The viper in our national bosom

Today five young British Muslims, linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network have been jailed for life after being found guilty of bomb plots designed to create carnage on the 911 scale within the United Kingdom. The bombs, primarily made from ammonium nitrate fertiliser, were intended to be targeted at possibly the Bluewater shopping mall in Kent, the Ministry of Sound night club in London and Britain's gas, electricity and water utilities.



The revelation, hitherto suppressed, which has come out of today's guilty verdicts is that two men who were obviously friends and contacts of the five men convicted today were Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer, two of the July 7th 2005 suicide bombers who killed over 50 people on the London tube. Both men were tracked on four occasions by MI5 while engaged in discussions with the men convicted today, yet MI5 neither arrested them or passed their details on to the West Yorkshire Police as possible terror suspects.




The upshot of this revelation, of course, is that angry suggestions are being made of a breakdown in communication by MI5 which could have meant that over 50 people died on 7/7 at the hands of men who could have been apprehended earlier.

Well it's not often I agree with John Reid, our Home Secretary, but this afternoon he said though it is a tragedy that these two men were left free to commit the terrible carnage on the London tube, hindsight is a wonderful thing and that, although Khan and Tanweer had been under observation by MI5, they were considered to be on the periphery of the investigation. Neither man had a record and neither man was heard discussing bomb plots or explosives. There simply were not enough operatives to keep a tail on every Muslim who may have come into contact with the suspects, without their being some significant grounds that they were an integral part of the network and such was not the case. The fact that they subsequently proved to be part of another, lethal cell was tragic and would appear that MI5 made a wrong call but one which, given the pressure and the circumstances, is all too understandable.

The real problem of course is the viper we are now nursing in our national bosom. The story that was revealed today of Mullahs in mosques all over Britain ostensibly preaching the pure faith of Islam yet in secret gatherings of chosen youngsters they are preaching Jihad, of the infiltration of youth clubs and boxing clubs used by young Muslims by Jihadists who are sometimes paying to send these disaffected youngsters to Al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan, is truly frightening.

The judge in today's trial in his summing up referred to the five British Muslims as 'traitors' who had 'betrayed their country' and in that is encapsulated the frightening problem we face. For these men do not see national boundaries as 'their country' or as something to betray. Regardless of where they make their home, the spiritual home is Islam and, for many, an international Islamic Caliphate which knows no national boundaries.

So in a democracy which, over the last 50 years has absorbed people from many Islamic countries and now has 2 million Muslims in our midst, how do we know who are our friends and who are our enemies? The task for MI5 must be utterly thankless. It's not as if we are necessarily importing terrorists, we are breeding them! Families who arrived here many years ago as immigrants and were content to live in peace and make their homes here have produced children, maybe three generations on, born in Britain, educated in our schools and universities, and who showed no particular interest in Islam as youngsters, yet suddenly in their teens they become bitter and angry Jihadists and suicide bombers. How do you anticipate this?

Todays operation has been a success for the police and the security services, let's be clear about that. Operation Crevice has been a success. One Islamic cell has been chopped out before it could do any damage.

But it's like cutting off the head of the Hydra. Another will spring up in its place and, at the current estimate, there are 200 Islamic sleeper cells in the United Kingdom and one is grimly reminded of the warning issued by another terrorist organisation, the IRA, many years ago after a failed operation when they sent the following message to the British Government:

"Congratulations. Today you got lucky - but then you have to get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once!"

Why do zealots always misread cause and effect?

One of Britain's charities, Alcohol Concern, has today come out with the ridiculous proposal that parents who give their children under 15 wine at home should be prosecuted. Joining the ever growing list of 'protectionist' charities who seem to believe that protecting children from absolutely everything is the answer to all adult problems, Alcohol Concern has today, in addition to this crackpot scheme, suggested a 16% rise in alcohol taxes and a ban on brewers selling alcohol at discount rates to retail outlets.



Now I'm all in favour of sensible measures to curb all Britain's social ills, but this is not one of them. Why don't these zealots look at our neighbours across the Channel? French families have a long history of allowing their children to consume a glass of wine with meals under supervision and, while the French have a lot of faults, I don't see one of them being hordes of teenage kids rolling around drunk on city streets as they do in England.




