I wonder if men came up with this?

The UK based Cancer Research Society has just finished a survey in which it concluded that the risks of breast cancer are drastically reduced if women do more housework. Just in case these modern misses who spend more time doing aerobics tried to dodge the issue by suggesting that they work out enough the study even went on to add that 'housework was much more beneficial than sport or exercise'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6214655.stm

Is this a cunning plot by unreformed sexists to put women 'back where they belong' and can we expect further health surveys soon which suggest that men,whose cancer risks are way outweighed by the risks of heart disease caused by stress and depression from their taxing executive jobs, would live much longer if they spent more time relaxing in the pub - while the women presumably get on with the housework?

Britain has paid its dues!

Today is a significant one for the British Treasury, if not one which will rock the financial centres of the Kingdom. We have paid our last installment, after 60 years, on the Washington Loan Agreement negotiated with some difficulty by John Maynard Keynes after the U.S. abruptly canceled Lend Lease once the war ended.

This decision in itself had been a shock to Clement Attlee's struggling Labour government which had deluded itself that America would continue lend-lease during the period of Britain's rehabilitation following the terrible destruction caused by the War. This despite the growing anger of American industrialists and politicians who said that America was providing Britain with the opportunity to grow its export trade - particularly because of Empire (later Commonwealth) preference agreements - thereby cutting American throats at American expense. The U.S. had then demanded that no benefit from any element of lend-lease would be transferred to the export business, a promise the British found hard to implement in that how do you separate what raw materials and tools are used for domestic and export production from the same plant?



Anyway the U.S. scrapped lend-lease almost overnight, which had been keeping Britain's factories turning and its people fed, and Attlee was forced to beg for a loan which America supplied at a high (bearing in mind the capital involved and the time it would take for the investment to bear fruit) rate of interest - 2% - and Britain's economic recovery, while helped in the very short term, has suffered over the following period because of the high repayment obligations.



America has been one of Britain's greatest friends - and vice versa - for certainly most of the 20th century - but, it can be argued, never lost sight of its hard headed sense of business during that period. Today as the Treasury signs its last Bankers Draft to the U.S. it might be worth remembering, lest our nation (and particularly its Prime Minister!) becomes too idealistic, that even the best of political friends come at a price.

Another General piles in!

It looks as if the overshooting of Miami Airport might be the least of Tony Blair's Christmas problems as yet another senior British Army Officer, Major General Richard Shirreff - Commander of the British Forces in Southern Iraq - has joined in the criticism of HM Government with a sharp attack on 'the breach of covenant between the government and the military' and suggests that there has been a 'generation of serious underfunding and neglect'.





These follow hard on the amazing comments of General Sir Richard Dannatt (reported in a previous post) and of Colonel Tim Collins one of our most senior officers in Iraq at the time of the start of the war who has described the Ministry of Defence assertion that Defence spending has continued to rise as 'disingenuous'.

Added to all this the lads at the sharp end have brought out a new website called ARRSE, the unofficial British Army Rumour Service which claims on its Home page 'contrary to popular belief, we are not seeking the overthrow of HM Government by armed force, but aim to provide a useful, informative and amusing resource for all'. It is apparent from the wording that the army lads know they have to watch their step but it is equally clear that, from the top to the bottom of our armed forces, there is a confirmed view that British Forces are overstretched and under-resourced. It is equally clear that there is a lot of anger around right through the ranks.

We have an issue here which is reaching boiling point and one day not too long away something will give. I'm not expecting insurrection by the armed forces but one political commitment too many could soon result in one or more top generals making a stand along the lines of 'We cannot do this and I refuse to put my soldiers lives at risk in attempting it - so fire me!'

The Alternative Christmas Massage

As an alternative to the Queen's Annual Message which, with all due respect to HM, does tend to be a little predictable and drab, my family and I decided to watch the Channel 4 alternative - a 10 minute broadcast by a Muslim woman in full dress including the niqab.

The idea, apparently, was to use Christmas to dispel all our fears and misconceptions about Islam and about veiled Muslim women in particular but instead it came across as a rather patronising little exercise, in my opinion, in totally missing the point.



The lady was introduced as, I think, Khalisha, born in Zimbabwe and now a British citizen, but regardless of her Islamic name I would guess she was born Cynthia Fortescue, or some such, for she spoke perfect public school English. Not one of your suspicious foreigners with dark skin and a thick arabic accent. This seemed to be an attempt to make the British feel at home with her.

She said went on happily to describe Jack Straw M.P. as 'misguided' in his suggestion that Muslim women should shed the niqab in public and compared it to the 'studs and mouth piercings of many western youngsters' just to indicate difference and individuality. When asked what she would do if she met Mr Straw, she giggled and said 'she would probably have a mince pie or a piece of Christmas cake with him' How cute. How normal. See? Just like one of us. A nice marketing exercise to try to massage our fears and convince us that it's us infidels who have it all wrong and that Muslims are so misunderstood.

However given that radical Islam is now the most feared force on the planet, has killed 3000 people in New York, has blown up tube trains and killed 55 people in England and given that women dressed just like Khalisha similarly garbed and unidentifiable, their clothing packed with explosives, participated in the Beslan school horror, the Moscow Theatre siege and countless suicide bombings in Israel, I feel that Channel 4's good intentions came across as rather trite and Khalisha's comparisons similarly. A good friend of mine, a Sikh, admittedly no great lover of Islam says 'Don't believe these declarations of distance from such acts. Although only a small proportion of Muslims participate in terrorism, a much larger silent majority share the aim for a greater Arab Caliphate and have considerable sympathy for those who are prepared to fight for it'.

I know this reads like an attack on Islam as a faith. I am also aware that there are many Muslims who quietly want to serve their faith within a multi cultural context and to them I nod in silent thanks. But I am also extremely conscious that the British people have the right to ask of the Muslim population 'where DO you stand in all this?' The thought of a collective viper in our national bosom just waiting for any opportunity to strike is too real and too horrible to be washed away with a piece of ad man Christmas glitter.

What Britain needs is not this kind of Christmas marketing Khalisha was offering but clear actions by the Muslim community to prove that they see us, their fellow Britons, as equals with an equal right to life and to our culture, that they are in fact our true fellow citizens. This would be helped if extremists were disowned and handed in, if cells were broken by informers, if the majority proved that they value harmony and peace above some grand Islamic design. It would also be helped if Muslims recognised that from the point of view of security at a difficult time, the wearing of the niqab - not mandatory as part of religious custom - might be abandoned in public. It would show willingness to sympathise with Britain's efforts to safeguard all its citizens because total veiling compromises security, acknowledge that this total veiling gives an impression of distance and hostility, and maybe bring a bit of openness and light into what is perceived as a closed and insular society.

