They shoot hacks, don't they?

Was Rupert Murdoch joking when he said his (former?) lieutenant Rebekah Brooks had saved the retired police horse from the glue factory?  It seems such an archaic process as to be lost on most people – how equine is my Pritt Stick?  As Richard Pryor said, with comedy, always start from truth.  Who can relate to Murdoch malfeasance, let alone his gags?  Maybe in his doddery old age, he was confused that he had saved Brooks from the glue factory.  She may no longer have any formal role in News Corp but she enjoys all the perks of which most unemployed people can only dream.  And when the heat was turned up, she dispensed with the horse as easily as any of the journalists sacked from the News of the Screws.  The Met Police merely found a new owner.  It will be hard for Brooks to be similarly re-housed.  The New York executives loath her for the damage she has wrought on the company overall.  For them, she’s in the knacker’s yard.

As for the heir apparent James Murdoch, stepping down as chairman of News International, the British newspaper arm of News Corp, it may be billed as freeing him up to concentrate on the broadcasting arm, but no-one gives up power that simply, especially not a Murdoch.  Papa Murdoch is in town to sort out the mess in the newspaper division that his son let fester.  In a very real sense, James Murdoch has been put out to pasture and at the age of only 39.

This Charming Man (and woman)

Much has been made of the ‘feral’ children of the poor and, increasingly, disgust at the ‘feral rich’ too, as the shockwaves of the 2008 economic crash continue to reverberate.  Now, a scientific study suggests there may be evidence that the upper-class think that they are above the law, wilfully lying and cheating.  It doesn’t apply just to aristocrats – being in a higher social class through self-attainment can also lead to unethical behaviour; consider the venality of certain politicians, journalists and, especially, financiers.

Scientists are forever searching for ways to justify grant-funding and newspapers eat up with abandon some of the more ludicrous postulations.  This can be dangerous, as with the scare over the MMR vaccination jab for children (which was subsequently and utterly discredited), but mostly it’s for fun, mocking ‘wacky boffins’.  This is often because the process of peer review is long and arduous and that a press release by a group of scientists doesn’t equate with a breakthrough in our approach to knowledge.  No-one reports on the analysis of peer review or how the calculations used arrived at the stated conclusion, outside of the publications devoted to the discipline.

This study though does have the air of truth inflating it.  Topicality and gut instincts are worthless attributes to the validity of a ‘discovery’.  Yet it demonstrates why bad men (and women) often get to the top.  Psychologists at the University of Berkeley, California, openly admit this could help explain the reckless behaviour of bankers leading up to ‘The Great Recession’.

One task involved asking those taking part to pretend to be an employers conducting a job interview to test whether they would lie or sidestep awkward facts in pay negotiation, namely that the job position would soon become redundant. Would they conceal this information from the interview candidate?

Another task was a little risible. It involved rolling dice in an online game in which participants they were asked to report their own score, thinking they would be in line for a cash prize for a higher score – and that no one was checking.  Who gives away any amount of money in a game without checking it is deserved?  The betting industry would go out of business overnight from a wave of unscrupulous gamblers.

The authors of the study also carried out a series of observations at a traffic junction in San Francisco. Different drivers’ social status was assessed on the basis of what car they were driving as well as visible details such as their age. Those deemed to be better off appeared more likely to cut up other drivers and less likely to stop for pedestrians.  I wonder what measurements they used here.  SUV drivers probably feel less inclination to adhere to the rest of the world because they feel their vehicle is practically indestructible in a non-war zone.  Cyclists can be equally disrespectful of traffic law as motorists.  Are the former high achievers too?

A fourth examination observed people at work taking about being unethical and whether they would actually follow through on the proposed action.  Michael J Fox as Marty McFly in the Back to the Future Part II got fired for inappropriate action, though he only succumbed to amorality from peer pressure rather than through being a high-flier.  In all examples of human interaction, having a ‘control’ sample, as one would in a laboratory, is incredibly tricky.