One of the problems here is that there IS no civilised and mature approach to acquainting children with alcohol. Instead of it being part and parcel of a civilised life style, as it is in France, here it's some kind of rite of passage whereby kids need to drink as much as they can, in pubs and usually below the legal age, and to consequently throw up to the amusement of their mates. That macho drink culture is not going to be stopped by proposed measures like this. Instead the people caught in such a trap would be the middle class parents who do have a sensible approach to informing their children about alcohol and how to drink it.




Once again we have a charity which tries to solve a social problem for some by imposing a nanny-state solution on everybody. The laws are in place already to ensure that children are brought up responsibly. If there is clear evidence of some moron allowing his 8 year old to drink pints of beer until the child is sick or drunk, then that constitutes child cruelty and he/she can already be taken to court.

To suggest taking away the responsibility from intelligent parents on how soon to introduce their children to drink sensibly is ludicrous. Frankly I'd take away the charitable status of Alcohol Concern if they come up with any more stupid schemes like this!

Princess Diana - a tragedy turned into farce

Now I have no idea whether the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in that Paris underpass 10 years ago have any substance or not but the machinations surrounding the much delayed inquest into her death can only give succour to the conspiracy theorists.

The inquest has been delayed again after Baroness Butler-Sloss, one of Britain's most senior judges, announced her decision to stand down as coroner from the inquest on the grounds that she has 'insufficient experience of an inquest with a jury'. This, from one of Britain's senior law makers is laughable.



Baroness Butler-Sloss was the third coroner to have taken responsibility for the Diana inquest, the first, Dr John Burton retired in 2002 and the second Mr. Michael Burgess, the Royal Coroner, standing down citing 'pressure of work'. What work could be more demanding of the Royal coroner's time than discovering how and why the Princess of Wales died?

Now the inquest will be taken over by Lord Justice Scott Baker and the nation is agog to discover how long he lasts before coming up with some excuse for not seeing the job through.



Muhammad Al Fayed. father of the deceased lover of the Princess has described this latest twist as 'an establishment fix' and, although Mr. Al-Fayed is known for his lurid and exaggerated descriptions, it's hard not to feel some sympathy with his views.




Baroness Butler-Sloss had first asked that she sit alone, then had to concede that Al-Fayed's accusation that Princess Diana and his son were murdered by the security services had to be heard. Her sudden claim that she lacks the necessary experience to continue this inquest does rather smack of pressure politics.

One hopes that no further obstacles obstruct the search for truth in this matter, but if, at some time before the next hearing, you read that Mr Al-Fayed has fallen to his death from the roof of Harrods after partaking of a liquid lunch - don't be too surprised!

Talk about leaving a decent tip.........!

The 'Zizzi' pizza restaurant in London's Strand area was the subject of a bizarre incident yesterday when a man in his mid thirties walked into the restaurant, walked down to the kitchens, picked up a carving knife and cut off his penis, leaving it in the kitchen before, as police reported, going berserk and having to be subdued with CS gas.



It's not clear if he was going berserk before cutting off his penis but I could quite understand his distress following the incident.

Whether this was a protest at the standard of sausages served in 'Zizzi' has not been made clear, but medical staff at the South London hospital to which he was taken were sadly unable to re-attach the severed appendage.

Is this because they couldn't find it, I wonder? Not wishing to further damage the reputation of 'Zizzi' whose management were not exactly cock-a-hoop (sorry) about publicity for their restaurant, but I bet the sales of hot dogs have dropped alarmingly over the last 24 hours!

Yeltsin - too much too soon

Boris Yeltsin, who died today, apparently from a heart attack, at the age of 76 is a monumental figure in the history of modern Russia but , at a time when the Soviet Union reached meltdown, I would contend that Yeltsin was the wrong man to pick up the reins when the new Russia came into existence.

Having been elected President of the Russian Republic six months before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin became first President of an independent Russia for nearly 70 years.

So much faith was placed in him at the start of his presidential rule but in 1992 Yeltsin brought in a capitalist economy virtually overnight, axing Soviet price controls, cutting state spending and creating a market ripe for exploitation. Inflation increased multi fold almost overnight and the living conditions of the average Russian citizen became extremely poor. The only winners it seems were the business oligarchs who made billions of dollars out of the new privatised economy while the average Russian, promised a share of the new wealth received virtually nothing.