Until that understanding and appreciation of the concerns, not just of Jack Straw, but of many other non Islamic Britons is appreciated and acted upon, forgive me if the kind of massage Khalisha was doing to our consciousness on Christmas Day just sounds like window dressing.

Christmas cheer!! Drink protects your brain!

I am much cheered, writing this on Christmas Eve, to find that the University of Toronto has discovered that people with serious brain injuries were 24% more likely to recover from them if they have been drinking.



The University team reckon this is because the brain goes into shock after an injury and the calming effects of alcohol reduce that shock and the brains defence mechanism does not go into such dramatic overdrive - an overdrive which apparently may keep you alive but also causes a lot of cell destroying permanent damage.

This is marvellous news for us drinkers and completely vindicates our habit !



Of course what the survey does not say, as this is pure layman speculation and not medical science, is that your chances of getting a brain injury in the first place are probably considerably enhanced by being pissed out of your head and falling off the pub wall!

A Merry brain injury free Christmas to all readers of the blog!!

A salutary tale for all bloggers!

In the north of England lies the town of Barrow-in-Furness, a traditional shipbuilding town with all that implies. Like all British towns its had a major face lift,a new shopping mall and a whole new range of trendy shops including a Thornton's chocolate store. Now Thornton's, for non Britons, is one of the creme de la creme of chocolate shops with its own brands supplied in de luxe gift boxes for the choosy.



Into this emporium came one Mr. Steve Beall, who it would appear moved reluctantly from his home in Whitley Bay, to manage the new store. It would appear that, in addition to his distaste for Barrow, the new enterprise got off to a bad start when kids vandalised the shop before it even opened and Mr Beall was compelled to stay in a Travel Lodge while his accommodation was sorted out.

In desperation, as we all do, he turned to his trusty computer. There he managed to compound his problems. Using a communal thought sharing website, he wrote 'What have I done in my career to deserve this? This place is a rough, dull, boring s**thole!'



Unfortunately for Mr. Beall, the local newspapers (well it's Christmas and there's no news) got wind of his remarks and decided,as the local press frequently does, on a bit of home town righteous indignation. As a result half the town's population read Mr.Beall's vented frustrations and demanded recompense.

Well Mr.Beall is no longer living at Travel Lodge so thats one good thing but sadly thats because he got fired from his job. Thornton's have spent the pre-Christmas period handing out free chocs to the locals in the hope of recovering lost prestige.

The moral of this story: If you want to vent your spleen on a blog -and that IS what they're for - make sure you are discreet about it. Post any evil thoughts about people who could harm you - particularly if you work in a service industry - only where the most trusted people will see them - not on a public grump sharing site!!

Something wrong with the Criminal Justice system

I did a piece on the prostitute murders in Ipswich a few days ago. Well since then, things have moved and a man has been charged with the five murders. If the police have the right man then it will be a source of considerable relief to the women of Ipswich, and congratulations to the force on finding the guilty party so quickly.

However the charged man, Stephen Wright, was not the first person arrested by the police in connection with this enquiry. The first was a 37 year old man named Tom Stephens who has now been released on police bail. He may well be interviewed further but at present one assumes he can be considered not a suspect.

Now I am not at all surprised, given the nature of the case, that it has taken two shots to get the right guy (we assume) and I do understand that an arrest needs to be made before the police have full interrogation rights so I have every sympathy with their situation vis a vis Tom Stephens.

What I find deeply disturbing is that once the arrest was made, the newspapers and TV had full access to Mr.Stephens' address, his photograph and to an interview he gave to a TV company some weeks before because he knew several of the murdered girls - which may have been one of the main reasons he was high on the list of suspects.

Now this is not a case of parking on double yellow lines. This is a case where 5 young women have been murdered, the type of case which stirs violent emotions. It never takes long for lynch mobs to gather whenever there are murdered girls or children.

Should we not ban the release of names, photographs and other personal details of an arrested man UNTIL he is actually charged with an offence? Particularly in cases as emotive and potentially damaging to the health of the accused as this one is.

Oh and I am not going to be accused of double standards. Although the photographs of both men are available to me and my blog only reaches the proverbial three men and a dog, I don't intend to print them.

The Christmas Circular

Do you have friends who are so goddam successful that they think your life is complemented at Christmas by living theirs vicariously through a long standard letter? You know the sort of thing:

'Dear [Brian]

Sorry we haven't been in touch but as I have been preparing for my 5th Himalayan expedition (I swore to Celia I'd bring her back a chunk of rock from the very top of Everest this time) and my wife is up to her ears as UN goodwill ambassador to Matabeleland, I'm afraid life has just been one non stop whirl for the last 12 months.

Celia sends her love etc etc and would have added a personal note but she's stuck somewhere in the Congo at the moment ( personal request from Tony to do a little female diplomacy -well you know how it is, can't refuse etc etc) but she really is thinking of you.

I think we forgot your birthday too. Sorry old boy but we were out of the country on tour with Joss Stone - yes amazing isn't it. All gratis and paid for, hotels as well. Yes I mean I'd never heard of the girl either but seems our eldest, you remember Clarissa? Well while she was studying in Manchester for her first class honours degree it seems they met at some club Joss was performing at and Clarri said she was like 'really cool' and well, mentioned the name to her mother and Celia was able to open a few doors and well..bob's your uncle as they say.

Young Damien, he's off to Oxford in September, but he's spending his gap year helping Bob Geldof sort out the poor in Africa. Takes after his mother, heart of gold. Anyway we had a champagne supper last week as he just got his helicopter licence. Well we didn't want hime tramping through those ghastly jungles risking swamp fever so we got him his own chopper. Second hand, naturally! I mean we're not made of money! Apparently there's no problem landing in those villages. You just give the tribal commissioner a days notice and they knock down a few huts to make some room. They don't take long to rebuild.

As for little Penny, well she's not so little any more. Sixteen now and pretty as a picture (see photo). I'm afraid she doesn't have the brains of the other two, oh she'd be the first to admit it. But the talent in those hands. I mean she always stared at the dresses in Marks and Sparks when she was six and then started drawing and next week she starts an apprenticeship with Stella - you know - Sir Paul's girl. Well I mean the kid deserves the chance. Of course after the law work my firm did with Sir P on that rather messy Heather business I called in a favour or two and ..well wheels within wheels.

Well that's us, I'm afraid. Humdrum and boring as ever. Celia always says why do we foist our tedious lives on [Brian] when you obviously have so full a life of your own. Do send us a date when you are free and I'll get my computer to calculate when we can all get together - probably around September 2012 at a guess right now.

Till then

Ciao

Peregrine'

Oh darling - so size DOES matter .......

