Catnip

Sometimes you can pop down the cinema and be confronted with a rather depressing list, options narrowed if you have forgotten your £D specs at home. With much umming and aahing, we opted for Puss in Boots (2D) – I would have gone for Aardman’s Arthur Christmas but that was only available in 3D (we never watched Arthur Christmas while it was still in the cinema in the end).


After the tired performances of the last two Shrek movies, there was some trepidation about venturing into another adventure by the same people. Puss in Boots was now the eponymous star of the show, giving him a backstory in what seemed like a prequel to the Shrek saga. Set in some vertiginous outpost of Spain’s New World empire, it follows Puss’ latest hustle, the marks being the abominable twosome of Jack and Jill and their radioactive-looking magic beans. He is thwarted by Kitty Softpaws who is working for Humpty ‘Alexander’ Dumpty (not the English civil war royalist cannon that fell from its ramparts, but the nursery rhyme figure that resulted from the incident). The three together set out to capture the beans and raid the giant’s castle but who can be trusted.

The strength of the movie - in contrast to the previous two Shreks - is not in the setpieces, enjoyably chaotic as they are, but in the characterisation that makes you care or cavil in equal measure over the protagonists. Despite being in some baked Sierra Madre-like territory, it is a welcome about turn from lush and/or swampy fairyland, much of the humour seeming fresher, as well as giving a new and appropriate angle for Antonio Banderas to polish his Zorro burr (for of course he was the hero of the modern Zorro movies). Salma Hayek as a sultry Kitty with a traumatic past, Zach Galifianakis as the constantly scheming egg whose motives expertly change (or rather are revealed) as the narrative progresses and Billy Bon Thornton and Amy Sedaris as the hideous hill-billies Jack and Jill – all are worthy ingredients to a prequel that is the recipe for a sequel. Four out of five.

The Peter (un)Principle(d)?

Hearing the news live on the BBC Radio 4 last night at 10.15 p.m., that Stephen Hester was declining to take his bonus, I thought: ah, he doesn’t want to be another Fred the Shred, he still has eyes on a knighthood. And sure enough, a précis of his explanation a few minutes later was that he did not want to be a pariah. So the European market is depressed because of the sovereign debt crisis, sending the Royal Bank of Scotland’s share price down by a third – it’s still a failure for a supposed Master of the Universe and why should failure be rewarded? He reduced RBS’s exposure here and slashed departments and offshoots there – this is his job for which he is paid handsomely to the tune of £1.2 million. A bonus is for going beyond and above the call of duty and succeeding. It is not a mandatory payment by virtue of its name – a bonus! If bankers don’t like these new strictures, they can relocate for there will be people who can fill their shoes happily under such rules and such people will be untainted of responsibility for the banking crash in the first place.


Also, Nicolas Sarkozy has unilaterally decreed that a Tobin tax will in be in place in France by August. A 0.1% tariff on transactions will not be a serious interdict to capital flows but will make bankers think twice when they sign off a deal, particularly if it is big. Sarkozy is clearly playing to a domestic audience’s dislike of globalisation and the CAC is not on the same par as the FTSE or Dow Jones, but it is brave nonetheless and making the people who damaged national economies are made to help pay for it (sure, within narrow limits most financial institutions may have repaid their debts but not for the wider damage that rippled out). Having Merkel campaign alongside him may rebound negatively though, as it did with Putin in the Ukraine in 2004. He won’t mention it during the election campaign but if Barack Obama wins a second term, it would be useful in staunching the runaway national debt of the USA. If Mitt Romney wins in November, expect all mention of a Tobin Tax to disappear without trace.

Over (in Africa) and out

I think the biggest problem with the Africa Cup of Nations is neither the half-empty stadiums or the dreadful football on display (this year Côte d’Ivoire versus Burkina Faso, for example, was not merely boring but the technique on display from gifted players was appalling).  Nor is it the fact that this year it is being hosted by one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world in the form of Equatorial Guinea, with Gabon not far behind in being a kleptomaniac hereditary ‘republic’.  Also, that it is played in winter can be discounted since anywhere north of the equator would have be played in stifling, life-threatening heat – ever since the death of Marc-Vivien Foé in 2003 during the Confederations Cup, these matters have to be taken with the utmost seriousness.  No, my beef is that, unlike the World Cup and European Championships, it is played every two years and so on a biennial basis European clubs are stripped of such players as these .  Quadrennially, it would be understandable that Africa has certain strictures placed upon it, both from the natural and political climates and holding it every two years also diminishes the value of actually winning the tournament, but my reasons are largely club-motivated selfishness.  I can't deny it.

Newcastle United losing Demba Ba and Cheik Tiote, whilst also signing Papa Demba Cissé, it has been a grievous blow to a small squad.  Players of the highest calibre have been replaced with willing tryers who no longer make the cut or never really have done.  Then again, when the team puts in a listless performance for 75 minutes until they concede a goal, they deserve all the brickbats they will receive and even the best strikers could only staunch the bleeding, instead of curing outright.  This was a great year for the FA Cup with both Manchesters and a fair few other Premier League teams out but as NUFC.com said, the club has a reputation for footballing self-harm.  Brighton and Hove Albion were abysmal against tiny Wrexham AFC over two matches but when they were no longer the giants but the underdogs they suddenly gained extra vigour.  Newcastle by contrast, without an away win in the FA Cup since 2006, failed to rise above the risible.  Ba and Cissé are urgently required and will soon be back in club harness but Tiote completes the picture as much as he dominates midfield and, despite ‘playing within themselves’ against Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire are most probably going to be in action for another three and a half weeks.  I, meanwhile, am depressed for the second Saturday running.

One more reason for Putin to hate Britain

I settled down last night, after watching the excellent documentary Putin, Russia and the West, to see if Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy lived up to the hype. Unfortunately, the documentary that I watched prior to it had more laughs.


The trails for the E4 show were promising. I have a great affinity for the absurd, whimsy and the surreal, but I sat grim-faced throughout, the odd half-smile maybe a twitch of irritation on reflection. A slideshow of paintings by Dali and others of the surrealist movement would have been rewarding. Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy, also riffing on The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper and Yellow Submarine, was about as luxurious as steaming crap poured into one’s eyes at a spa, all the while being assured “this will make you fell better, the best money can buy” (one spa treatment for Stephen Hester, RBS boss, please). Frankly, contracting psoriasis would be funnier.