Such was the outrage at the efffects of Yeltsin's policies that his own deputies in Parliament turned against the reforms after which Yeltsin disbanded Parliament by decree. In return Parliament announced that Yeltsin had been removed from office after a vote of no confidence and they refused to leave the building.

Despite his difficulties Yeltsin had retained the loyalty of the Russian army and, on Oct 3 1993, the army shelled the Parliament building, blasting out his opponents. Yeltsin, though he might have won the battle, effectively lost the war as the economic situation went downhill at a rapid rate with Yeltsin seemingly incapable of any policies to stop it.

His behaviour became more and more bizarre with episodes of drunken behaviour on foreign soil increasing and causing him to miss dinners and appointments due to 'illness and fatigue'.

Despite this Yeltsin obtained a second term as President in 1996 narrowly beating his Communist opponent but was then taken ill with heart problems and needed a by pass. The remainder of his time in office was a roller coaster as he survived another attempt to oust him, once again fired all his Ministers and still Russia was sliding ever deeper into economic disaster.

By 2000 he was a sick man but it was still a surprise when he handed over the reins to Vladimir Putin , the current leader of the nation.

Many people look back at that crucial year of 1991 and wish that, despite his Communist past, the new Russia had embraced the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured left). Change would certainly have been slower but it would have come, and Russia would have been in the hands of a cautious and thoughtful politician. Instead the Russian people opted for a passionate, lovable bear of a man with a love for vodka and a strong anti Communist passion. It is unfortunate for the Russian people, still living with his legacy, that his passion was not matched by any political acumen - certainly nowhere near enough to cope with the awesome task he was given.

A Royal flush...or a right Royal disaster?

As a fellow European and interested in how my cross-Channel neighbours jump, I am particularly fascinated by this Sunday's French Presidential election. Whichever way it goes there could be significant changes in the way France relates to its neighbours in Europe and to the rest of the world.

Nicholas Sarkozy

There are three leading contenders, Nicholas Sarkozy from the ruling centre right UMP, or 'Gaullist' Party, Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate who could become the first woman to lead France, Francois Bayrou the centrist candidate ...but as always darkly lurking in the background is Jean Marie Le Pen of the French National Front whose extreme right wing anti immigrant, anti semitic political message plays strongly enough among a large minority of French citizens to have got him through to the second round in the last Presidential contest.

Jean Marie Le Pen





At present, as I write, Sarkozy has a narrow lead in the polls over Mme Royal by 27% to 25% with Bayrou on 19% and Le Pen frightening half of France and delighting the rest by looking like achieving his best rating yet on 16%.

The three leading candidates all, in a sense offer something new for France. Sarkozy is an unashamed admirer of both the United States and the UK and has said he wants to build bridges with both countries. That does not mean, I suggest, that Sarkozy will in any way abandon the French independent stance that so marked the Chirac years but may become more conciliatory and supportive of American and British international positions.

Segolene Royal would, if elected, become the first female President of France and she is certainly personable, attractive and has crowd appeal. However a couple of things go against her success on Sunday. She is a very traditional Socialist and many of her campaign pledges would not sound out of place in a British Labour Party manifesto of the 60s and 70s. On the surface her plans to ensure full employment in France sound attractive but, unfortunately for her, she has a track record to defend. Mme Royal is currently regional President of Poitou-Charentes on the west coast of France which she used as her Socialist 'guinea-pig' setting up businesses and enterprises to ensure that the youth of the region had jobs. Unfortunately, rather than attract private enterprise to the region, her policy has had the opposite effect and now many of the jobs are seen to be 'pseudo jobs' maintained by the Regional government. So if her policies fail regionally, many say, why should we vote for them nationally?

The other factor is the French voting system. As French electors look at the candidates and at the opinion polls they see the frailty of Mme Royal's regional success and her lack of experience nationally. They see the threat of Le Pen and they see Nicholas Sarkozy as a Gaullist many do not want.