According to a poll of 4,000 Britons, conducted by an insurance company, the most popular car in the country is .....The Volvo Estate! Here hang on a minute, that's the same dull boring looking vehicle which only retired anoraks would buy? Looks as dull as ditchwater ? Yep that's the one! Ah but why did these people vote for it with a smirk on their faces and a glint in the eye?



Because the poll was asking which car is the best for having sex in the back seat! Apparently the Volvo Estate has comfortable and plush seating and so much space that even the most ambitious positions can be attempted. 6% of people admitted to becoming so enthusiastic in the course of their (hopefully) stationary vehicular use that they had damaged the upholstery of their vehicle and 1% of those - cheeky buggers - admitted to claiming for the damage on their insurance policies!

Drivers were also asked what they thought about when they were driving and whether their minds were 100% on what they were doing. One in five drivers admitted to thinking about sex for a quarter of the time behind the wheel (unless presumably you are a Volvo Estate driver when it goes up to 50% wondering how fast you can get started once you find a parking lane!)



The name of the insurance company that researched all this - 0h 'Yes'!!

..and of course, £1 million for you, Your Highness!

The British Serious Fraud Office has just dropped an investigation into the dealings of British Aerospace in relation to the contract with Saudi Arabia for arms and aircraft dating back 20 years. The basis of the investigation has been an accusation that BAE (as it is now called) managed a 'slush' fund with which they greased the palm of Prince Turki Bin Nasser, a prominent member of the Saudi Royal Family to procure arms agreements worth billions of pounds to the British economy and to employment prospects.



The decision has been met with howls of protest from some opposition M.P.s and accusations of pressure from the Blair Government to get the investigation halted once Saudi Arabia had threatened to pull out of a new deal with Britain for a fleet of Eurofighters worth £60 billion.



Now I am all in favour of ethical politics but seriously...if we are going to do business with regimes like the Saudis who have more money than they know what to do with then frankly you play by their rules..within reason i.e. short of murdering someone.

When you have an autocratic mediaeval monarchy, a culture in which a man is lauded for his wealth, his possessions and how much he can demand in tithes from those with whom he does business, what on earth is the point of sticking your political head in the sand and pretending that you can do business according to western fiscal standards? It is a pipe dream!

I am not in the least surprised that BAE had a £60 million slush fund. Had they not then deals worth billions would have been lost to countries who were less morally scrupulous than Britain has, apparently, attempted to be. Do I approve of it? On principle no of course not. Do I think it's worth while greasing the palm of these autocratic despots if it means 3000 workers in Bristol keep their jobs? You bet your sweet 'a' I do!

Prostitution and safety

Today's piece is rather a grim one. The most unlikely setting, the small city of Ipswich in Suffolk,has become the focal point of the national news because 5 working girls - the conventional euphemism for prostitutes - have been found murdered within the last 10 days. The small Suffolk police force, shocked and overwhelmed, now accepts that it is dealing with a serial killer of,presumably, prostitutes, but every woman in the area is now living in fear. (The picture below shows Gemma Adams and Tania Nicol, two of the murdered girls)



The news compels one to look at some pretty grim statistics with regard to the murder of prostitutes in the United Kingdom - they don't make pretty reading. Since 1992 over 100 girls working the streets of the United Kingdom have been murdered. Compare this to the vice capital of Europe, Amsterdam, where the number of working girls murdered over the same period is 15. Hundreds more women simply disappear off our streets, their fate never discovered.

There are a multitude of reasons for this but many of them boil down to one thing - social attitude. 'The Guardian' newspaper did an investigation into violence against prostitutes four years ago - not just murder, but beatings, rape and the like - and found that the average 'man in the street' doesn't care about the fate of these women. 'Most of 'em are asking for it', 'They've only got themselves to blame' and 'If they weren't selling themselves they wouldn't get hurt' were some of the attitudes - so when a prostitute is reported missing or simply disappears, who cares? The newspapers don't and it would seem that missing prostitutes come pretty low on the police scale of priorities too - until they turn up dead.

It is a strange irony that the home of Orange religious zeal has developed one of the most tolerant and successful relationships with its working girls, granting them tolerance zones where they can work in a reasonably safe environment under limited police protection, compared to the squalid street walking in dark, poorly lit streets that are the domain of Britain's prostitutes, the girls frequently moved on by a police force ever conscious of the need to remove the stigma from our streets.

The girls here are pariahs, with little protection and little sympathy when they get into trouble, and the situation is tailor made for the kerb crawling anonymous sadist and possible killer who can pluck single lonely girls off the street with no questions asked.




My City Council, for once amazingly enlightened, approached the government for permission to open the first vice tolerance zone in England in an area away from residential streets and where the girls would have access to secure accommodation and medical facilities but it was turned down by the Government as 'appearing to encourage immoral conduct'.

One of these days a British government is surely going to have to face up to this issue. Prostitution is as old as humanity itself and will never go away. (There is a nice touch of humour on the board advertising church services at the Oude Kerke in Amsterdam's red light area which says 'We are the second oldest profession in the city') and as long as British society continues to treat these women as social pariahs and pretend they didn't exist, rather than face up to the fact that these are very vulnerable human beings who are exposed to great danger, then we will continue to have working girls murdered, raped, beaten and 'disappeared' at a rate which should shame a civilised country.

Replacing Trident - another victory for poodle politics?

So Tony Blair and his (presumed) certain successor have announced that Britain is to spend up to £25 BILLION (pounds) on a replacement for the Trident underwater missile system which has been the mainstay of our nuclear defence capability since 1980 as a successor to the old Polaris missile system.



One has to ask,regardless of one's particular view about independent nuclear deterrents, why? We cannot launch them without American permission and so any military engagement involving the use of Trident missiles would never go ahead without American active participation. OK well assuming there are grounds for the use of such missiles, we are a poor country compared to the US, so why don't we just allow big Uncle Sam to look after us when such occasions demand and save the bread - its a lot of money for a nation which needs new hospitals, improved social service care and a whole host of improvements to our infra structure - for which £25 billion would go a fair way.

OK I can see the argument against. Because we need to hold our heads up in NATO. Because we have committed to be part of the western alliance shield. Because that means paying our way. Well OK that's a good argument if you accept the status quo.

Frankly I would like to see Britain pull out of NATO, strengthen our European political ties and become a driving force behind a European Defence Force on which we can spend a reasonable amount of military budget on areas which we can justify as being within the European sphere of influence - but it's a pipe dream. It will never happen, certainly not under Blair or Brown.