It was akin to turning up at a house party where everyone is stoned and those who have the energy think they’re hilarious. But they’re not. Fielding is very engaging as a captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks but taking part in a celebrity game show is much the same as an old sports pro turning pundit – it’s cash for old rope. Creating a show based on jokes that is more than will-o-the-wisp is harder. The sketches were cliché-ridden and banal – I know Richard Pryor said ‘start with truth’ and clichés have kernels of truth in them, but this is ridiculous. In a similar mould, the video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer (let alone Lady Gaga’s visual spectaculars) had more wit in four minutes than I imagine there would be in four hours of Fielding’s shtick (it’s a disaster when the adverts are more enjoyable).

In a way it was brave, overturning the fashion for observational comedy, yet it felt dated, as if stuck forty years in the past, rather than forward-looking. Even on paper, the lines would have fallen flat, spiking an offball concept from the outset. With this sentence, they would probably done an elongated skit on how words on paper always fall flat – it’s a two-dimensional format. Witness the deconstructivist material that equated a felt-tip pen drawing of Pelé with the Mona Lisa – the kind of hoary relativism and weak hokum-cum-satire that wouldn’t even make the grade as sixth-form humour (fifth-form possibly). Next week, after Putin, Russia and the West, I will be switching off.

The more things change...

To the roll of infamy that lists Jacob ‘Howling Jake’ Smith and William ‘Rusty’ Calley, we have a new addition: Frank Wuterich. And to miscarriages of justice of which the other two benefited, we have another. It remains to be seen how harshly those marines filmed urinating on dead Afghans are treated.

Brigadier-General Jacob H Smith had been tasked with counter-insurgency in the Philippines, then a US protectorate, in 1901 after more than 40 American soldiers were killed on the island of Samar in a surprise guerrilla attack. The Filipinos had not fought the Spanish so persistently only to have another overlord imposed on them. With the racist attitudes of the time, this incensed many Americans, who saw that they were delivering progress to a supposedly benighted populace, like the good imperialists they were. Brig-Gen Smith ordered at least one of his subordinates “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me.” He also insisted that any male who was ten or older was designated an enemy combatant. American troops marched across the island, razing villages and shooting people and farm animals alike. Although the majority of Smith’s subordinates were recognised as demonstrating restraint (by the Judge Advocate General of the US Army), estimates of how many died range from 2,500 (by outside sources) to 50,000 (Filipino historians).

One of Smith’s subordinates, Major Littleton Waller, was court-martialled for executing prisoners. Called as a witness for the prosecution, Smith perjured himself saying that he had not given any specific orders. Waller was acquitted on a majority verdict. Smith was tried, not for murder or war crimes, but “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” More than a century later, Wuterich (pleading guilty) was convicted of “negligent dereliction of duty.” Smith was convicted, admonished and forced to retire. He never served any prison time.

In 1968, in Vietnam, American soldiers had gone on a bloody rampage at the hamlet of My Lai killing more than 500 villagers, men, women and children. They were under the command of Second Lieutenant William Caley, himself charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese civilians there. The events were covered up for more than a year before investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story. Calley was convicted in 1971 of the premeditated murder of 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labour. While many today would think that was the least he deserved, many Americans were furious. After the conviction, the White House received over 5000 telegrams; the ratio was 100 to 1 in favour of leniency. In a telephone survey of the American public, 79% disagreed with the verdict and 81% believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern. Even future Democratic president and peace activist Jimmy Carter, as governor of Georgia, instituted ‘American Fighting Man’s Day’ and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on (yeah, because running down your car battery is an effective form of protest). This was one year after unarmed students were mown down by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and after the American public supported the reservists.

This was not the end though, even if Calley was the only one in the chain of command who was convicted. Only a day after sentencing, President Nixon ordered him transferred to house arrest and the appeal reduced the sentence to twenty years. A separate clemency action commuted that to ten years. In 1974, Calley petitioned a federal district court for habeas corpus at which the judge said that pre-trial publicity, the denial of subpoena for certain defence witnesses and inadequate notice of charges meant, after a few legal wrangles, that he could walk out a free man, after serving just three and a half years (along with a general court-martial and dismissal from the US Army). In 2009, at a servicemen’s club, he apparently expressed remorse, whilst insisting that he himself was given orders and he was merely following them, which on reflection, he claimed, he should not have done (how many Nazi concentration camp guards said the same). Anyone who wants to talk to him though has to produce a cheque detailing a hefty amount.

So we come to Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich (notice how as the years progress, the ranking officer convicted is lower and lower down the chain of command). After another cover-up over the massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, including three women, seven children (the youngest a toddler of one) and a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, charges against seven of the eight marines were dropped and Wuterich was sentenced to only three months (suspended) for ‘negligence’. As with Smith and allegedly with Calley, the killing spree was cited as revenge for an attack on US soldiers (in this instance by an improvised explosive device that killed a lance corporal). Christopher Hitchens dismissal of the comparison with My Lai can itself be dismissed because he was a doctrinaire flag-waver for the invasion of Iraq and would excuse any action committed there (when does being a contrarian tip into being a hypocrite?). Sure, those who died at Haditha may have been 95% fewer than those who perished at My Lai, but a massacre is a massacre – were Nazi concentration camps insignificant because ‘only’ tens of thousands were murdered at them compared to the millions at the actual death camps? (I am aware of Godwin’s law but in the case of war crimes I don’t think references to the Nazis can be avoided).

In all three cases, justice in any meaningful sense of the word has not been seen to be done. People talk about the ‘hard sell’ of Wuterich’s conviction to the Iraqis as if it were no more than a PR operation rather than, as Nick Broomfield (director of the film The Battle for Haditha) rightly said, a miscarriage of justice. This will not be an open sore just in Haditha but across the whole Middle East.  All armed forces have their skeletons, the dark episodes that colour any bombastic military pride but many Americans think of themselves as the good guys, always and everywhere, sending forth munificence from their shining city on the hill. Last year, The New York Times found secret transcripts of military interviews from the investigation into the Haditha massacre. In these interviews Marines described killing civilians on a regular basis and one sergeant testified that he would order his men to shoot children in vehicles that failed to stop at military checkpoints. When Democratic Representative John Murtha, a retired Marine colonel, openly stated that Wuterich and his men killed innocent people in cold blood, he was roundly attacked by right-wingers, people of the same mindset as Rick Perry who did not want the incontinent marines in Afghanistan prosecuted. American society has come a long way since the 1960s/70s but not all have made the same journey that some of the ‘boys’ will disgrace the uniform if put in a war situation. That the acquisition of the Philippines and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq (second time around) were gratuitous just adds to the tragedy.

Inland Revenue versus football

This week Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is engaged in two high profile court cases.  The one accusing current Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp and his relationship with Milan Mandaric, when they were in charge of Portsmouth FC, garners the most headlines but more important to football overall is the winding-up order they have served to their old club on the south coast.