Segolene Royal

I think M.Sarkozy's vote among the centre right is pretty solid. I don't think Segolene Royal is in a similar strong position and come Sunday I can see her being overtaken by the Centrist Bayrou and it being a Sarkozy/Bayrou battle in the second round. Bayrou, the 'quiet man' has taken the pundits by surprise by his rise up the polls. His gentle insistence on France playing a more positive leadership role in the EU seems to have struck a chord. He could spring a major surprise and I suspect it will be Segolene Royal who will suffer the consequences. We will see.

Francois Bayrou


Update

Well I was wrong I am pleased to say and Segolene Royal and Nicholas Sarkozy will fight it out for the right to be President de la Republique on May 6th. At present Sarkozy would be seen as the clear favourite but a few more pictures like this, given the sensual nature of the French, may not harm Mme. Royal's cause. Not bad for a 'babe' of 53 :)

America's never ending nightmare

Once again the United States has been hit by a campus killer, this time at the Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. This guy set a new record for these school and university slaughters with a death toll of 31 and almost the same number injured.



Maybe that's what he was after, some kind of bizarre record to put him in the Guinness Book of School Shootings because who knows what goes through the minds of these people in order to justify the mass murder of innocent young students.

Whatever the cause it is another terrible day in the United States murder record and of course it will re-ignite the all too familiar debate about gun control - and it will produce exactly the same result for the gun culture is far too well entrenched in the American psyche. Even students who had suffered the trauma of Columbine, and who were interviewed today after the Virginia Tech killings were, to British ears, surprisingly ambivalent about gun control.

There are some people who continue to say that if every university guard, teacher, student was armed the death toll would have been lower. Well I'm sorry but I don't buy it.

It has been argued over and over again why a gun is such a lethal killing machine - not just because of the obvious fact that it can fire a lot of bullets over a long distance at high speed and do incredible damage but because of the impersonal nature of the killing device. A mentally unhinged person who wants to work off his angst against the world can feel 10 feet tall in his combat jacket as he strides around with this metal pop gun - bang, bang, bang and all those irritating people who make your world a misery just fall down like dolls. Nothing messy like sticking a knife in and feeling the blade go through bone and gut, no horrible close up mess like chopping their heads off with a cleaver. It's all so clean and tidy.

This happens over and over again and every time someone tries to put a rational explanation on it. It was some anniversary worthy of perverse celebration, it was an overworked student who had problems with his work, it was two boys who had problems at home. Well for Christs sake, everywhere on earth has these same problems but they don't all end up killing their classmates.

The obvious problem is of course the elephant in the room. The existence of so many guns in the United States which are so accessible to so many that when someone does go off the rails the consequences are awful. The one thing which is the major contributor to all this is played down even by former victims of insane gun rule.

Why? Because I think the cancer is terminal. I think the number of guns in America is so great that Americans cannot see a world without them. People see the answer to hideous gun killings as 'lets have more guns'. Many Americans don't feel safe without a gun in the house and I fear that this attitude will not - cannot - ever be eradicated. Consequently, at least once a year, America will wake up to tragedies like this one and there will be a genuine outpouring of sadness, the President will make a speech of support and regret, then, after a suitable time the United States will simply forget about it and get on with business - until the next one.

Don Imus and the American paradox

I first heard abut this week's Don Imus story via a, primarily, American internet newsgroup where opinion seemed to divide along vaguely political lines as to whether the US radio 'shock jock' had received his just deserts or whether he was a victim of one sided political correctness.

For those of you in Britain who, like me, hadn't a clue who Imus was, well until this week anyway he was a US 'shock jock' who worked on a popular radio morning talk show. The show has, apparently, long courted controversy and is part of the tradition of 'free speech' which prevails on talk radio in the States. Howard Stern is another of a similar ilk whose show courts controversy yet manages to acquire high profile guest celebrities, some of whom are so angered by their treatment that they vow never to return.



Anyway in the spirit of this tradition Imus and the sports reporter were discussing a basketball match played between two US college teams, Rutgers and Tennessee, the Rutgers girls being predominantly black. During what was supposedly intended as good humoured badinage using 'street-talk', Imus referred to the Rutgers girls as 'nappy- headed hos'. It would seem that this piece of throw-away racism, not the first Imus has produced of a similar ilk, would have disappeared into the ether until someone posted it in the 'blogosphere' and it began to catch attention. Within a day CBS were aware that sponsors were withdrawing their funding and, despite a far from convincing apology by Imus, the talk-show host was fired from his lucrative job.