So what are the circumstances in which such expenditure is justified from within our current political and military alliances, forgetting any personal preferences. Do we see this system being used against China maybe? North Korea? I don't really think so. There is precious little evidence that the Chinese see Britain as a front line target for nuclear attack. Russia? Well certainly President Putin is behaving in a very Imperial fashion at present but I don't see the scenario of another nuclear stand-off as in the cold war days. As Ian Hislop dryly pointed out this week on 'Have I got News for you' it appears that the Russians have developed a more subtle way of spreading radiation throughout the United Kingdom. The situations in which we have been militarily involved in recent years would certainly not involve the use of Trident nuclear weapons and it is hard to envisage a scenario where such is likely.

So on what rationale was this decision reached? Tony Blair promised last year that the whole issue would be debated in Parliament before any decision was reached, then hey presto, on Dec 4th Blair announced that the Trident system would be replaced and that the decision had been made. This is not the first time Blair has misled the British people but presumably this decision was made after the recent trip to Washington when the Americans told him that he could consult all he liked but the British would continue to pay their nuclear way, like it or lump it.



The truth is that Britain is so dependent on American good will that we are in an unbreakable noose. British Prime Ministers can waffle on all they like about independent deterrents and free and open debates but we are tied to the American nuclear programme for as long as the Americans want us to be.

'Ethnic minorities' - as discredited a term as 'coloureds' ?

Matthew Parris, a writer I admire, made a good point in yesterday's 'Times', that the term 'ethnic minorities' is used in the UK as an 'acceptable' way of grouping together all those who are non-white. In that way, he argued, it is a 'nice' way of justifying the compulsion to group all non white Britons in one statistical bag. Because it is a twee and convenient tool of government and the media it is just as offensive, in a covert sense, as 'coloureds'

After all when used to describe social problems here it doesn't usually refer to the Poles, Alabanians, Romanians, Australians and other groups of caucasian racial type who live here but to the Afro Caribbeans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and black Africans who make up maybe 10% of the population of our inner cities. It is a term based on colour and not on genuine ethnic diversity.





And so Parris is right. It makes little sense, except as a polite tool to avoid accusations of racism, to continue to encourage the use of this term. The needs of people from an Afro Caribbean culture are vastly different from those from the Asian sub continent - and within that area, different religions and cultural observations apply and thus different requirements for each community.

As part and parcel of nation building, lets start calling all these people British and stop this breakdown into whites and others no matter how neatly we parcel it up. Certainly if something report worthy happens which for which a person's cultural background plays an important part then its probably fair to mention it in the press.

I would like to see Government documents stop referring to our 'ethnic minorities' as a catch all and either, if it is deemed necessary, pinpoint the culture to which the report refers or better still, refer to us all as 'British'

Blowing a dangerous raspberry!

The super story of the day is of the American Airlines flight which had to make an emergency landing at Nashville Airport after the smell of sulphur burning was detected in the cabin. It transpired that a woman passenger, embarrassed because she had 'broken wind', tried to hide the ensuing smell by frantically lighting matches - presumably, in her distress, forgetting that smoking is banned on flights these days.

How awful that must have been for her and it made me think of the social stigma we attach to the perfectly natural act of farting and the lengths to which people, particularly women, are driven to avoid the embarrassment of such things.

There is an apocryphal tale of the young lady who, full of nerves before a big date, realises that her stomach is full of gas just as her boyfriend rings the doorbell. Unable to remedy the situation before her mother has let the boy in she resolves to hold on desperately until he ushers her into the passenger seat then, with perfect timing as he slams the door, let fly with a ripper and thus ease the problem. She thinks, inside the darkened car, that her plan has worked perfectly until her boyfriend gets in and draws her attention to the two friends sitting in the back seat!

Such stories are legion and it makes one wonder whether, in this modern era of social graces we may not be doing ourselves some gastro intestinal damage by worrying too much about about this sort of thing. Maybe we would be better going back to the days when wind at both ends was the sign of a healthy exhaust and to hell with what the neighbours thought!

A gay day for 'The Archers'

Britain's longest running radio serial, 'The Archers' has long been thought of as the solid heartbeat of the nation. Broadcast now for an unbelievable 55 years every night of the week, clocking up an incredible 15,000 episodes, it always reflected everything that was 'good and decent' about British values, somewhere that the population could retreat to as an escape from the world that was rapidly changing outside.



When I was a child my mother listened avidly to 'The Archers' - termed then a simple everyday story of country folk. The main characters were farmer Dan Archer and his loyal wife Doris and their son Phil - now the oldest surviving character. When his story-line wife Grace 'died' in a fire in one of the episodes way back in the 50s, the BBC was taken aback by the emotional response. Hundreds of wreaths were sent by listeners to the 'funeral' and it was the first time that the BBC chiefs realised how closely and personally listeners identified with the happenings in the show and how easy it is to blur fantasy and reality.

Its theme music, called 'Barwick Green' has been played, virtually unaltered, since episode 1 and is recognised by every generation of Britons as 'The Archers' music even if they have never heard the show.

Three years ago the Archers broke new and very risky ground. The programme introduced a homosexual couple into the show, a relationship which, of course, would have been illegal all those years ago when the show began and something which the scriptwriters would never have dared attempt without some clear idea that the attitudes of its once deeply conservative listeners had changed.

Next week, new ground is broken when the show features its first gay wedding, the episode on 14th December celebrating the civil union between the two men.



Shows like 'The Archers' do more than any Government polls or statistics to determine the changing views of a country because the BBC keeps an anxious eye on listening figures and listener reaction to any sudden shift in social attitudes. Hardly anyone has complained about the relationship, 'The Archers' is still the most listened to serial on radio and nearly 3/4 million people listen to it over the internet. The scriptwriters have been brave enough and bright enough to infuse new and challenging social dynamics, rather than allow the programme to fester as a Britain of bygone dreams - and more power to their elbow for doing so!

Ya want spies with that?

Next week the United States is to launch its latest addition to the War on Human Rights by allocating a secret code to every air traveler to the U.S. The ratings which will be used to subject people to further interrogation and maybe even arrest - with no evidence of any wrong doing - are to remain secret for 40 years, cannot be challenged by the people under surveillance and cannot be even viewed by them.

The new scoring system, called the Automated Targeting System is the latest brainchild of America's Department of Homeland Security and gives even those of us who love our friends in the United States the distinct impression that, with regard to security, the U.S. is becoming paranoid to the point of wacky.



Among the elements used to allocate a 'score' to people who, remember have no criminal convictions and no history, include their travel records, where they are from, how they paid for their tickets, their car records, their seating preference, past one-way travel and what meal they ordered.

I can see the regular tourist flights from the UK to Orlando being a lot of fun in future.

"Hey, Marvin, we got some real baaad shit goin' down here. Send some backup. There could be trouble! We got a guy scored zero"

"What did the guy dooooo? Why he only sat through the whole goddam flight wearing a straw hat, a Hawaiian beach shirt and those ugly shorts the Limeys wear, that's what he did! He's gotta be a terrorist. Like Jeez man no real Brit has THAT much bad taste!

