Whither now, America?

So now we know the line up for the big Presidential election in November. On one side a young black man who is so concerned that he doesn't represent a considerable swathe of core voters that he has brought in a running mate more in line with his party's expectations..... and on the other side, an elderly white man who is so concerned that he doesn't represent a considerable swathe of core voters that he has brought in a running mate more in line with his party's expectations.

Similar concerns about getting elected but such different choices for America. I think this election is incredibly fascinating because the Presidential choice is on a knife edge and for once the choice of Vice President elect could swing this one way or the other.

The mood of the United States electorate is incredibly hard to fathom. In a sense the two Presidential candidates both run the risk of losing the support of their own party faithful by a wrong word here or there.

For the Democrats, I feel that the gloss of Obama being the brand new kid-on-the-block is not so much of a magnet as it was and it is clear, despite the efforts of Bill and Hillary Clinton to bring the whole Democratic Party onside, there is still a simmering anger among a sizable number of supporters that Hillary is not on the ticket. There have been comments in the States too, about the nature of the Democratic Convention which had all the trappings of a coronation. I bitterly recall Neil Kinnock making the mistake of looking and appearing triumphal on the eve of the 1992 British election for which he was favourite...and he suffered at the polls as a result. I hope the same fate does not befall Barack Obama.



Sad though it is, I suspect the colour of Obama's skin, allied to his background, will also play a part, come November, with some traditional Democratic voters - particularly from the white working class. That, of course, is one of the reasons why Joe Biden is on the ticket. Biden was born into a working class Irish Catholic family and fought for everything he achieved later in life. He also has considerable foreign policy experience which Obama lacks and he can stand up fairly and squarely in front of factory gates and say 'Look guys I'm one of you'. There are downsides and he has been famed for some notable gaffes in the past.



For the Republicans, I believe the Party hierarchy wished they had almost any viable candidate except John McCain. He represents few of the values of the current Republican administration having attacked George Bush on everything from his Iraq strategy to his taxation policy, producing a degree of fury within the Party bosses. But despite all efforts he triumphed in the primaries and has to be taken seriously. Although noted for his common-sense and lack of GOP dogma, McCain is still quite a hawk on Iraq and, despite the image he likes to convey about being liberal on the subject, firmly anti-abortion - maybe the two issues which divide him most from Obama. In many ways, I like and respect McCain but his militaristic stances on the middle east worry me greatly. I feel he is intent on pursuing already failed policies.



His biggest problem for the electorate is going to be his age. If elected in November, McCain will be 72 by the time he takes office in January 2009, the oldest President to serve a first term in American history. He has also had some health concerns. So his choice of running mate was also watched with a keen eye to see what kind of a complement the choice made and whether, should McCain be elected, the VP would be the right person to take over were he to succumb to old age.

The choice has proved not only unexpected but startling and daring. Sarah Palin, at 44, is younger than Obama but is clearly a bright and pretty ruthless politician, taking on the party hierarchy in Alaska, to become Governor of the State in 2006. Before that she was Mayor of a small town of 6000 people. She is a traditional Republican conservative, firmly anti abortion, a member of the NRA who describes herself a 'a typical hockey mom'. In short the white American middle class ideal.



Herein likes the beauty of this election and the gut feelings of the electorate. Will those of the uncommitted dithering about the choice of McCain now be swayed by his choice of a young female running-mate clearly intent on going places? Or will they think of McCain's age and the fact that, only a heartbeat from the Presidency, is a young woman with hardly any executive experience? Will they look at Obama and decide that this young African American man with so much charisma is the guy to lead the US out of the Bush years. Or will they start to wonder, as the election nears, that maybe there is more showbiz than substance and that they would be safer with an old right wing maverick? Will Joe Biden prove to be a plus for Obama, dragging in the blue-collar vote which so clearly favoured Hillary Clinton, or will Biden make one of his major gaffes which blow the Democrats out of the water? I can't help but feel, exciting though it was, that the long drawn out Democratic primary battle has done damage to the unity of the Party and to Obama's chances of the Presidency.

I hope not, and personally I hope America takes a giant leap of faith and votes Barack Obama in as President elect in November. There is a real chance of a breath of fresh air running through US attitudes to world problems which I don't see with McCain. McCain might not be Bush..but if he wins I see the same depressing reliance on American military might in the middle east and I sincerely believe that is a policy doomed to failure and will make the problems of world terrorism considerably worse.