So I come to the American paradox. This is a nation which probably has more institutionalised 'correctness' than any other. At home, in schools, in work-places , Americans - and particularly white Americans - learn that culture and race are sensitive issues and that appropriate forms of address are important. I have seen this in all forms of dialogue with Americans and its quite clear that such concerns play a far more significant part in daily communication than they do in the United Kingdom.

The paradox however is America's constitutional commitment to free speech. Whereas in totally un-PC Britain, all radio output is controlled by a consumer 'watch-dog' the freedom of the air waves is a vital ingredient in American culture and thus the likes of Imus and Howard Stern can - or could - thrive. The 'tell it like it is' talk show is both plentiful and popular and it does, rather disturbingly indicate that, below the facade of the cloak of correctness, how much casual racism is still endemic and, indeed, applauded by a section of the American listening public.

The other, to my mind, disturbing aspect of this is that 'free speech' seems to be a commodity like ice cream or pizza. As long as the sponsor keeps paying the piper guys like Imus can, as he has done, refer to Arabs as 'ragheads', the black PBS anchor-woman Gwen Ifill as 'the cleaning lady' and admitting that one of his crew, Bernard McGuirk, was hired to tell 'nigger jokes'. He got away with all this until he targetted an American sacred cow - a group of young female college athletes. Whether he would have dodged this bullet too without the blogosphere becoming aware of it and outrage resulting who can tell? But it seems CBS sacked him not on some managerial decision regarding the unacceptability of what he said but because the sponsors started pulling out. So even 'free speech' comes at the simplest possible price - market value.

I mentioned earlier the institutionalised spirit of correctness particularly among white Americans. Overlaying all this, and this has been pointed out by Imus supporters in America, while Imus has been fired following the reaction of nervous sponsors - and probably rightly - black gangsta rappas continue to get lucrative recording contracts and concert dates while, in some cases, spewing out the most vile, violent and racist material in their lyrics - seemingly with impunity.

As The Times said yesterday that 'whitey' is paying the price for centuries of cultural, racial and attitude supremacy and if in the 21st century white performers complain that they are unfairly victimised for 'crossing the line', then that's simply because it's a line that white people are no longer allowed to draw - and historically they have only themselves to blame.

Another tragic procession...and a snub

This morning, on the same day that the headlines were captured by a bomb exploding in the Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad killing two M.P,s, and by a massive steel bridge being blown up over the River Tigris, a C-17 transport landed at RAF Lyneham containing the bodies of four British army personnel killed when their Warrior armoured car hit a land-mine near Basra.

Two of the four killed were nurses from the RAMC, one man and one woman and the senior officer present was also a woman. Gender shouldn't matter, they were all serving soldiers doing a job of work but somehow the deaths of two young women, barely out of their teens, somehow seems to reinforce the senseless stupidity of it all.

The senior officer, Joanne Yorke Dyer, apart from being a very pretty girl was a young woman with brains. She obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and then chose to join the Army as a trainee intelligence officer. She had been in Iraq only a few weeks as part of her training.



Eleanor Dluglosz was only 19, a nurse who was in Iraq to provide medical support. Her mother was interviewed today, the day of her daughter's funeral and said 'We always wnated what was best for her. She meant everything to me. But you have to support them in whatever they do, don't you..and she always wanted to serve her country."




It makes me almost want to cry and to beat my hands on a desk in frustration when I hear these bereaved parents coming to terms with something no parent should ever have to face, and doing so by reconciling themselves to the old chestnut, 'she was serving her country'.

The sad thing is that the chickens never come home to roost for the people who are really responsible for the deaths of these two young women and the thousands of other , primarily American, servicemen and women who have died 'serving their country' in this hell hole of Iraq.

Bush and Blair will eventually step down from their well paid tenures, both presumably sleeping well at night, Bush satisfied that he 'got one in for the old man' and Blair confident in his Messianic role as St Anthony the Redeemer. Neither will think for too long of how many people they killed in the process.

But the grieving parents of four dead soldiers did have the last word at todays funerals. It is custom and practice for a Government Minister to attend funerals of all British service personnel killed in action. There wasn't one there today. The parents sent a message to Downing Street that attendance by a representative of the British Government 'would not be welcomed'. I think their contempt speaks for the nation.