"No, no that ain't all! He ordered a chip butty! I mean like fuck, thats some Islamic crap ain't it? Whaaaaatt?? OK OK smartass so that's a chapatti. Well shit, man they sound the goddam same!

"Then when the flight attendant refused to serve him any more lager, he slapped her on the ass and yelled 'Bloody 'ell - two ferrets in a sack!'

"Thats gotta be some terrorist code right? I mean shit, its obvious theres two guys waiting and they're up to no good, right- ?"

...and I fear that the interminable queues to get through US Immigration will become so interminable that the end of your vacation will arrive before you make it past those first grim faced officials who welcome you so enthusiastically to the United States and kick your holiday off with that nice warm glow! Personally I think I'll go to Blackpool next year!

The greatest sporting challenge - and how to survive it.

OK I'm English and I'm biased but I have always felt that the greatest raw sporting challenge, the greatest test of character and of 'bottle' that man could ever face is in the white hot arena of a 5 day cricket test match ...and no other conflict matches the atmosphere of the biennial Battle for the 'Ashes' - the historic series between England and Australia - as the supreme example of that. A test not just of ability, but of patience, stamina, mental toughness. All these qualities have to be displayed to get the edge, to drive home the psychological advantage. Two nations with a love/hate relationship going back of course to the founding of Australia as a prison colony and the consequent reminders of that by Englishmen to Aussies ever since. Fortunately the 'hate' part usually confines itself to the sporting arena when a nation of charming wonderful people suddenly leaves Dr.Jekyll behind and becomes Mr.Hyde, players, supporters and particularly the Australian media pouring scorn and derision on everything English.

Cricket is not the nice, afternoon stroll that non participants sometimes fondly imagine - not at the supreme professional level anyway. Australians, particularly, are past masters at the art of psyching out an opponent, playing mind games, unsettling the opposition even before the game starts.

There have been some colourful characters in the game over the years and one legendary fan was a a guy named Steve Gascoigne, a passionate Australian, known to the locals on his favourite 'taunting spot' the Hill at Sydney Cricket Ground, as 'Yabba'. He had a loud and well projected voice and his favourite occupation was to taunt English batsmen. There are many comments attributed to 'Yabba' but one of his most famous is when a celebrated English batsman was struggling for form against an Aussie fast bowler, playing at and missing the ball regularly. 'Yabba' was heard to shout in a big booming voice 'Oy Ray, chuck the bastard a grand piano. Lets see if he can play that!"



If its tough for the players what about the armchair fans? Especially when you are in England and the series is played in Australia. The games start at midnight and continue until 6.30am UK time. Its a nightmare. How can any true fan go to bed while this gladiatorial contest is being played out live on his television screen?

I have discovered half an answer -though its not totally satisfactory and leaves me feeling drained in the morning. Sleep for a couple of hours before the game starts then watch from Midnight to 2am or 2.30am - the lunch break in Australia. Catch another hours sleep and come back fighting for another 2 hours, then have another nap and repeat the dose until 6.30. Over the last leg you need plenty of hot coffee!

At least England has started this game better than it began the one in Brisbane. Lets hope its not a false dawn and the result is still the same embarrassing shambles. Whatever, this stiff upper lipped Englishman will be there in front of his TV set, eyelids propped open with match sticks, foaming hot coffee at the ready, cheering our lads on!

Playing the blame game

Imagine being told by the person who blew up your house that it's YOUR fault that you are cold and suffering from exposure, because you're not rebuilding it fast enough! More than a little unreasonable wouldn't you say? Yet that, in effect, is what this discredited American administration is saying to the Government of Iraq.

George Bush, for whom the term 'lame duck' is a form of flattery - as most ducks have some sense of direction - is now spending his declining two years (Oh God is it REALLY that long?) in office trying still to look like a Commander in Chief with the respect of all he surveys.




The truth is that the Smirking Chimp (as a good American friend terms him) looks like the survivor of a train smash staggering from one smouldering piece of wreckage to another looking for help.

He is currently in Jordan with the Prime Minister of Iraq discussing ways the Americans can blame Iraq for the current state of civil war....ooops sorry, searching for ways in which the warring communities of Iraq can be pulled together by fresh initiatives by the Iraqi Government.

Because its not a civil war is it. Its just a little local difficulty and 'shucks well folks, y'all know that I'm no quitter. Times are tough right now but we are gonna win....' etc etc but no one is listening.

His removal of the Taleban in Afghanistan then leaving the ruins of the country to other NATO nations "We don't DO nation building!" has meant that British forces have faced - surprise, surprise - the Taleban who simply fell back and regrouped. Every military adventure undertaken by the Bush Government has been a catastrophic failure. Now Bush and Blair are desperately trying to get other nations to take over the responsibility. Like trying to sell a car that has no brakes.




The truth is that Bush can talk all he likes but his War on Terror is a miserable incompetent failure which will be judged by history as one of the most disastrous and despicable political decisions in American history. His military adventure has failed, people are being murdered by the hundreds in Iraq every day while the Americans look on in helpless impotence. His promised peace initiatives in Palestine have withered on the vine and the Republican Administration simply looks helpless and useless..which in fact it is.


I can only hope that the Democrats who now control Congress can come up with a compromise solution that gets American troops out of Iraq. Nothing will be accomplished by the Iraqi Government until that takes place. That may well mean that the current Iraqi Government is overthrown and one which is anathema to the Americans is returned. No matter. What is needed is some form of stability returned to that sad country regardless of its political hue.

Red Tape gone barmy!

Today it was announced that a 58 year old man, who has lived in the West Midlands for 57 years, has never known anything but a Midlands home and has never even been abroad on holiday has been told by the Home Office that because, technically, he is not a British citizen he has to take a 'Britishness' test to see if he can stay here!

This is because his mother had a relationship with a G.I. based in Britain, and who then spirited his bride back to the States where the child was born and registered as an American. Eleven months later the marriage collapsed and mother and baby returned to her home in the West Midlands of England where the lad grew up, went to the local primary school, and thenceforth lived and worked in the area. Now OK technically I suspect the HO are right because the mother did not change her child's status but surely there is some flexibility and common sense, but it seems not - Civil Service rules cannot be bent, warped or twisted.



Now the man, Len Sutera, has to take a Home Office test which could be quite taxing. Two of the questions baffled me completely. "What % of Britons claim to have a religious belief?" I hadn't a clue - it turned out to be 75%. "Give the dates of all the National Days in the UK" - Huh???? - I got one right, St Patricks Day.

How poor old Len will fare I have no idea but I suspect his biggest challenge will come with the killer question:

"Demonstrate an adequate command of the English language" - Impossible if you hear his dialect! Len lives in Wednesbury!!!