I think the taxman is doomed in its prosecution of Old ‘Arry.  HMRC are not in the habit of waiting seven years to collect when they think they have a strong case, as Portsmouth have found out innumerable times over the past few years.  Rather I think government pressure has forced a once-and-for-all settlement so as to decide whether Redknapp can succeed Fabio Capello as England manager, without a perpetual cloud hanging over the whole situation.

As for the Fratton Park faithful, the number of chancers (one who might not even had existed) who have owned them is the disgrace of the Premier League and FA, but both pretend to see no evil and hear no evil, while speaking with forked tongues on the game’s governance.  It would be a very sad day were such a big club – who have won England’s highest division twice and more recently the FA Cup - cease to exist (unless one happens to support Southampton).  The taxman obsequiously states that it is in the interests of all taxpayers for debts to be followed up.  So what was the situation where Goldman Sachs had £10 million written off their bill or Vodafone were let off more than £1 billion in charges?  Clearly Portsmouth FC was not rich enough to corrupt HMRC officials with serial wining and dining.  If Goldman Sachs or Vodafone had any morals (which we know they don’t) they would dip into the savings they made to throw Portsmouth a reprieve.  It is indicative of the collapse of decency in this country where the wealthy are given all the advantages and the poor are kicked in the teeth.  Maybe the latter action would be a fitting tribute for the outgoing HMRC head who has been allowed to ‘retire’.

Driven to distraction

Studies by scientists hailing from – where else – California, claim that the male sex drive is responsible for all wars. Supposedly aggression and bravery in men was to compete for mates and territory and belligerence was rewarded by reproductive success. It cites Chinggis Khaan’s alleged 16 million direct male descendents and the genetic code associating Scandinavians with Scottish and Irish people through the Vikings. It doesn’t mention all the idiots who lost their lives in battle, such as Charles the Bold of Burgundy (also known as Charles the Rash) who died before he could father an heir or Major General Rollo Gillespie getting so angry during a battle in the Anglo-Nepalese War that he led a reckless personal charge and taking a bullet through the heart for his troubles, with no known issue sired. Let's not forget all the common soldiery who are cut down and forgotten in a misguided offensive, such as the 30,000 Russians who perished in 1877 at the Battle of Plevna because their commanders insisted on a frontal assault or the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the blackest day in the history of the British Army. History’s genetic code written by the victors you might say but who are the victors?


These liberal Californians (are any of them men by any chance?) say that women are naturally gifted with a ‘tend and befriend’ attitude, who find it easier to enact conflict resolution. Margaret Thatcher, when urged to negotiate after Argentina had invaded the Falklands, hardly showed much of the tending and befriending character. Cristina Kirchner’s bellicose statements on the subject of the islands in the last few years show little of it either. What about Sri Lanka’s Chandrika Kumaratunga, who presided over a bitter civil war with the Tamil minority in the north? Or Indira Gandhi’s storming of the Sikh temple in Amritsar. Or David Ben-Gurion's description of Golda Meir as "the best man in the government" and who showed such steely determination in the Yom Kippur War during her tenure? History is littered with aggressive female leaders – Hatshepsut, Empress Theodora, Wu Zetian, ‘Bloody’ Mary I, Catherine the Great, Cixi, Madame Mao, the battling queens of Edward II and Henry VI and many, many more. Even more respected female figures are exceptionally headstrong – Joan d’Arc, our warrior queen Elizabeth I, Mary II who deposed her father James II, Maria Theresa, even Queen Victoria who, in 1839, refused to replace her Whig ladies of the bedchamber with Tories, so Sir Robert Peel who could not feel confident in forming a government (let's not mention her empire-building enthusiasm later). Scant consensus-building there. The scientists could claim that the female instinct is generally prevalent in the population but then they are hypocrites in talking up male leaders. I imagine they had a deep-seated theory that was personally dear to them - in essence, men are nastier than women, which is the intellectual equivalent of gossip on Ricki Lake (who is returning to talk shows later this year) - and they've set out to prove it, rather than the Popperian approach of disproving the alternatives.  We'll see how the peer-review process goes.  Maybe these scientists should follow their commercially minded colleagues in telling us that all food and drink is bad for us.  Either that or go on Loose Women.

Hand in Mitt (the sun shines out of our behinds)

Yesterday, Republicans in South Carolina handed Mitt Romney his arse (or should that be ass).  He had a sizeable lead in the polls and blew it.  Republicans forgive those who apologise but when the candidate in the spotlight squirms and tries to wriggle out of controversy, they hammer the tricky dicky – as Herman Cain found out, losing their trust.  Romney’s evasion over his tax receipts, refusing to confirm whether he would follow his own father’s example (a previous presidential candidate), was the keynote issue of this particular state primary.  All the attacks on Newt Gingrich washed off him as he either confidently answered them or confidently stared them down.

It’s amazing that Gingrich has seemed buried, not once, but twice.  In the summer of 2011, his entire campaign management deserted him, citing his unreliability with a cruise holiday taking precedence over electioneering.  They vacated the premises while he was on vacation.  But he bounced back and seemed certain to take Iowa.  Then the SuperPac with no official links to Romney absolutely savaged his record and character and he struggled in fourth (enough to take some delegates with him though).  Then, after a lull in New Hampshire, he’s come from under the radar again to upset the ‘moderate’ bandwagon.  Romney still is riding high in Florida, but if Gingrich bucks trends there as well, who knows how far he could go (he needs to register on the ballot in places like Missouri though).  And Barack Obama rubs his hands, rather than wringing them.

In my professional capacity, copytaking is an occasional, sometimes fraught, sometimes pleasurable, aspect.  Owing to that relative infrequency, it has been decided by a higher bod that it is to phased out from my remit.  I have had some interesting copy over the years such as direct from Basra (over a terrible line) and Kabul (Ben Farmer covering an international pomegranate fair – when I mentioned this to him as he dictated copy from Libya, it came across that this was a quixotic episode he would rather forget).  I have taken scintillating book and television reviews and recorded the scores of amateur golf in the Midlands (the correspondent Jennifer Prentice discontinued this after they were not published repeatedly).  A regular freelancer was John Shaw, who was always a welcome voice in his geniality and up for a laugh, inbetween some auction news of rare or antique objects.  He often gave great background to the subject which was often trimmed back to a news in brief at best (one story had a misprinted stamp over a biplane flying upside down and The Telegraph actually sourced the picture from the auction house to accompany it).  No doubt frustrated at The Telegraph not showing enough interest in his work, he has not been heard over the phone for quite some time now.

I can’t imagine that The Telegraph will keep the out of hours copytaking company on its books if they are removing us from such duties when they were getting us for free.  Cutbacks mean that in future the outside journalist will have to phone up the relevant newsdesk in head office, which makes sense but is just speculation on my part.