The downside of an open web...and cell phone cameras

I would be the last person to want to censor the internet. I have, shall we say, broad tastes in what I enjoy and I hate the idea of excessive and repressive censorship. However I do have considerable sympathy for the outburst by Alan Johnson, the UK Education Secretary, who was railing against the abuses of camera phones and the irresponsibility of sites like 'YouTube' and 'Rateyourteacher' who accept their output.

At a time when the British teaching profession is under more stress than it has ever known given that there seems to be little redress teachers have against thugs, bullies and disruptive students, and more and more teachers are leaving the profession with stress related illness, they now have the additional ordeal of websites which feature photos taken on cell phones, often capturing them in some undignified pose, and making them look ridiculous.

'Rateyourteacher' seems to allow images of teachers to be posted along with usually unflattering commentary and a series of marks often calculated to deride and humiliate. Of course the poster can hide behind the anonymity of his screen name but the poor teacher's image, comment and 'marks' are circulated for the world to laugh at.



No student would be allowed to get away with such behaviour in class and the fact that some are doing this protected by on line anonymity is both shameful and cowardly. No person doing a job of work deserves to be publicly derided in this way and I have every sympathy with any measures, hopefully voluntary, with the owners of the sites, to stop this sort of thing continuing.

If the likes of 'YouTube' refuse to cooperate its hard to see what can be done about it, short of security guards posted in every school and students and their lockers searched every day for the presence of a camera phone...and who wants a society like that?

Does 'Britishness' equal racism?

There are probably only two things about which one can voice certainty and those are life and death. Every other aspect of our existence seems to be a matter of perspective. This was brought into focus again today when a young woman named Baljeet Ghale, the first ethnic minority President of Britain's National Union of Teachers, attacked the concept of 'Britishness' and has condemned the Government's intent to teach schoolchildren 'British values'.



Ms Ghale, who is a member of the Socialist Teachers Alliance, and pretty far to the political left, denounced the plan as 'racist' when she addressed her Union's annual conference today. She asked, 'What is it about British values that make them so special? What is it that makes them so different from the values of other countries?' To demand that people conform to an imposed view of Britishness only fuels that racism, Ms Ghale added.

Now of course, from the predominantly left wing teaching unions this drew great applause but I would imagine from many others, including me, there is a certain sigh of despair because not only does this attitude indicate that the Government is not selling its message well , but I suspect some people, like Ms. Ghale, are riding high on rhetoric about perceived racism because it suits their political agenda.

Ms Ghale obviously believes (or purports to believe) that 'Britishness' is an attempt to teach Afro Caribbean and Asian children about the pride of Empire, of 'knowing your place', of behaving as white people expect you to behave while destroying that cultural diversity that makes people have pride in themselves and in their cultural background. She will, I am certain, get a great deal of support in some quarters for this view and her stock will rise accordingly.

I don't believe that's what the Government has in mind at all. I think its an attempt to make sure that all British children, regardless of their ethnic cultural backgrounds accept that if you are British and actually want to BELONG in this country, there are certain attitudes that should be common to everyone, like:-

a) A woman is free to marry the person she wants free of harassment and violence from her family.

b) Homophobia is a prejudice that should be rejected in Britain regardless of the values inherent in the land of your forefathers.

c) Females and males are equal in rights and in respect and should be treated thus from cradle to grave.

d) You don't expect the automatic right to wear what you like to school. You don't carry ceremonial knives and you don't wear headgear which prevents proper eye contact with teachers and fellow students.

e) You don't buy guns and join gangs in the United Kingdom regardless of your ethnic background.

f) You accept that people in the UK have the right to criticise religion whether it be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or whatever. You do not accept the human rights only of those you agree with. You recognise the difference between criticism of a faith and incitement to hatred and murder.

g) You learn that secular British law, embracing every citizen of the UK, prevails over any religious beliefs you may have. Forcing your daughter into an arranged marriage against her will or declaring a fatwa against someone who has displeased you is unacceptable.