Supernannies in the Nanny state

The Prime Minister has announced today that £4million is to be spent on the provision of 'Supernannies' to be located in the worst areas for juvenile misbehaviour in England. The idea is that, first of all on a voluntary basis, these child psychologists will assist hapless and hopeless parents in the task of bringing up their children.



The United Kingdom has already been labeled, by the Institute for Public Policy Research, as the worst country in Europe for juvenile misbehaviour - not necessarily serious crime, but 12 year olds drinking in the street, wrecking fencing, damaging cars and so on.

The Government has intimated that at first the scheme will be voluntary but that if bad anti social behaviour continues then parents may be compelled to attend parenting courses.

I have to admit this is an area that makes me see red and I have every sympathy with the Prime Minister's intentions though I don't know if compulsion will work.

I try hard to be so liberal in most of my social attitudes but then I see the behaviour of many kids, even in my own reasonably affluent area, and I find myself shamefully thinking that maybe compulsory sterilisation for some young men and women would be money better spent. The product on Britain's streets today is obviously not an overnight phenomenon. It's the product of a successive generational decline in the degree of responsibility parents have accepted for raising their children, the parents themselves being products of irresponsible parenting and so the vicious spiral has just become worse and worse.

I know its not the done thing to say but we have Europe's biggest problem in single mothers matched by our singular success in having the highest rate of below legal age pregnancies too. We are told that it's 'bad form' to condemn the changing sexual attitudes and that nobody should suggest that being a single mom is a stigma. Well I don't want anyone to be stigmatised but I would like to see some emphasis being placed on a return to the conceiving of children within a stable, preferably marital, relationship.

We have practised and indulged the liberal creed of 'anything goes' to the point where, in many areas, there is no sense of responsibility about sexual coupling, or taking precautions, or what happens as a result because pregnancy is a way of jumping up the housing queue for the estate girls who just want to get away from home. What happens to the progeny is an afterthought. It doesn't matter, the state will clear up the mess, pay the benefits - ignoring the fact that unwanted little Johnny probably grows into mean minded and vindictive little Hoodie because his stupid parents have no time for him and little ability to cope with their own lives let alone his.

The consequence of course is the ASBO generation we have now (for non Britons an ASBO is an Anti Social Behaviour Order designed to curfew troublesome children) and the fact that they revel in being so 'honoured'. Its a mark of toughness to get an ASBO.




Now we have the latest state designed attempt to get our society back on the straight and narrow - the Supernanny who will show all these parents how to do their job. I admire Mr Blair for trying but I wonder if its just a gesture like the little Dutch boy trying to block the leaks in the dike - just a sad, flailing gesture when what is needed is a whole shake up of our attitudes towards sex and parenting. We should be handing out some stick with all the welfare carrots and compelling some of these morons who think having kids is 'just a laff' to face up to their responsibilities right from the off.

I don't know why this issue makes me so angry. Maybe it's because I was not brought up in riches and neither were my neighbours' children but we never went off the rails like this. If we did we got a good hiding and I know thats an AWFUL thing to say to todays liberals who, in my opinion, are partly to blame for the crisis we now have among our youth. If kids have no discipline in their lives they have no focus -and that has been the problem for at least the last two generations.

I watched the news broadcasts of 17 year old Sandra in Bristol with her out of control 3 year old and I could have thrown something at the set! These people are just so irresponsible and so patently unfit to be parents that you really fear for the future.

Maybe we need to forcibly take these kids away from their totally inadequate parents and bring them up in state homes like they do in China. OK OK I have gone completely over the top - but when one sees some of the people who are responsible for the next British generation, one is driven to extremes of authoritarian fantasy!!

Foot in mouth disease

One of Tony Blair's closest allies in the Labour Party - pause while readers try and recall if he has ANY allies in the Labour Party - is Margaret Hodge,a close personal friend (possibly still) and currently a Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry.

Adding to Mr.Blair's now long list of 'when you have friends like these who needs..etc etc' Mrs Hodge was, last week, guest speaker at a meeting of the Fabian Society, the left wing think-tank, in London.



At the meeting, Mrs Hodge is reported to have said that the Iraq War had been the Prime Minister's biggest mistake in foreign affairs. It would seem, in the eyes of Mrs Hodge, to be one of many. She went on to add that she had had serious doubts about his approach to foreign affairs since 1998. She said that Mr. Blair was guilty of 'moral imperialism' in trying to export British attitudes and methods of government to other countries. She went on to say that she had gone along with the Iraq War because 'Tony was our leader and at the time I trusted his judgment'.

Not content with dissing the Prime Minister's competence in foreign affairs she then proceeded to display a remarkable naivety for a Minister of the Crown by saying at the end of her address:

"This won't be reported will it?"

Silly Girl!!!

Making too much of a meal of it?

The British TV watchdog, OFCOM, has announced very stringent regulations on the advertising of junk food on television. Beginning within a month, there must be no advertising of food with a high concentration of salt, sugar or fat on any TV programmes made for children and, on any TV channel which caters exclusively for children.





The restrictions do not stop there. Also included are any adult programmes (and they are to be listed) which OFCOM considers are watched by large numbers of children, including the MTV and VH1 music channels.

Swingeing and much harsher than most people expected - and the TV chiefs are saying it will cost them nearly £40 million in lost revenues.

For the health campaigners that is still nowhere near enough. Representatives of the British Heart Foundation and the British Medical Association are already crying that the measures do not go far enough. They are demanding a 9pm watershed before which no such foods can be advertised at all.

I have waxed lyrical before on this blog about the danger of excessive legislation prompted by good intentions and I believe what OFCOM has already determined is as far as it is reasonable, in a consumer society, to go.

The well intentioned diet 'nannies' do give the impression of a society where the influence of parents is negligible and the entire apparatus for ensuring that little Johnny and Janey do not turn into shapeless blobs at 14 and consequently die at thirty from heart disease is all in the hands of the state.

I recognise that we are living in an age of growing and dangerous over indulgence where there are more young children being diagnosed with diabetes because of obesity, even at a very young age but you are not, in my opinion, going to change that too much by banning the advertising of McDonalds produce during the screening of Scooby Doo.

McDonalds, BurgerKing, Dominos etc have a right to market their products as best they can in a consumer society. After all they are not selling poison per se. Despite the emotional arguments to the contrary, so called junk food is only bad for you in excess - like anything else. I just feel that these lifestyle guardians are taking away the responsibility from parents and from the children themselves, to make measured and educated choices.



It probably is sensible to limit the more seductive advertisements with free gifts etc shown to impressionable small children but as for a 9pm watershed before one sees a commercial for a hot dog - well that just strikes me as ridiculously prescriptive.