To wit, the comment report I took from Theodore Dalrymple last Wednesday may very well be my last.  Mr Dalrymple seems to not have a specific job at The Telegraph (the predictive email address finder could not locate him – even were he not to have access at home, he would have an account for his forays into the office), yet the Dalrymple name is an important and respected one.  I was gratified to see that his piece opened Thursday’s comment section, not least because I had pointed out the odd repeated word here or there and my suggested synonym had been accepted. 

As often with commentary rather than news, it was designed to provoke through counter-intuitive reasoning (Jonathan Steele’s pronouncements on Syria in The Guardian might carry greater weight if they weren’t so overtly one-sided apologia for the Assad regime – if you want ‘competing biases’ go to Fox News).  Mr Dalrymple’s piece defended the captain of the ill-fated and ill-named Costa Concordia for his decision to abandon the ship before the evacuation was complete, though Captain Schettino’s incompetence was another matter altogether.  We have since heard from Schettino that he ‘tripped’ and fell into a lifeboat and then was taken away before he could get out – which reminded me of the sarcastic saying of someone caught red-handed in an extramarital affair – ‘oh you just tripped and fell on his dick/her pussy’, with exactly the same amount of credibility attached.  Dalrymple argued that the notion of a captain going down with his ship was old-fashioned romanticism that a ‘utilitarian zeitgeist [the latter word being an accepted suggestion of mine]’ scorned.  Schettino’s culture was responsible for his premature departure, not because he was Italian but because he was modern.  Would staying behind have ensured no further loss of life than that which had already occurred?  Schettino would have on his conscience for the rest of his life all those who had perished.  I recognise the merits of Dalrymple’s argument but I personally disagree.  If you take on the role of sea-faring captain, then it is beholden of you to be the last to leave, especially if it was your mistake that caused the disaster.  Like structures and material, ship’s captains should be stress-tested for the suitability of application to the task.

Nine is the number, football is the game

Among many of the clichés swirling around Newcastle United is that they like their number nines up there, citing Jackie Milburn, Andy Cole and Alan Shearer (even Glenn Roeder did well with that assignment – from a defensive position). Throughout the club’s sojourn in the murky depths of the Championship, no player bore the number on his back. Andy Carroll saw it conferred upon him at the start of 2010-11 season, only for him to depart to Merseyside in the next available transfer window. Like the empty chair, this was the empty slot.


Demba Ba’s scoring prowess has made Alan Pardew exclaim that had he known how effective the Senegal international would be, BA would have been a dead cert for the number nine, instead of the current squad number 19. Now, despite claiming that he wasn’t searching for a striker this January in the wake of the breakdown in the move for Modibo Maiga, which seems like expert bluff, Papiss Demba Cissé has become part of the team and if he is three-quarters as good as the other Senegalese Demba, he will have been a worthy addition. Intriguingly, he has been allocated the number nine shirt.

It may seem perverse to sign another striker who will be unavailable for at least another month, but he is an insurance policy and, so as to avoid a potential repeat of the Carroll situation with Ba, Cissé thus has the coveted niner. Whatever comes of the release clause for Ba, whether it is activated in this transfer window (or if seems likely the next) or if the club renegotiate the contract, I imagine that Cissé has a rather firmer contract given that his previous club, the stricken Freiburg, were keen to sell him, allowing personal terms to be ramped up for the player (plus the healthy league position of United being a bonus). Like Arséne Wenger’s early years in north London, it’s another success for Graham Carr (dad to ‘Chatty Man’ Alan) and his excellent scouting network.

Rick Perry - the Abu Ghraib candidate

Despite being a sideshow to the main event in November, in the age of the 24 hour news cycle, the Republican primary has proved ominous and entertaining in equal measure. Many on the left would love to see one of the zanier candidates face-off against Barack Obama as it would make the president home-and-hosed for a second term. He hasn’t been a great or even near-great chief executive (partially hindered by an obstructive opposition in Congress and the habitual Democrat trait of failing to get their act together), but he has been middle-of-the-road and that could rise to above-average with a major foreign policy success between 2013-2017 (Congress would torpedo any domestic reform).


The most likely challenger Mitt Romney would probably be the most acceptable Republican president since Eisenhower if he did win but he has none of Ike’s charms (or war record). Newt Gingrich may mock Mitt for uttering French (despite two years in Paris, saying Bonjour, je m’appelle hardly qualifies one as fluent) – criticising an ability to possess a foreign tongue is one of the more laughable critiques from the right of the GOP, including the lambasting of Chinese-speaker Jon Huntsman as the Manchurian Candidate – thus making him comparable to John Kerry, but the Romney/Kerry flip has some mileage. Both were seen as solid yet lacklustre candidates by their respective parties, doing nothing to energise the grassroots, with only desperation at the current incumbent driving people to vote for them. Kerry lost narrowly, Ohio reaffirming its status as the bellwether state. What are the odds for a repeat, with Romney being the fall guy?

Rick Perry seems a few bricks short of a shithouse and was busy vindicating that yesterday when he said that the marines captured peeing on dead Afghans shouldn’t be prosecuted, merely reprimanded. He doesn’t understand that like the (false) reports that Korans were burned in Guantanamo Bay, this can inflame passions and, As John McCain said, damage the war effort. Specifically, it puts American troops in more danger. To compound the damage of his words, he said it on CNN, with its enormous reach throughout the world. Excusing the bastards who had such contempt for the fallen, he went on “Obviously, 18 and 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that's what's occurred here.” Taking dad’s car and pranging it is making a stupid mistake and which happens all too often through the teenage demographic. Urinating on people you have just killed is more than that – what’s occurred here is a war crime. It is against the Geneva Convention to desecrate the dead but Perry would probably dismiss as foreign meddling in American affairs from a limp-wristed, Francophone zone (if he knew where to find it on a map). Did he defend the Somalis who dragged dead Americans through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 as 18 and 19-year-old kids making a common, stupid mistake? Perry has already declared that homosexuals serving openly in the US Army have damaged the institution but it is actually everything he says that does. It is not the Obama administration with the “disdain for the military.” It is he and thankfully, according to current polling, he is going to be pissed upon this Saturday.

Live and let live

Oscar time (like Hammer time, except with more gold, less baggy trousers and junk that you can touch) is approaching and all the self-publicists are gearing up to give Narcissus a run for his money.  Ricky Gervais is labelling anyone who thanks God in their acceptance speech as ‘arrogant’.  For Gervias to pronounce on hubris is akin to stone throwing to be going on in a glass courthouse where the pot is accusing the kettle of blacking-up.  Indeed, his line of attack is so predictable, it’s a wonder that he doesn’t believe in a deterministic universe.  He’s like the National Secular Society which, whenever it appears on a news item, is always moaning – I’d like to see the day when they have something unabashedly positive to say, especially that which doesn’t offend anyone (allegedly their biggest concern).