The team leader of the process, Dr Paul Piff, summarised “On the one hand, lower-class individuals live in environments defined by fewer resources, greater threat and more uncertainty.  It stands to reason, therefore, that lower-class individuals may be more motivated to behave unethically to increase their resources or overcome their disadvantage.

“A second line of reasoning, however, suggests the opposite prediction: namely, that the upper class may be more disposed to the unethical.  Greater resources, freedom, and independence from others among the upper class give rise to self-focused social cognitive tendencies, which we predict will facilitate unethical behaviour.”

Dr Piff added “Religious teachings extol the poor and admonish the rich with claims like, ‘It will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven’.”  Actually, the quote from each of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke is “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  In the manner that the higher-ups accrued their wealth (and/or power) and in their overall disposition therefore, this magnifies the truth of what was recorded of Jesus, no matter one’s religious viewpoint.  What can be done about curbing the immorality of the better-offs is moot, compounded by the fact that in most cases their ruthlessness has led them to be in a position to control or influence the levers of government.  Looking at the negative and polarising impact on American politics by the super-rich is a case in question.  The study though is useful input into the public discourse.

Tried and tested methods

In the run-up to the presidential election in Russia, the FSB (the old KGB) and its Ukrainian equivalent claim to have foiled an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin.  Frankly, if you believe the propaganda, this was more than gratuitous for Putin would have simply ripped off the arms of his assailant(s) and then fed the living remains to his dogs.  Let’s flick back to 1999, with a series of apartment bombings led to the second Chechen war which sealed Putin’s rise to the presidency.  Many feel these explosions were orchestrated by the FSB; certainly the evidence that the attack was explicitly linked to Chechen nationalism cannot be taken at face value.  And now, as the Kremlin rocks to unprecedented protests, at least since the “the greatest geo-political tragedy of the twentieth century” (quote V. Putin), the current prime minister’s fellow alumni, in conjunction with the spooks of a largely pliant neighbour, have ‘exposed’ a Chechen plot.  If the election was not already secure, Putin will get a sympathy vote (as happened over an 'attempted murder' on a candidate in a narrow Taiwanese presidential election in 2004),   Forgive me for thinking how convenient is the timing.

A film not lost for words

I’m glad The Artist won Best Picture at the Oscars, not solely because it was the first silent movie to win the category since Wings was the victor at the inception of the ceremony, but because hopefully my local cinema will permit it a re-release after it was given a disgracefully brief run.

Wolves at the (trap)door

It is always heartening to see a black football manager appointed in the English game (I wouldn’t know much about leagues in other federations to comment, though it was sad that at the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, all the countries from the African continent that qualified replaced their native coaches with foreign ones – a fallacy borne out by only Ghana doing well).  There are precious few of them – too few – and they need to get a break to bridge the gap.  Affirmative action as they have in other sports would face resistance in the England where chairmen are results-obsessed.  But when they do make the step up, they can be quite successful, usually because they’ve had to scrap more than white contenders. Birmingham City and Charlton Athletic are upwardly mobile under the two Chris’s Hughton and Powell.  Hughton also did well at Newcastle United until he was brutally and unfairly sacked.  In the future, it will be hoped that black players of today will occupy plenty of managerial posts of tomorrow.  Patrick Viera for one seems to be on course for that.

This is why it is a good thing that Wolverhampton Wanderers have appointed Terry Connor as interim coach to the end of the season.  If he keeps them up, he deserves the job on a full-time basis.  A welter of white candidates reared their heads and then ruled themselves out when a permanent position was not immediately forthcoming, no doubt thinking of the dents to their own reputation were they fail to keep the Old Gold up and then relieved of their responsibilities.  Connor has been at the club since the last millennium and has no trouble in stepping into the breach to help the club with which he has become so familiar.