Red Herrings a -plenty

Our soon to be departed Prime Minister, who many of us believe is only waiting until the United States changes its Constitution to allow foreigners to stand for President before he swans off across the Pond to try for the big one - after all he is much more popular in America than he is here-, has been giving evidence and suggestions to the Iraq Study Group chaired by James Baker.



This in itself has caused howls of rage among some Members of the British Parliament who failed in an attempt to get Blair to accept an enquiry into the conduct of the war here in the UK in front of his own Parliament.

It would seem that Blair has wandered off the original mandate and suggested to Baker that one of the significant stepping stones to peace in Iraq would be for the west ( and he means America in particular) to step up diplomatic initiatives to resolve the tension between Israel and Hamas.



I mean, like - hello, Tony - are you really serious that such a deal would have a major impact on the political situation in Iraq? Or are you playing for time so that we have to make no decision about our own troops in Iraq until you have left office and Gordon Brown has all the shit to deal with? Forgive my cynicism but I suspect the latter.

I am strongly in favour of diplomatic initiatives to resolve the Israel/Palestinian crisis but how long does Blair think that is going to take?

The truth is that we need new and radical initiatives in Iraq NOW not some time come never. It is apparent that the root causes of certain sectarian violence is being ignored, like the kidnap of over 100 people yesterday of one particular Islamic following, where the police responsible for their welfare were from the other major sect. This just cannot go on and the US and Britain HAVE to exercise some form of blackmail in dealing with Talibani and Al-Maliki to the effect that these Iraqi officials need to get their act together if they expect to be helped to stay in office by the presence of US and British troops for ANY reasonable length of time - that or we pull put and simply leave them to it.




Bush and Blair need to apply themselves very clearly and very directly to what is going on in Iraq. Muddying already muddy waters still further by waffling on about the Palestinians in this context is simply hot air.

Defending the rights of the obnoxious

Yesterday, two members of the right wing, racist British National Party (B.N.P), Nick Griffin, its leader, and Mark Collett were cleared of inciting racial hatred. The charges against them stemmed from a secret film of the pair made by the BBC at a private B.N.P. meeting in Yorkshire in 2005 where the phrases 'Islam is a wicked,vicious faith' and 'Muslims are turning Britain into a multi-racial hell-hole' were used.




Although I dislike intensely the whole ethos of the B.N.P. I found myself compelled to applaud the verdicts - and then begin to worry about the reaction to them from the British Government.

We have a new Racial and Religious Hatred Act under which these charges were brought and, as with many other well intentioned pieces of legislation, I fear that one of the consequences will be the annulment of the right to hold an opinion and express it in public if the government considers that opinion to be unacceptable. This is a dangerous road for any government in a free democratic society.

Let me examine the circumstances in which the purported offences took place, the nature of the purported offences themselves, and the involvement of the State.

First of all the circumstances. The speeches were made to an invited audience of BNP supporters in a private room of a pub in Keighley, Yorkshire. These were supporters and sympathisers. It was not, by my perception, a public venue where passing Muslims could hear, and be antagonised by, the nature of the remarks.

In fact the remarks would never have come to light had it not been for a BBC camera crew passing themselves off as supporters and secretly filming Griffin and Collett as part of the fashionable trait of undercover journalism. While I accept that much of this work is good in exposing immigrant smugglers, slave traders etc I am concerned if it is going to be used to sneak around the country spying on those with whom the authorities have political differences and in order to make secret film which can then be used in prosecutions. This is too much like the KGB for me. I felt the whole justification for this case was shabby, as it appears, did the jurors.

Now the remarks themselves. The comments Griffin made are the kind of remarks people make in pub discussions, not solely about Islam but about any issue about which they hold passionate opinions. I have heard strong opinions on Catholicism, on Arabs, on Germans (mainly by those old enough to have fought in the last war) but we don't have a religious or cultural war on our hands as a result. Good Lord we even burn the Pope in effigy on Nov 5th every year!

It would be a different matter had Griffin and Collett advocated beating up Muslims or damaging their property. Had comments been made which were specifically aimed at persuading those at the meeting to go out and perform aggressive and violent acts I would have supported the criminal prosecution. No matter how much I disagree with and dislike the tenor of the remarks they did NOT suggest that and do not for me constitute grounds for criminal prosecution - and again the jury agreed.

Now, and for me the biggest source of concern, the British Government. What has been their response to the verdict yesterday? "OK, we need to be a little more judicious in the way we choose these prosecutions?" No of course not! Instead our presumed next Prime Minister talks about tightening up the Racial Hatred Act so that we get them next time and our Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer has spoken of 'ensuring comments like this are legally outlawed as we want to send a positive message to young Muslims'.

Frankly I find this attitude quite disturbing. It is, in essence, saying 'We have a tinderbox on our doorstep and we are frightened to death of it. Therefore in the interests of damping down unrest, we have to make sure that Muslims who might be offended and thus resort to violence are not given any excuse'



Well I think that's pathetic. I don't want to offend Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, Jews or any other faith but at the same time I believe we are in danger of sacrificing a fundamental right to freedom of opinion simply as an expedient to preventing violence by one section of our society. Lord Falconer may be right in believing that Muslims think they are singled out for criticism but there are many reasons for that and many solutions to it - but not an excuse, in my opinion,to stifle personal opinion using repressive legislation.

I am quite in agreement with stopping hate mongers who advocate violence screaming out their demands on a public platform but we are in danger of blurring the distinction between genuine incitement and personal opinion, no matter how obnoxious many might find that opinion to be. I am not being naive here. I think the B.N.P., under Griffin's leadership has become a lot smarter politically in what it says - and that was evidenced by yesterday's verdict. I don't think the Party has become any more benign in its intentions towards immigrants than it ever was. However, in a democratic fair society no government must be allowed to manipulate the law to get the result it wants - and that includes acting against neo-nazi organisations.

Down this road of ever more repressive - and worse, manipulated - legislation lies the authoritarian state - and whatever our personal views of the B.N.P., the machinery used to inhibit them might have consequences more far reaching than we can envisage.

Is America stepping back into the light?

In a wonderful night for the Democrats, the Party took control of the House of Representatives and is within two seats, both too close to call at present, of taking control of the Senate. Under the, to the British, slightly strange American system, this means that the President of the United States is effectively neutered on many of his policy initiatives unless he can get support from the Democratic majority in Congress.

This is rather like Tony Blair trying to remain Prime Minister while faced with a majority of Conservatives in Parliament. It couldn't happen here, of course, because although Blair is our political leader he is not, unlike George Bush, also head of State. Non Americans might think that this US system is a bit stifling for the Executive - which is probably the idea - and which, in many circumstances, would be a bad thing.