Mixed blessings from Beijing

I am as pleased as anyone that 'Team GB' (Oh how I hate these corny marketing titles) is doing so well at the Beijing Games, a total of eighteen gold medals accrued so far - way beyond the expectations before the team set off.

But it's interesting that, outside the glare of the events, the careful gloss China put on its image in order to get the Games has begun to unravel pretty quickly. Journalists have been arrested and dragged away in mid broadcast, John Ray of ITN news being one of a number carted away for trying to film a 'Free Tibet' protest near the Olympic Park.

Even the pretty basic right of poster protest, allowed in China before the Olympics, has been savagely terminated and protesters put in prison.

China promised that an area of park would be set aside for political protest during the Games on submission of an application in advance. So far 80 applications have been submitted and every one has been refused. It is a joke. Protests such as the one pictured below are, of course, only possible outside the country.




Of course the damn fool IOC fell for every promise of a 'free flow of information during the Games' and there has, of course, been nothing of the sort.

Human Rights Watch has criticised the affluent sponsors of the Beijing Games for failing to live up to their corporate responsibilities and adopting a 'see no evil, hear no evil' approach while they sit in their lavish boxes and lap up the luxury.

China is basking in the publicity it is getting for hosting a well organised games but I desperately hope, at the end of all this, there will be a stream of consciousness emanating from those covering the Games and those involved in the decision to take them to China asking 'but at what cost?'

I don't believe that the International Olympic Committee has come out of this very well..and not for the first time. They seem interested only in the spectacle itself, heedless of the consequences and impact of awarding the Games to totalitarian regimes. It is a policy bereft of any moral decency. Human Rights Watch is urging the IOC to set up a committee to investigate human rights abuses before the Games are awarded in future. Well it won't be done, and actually there is no need for it. Amnesty International, HRW itself and other organisations are well equipped to point out the flagrant human rights abuses in countries like China.

The single biggest failing is that the IOC simply refuses to listen - or apparently care.

Good old blundering Brum does it again!

Sometimes I shake my head in despair at my native city. There are so many good things going on here, so much regeneration which is truly admirable and yet our city officials continue to fall on banana skins which tend to make us look like some rustic amateur council.

The latest of these concerns the new publicity fliers for the city which contain pictures of the Birmingham skyline....and indeed they do.....the skyline of Birmingham, Alabama not Birmingham, England! It is pretty inconceivable how such a careless and stupid error could have been made - but it's not the first time. It has indeed brought Birmingham some publicity, but hardly the sort our city officials must have wanted. I've received e mail from friends in the United States containing attachments from US newspapers reporting on the cock-up. They all think it's a hoot. OK it's pretty minor in the overall scheme of Birmingham council's overall responsibilities, but its the sort of thing that tends to be noticed and makes the city look foolish.




The REAL one..as indicated




A previous one that comes immediately to mind was the loan of the 'Birmingham Eye' from France....and nobody appeared to have spotted, until the Eye became operational, that the audio accompaniment was a tour of Paris! The Eye itself was great but, again, the city's 'ship' was spoiled for a proverbial hap'orth of tar. Nobody thought to check everything properly or ensure that a Birmingham audio was produced. Again we looked stupid.

A few years ago came the act of political lunacy that everyone in the country remembers and sneers about. The proposal by the then Labour council to scrap the Christmas festivities and rename the period 'Winterval' to avoid upsetting ethnic religious and cultural minorities. It was laughed out of court by just about everyone but again the city got a reputation for being governed by well-meaning thick-heads.

Birmingham has always had a civic reputation for a sort of working class prudishness. We have had great art here, the Royal Ballet, one of the finest Symphony Orchestras in the country,a first class Repertory Theatre but one senses that this was despite, rather than because of the mentality of its elected officials. We seem to have an ingrained dull, plodding but rather prudish attitude to anything challenging. Some years ago, I recall, Birmingham acquired, on loan, a prize exhibit of the 'Europa and the Bull' statuette which came close to being withdrawn from display after a female councillor alleged that it was obscene and encouraged bestiality. It is this sort of worthy, plodding, provincial thinking which tends to epitomise the city.