Yet that familiarity may become a problem.  When a different gaffer takes over, they’ve usually been brought in from outside and you get the ‘new manager bounce’.  The players recognise that this guy only knows them in passing and they bust a gut in training and on the match day to justify their place in the planning of the manager.  In most cases, it lasts a few games and then tails off as the squad suss out the boss as to whether he is any good or no better than the previous incumbent.  But the Wolves team are aware that Connor knows them inside out.  Why should they try any harder for him than they should for the departed Mick McCarthy?  Taking a hammering at home from bitter local rivals West Bromwich Albion undermines a player’s self-worth and their belief not just in the manager but the entire coaching set-up.  Steve Morgan acted perhaps on the example of the visiting West Brom under Roy Hodgson who came in at roughly the same period with the team struggling and elevated them to mid-table safety.  Hodgson, however, was an outside introduction.

I hope Connor does well, repeating Hodgson’s feat.  Having no previous managerial experience isn’t a sign that one is not good enough – it hasn’t stopped white candidates being allowed to make the step-up, such as Nick Barmby at Hull City, Gianluca Vialli at Chelsea or Andy Hessenthaler (first time around) at Gillingham, to name but three of many.  One has to start somewhere.  It is Connor’s intimacy with the squad, usually a plus, that may fail to lead to improvements in performance and possibly culminate in relegation.  The example of Steve Kean floundering at Blackburn Rovers (bar Yakubu’s goals) since taking over from Sam Allardyce looms large.

Less Opus Dei, Rick, more open your eyes

As Rick Santorum continues his phenomenon in the multiple car pile-up that is the Republican primaries in the USA, that has the rest of the world rubber-necking, he seems very canny to have kept in the race when all looked lost after the initial flurry of eastern seaboard elections.  Of course, he has stuck to his principles and unlike the maverick Newt Gingrich has few skeletons in the closet (rather he takes them out and breaks into a routine of ‘Dem bones’).  This is why the carpet-bombing of negative advertising by the SuperP(olitical)A(ction)C(ommittee)s completely unaffiliated to the Mitt Romney camp have so little impact – whatever Santorum’s public pronouncements, his personal life seems akin to so many down-home Republicans.  Further, blue-collar voters don’t like to see the moneyed, honeyed elite dump on the little guy.  This is why I would like to see him triumph over Romney, so the SuperPACs and negative advertising suffer a significant blow (not just because he would ‘lose 35 states’ in November). If you can withstand the welter of innuendo propagated by gay rights activists outraged at his foul suggestion that bestiality and homosexuality was on a par, you can pretty much weather any storm.  Having ‘Santorum’ have as the top Google hit with a handy description – “Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal [sic] matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum” – would be enough to make anyone feel glad that people thought your surname was Sanitorium. 

As a frontrunner, the scrutiny naturally cranks up because more media types want to interview you.  The smooth Romney camp hopes this is where he trips up. Attacking a Democrat president is meat-and-drink to the Republican grass-roots who, as with Clinton, cannot accept as chief executive and Santorum played to that baying crowd this week to accuse President Barack Obama of ‘phoney theology’.  There are more incendiary interpretations of that phrase but the former Pennsylvania senator believed that Obama was a Christian but he disagreed with his perception of the president placing care for the Earth above care for man.  This is Santorum’s jumbled way of saying that Obama has got mixed up in the Gaia theory and the Roman Catholic right-winger quoted Genesis to say that God gave man dominion over the Earth and all in it (ignoring that Adam and Eve were subsequently evicted from the Garden of Eden).  This puts ‘Dominion ideology’ as the guy-rope that Santorum uses to keep his mast up, allowing him to fill his sails.  Therefore, anything that bounces into the guy is torn in two in Santorum’s mind, hence his rubbishing of climate change research as ‘junk science’. One does not need to study the figures to observe that weather patterns are becoming more extreme, with climatological records falling around the world and the oceans becoming increasingly acidic.