I'm sure most Europeans will share my view though that, regardless of what we perceive to be a political idiosyncrasy, last night's result can only be greeted with a roar of enthusiasm and a sign of relief - given that the stricken President is George Bush. If he cannot be removed then at least he can be put in a strait-jacket.



Maybe, with the new leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who is nobody's shrinking violet, prepared to stand up to Bush for a change in foreign policy, we might at last see a United States which begins to move back towards the middle ground, away from this confrontational military machine which has so alienated most of the world over the last 6 years.



It is heavily rumoured that as part of the conciliation talks which have to take place between Congress and the Executive, one of the first casualties will be Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Few tears will be shed on this side of the Pond if that turns out to be the case and, indeed, the one regret is that the man will not be facing a war crimes tribunal.

The American electorate has, thank goodness, finally given the thumbs down to more of the same reckless squandering of human life, American and other, which has been the trademark of the Bush administration and hopefully these steps back into the light of a more rational United States, the one that used to be admired by so many, will be completed in 2008 with the return of a Democratic Presidency. One can but hope!

Crime wave - or punishment wave?

As I write the current Labour Government in Britain has brought in 3,023 new laws in the nine years since it came to power. Now obviously some of these laws are updating the statute book to reflect modern conditions but this is still TWICE the rate of the previous Conservative government. Some of these laws include banning the import of pistachio nuts, Brazil nuts and chilis from Iran, or potatoes from Poland. Others seem to have a Pythonesque quality. It is now illegal to enter the hull of the 'Titanic' without permission. It is illegal to cause a nuclear explosion (well there's a surprise!). Its illegal to sell grey squirrels or impersonate a traffic warden. OK some of these, despite the apparent silliness, have a sound reason behind them. Others are aimed at restricting our freedom even more and have a far more sinister implication.

At the same there have been mixed signals about crime sentencing policy. There has been an inclination to punish, with custodial sentences, far more crimes than was the case ten years ago. First time burglars now have a 25% rather than a 15% chance of going to prison.

While all this is happening our prisons remain as primarily Victorian edifices, lagging behind, both in space and facilities, to house the growing number of people the government seems intent on incarcerating.

The centre-left think tank 'Compass' makes the following observations in its publication 'The good society':-

'England and Wales now has the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe. And yet the 2003 Criminal Justice Act provides the capacity to vastly increase the rate of imprisonment in the future. When the prison system once again bursts at the seams with overcrowding, where shall we incarcerate the ever increasing number of prisoners - floating hulks, offshore islands, oil rigs, army camps? We have a society that doesn't know what to do with the social problems it has created.

Who are the increasing numbers of people we are locking up? Not career criminals. Their collective profile provides a shameful insight into the injustices and inequalities of the last three decades. The average prisoner age is 27 with a quarter under 22. 27% of these were taken into care as children. The growth of punishment under New Labour's 'tough' approach to crime has been at the expense of the most vulnerable.'

It is clear as the assessment continues that much of the criminal problem is down to three things - mental health, drugs and alcohol. 'Compass' insists that we must put more money into fighting drug and alcohol addiction and stop shoving people whose prime problem is mental illness into prison and instead recognise the symptoms for what they are. We need to stop this knee jerk of locking people up in order to flex government muscle and instead start to seriously investigate environmental and family background reasons why people go off the rails. Much of it could be nipped in the bud if we had the will to do it. Whether we do or not could determine the nature of this country over the next ten years and beyond.

Does it depend who is murdering who?

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death for 'crimes against humanity' for his responsibility in the killing of 148 people at Dujail in 1982. Sentenced to death, ostensibly, by a jury of his peers set up by a Government created and supported by the United States and Britain.



But hang on a minute. In order to get this man to trial did not the aforementioned United States, with Britain's backing, kill something in the order of between 100,000 and 600, 000 Iraqi citizens, many of them innocent women and children? Many of these deaths came from the much vaunted 'shock and awe' tactics organised by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the behest of the evil Bush.

So when are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair going to appear before a world court and justify their actions in killing possibly half a million innocent people? Oh they're not! I see so its like Nuremberg. You are only a heartless evil monster when you are on the other side!

Sometimes a cartoon is enough!

A nation comes of age

The modern South Africa is a new country and it has had so much to learn and absorb since the end of apartheid and white Afrikaner Nationalist government. There are still many weaknesses within the country - some political corruption, a high crime rate and terrible pockets of poverty. A stubbornness by its President, Thabo Mbeki, in refusing to recognise the cause of AIDS.

Countering all that, however, to the surprise of many, has been the speed with which the African National Congress has matured from a terror organisation (in the eyes of many) to a mature political party which has handled the reins of government with increasing confidence and growing maturity. It has a cabinet style government which can over rule the leader (unlike the United Kingdom which is only supposed to have one!) and which has overruled Mbeki on the AIDS question, instituting a programme of information and medical care. It established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, surely one of the most amazing acts by any independent African government, to bring out into the open, confess and then expiate all the sins of the Apartheid era and avoid the rancour of an open running sore - in which it has succeeded quite admirably.

And now yesterday, P.W.Botha, the 'Crocodile', the last but one Apartheid Premier, died at the age of 90. I would bet that 12 or so years ago this news would have been met by black South Africa with joyous chanting and cries of 'Good Riddance'.



Yesterday there was none of that. Instead the former and first black President of the nation, Nelson Mandela, who was released from captivity by Botha, commented on the old man's death with dignity and said that 'As a nation we should remember P.W. Botha, not as a bastion of apartheid, but as the man who took the first steps, at a difficult time, towards the reconciliation of our country.'



Truly the Rainbow Nation has come of age.

Weasel Words

Yesterday the B Liar Government escaped by the skin of its teeth from being forced to hold an enquiry into the conduct of the war in Iraq. Maybe the timing of the demand for such an enquiry, a coalition of Nationalists, Conservatives and Liberals was opportunistic, but it was hard to avoid curling my lip in contempt to hear the Divine Beckett, our latest Foreign Secretary, talking about an enquiry sending 'a wrong message to our gallant troops, already in great danger'.

Why do weaselly politicians always look to the interest of 'our gallant troops overseas' whenever their foreign policy comes under scrutiny? Beckett, who reminds one of the old Groucho Marx line, 'I have strong principles - but if you don't like them, I have others' - was once described by Britain's erstwhile Foreign Secretary, Denis Healey, as 'The Vicar of Bray' of the Labour Party, prepared to bend her views to suit any master. She is ideally suited for the job of B Liar's lap dog to feebly defend the indefensible.




Do B liar and Beckett think 'our gallant troops overseas' are stupid? I'm certain our soldiers would rather be re assured that a major debate was taking place about the role they are undertaking and whether their lives are being squandered needlessly, rather than continue to be killed and maimed in a hell hole manufactured by Bush and supported by Blair because spineless politicians haven't the guts to admit they were wrong.