Is that enough for a start, Ms Ghale? If we can imbue our youngest children with these values then maybe in twenty years time our failed 'multi-culturalism' ( interpret that as - 'allow people to move here then let them set up ghettos and forget about integrating them' ) might be replaced by a society where thirteen year old black children are not shot dead weekly, where young asian girls do not live in fear of their lives because they have chosen the wrong boyfriend and where 'freedom of speech' will mean what it says to every citizen of the United Kingdom regardless of religion and culture.

Then maybe someday we might have a Britain to be proud of - but it won't happen unless we all pull together and make it work. Ms. Ghale's attitudes, I fear, are simply going to perpetuate the status quo and the misery on our streets every week tells you just what a depressing spectre that is!

The European 'disease' returns to football

Tonight I was watching an absorbing football match between Seville of Spain and Tottenham Hotspur of England but sadly, for at least part of the game, the attention was captured by violence in the crowd directed against the Spanish police. Plastic seats were thrown by the Spurs supporters in the direction of the police and quite clearly some people were injured, one man sporting a nasty cut on his head.



This right on top of an even worse situation in Rome the previous night when fans of the host club Roma clashed with the visiting Manchester United supporters and opposing fans bayed and snarled at each other in their hundreds, through a thin dividing barrier. The Italian police launched into the crowd of Manchester United fans swinging batons with gusto and, it has to be said, excess but that does not excuse the nonesense that preceded their action. Eleven United supporters were taken to hospital one with a rumoured skull fracture.



What used to be called the British disease is now the European one and Rome in particular is a venue for travelling British fans to avoid. In past seasons fans from Middlesbrough and Liverpool have been stabbed during matches at AC Roma and the club has a bad reputation for crowd violence. Italy in general seems to have become a focal point for this kind of problem, the whole of the Italian League being suspended earlier in the season when a policeman was killed during a Sicilian local 'derby' between Catania and Palermo.

South America is possibly even worse with major soccer riots having occurred for many years in just about all the Republics.

But why is it? And why doesn't spectator violence seem to be a major factor in the United States. America is, in some ways, a more violent society than Europe yet the country seems to be mercifully free of the sports crowd rioting so familiar in Europe. Is it because rivalry between football and baseball teams, while keen, is not an all consuming passion as soccer support seems to be for so many in Europe? I'd welcome any American comments on this.

Sociologists and psychologists have tried to find reasons but I'm not convinced that anyone has really put their finger on it. The British have a drink culture and consequently an alcohol problem but I don't believe alcohol is even the prime cause of this. So much of it is mob rule and premeditated. Certainly the current crop of violence, particularly in Britain, is a pale shadow of the horrors of the 1980s which culminated in the terrible events at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium during the European Cup Final between Juventus of Italy and Liverpool of England when, following crowd violence 39 people died and 400 were injured when a large wall collapsed on people fleeing the violence. However the signs of the disease creeping back to former levels needs to be carefully watched.

After Heysel, the Conservative Government in Britain made sweeping changes to the structure of football grounds, insisting on all-seater stadia and, at first, perimeter fencing around the pitches. This latter was soon abandoned when it was pointed out that if violence did break out people would have no escape from it. The consequence of this change was, almost overnight, to change the nature not only of the stadia but the paying customer too, for the cost of attending a game rose astronomically pricing out many of the former 'working class' tribal patrons and encouraging a new richer 'elite'. Certainly much of the yob violence dropped completely but so did the atmosphere and colour with which local support used to be associated.

Now the violence is back and again the psychologists are asking themselves if they treated the symptom and not the disease when they gave their original remedy to government back in the 80s. It seems to be a complex mish mash of warped nationalism, tribal hunger and some strange way of 'being somebody'.

Whatever the cause of this sudden upsurge which seems to be spreading through Europe like a rash, it is taking away the focus from where it ought to be and that's on the game of Association Football, the greatest game on earth.

Taken aback by public comment

The fifteen British sailors captured in Iranian waters (says Iran)/ hijacked from Iraqi waters (says Britain) have been released amid a great show of largesse by the Iranian government and are on their way home as I write.

To a heroes welcome? Well I'm not sure they would have expected or deserved that but some of the comments flying around from their fellow Britons on the BBC's correspondence web site have made me squirm.

Just a sample and they are far from the minority:-

1) "Those of the 15 Service personnel that made those cowardly statements on TV and in letters betrayed their own limited sense of honour and damaged the reputation of their service and their country."