Gervais’ whines that people should have speeches written previously, targeting Sandra Bullock for praising the Divine.  Seriously?  Given that anyone who prepares a victory speech is seen as overweening in their conceitedness, this is the solution for Gervais?  Maybe he sees no contradiction.  Is the answer for everyone nominee to prepare a set of notes to which a lawyer (this is LA) makes a deposition that said text will be said should an award come the way of the talent and so everyone can be suitably bland to cope with the strictures of the thought police?

Matthew Norman yesterday in The Telegraph declared (of another high-profile personality) that arrogance usually manifests itself in someone with an extremely thin skin to make up for supposed deficiencies.  Though admitting himself no psychoanalyst (curious for a Spurs supporter, who would have had, until recently, years of introspection), it is an interesting take.  The way out for Gervais is to affect tolerance for the outlooks of those at the Kodak Theatre, as Hollywood (being a largely liberal lot) does for his belief system when he expresses it.  Winning friends is not always a noble pursuit but neither is fundamentalism in alienating people.

Extradite this treaty to the dustbin

Another case has come up to show that the UK is little more than a glorified staging post to US incarceration. This instance is particularly offensive as not only was the student, Richard O’Dwyer, running a search engine that linked to websites containing pirated TV shows and films – something not illegal under UK law – rather than being a pirate himself, he used servers based in the Netherlands, which means that the USA should have no jurisdiction as O’Dwyer’s website, TVShack, had no direct link to the United States.
But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have to justify their budget with a round of heavy cuts in federal spending in 2013. The assistant deputy director (does a deputy director need an assistant – one job that can be taken off the payroll) has admitted the agency would pursue websites whose only American link was to end in .com or .net (providing a compelling case to get one’s email accounts switched to .co.uk where possible (Google doesn’t seem to offer this option)).

David Blunkett did a disservice to all blind people when he signed the extradition accord in 2003 – even the British version was worded with Americanisms. It was all of a piece of the Blair government, where it felt compelled to act in complete subservience to the George W. Bush administration in order to gain some nebulous (and ultimately worthless) influence inside the White House. The Bush’s own dogs had more influence on policy direction than Blair. But then when you’ve ended the legal statement that an Englishman’s home is his castle after 500 years on the law books, why should you be bothered about protecting your own citizens? Complaints about being the 51st state were way off the mark – the UK doesn’t even have the same rights as an American state.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats came to power promising a radical overhaul of the pact, especially given the US Congress’ tardy approach to ratifying their end – making it a one-way extradition treaty, another example of how absolutely pathetic Blair could be (New Labour was a hollow-sounding big nothing – anything of substance such as the minimum wage or devolution were holdovers from old Labour). Yet even though a ‘forum clause’ has been passed by both Houses of Parliament, allowing a judge to decide where best a case should be heard, it has not yet been enacted, which is ridiculous. Is the Home Office still not fit for purpose? Civil servants should get a move on or feel the wrath of their elected bosses.

Frankly, I think the treaty should be scrapped altogether, given the inequitable way it is applied. We send over anyone they request but appeals for those with links to the IRA to stand trial in the UK are met with firm rebuttals. In this case, O’Dwyer isn’t even committing an offence in the UK, so how could he possibly stand trial, unless it was in the USA? The forum clause doesn’t address that, just where a trial should take place. This Coalition is committed to free enterprise but only when Washington D.C. doesn’t veto it.

A lesson learnt?

A good school education is one of the most important processes to drive forward a country.  This is why I am pleased to hear that Kent County Council are circumventing the rules in place to allow the opening of a first new grammar school in Britain for 50 years, that is, an existing grammar school is opening an ‘annexe’ in another locality.  My feelings towards the council is that it is run by pompous, bumptious Tories and that would still be my view even if Medway wasn’t a separate unitary authority (please, Queen Liz, don’t waste your jubilee gift in making Medway a city – we already have one called Rochester, even though they let the city charter lapse deliberately).  On this though they are right.

I am an ardent believer in the benefits of grammar schools.  There are plenty of (anti)progressives that still mistakenly equate the pursuit of excellence with social injustice.  It was probably the Labour Party’s greatest mistake of the 1960s - the drive to abolish grammar schools.  Even decades later, left-wingers still have more hang-ups than a CofE conference debating women and gay priests.  The Guardian sneered in March 2011 that working-class kids only earn slightly more than their parents if they go to a grammar school (though grudgingly admitted that the same is true for middle-class kids).  Isn’t earning more, no matter the amount, a good thing?  The same paper is up in arms that private schools are creating a social ‘apartheid’ (a favourite Grauniad word) in society as an elite become distanced from the populace.  Their bigoted blindness means they fail to realise that it is not private schools driving this wedge but the misguided anti-grammar school policies as nature asserts itself.

Several years ago, a survey was carried out looking at the one hundred most influential people in a series of fields – business, media, politics, etc – to follow on from a survey that was carried out three decades prior.  In the 1970s, the education of the movers and shakers was thus – a small percentage were comprehensive alumni; about a quarter who went to private fee-paying school; and a vast majority were those who attended grammar school.  By the early 2000s, there had been a seismic shift – the number of those coming from grammar schools had been crippled, being a very low figure; those who learnt at comprehensives had more than doubled but were still quite small; however, the overwhelming majority of those who now head the elite went to private fee-paying schools – indeed a greater percentage than of those in the 1970s who went to grammar schools.  In the name of equality, they created worse inequality.  Ideology triumphing over expertise and proving disastrous.  A Cultural Revolution in more than just name. 

It is common sense that such a policy fall between two stools and satisfies no-one.  Plenty of middle-class parents determined enough would scrimp and save just to ensure their children went to a good school – if they were denied the grammar option, then they certainly weren’t going to allow their kids take the comprehensive route.  The progeny of working-class parents – who could never afford the fees – were left behind – the ladder, in many ways, hoisted up.  So the divide between haves and have-nots broadened immensely.  Strange that they cling to Darwin as a saint, yet many liberals don’t recognise the natural selection (survival of the fittest) here – nature taking its course as defined by the obstacles placed in its way.  If you dam part of a river, the water will flow ever stronger through the open part.