On Wednesday, the Anglican Church made a commitment to tackling climate change, describing potential “runaway global warming” as “the overriding moral question of our times.”  Leaving aside his Opus Dei connections, would Santorum abandon ecumenism and label the Church of England as having ‘phoney theology’?  In his explanation of his Dominion beliefs, Santorum also posited that mankind should be ‘good stewards’ of the Earth.  Exactly.  He may think that the Rapture will happen in his lifetime so trashing the Earth doesn’t really matter but if God didn’t see fit to bring it about when St John the Evangelist was alive, why should He be more obliging to Santorum or ‘St Rick’ (as goes his mocking moniker)?  Our responsibility is to take care of this planet to benefit mankind, not place the Earth above man as Santorum sees all environmentalists.  Unfortunately, vested interests have played a huge role in misleading the masses and Santorum is one of those sheep.

The Killing Fields

So, Marie Colvin wasn’t just killed, the French photographer Remi Ochlik and herself were murdered by the Syrian regular army.  Intercepts from Syrian intelligence shows that they knew where western journalists were based in Homs and actively targeted this building to stop them reporting on the destruction.  It is a norm of conflict (not to mention Geneva conventions) that you don’t intentionally kill reporters, especially those from neutral countries.  The Syrian government denounces the rebels as terrorists but on placing themselves on a par with the radicals who executed Daniel Pearl, not to mention inflicting wholesale anguish on civilians, the regime in Damascus are proving themselves ever more the true terrorists.

Unceasing anguish and anger in Syria

Day after day, the indiscriminate and horrendous shelling of Homs continues, amidst many other petty slaughters in other parts of Syria.  It is hard to remain impassive in the face of such unmitigated brutality.  Maybe Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao can because they could easily find it within themselves to do visit such atrocities on their own people but are cannier political operators than the ridiculous Assad and are better at allowing pressures to escape the seething, boiling pot beneath them.

Now Marie Colvin, reporter for The Sunday Times, along with a French photographer, have been killed in another barrage from pro-regime forces.  The Sunday Times recently boasted that it was the only British newspaper to have a journalist in Homs.  Not anymore.  Colvin, an American, was very interesting for being a woman with an eyepatch (losing an eye from shrapnel in Sri Lanka in 2001) – anyone who wears an eyepatch is a bit of a character.  She and her French compatriot were not killed on purpose as a way of stifling the media.  The Syrian army does not care who it shells.  Collateral damage is not a concept that exists for Damascus.  It is collective punishment for civilians to dare challenge Assad’s right to rule, because it was so long ago but for months the protests were peaceful, in spite of the daily killings.  In Homs, government authority was overwhelmed in the surge of people power and Assad and his even more bloodthirsty brother are making a statement.  In the end, probably not much more of Homs will be left than of Warsaw in 1945.  But without a united Syrian opposition and no bridgeheads other than a few routes through Turkey’s southern border, the options to end the carnage are limited and will not be swift.

Er, fight the good fight?

Dereck Chisoara certainly knows how to get the weekend started.  As if going loco down against the Klitschkos wasn’t bad enough, he indulges in melee madness with David Haye.  Specifically of the Chisoara and Haye extra-curricular bout, we’ve now seen it all: there was the Rumble in the Jungle, then the Thrilla in Manila, top billing currently is the Lunatics in Munich.  In the future, Chisoara will lucky to get a fight night in Timisoara - that western Romanian town stood up to the madness of Ceaucescu; it could easily handle a jumped-up jack-in-the box like Chisoara.

His stunts against first Vitali, then Wladimir Klitschko defy sense.  People taught about pugilistic etiquette and Chisoara has apologised for all aspects of his stay in Germany, pre, during and post match, bringing into disrepute a sport of ‘controlled aggression’.  Blah, blah.  I’ve never been a fan of boxing but Chisoara’s action could count as a mobile public art installation of the absurd and as such it is richly ridiculous – the anarchy stripping away the public image and holding it up to mockery.  I can’t help it, a smile etches its way onto my face effortlessly.