Birmingham tries so hard to look classy and fashionable and, indeed, so much has been done which is admirable regeneration. But you always get the impression that the mentality of the city, of the people who drive its development, lacks any real sophistication or class. The city always reminds me of the working class woman who dresses up in her finest to go shopping in Fortnum and Mason's - but somehow, no matter how much she spends on herself, never quite looks the part.

Does a woman have ANY responsibility for her own welfare?

On Tuesday, a young woman, who was raped five years ago after a night out, succeeded in overturning a decision by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board who originally cut her compensation by 25% 'because her excessive consumption of alcohol had been a contributory factor in the rape'.

She was raped by a stranger on her way home - the man was never caught - and, in this case, I whole-heartedly support the appeal findings in restoring her full compensation. It was as ridiculous to suggest that she was part responsible for her own rape through alcohol as it would be to suggest that someone beaten up and robbed was responsible because they'd had a few and were incapable of fighting back or seeing danger.



I am a little more wary, though, about the conventional wisdom -echoed in this current case by the Ministry of Justice - that a woman never has any responsibility for her rape. My concern is primarily in the area of so-called date rape. Now let me be clear. I have no sympathy or tolerance for the man who takes a woman on a date, deliberately plies her with drugged drinks -roprynol or the like - or physically forces her into a sexual act she clearly did not want. Men like that deserve the full weight of the law brought down on them.

We seem to have extended the interpretation of rape, however, to cover the circumstance where a woman claims she was too drunk to give consent. Now this has been used in circumstances, most recently I believe in a case at a Welsh university, where a young woman admitted she went out with a guy from the college who she liked. She admitted that she consumed alcohol of her own free will. She also admitted behaving in an uninhibited fashion in the nightclub, the drink freeing her libidinous instincts to a degree where she was seen to be 'all over' her boy-friend. He took her back to the college and what happened after that became the subject of a court case.

She claims to have woken up in the morning aware that sexual congress had taken place but to which she was not in a state to give consent. The boy was found guilty of rape and his life has consequently been ruined.

I think it's fine that we are sending out messages to young men, particularly, that a woman is not to be treated as a sexual prey and that her full consent to sex is required before intercourse takes place.

I do worry, though, in these women's rights driven times, what message we are sending out to the hordes of young women I see every weekend lurching down the main clubland street in my city by the absolutism of the women's rights lobby and the Ministry of Justice. It seems that, no matter how they behave, no matter how intimate, clinging,and uninhibited their behaviour might be with their partners, occasioned by ridiculous quantities of alcohol willingly consumed, they can wake up in the morning and say 'I was too drunk to know what I was doing'.

Well I don't want women to suffer the horrors of rape - but I don't want men to suffer for the rest of their lives for an experience which, in my view, was in many cases, a shared responsibility. Women's rights groups are very quick, in the cases of pregnancy and abortion, to leap to the argument that a woman's body is her own and thus she owes no explanation to partner or anyone else about what decisions she makes. They are not so quick to support the rights of women to drink copious amounts of alcohol, lose all sense of self control and then have sex with whoever happens to be available. This is the point at which a woman, apparently, is no longer responsible for her own body and what she does with it - it's all the fault of the men.

Well I'm sorry but I feel these are circumstances which should result in a little more investigation before criminal proceedings are brought. I believe there is just as much need for a nationwide campaign to remind women that they do bear some degree of responsibility if they drink themselves into a stupor. It would be a good wake up call to their sense of responsibility - not to mention their health. Rape is unlike any other crime. Few willingly submit to being shot, stabbed or burgled. There are few comparitive situations where the same physical act can be either an act of love or an act of criminal abuse. I think the law needs to be very very sure what exactly took place before ruining a man's life on the say-so of a woman who may be feeling very remorseful and very ashamed of her own lack of self-control.

If you think you were justified, NEVER accept a police caution!

Jim McCullough of Manchester in England, must be ruing the day he accepted a police caution. Jim was a football coach and community worker who spent his life working with children. After a family row with his 13 year old daughter, Jess, who had been upsetting neighbours by banging on their windows and generally behaving like a lout, she swore at him and he slapped her - once - across the face.

The child, who now admits (rather too late) that she deserved what she got, immediately decided to be bitchy and phoned the police. Mr McCullough was arrested and given the choice of being taken to court or accepting a police caution. As any decent man would do in such circumstances he was grateful for the caution.