John Prescott famously moaned about being ‘hurt’ after he failed his 11+, but would he have become deputy prime minister if he hadn’t been driven to prove the system wrong?  Would he have been elected as a shop steward, let alone an MP, if he had succeeded in the test?  Hypotheticals maybe but I think there is truth present.  I did enough to pass my 11+, cruising in maths, yet just scraping by in English.  I went to a grammar school and I didn’t fully recognise how lucky I was but time grants perspective.  Those seven years were hellish – I didn’t fully recognise then but time grants perspective.  Unlike John Prescott, my ego isn’t so inflated to think “I’m unhappy, so the system must be wrong.”  My misery was caused by my peers but that can happen at any faculty – it was not a specific failing of the concept of the grammar school.  Letting one’s childhood traumas affect the direction of a nation is, though, heinous.  Do they worry about those hurts feelings in places with advanced education like Scandinavia? They do but they build environments so that everyone can achieve in their own distinct way.  They are constructive not destructive like too many British left-wingers.  There was an outcry against academies first came into being (still is), but they were an attempt to fill a natural need in places where grammar schools were distant memories.  Let’s have none of this Marxist bollocks about man taming nature – we are governed by the latter, whether we like it or not.  The system before was not perfect but it was far better than what we have now.  Where once working-class and middle-class kids could mingle and gain insights into each other’s backgrounds, now both sides are impoverished and regard the other contemptuously. Watch us fall away in the international league tables. Bravo, you ivory tower lefties, bravo.

Handbagged but not horsewhipped

Otto von Bismarck, the iron chancellor, posited that Germany could either produce more guns or more butter but not both simultaneously.  The film, The Iron Lady, would have you believe that Margaret Thatcher favoured the latter over the former, as one of the tour de forces has her reeling off the prices of various makes of the spread.  The al-Manama military deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia (while much traditional industry was eviscerated) would suggest otherwise but it is not recorded here.

A book on Bismarck, partially obscured and on display for less than five seconds, implies a kindred ruthlessness between the written subject and the filmed one.  The Iron Lady is resplendent in homespun wisdom imagery, beginning with milk being taken (not snatched but the idea is there) from a shelf and this feeble, old lady being treated with contempt by a hurrying, uncaring and ill-mannered society – the one she helped shape.  There is also the metaphorical flourish as Thatcher leaves Number 10 Downing Street for the last time, her feet awash with rose petals – this not some intrusion by American Beauty, rather that New Labour and its red rose symbol had its success paved by her and whose free market ideology it would perpetuate dogmatically.  In one scene, Thatcher decries that she would never die washing a tea cup (unspokenly because her mother was always downtrodden and up to her arms in suds) and the film’s coda teases those observant among us with this line.

It is not surprising that the scriptwriters (along with the director, women at that, to fit the theme) should take this tack, given that they have crafted what is, to all intents and purposes, a love story between Maggie and Denis.  Though she dresses down a GP, declaring that thoughts and ideas, not feelings, are of the essence but philosophies such as monetarism or ‘Wet’ Conservatism are not broached.  The story defies chronologly yet as a series of flashbacks (usually fatal for a motion picture) for a woman with dementia, it is clever in slicing up her life to click with the direction of the narrative.  At the moment of her greatest triumph – victory in the Falklands War – a rapid decline in her political fortunes sets in almost immediately, just as the supposed fruits of her policies bloom, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall (though she feared German reunification would bring renewed militarism) and dancing with Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda who, suspiciously, is made to look like the far better known Nelson Mandela (the end of apartheid even though she opposed sanctions against South Africa?).

There were many resonant passages as history sashayed along.  From the standpoint of being British living through 2011, the 1981 riots had a tremendous immediacy in the archive footage.  The rampaging police at the time of the poll tax disturbances were no mere urban cohorts but Thatcher’s praetorian guard.  The IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel was referenced frequently early on (though it would have been more poignant to see Norman Tebbit hauled out of the rubble on a stretcher, Denis complaining about his ruined shoes was funny) and the bombing of Horseguards’ Parade meant something to me (I was born several hours later). The moment Airey Neave hove into view, his fate was sealed and I waited for his assassination in the Houses of Parliament parking lot by the Irish National Liberation Front, the sound of the blast shaking Altaa.  That Thatcher said goodbye to him seconds before his car exploded is a dramatic liberty that crops up sometimes a little too obviously (for instance, Denis proposing to her on the night of the 1950 electoral defeat in Dartford may be true but seems unrealistically melodramatic).

One can see why the Thatcher family would shy away from a trip to the cinema.  Maggie may be shown for much of the running time as a doddery, old woman, neglected and losing her marbles, but the boot is really put into her children.  Carol is portrayed as a middle-class twit of the year (trying to pay for a taxi with a cash card, almost running over a cyclist, etc), while Mark is a bad lad, frequently AWOL, so desperate to abandon his mother (or at least care for her) that he goes and lives in South Africa.  Maybe Maggie’s decision to divert government resources to find him after he got lost in the Sahara during the Paris-Dakar Rally Race would have been over-egging the case against him (if that were possible).  Then again, Maggie is seen neglecting her family for political ambition – pointedly demonstrated in a 1970s kitchen with the bread brand Mother’s Pride lying on the side.

The acting was top notch throughout.  Meryl Streep would be a worthy Oscar winner on this performance.  Even when you think she is about to slip, she pulls it out the bag as if it were the most natural thing.  Anthony Head is superb as podgy Geoffrey Howe, much distant from the toned and slim Giles, Uther and Maxwell House man.  Richard E Grant is a bit of a hammy Heseltine, denied his Westland resignation moment (his banishment from the inner circle is only alluded to in a montage section of Thatcher strutting the halls of the Commons).  Stephen Fry continues his many fingers in many pies (as Private Eye critiqued “Fry, Fry and Fry again”), though probably feels the prevalence of his persona is starting to grate and his cameo is uncredited.  Jim Broadbent, who is nearly as ubiquitous, does well as Denis though the face is too full for the starched, lean man behind the scenes (captured in the depiction of the young Denis by Harry Lloyd) and with cadences that are more Broadbent than Thatcher (see Ian McDiarmid’s overall display in 2009’s Margaret).  Denis moreover would probably turn in his grave at having a ‘pinko’ act him.  Indeed, the point where his hallucination chides Maggie for drinking too much is rich from the old soak.

I was pleased to recognise The Daily Telegraph from its back page alone before Maggie/Meryl acknowledged it by name.  It was also fun spotting the impersonated personalities of yesteryear.  There was the odd factual mistake – Maggie talking about the EU in 1990, which is deeply anachronistic, given that the institution was not created until the Maastricht Treaty of 1993; she should have said EC or European Community in full for greater effect.  I should be a historical consultant.  There was a curiously large number of retrospectives on Thatcher’s career on the television too.