In the macho tenor of the trash-talking, Chisoara slaps like a fairy, spits like a dweeb.  Muhammad Ali claimed to be ‘The Greatest’ and used poetry.  Chisoara is scrapping for the title of the worst and uses thuggery.  The British fighter actually attempted an abortive head-butt on Vitali Klitschko before realising their heads were too close together.  How can I get this Ukranian champion to back off so I can really lay into him – I know, I’ll slap him, leaving him stunned and ripe for a central hook of my forehead. 

Expectorating into the face of Vitali’s brother, Wladimir, while pacing the ring really was beyond the pale.  Spitting on someone is particularly offensive but to do it into their face – there can be no greater physical insult.  It is an act of intentional contamination directed against the primary receptacle of the body’s senses.  It speaks of a no-good punk who knows he’ll never be the best so has to stand out for being disgraceful.  If he was in Enfield, he’d have an on-the-spot fine.  Okay, so Chisoara took a swig of water and diluted his projectile, yet he also increased his capacity.  I think Wladimir would have perfectly justified to leap over the ropes and rip Chisoara’s throat out.  Frank Warren, the promoter, would probably say upon his client’s gruesome end that he can’t defend the actions but he can explain them.

After becoming the Wasted of the Danube Basin in the wake of Vitali’s victory, indeed the Scalp of the Alps, Chisoara sought the title of the Gregarious of Bavaria, yet it became hairier when Hayes gatecrashed his conference, setting in motion the incident that was the Larier of Bavaria.  Going ballistic at Hayes’ impertinence and seeking a ruckus, combined with the Klitschko controversies, suggests serious mental health issues.  Hayes is no innocent, trying to use someone’s else post-match interview to talk up pitting his wits against Vitali.  Now, not only has that lucrative link-up disappeared forever, he won’t get another invitation from The One Show to sugar-coat his reputation –hard to know of which one he is more devastated.  With both entourages getting involved and Hayes allegedly resorting to swinging a camera tripod, this carnival of carnage was brilliantly brainless.  This lary behaviour ended with Hayes scuttling back to the UK, because Chisoara said he would variously ‘shoot’ and ‘burn’ his latest nemesis.  Whatever. Hardly up there with Mike Tyson threatening to eat Lennox Lewis’s (admittedly non-existent) babies.  Commentators are in a hue and cry over the disgrace but this was panto at its best.

Given the boot

After the shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled, airports around the world initiated inspections of the footwear of passengers, much to the chagrin of those passing through the examinations.  American officials used to joke when frustration was aired “At least he didn’t hide it in his underwear.”  Now Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has exploded that quip (thankfully, the only thing he did blow up) by attempting to do just that.  Under the sobriquet of the ‘Underpants Bomber’, he attempted to blow up an aeroplane over Detroit on Christmas Day (to paraphrase Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever, if had been Detroit, they wouldn’t notice for years).  His actions and his incompetence though have been a boon for the convenience of air travellers with airports forced to splash out on full body scanners than pester people to take off their shoes again.  It was always the way to the future.

Attack of the drones

It was important that the United Nations General Assembly achieved what the Security Council, condemning the Syrian regime for the near daily massacres it inflicts on its own people.  For more than 130 member governments to vote in favour of the Arab League plan against a miserly twelve who oppose it, heaps burning coals on the heads of the Russian and Chinese governments.  However, it should not be used as moral sanction for overt military action.  Before the vote took place, one person wrote a letter to The Daily Telegraph advocating “send in the drones” in order to eviscerate Bashar al-Assad’s command-and-control structure.  Notwithstanding the legally grey area that drones occupy, I don’t see how deploying Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Iain Duncan Smith will bring Damascus to its knees, let alone making Assad cease and desist.