What he didn't appreciate was that the caution counts as a non prosecuted acceptance of guilt. Consequently he is recorded on the national police computer as having recorded a violent offence against a child and can no longer work with children - an area to which he has devoted his life.

This is clearly ridiculous, but it's not the fault of the police who follow their instructions, it's the fault of our society and an overprotective law which allows the vindictive reaction of a lippy little cow to supercede common sense. I have long said that common sense has been driven out of the British legal system in favour of mandatory Home Office dictats and the impersonality of the computer.

The lesson to be learned, though, is that even though you may be feeling upset, shocked and pressurised and thus grateful to be given the chance of not being taken to court, then think twice.

If you feel your actions were justified and you have a clear conscience, elect for a trial by jury and seek total exoneration. The experience of Mr McCullough should be a warning to every parent in the land just how crazy our system has become.

A complex mess that needs careful diplomacy

One of Britain's newspapers this week referred to the Russian tanks rolling into South Ossetia as 'While the world wasn't watching' - and, of course, there is probably some truth in the fact that the timing was not entirely accidental, and that the world would be concentrating on the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

But let's not pretend that this is just another case of Russia behaving like the old Soviet Union. The behaviour of the Georgian government, in the days before the Russian response was, if anything, even more sneaky and disreputable. Their attempts to reinforce their territorial claims to South Ossetia were crude, heavy-handed and clearly misguided.



The situation of South Ossetia has long been complex. A semi autonomous region under the Tsar, it was absorbed into Georgia by Soviet decree in 1923 and has never been happy with that status. The problem for the west is that, when the Soviet Union broke up, the United Nations accepted the boundaries of the new independent republics in line with that early Soviet demarcation. So the UN - and in particular the United States, is diplomatically honour bound to support the claims of Georgia to the territory.

Who knows what goes on behind the scenes, but I think it ill behove the Americans to produce their predictable anti-Russian knee jerk, accusing them of 'invading a sovereign territory' after the experience with Iraq. Have they no blushes? President Saakashvili of Georgia proved his youth and inexperience by giving the Russians a perfect excuse to 'protect the people of South Ossetia' by his rash decision to try to retake the territory by force and failing miserably.



Back in the early 90's immediately after the break up of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetian independence movement attempted a breakaway from Georgia, and the move was put down with ruthless cruelty by the Georgian military, over 1000 people being killed. At that time Russia threatened to invade Georgia if its troops did not withdraw and allow South Ossetia a chance of self determination. A referendum was held (which Georgia refused to recognise as legitimate) and South Ossetia became 'de facto' independent although Georgia continued to maintain its territorial claims. In the years since that referendum, Georgia has tried to starve the region into submission, denying it power and supplies..so they turned, naturally, to the Russians.



This whole episode smacks of very poor statesmanship and political thinking, Saakashvili appearing to think that his western allies would dive in to help his rash military decision.

And this of course is another issue which fires the kindling flames between Russia and its neighbour. Georgia wants to join NATO. Its President is young, pro American, pro free market - and the Russians detest him. They fear a Georgia in NATO just as the Americans feared rockets in Cuba back in 1962.

Again I think the Europeans have shown sounder judgment than the US on this issue. America has been clamouring to get Georgia admitted into NATO - while European nations, and particularly the Germans, have urged caution. Germany, rightly in my view, has said that while Georgia is in the throes of an internal territorial dispute , it does not have the right qualifications for membership and the issue should be left until the situation in South Ossetia and neighbouring Ajaria is clarified.

Now while Russia can claim an 'honourable' excuse for liberating South Ossetia, it now seems their political and military objectives go much further. They have seen this as an excuse to remove their 'pain in the neck' and it is clear that they are trying to humiliate Georgia to a degree whereby Saakashvili is forced out office.

What does the west do about all this? It clearly should not stand idly by and allow a sovereign nation to be invaded, but neither, in my book, should America be launching its predictable anti Russian rhetoric. Careful, delicate, sound diplomacy is required here because the current situation is very volatile.

What would be a mistake is if the United States begins to treat Russia like the old Soviet Union and we get a re emergence of the cold war. That would be a mis-reading of the situation and a devastating mistake in my view. One can but hope that the United States recognises this too.