There is only so much a coherent two-hour film can capture of life stretching over more eight decades.  The clip from the trailer where she invites the European dignitaries “Gentlemen, let us join the women” would have been a nice counterpoint to earlier in the film where she has to leave a drawing room with other females, yet it ended on the cutting room floor (the editor another woman).  Though demonstrated all along, the quip “You turn [U-turn] if you want to.  The lady’s not for turning,” would have made for a decent mental checklist moment and there is only one mention of her handbag.  Her disastrous appearance at the 2000 Tory party conference (in terms of the impression it gave off rather than the delivery) would have made no sense in the thrust of the tale and does not make the final cut either.

Not quite up there with The Comic Strip pantomiming Thatcher’s battle with Ken Livingstone (but streets ahead of the comedy series’ latest incarnation of her via Jennifer Saunders), The Iron Lady has plenty of pops at her (as one would expect from something partially funded by Film Four), yet also humanises the woman, much to the chagrin of those who would regard this as a horror flick.  Geoffrey Howe’s quitting of the Cabinet and verbal assault on Thatcher in the Commons was brought a new dimension for me – that of Governor Julius Vindex’s revolt against Emperor Nero.  Vindex had no legionary forces at his command, nor did he claim the title of Caesar himself but gained the adherence of the ultimate victor Servius Sulpicius Galba (whose carping epitaph by Tacitus ‘all would have agreed that he was equal to the imperial office if he had never held it’ could well apply to John Major).  Thatcher was not as vainglorious as the clot Nero but her personality (namely her obstinacy) was her undoing in later years as much as it was her success early on.  In the end, the Iron Lady fell to rust.

Four out of five.

Referendum-itis continues its steady pandemic throughout the UK body politic.  Alex Salmond, the sole person who makes his entire SNP party respectable, would like the UK to do the Bannockburn splits in 2014, though my fear would be that it would be as painful as the banana of the same movement.  The Coalition government in Westminster throws down the challenge of a yes or no plebiscite to be held no later than 2013. The chippy, nationalist nutjobs come out of the Holyrood woodwork to denounce any London interference, even though they need it to make an independence vote legally binding.  I recall one Newsnight debate where one prominent SNP politician said she was proud to be chippy!  Let us not forget under the leadership of John Swinney, their beloved party was dead in the water.  Salmond knows he has to achieve independence in his political lifetime or he may never see it in his actual lifespan and so he ignores the health problems that forced him to step down the first (so far only) time.

The Conservatives are set against Scottish independence as they want to preserve the union to live up to their former name of the Conservative and Unionist Party (also as a connection with Northern Ireland and its Presbyterians).  Labour fear the loss of Scottish Westminster seats would cripple future election efforts and are right to do so.  The Liberal Democrats are a bit of both.  Salmond would love to do the timewarp again to 1314, when Scottish independence was secured for four centuries at the Battle of Bannockburn and then fast-forwarding 700 years as budget cuts start to really bite (across the whole country but that doesn’t fit Salmond’s narrative).  All three major Westminster parties hope for a repeat for the Scottish Nationalists of the Battle of Flodden on its 500^th anniversary.

I must admit, Britain’s ridiculous, expensive macho posturing by maintaining a pointless nuclear ‘deterrent’ (that would never be used except in conjunction with the USA which has many times greater an arsenal and provides a nuclear umbrella to all of western Europe, except France) and therefore keeping open the Faslane nuclear naval base, means I have some sympathy were Scotland to break away.  There would also be the frisson of excitement as a new country fashioned its own path in the world.  I, however, always hark back in my mind to Timothy Garton Ash writing about the Czechoslovak ‘Velvet Divorce’, where he said that, after 1993, Prague and Bratislava were both culturally poorer and less interesting.  Given the great Scottish pollination in London and the English fascination with Edinburgh extending from Dr Johnson onwards, I well appreciate that sentiment.  My preference is for the United Kingdom to remain united and a stronger unit by standing together.  The latest polls north of the ‘border’ suggest most Scots are of the same opinion.

Was Boris ‘whiff-whaff’ Johnson right?  Do Scousers and their associates have a victim mentality?  And if they do, is it justified?

The release of documents from 1981 where Geoffrey Howe said that Liverpool should be left to a ‘managed decline’ has brought a great deal of embarrassment to the now ennobled politician.  But it was a comment that the city crystallised an opposition to the Thatcher government that made it like a left-leaning republic separate from the rest of England.  And small nations, real or otherwise, can be a bit chippy.

Furthermore, we have Liverpool Football Club, in the week that the new trial for the murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded, issuing a very sulky apology for Luis Suarez’s comments.  The apology was to the media, not to Patrice Evra or Manchester United.  That Kenny ‘in denial’ Dalglish encouraged the squad to wear T-Shirts supporting Suarez should have been a source of profound embarrassment for anyone.  But anyone who took Liverpool to task for this had a torrent of abuse on message boards and Twitter from narrow-minded Scousers, who can’t understand that a person of colour might be exceptionally offended by being referred to only by his colour.  Liverpool even question the credibility of Evra, even though Suarez has admitted making the abuse – it’s beyond the blackest of satire.  Part of this is a result of the national consciousness to blame someone else for their ills rather than look in the mirror first.  And then when Oldham player Paul Adeyemi was racially abused by a Liverpool fan on Friday, it just cultivates an image of racism rife at Anfield as of a piece with the Suarez affair, undoing all their good work in the 1980s.  And now Stewart Downing has been arrested on a charge of assault.  Will the Liverpool hierarchy adopt another bunker mentality in defending this?  Boris Johnson was vilified after his comment back in the last decade – why on earth Liverpool FC want to vindicate him I do not know.

The news that Network Rail has produced a report that dismisses all alternatives to the High Speed 2 (HS2) line from London to Birmingham is to be welcomed.  When leading businessmen, trade unions and minsters are agitating for something there must be something intrinsically right about the project.  Even The Daily Telegraph is producing front page articles with a favourable slant (stating that the likes of Morocco and Saudi Arabia have more high speed track than the UK, let alone France and Japan). 

Not being able to drive, I am an enthusiast for train travel (though train-spotting must be one of the most tedious and pointless pursuits ever to have been created – I saw a man and his wife perched on camp chairs at one mainline station, notebooks in hand, thermos flasks in easy reach – she must really love him).  I often despair at the illogicality of encouraging more people to travel by train through fare rises (I guess the rationale is ‘it’s what the market will support’ – like BP ending their final salary pension scheme despite having vast profits; they’re ‘reflecting market trends’ – screw the market, after all it caused the global slump), but I can find gazing out the window is even more compelling than reading – you can see the strangest scenes.  This wouldn’t be possible under HS2, as anyone who has travelled on HS1 can testify.  Yet it’s dragging us into the late twentieth century and won’t be completed for another decade(!) at least and that’s just to Birmingham, let alone Yorkshire and the north-west.  It is needed through as there will not be a third runway at Heathrow and economic growth will be hampered otherwise.