Not a gaucho, just gauche

Sean Penn, ‘serious’ actor and douchebag extraordinaire, has turned up in South America (maybe he believed it to be the Deep South) and thus, At Close Range, weighed into the contretemps over the Falklands, explicitly endorsing the Argentinean version of events, leaving many British scowling at The Game he’s playing.  His argument, which has all the substance of Milk, would make him a Dead Man Walking were he ever to set foot in Port Stanley now, after condemning the islanders without even bothering to meet them.  No doubt when he met President Cristina Kirchner Up at the Villa, he was in A State of Grace at being admitted into the presence of a national leader (not the first time given his attempt to parley with Saddam Hussein).  Thinking She’s So Lovely, he failed to realise he was proving her very willing ‘useful idiot’.

Both in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Penn bandied about terms that he had been trained to deploy such as ‘archaic’ and ‘colonialist’.  What is this – the Communist International in 1921?  Suggesting ‘the UK’ (the phrase being overly politically correct) has all the faded imperial grandeur as to be found at Persepolis is far from Crackers; it’s stating the obvious.  But implying that the British are the Bad Boys and that their delusions leave them up a Mystic River without a paddle, is simply plain rude.  We all have our limits and Penn stepped over The Thin Red Line, given he has no connection either to Argentina or Britain (a failed marriage to Madonna doesn’t count, despite her bigging up Englishness a few years ago).  To cite the Casualties of War of both combatants in 1982, including those with The Weight of Water above them, in criticising the brief sojourn of Prince William is also insulting (plus let us not forget who the aggressor was then).  Wills is engaged in search and rescue, not search and destroy with All the King’s Men.  On that note, for Argentina to say the second in line to the throne wear the ‘conqueror’s uniform’ makes me rack my brains for all those lands subjugated by search and rescue teams.

Penn’s intervention must the inhabitants of the Falklands go “What Just Happened?”  He appears in The Interpreter – a drama based in and around the United Nations building in New York – and he thinks this makes him an expert in international relations.  In most regards, Michael’s Moore’s Stupid White Men is a coruscating and funny read, but his section dealing with non-American disputes is full of glib one-sided claptrap that would exacerbate these situations.  He is a dedicated polemicist though; Penn, in trying to emulate Bono and others, is just a windbag.  Never mind The Assassination of Richard Nixon, a film entitled The Assassination of Sean Penn would do good box office in Port Stanley’s cinema.

If he had even 21 grams of sense, Penn would acknowledge how absurd he is.  Should the USA hand back the vast tracts of land they confiscated from the Mexicans in the middle of the nineteenth century (more recent than the British resettlement of the Falklands in 1833)?  If so, Penn should be fine over losing his Malibu estate.  Maybe the new Mexican owners could bulldoze it to make way for a new road and rename it Carlito’s Way.  That would be Sweet and Lowdown.  We’re No Angels but all countries in the world have spotty reputations at some points in their history.  Westminster is not going to do a U Turn on the right to self-determination of the islanders, who have The Tree of Life of their families dating back considerable generations.  The Pledge of allegiance to London is not practised but they want sincerely to remain attached to British.  The Argentineans can call the place Las Malvinas if they not want, but the majority of the rest of the world will call it the Falklands, just as they use the term The English Channel rather than La Manche.

Given Buenos Aires is exactly on the other side of the world from a certain Chinese metropolis, would it be a Shanghai Surprise to find Penn burnishing his left-wing credentials by demanding the bourgeois democracy of the Republic of China on Taiwan return immediately to the People’s Republic of China of the mainland?  After all, who bothers about the views of those who live there?  Then it would be off to Pyongyang, where he miraculously survived in Team America: World Police, so he can pay his condolences to Kim Jong-Un, the son of his good friend Kim Jong-Il and then extol the virtues of hereditary communism.

Yes, I know I missed a few films of or related to Penn.  So sue me.

