrats in terms of numbers but a massive apathy abstention by their core vote, the great and the good churchgoers of middle America saying 'a plague on both your houses' and not voting at all.

Certainly to me, 3000 miles away from the US, the scenario for the next US election is quite fascinating. Whoever the Democrats pick of their front runners, assuming it to be Obama or Clinton, if they win it will be a milestone in the American political scene, a major milestone in breaching the white male hegemony of the Presidency and if the Republicans win again, they will have overcome the most appalling legacy of incompetence left to them by any Republican Administration for many years....and without a clearly charismatic candidate with which to do it. And if the GOP does win in 2008 - after the Bush legacy - the Democratic Party must surely be rocked to the core and will need to take a long hard look at itself and what it needs to do to capture American trust.

At least, if the 'Daily Telegraph' is right the next election might possibly be won on political issues and not by 'God leading the way'. I have said this many times but 'God' is wonderful if you need Him as a personal path through life and I respect the views of those to whom God is important.

It worries me more than a little though when God tells Presidents of the United States what to do and when that faith leads them to doing Richard the Lionheart impressions in taking on the 'infidel'. I'd rather trust in sound earthly based common sense myself.

Anita Roddick: A tragic loss

There are few entrepreneurs in this world who live their beliefs in the way that Dame Anita Roddick, who died yesterday from a brain haemhorrage, did. She made millions from her Body Shop enterprises which now have nearly 2000 stores worldwide, having started in 1976 with one shop sandwiched between two funeral parlours and selling 15 lines of environmentally friendly animal fat free cosmetic lines.

Anita Roddick may have made a lot of money but she used it very much in the cause of humanity. She was an avid supporter of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, The Big Issue (which helps the homeless) and in 1990, after a visit to Romanian orphanages touched her heart, she founded the charity Children On The Edge which helps disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe and Asia.



Sadly Anita Roddick developed Hepatitis C in 1971 after an infected blood transfusion while giving birth. She knew this was virtually a death sentence, albeit a long delayed one as the disease is incurable and eventually creates other long term problems, in her case she developed cirrhosis of the liver.

It is easy to be cynical about people who have made money giving some of it away but in 2005 Anita Roddick gave away £51 million of her personal income to charity , selling her Body Shop business the next year to L'Oreal as she wanted to spend what was left of her life helping those in need.

I think the world has lost a genuinely kind and caring human being who lived her beliefs out and acted on them. We are poorer for her passing.