The nimbyist Tories who will have the line cut a swathe through their constituencies have flung up their arms but not quite up in arms against the Coalition.  Opponents talk “it’s blah blah this and blah blah that and it’s going to run through the bottom of my garden!”  Of course, gardens in this part of the world can be several acres.  It’s the damage to house prices that they are really cross about.  I can sympathise to a certain extent.  I live in a road which was a leafy backwater when I first moved here.  Some years later the council – in the hands of a New Labour/Tory cabal – decided to make the street the main thoroughfare between the hospital servicing much of the local area for many miles around and all the regions west of the River Medway (via the Medway Tunnel).  Despite vigorous opposition, the council pushed it through (strange, you would have though right-wingers would have cared about house values – ah well, it wasn’t their own properties affected).  So some of the trees – ‘old stumps’ as they were talked down – were removed and the road was widened.  I should add that the construction violated the standard for building roads of the last 250 years by not having a gutter between the tarmac and the pavement, so that whenever it rains the water sloshes off the road and creates a raging torrent for pedestrians to negotiate.  Now oodles of cars regularly race up and down it and double-glazing windows are a must (merely to reduce, rather than eliminate the sound) – one set of neighbours chose to move because they felt it wasn’t the right environment to raise a child (they moved to St Mary’s Island, recently ‘decontaminated’ from radioactive and other toxic dumping – good luck with that).  When the high winds of last week were blowing recycling rubbish across the road, forcing cars to wend and weave through the obstacle course, I couldn’t help grinning.  It’s no wonder that the area returned Liberal Democrat councillors until last year (and two out of three were still elected).

Atlas Shrugged (off some of its burdens)

The news that the USA is abandoning it strategy of being able to fight two major wars at the same time, in its drive for efficiency cuts to the military, is a seminal moment. They may spend more money than the next ten biggest spenders combined and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta may still quip about being handy in two theatres, but it is all too reminiscent of imperial down-sizing.

In the years after 1889, Britain insisted on maintaining the two-power standard, whereby the size of its navy was as strong as the next two foreign navies combined. This was a time when the expansion of empire was proceeding apace and far-flung colonies and protectorates needed to be defended. Ultimately, it was ‘navalist’ hubris, especially after Germany and America started rapidly building up their high seas fleets, for the cost became, if not ruinous, discomfiting. Splendid isolation was abandoned because British finances were not expanding as fast as the rest of the world rearmed their surface craft, resulting in an alliance with Japan in 1902 and an entente with France in 1904. The death knell was the construction of the Dreadnought in 1906, which although built by Britain, rendered all other battleships obsolete. To maintain the two-power standard Britain would have to start from scratch, an impossibility given the speed of German, French and American shipyards.

So the UK focused on protecting its interests signing another entente with Russia to resolve the Indo-Afghan border disputes and expanding its cooperation with France as a buffer against Germany. As with the USA. The latter is shifting its primary defence interests to the Pacific Rim, as the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exhausted it.  It may have been feasible to fight two conflicts at the same time but it has proven to be not desirable in terms of power projection.  It is also in a process of a ‘re-set’ in relations with Russia so it can disengage with a NATO whose membership largely do not pull their weight.

Britain was still the biggest naval spender after 1906 but its pre-eminence was being whittled away. The USA will still be respected as the only superpower but its influence is in inexorable decline, especially as Chinese and Indian agents snap up land and resources in Africa and the Middle East, just as American businessmen competed in the early 20th century with British companies in South and Central America (gaining the upper hand during World War One). Given the alternatives, a declining USA is not in the interests of the West.

Historic

There were many positive things in the 3-0 victory of Newcastle United over Manchester United last night, not least in the intrinsic aspect of beating any opponent. But of that, more later. This is historic (not least because it has been so long).  The crowning statistics are: this is the first win for the Magpies over the Old Trafford outfit for more than a decade – that a 4-3 triumph just days after September 11th where Roy Keane was excoriated for getting sent off when everyone still felt so raw; that this is the first clean sheet win and biggest scoreline win since 2000; not since 1996 have Newcastle Utd beat Man Utd on Tynseide, when a Man Utd player has not been sent off in the course of a game; it’s also the first time since before I can remember that the United of Newcastle have taken four points off Man Utd in a season. Going unbeaten against them in the calendar year of 2011 was satisfying but this is joyous.


Then there was the game itself. Another goal for Demba Ba, signing off in style in the Premier League before journeying to the African Cup of Nations (held jointly by the kleptocratic dictatorships of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, incidentally). Thank goodness no retrospective action was taken against Yohan Cabaye after his awful challenge in the last match as, wind or no wind, that free-kicked ball was always going in. And then, to compound the humiliation, an own goal by Phil Jones. The red half of Manchester were not at their best but Newcastle played their part in shackling them, so that there was no backlash after the embarrassment Sir Alex Ferguson suffered on his 70th birthday, with his side losing at home to basement club Blackburn Rovers.

This was an important victory in terms of the season as well. It puts the Toon three points further away from the chasing pack below, notably Stoke City in eighth place. While Newcastle are now only four points away from a Champions League spot, a best of the rest seventh place and possible Europa League entrance would represent progression, at least on the pitch. While time waits for no club, with Tottenham Hotspur not applauding Manchester City to the title but going for it themselves and that Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool will be stronger next season, looking down on the rest will be most enjoyable.

Two (sent) down, more to go

The conviction for murder of two of the suspects in the Stephen Lawrence case is a measure of restorative justice, yet given that they were already serving jail terms, it probably only means that their chances of parole from their previous felonies will not take place, given the longer punishment of this crime, institutionalising them so that they struggle if they are ever released from incarceration.  But there are confreres of theirs who live normal lives, despite playing a part in that horrendous night in 1993.  One of the two brothers under suspicion, Jamie Acourt, was confronted by the BBC in the street after he didn't reply to their request for an interview.  He made out that he was on a mobile phone and in a hurry as if he couldn't speak to them - a ridiculous charade.  As the television camera rolled, Acourt got into a car and drove off, still with phone clasped by hand and clamped to ear.  This is prima facie evidence of him committing a crime - driving while 'using' a mobile phone.  Even if no-one else was on the end of the phone, he only had one hand on the wheel.  If the police don't act on this, it will be fishy.  He may get a fine and three points on his licence; given his record, it might go to court where he could be disqualified from driving and given a £1,000 penalty.  It's not quite Al Capone and tax evasion but any legal constraints laid upon him and his barbarous friends acts as another step towards some sort of justice for Lawrence, the innocent teenager who just happened to have a skin colour that some people just cannot accept through a mental defect of theirs.  A change in general social attitudes - despite racism still occuring in places - is the probably the biggest tribute to Lawrence's life and the efforts of his parents.