2) "Two questions:

(i) Why did they not resist capture in the first place?

(ii) When will their courts martial be held?


3) "The way that the British Sailors and Marines acted was just a joke.... The woman was the worst.

4) "Whatever happened to JUST giving your "Name, Rank and Number"?
and where were their uniforms at the end? What is happening to our once proud armed forces!"

5) "I think the soldiers should be questioned about their behaviour. I know that probably for them it was like being in the Big Brother house."


So there you have anger, resentment, a certain 'British Bulldog' attitude AND sexism, ie the prime contributor to our abject humiliation was the woman. My first reaction was relief that fifteen serving sailors were not to be put on trial by Iran and how careful Britain needs to be to ensure that the circumstances which led to these arrests is covered a little more carefully in future.

Who are any of these correspondents to condemn in the way that they do, and there are many many more like that. Who is to say what coercion the sailors were under to do as they did? Who is to say who is telling the truth in all this?

There are some people who think like former US Ambassador to the U.N.,John Bolton, ie that hostages are a worth while sacrifice as long as we go in there mob-handed and give Iran a bloody nose, but they are morons in my book. This is mediaeval thinking, this obsession with loss of face and prestige when human freedom and possibly peoples lives are at stake.

Yes sure there are situations in battle conditions where, sadly, you do have to accept the loss that troops are simply sacrificed for the greater good of their comrades and the war effort but this wasn't one of them, not by a long chalk! I'm just glad they are home unharmed and to hell with who scored how many schoolboy political points over the other!

Smoke gets in your eyes - No longer!!!

Two days ago, Wales became the latest country in the United Kingdom to impose a full smoking ban in all public places. Scotland has been smoke free since March 26th 2006 and Northern Ireland will follow suit on April 30th. Good old kipper-lungs England, coughing along behind, finally makes up the entire complement on July 1st.

While the remainder of the UK seemed to move to such a ban effortlessly, the English were dragged kicking and screaming, mainly because the Blair government was frightened to impose a blanket ban and only did so when a free vote of M.P.'s voted resoundingly to overthrow the government's meek and ridiculous half measure of banning smoking in part of a premises as 'unworkable'. Of course it was but so are many of Mr.Blair's other initiatives so no wonder he didn't spot it!

I have resolved, once the ban comes into force, to march up to my local village pub on July 1st, order lunch and stay there all afternoon just basking in the fresher air. They say that former smokers become more Catholic than the Pope and that is certainly true in my case.

Until I was about forty, I smoked twenty cigarettes a day and lived the old joke 'it's easy to give up - I've done it hundreds of times' with tiresome frequency. I used to silently resent my friends and co-workers who didn't smoke and who objected to my smoking in their houses, cars etc because 'you have no idea what a residue it leaves and won't go away'. What a fussy, prissy lot I used to think, gasping for a fag, they're making a fuss over nothing.




Then I ruptured my Achilles tendon playing squash and was wrapped in plaster from foot to thigh for weeks. I couldn't go out anywhere much and I became so bored that my smoking increased from 20 to 60 a day. Eventually I realised that I was no longer enjoying smoking, I was simply indulging an ever worsening habit and (I thought) with great courage, resolved to stop immediately. To prove my intent I threw 200 cigarettes down the rubbish chute and finally stopped smoking for good.

Now, after all these years, I am probably worse than the friends I used to silently curse. I won't tolerate smoking in my apartment or in my car. I avoid pubs and restaurants where there is no smoke-free reserved section and my throat seems to have become very sensitive to cigarette smoke.

Now I know the misery my friends and colleagues used to go through every time I lit up in their presence. It's hideous, foul and revolting - like someone lighting a small fire in your living room determined to smoke you out.

That's why, although I used to be a smoker, I have no time for the whines and moans of those who say that a smoking ban inhibits their freedom. The dangers of passive smoking have been clearly demonstrated medically and you only have to sit in a room full of smokers to know what it does to your chest and throat.

That's why I shall celebrate in what is normally a smoky pub on July 1st when poor old England finally limps home behind everyone else, because I think this measure, like the measure years ago that stopped factory smoke from polluting the atmosphere, could make live so much more pleasant - and healthy - for millions.