In all this, I say, good on you Ben Fogle, in challenging Penn to a debate (the latter will decline for he knows far too little of the issue to argue effectively) on the south Atlantic shenanigans.  Fogle would send him to a Penn-itentiary AKA the house of corrections.  For Fogle has done some in-depth study of the history of these rocky outcroppings.  He would know that the British settled on West Falkland in 1765, almost half a century before the existence of Argentina, with the Spanish on East Falkland.  The British occupants withdrew in 1784 on grounds of cost but never relinquished their claim to the islands as evinced by the bronze plaque they left there.  In 1820, the Spanish also left, effectively handing the rights to Britain.  When the Argentines made moves to create a colony, they requested the permission of the British.  Why would they do so if they did not recognise British overlordship of these islands?  With the arrival of new British settlers in 1833, tensions simmered with their fellow pioneers from Argentina until some of the latter murdered some of the former, leading to the expulsion of the entire Spanish-speaking colony.  Throughout it all, dating back to 1765, the British have had a presence in either flesh or metal and always in law.

And the winner is...

The news from Syria that it will hold a referendum in ten days time on whether to introduce plurality into the political system is preposterous on so many different levels – no wonder the US State Department bluntly says it is laughable.  First of all, is how do you hold a meaningful ballot nationwide when so many of the rebel-held areas will not permit government authority and, particularly in Homs, people are crying out for basic services, not polling stations.  This leads on to the second point, that those who do vote will be in the relatively peaceful Bashar al-Assad strongholds and so the result will skewed towards the regime maintaining a monopoly of power.  Thirdly, Assad and his coterie have promised reforms before but shown no inclination to enacting these, indeed, in relinquishing any power at all – giving away with one hand, taking double back with two hands.  The ballot boxes will no doubt be stuffed with voting slips favouring the Ba’ath party.  Fourthly, this flawed facade will be trumpeted by Damascus towards the international community as the will of the people given free reign and Russia and China, masters of the fictitious election, will claim credit for their ‘measured’ approach in the Security Council allowing the expression of the Syrians to take place.  George Orwell would have a field day.  Assad wouldn’t care so long as he can field an army.

I was gratified to find that the savvy Malcolm Rifkind is of the same opinion that sending in troops on the ground is a non-starter.  Syria, like Iraq, is an Arab Yugoslavia and Colin Powell’s favourite Pottery Barn expression – ‘you break it, you own it’ – would come into play.  Barack Obama, in election year, seems very keen to avoid embarking on an open-ended commitment.  Let alone that the Free Syrian Army do not control any significant contiguous territory, western troops would be in flagrant breach of international law and find that, once there, they can do nothing right in the eyes of the local population.  Moreover, we have heard enough horror stories from Iraq and Afghanistan to disabuse us that liberal interventionism/imperialism is all sweetness and light. 

Again, my views coincide with Rifkind that non-lethal help e.g. body armour, night-vision goggles, intelligence on troop movements should be disbursed.  Arms may be smuggled in by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the rebels, but as we have seen in Côte d’Ivoire with the fall of Laurent Gbagbo and in Libya, the ‘righteous’ side can commit atrocities of their own.  It is best that we do not have such blood on our hands too for supplying illicit firepower.

Where I find Rifkind’s reasoning questionable is in setting up a blockade.  Blockade is a tool of war as with Napoleon’s Continental Blockade against Britain or the Royal Navy ‘locking Germany out of the world’ in the Great War, but it can serve as a declaration of conflict too, which made Robert McNamara and his Pentagon staff so antsy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Leaving aside that Iranian vassals Iraq and Lebanon would refuse to toe the line (as they have done on Arab League sanctions on Syria), as Tehran quietly stokes its Achaemenid ambitions, what if Russian ships strove to beat the blockade in order to send arms to Syria?  We’re back to (a non-nuclear) 1962.  There was enough kerfuffle when Israel stormed a Turkish aid flotilla.  Imagine the ruckus were an American warship to commandeer a Russian vessel because it refused to stop and turn around.  Washington D.C. and Moscow’s re-set has suffered many setbacks but it would not recover from this. Ultimately, the West’s options are limited and the Syrian revolution will be running for a long time yet, neither side strong enough to deliver a knockout blow.

Gurkha triumph

On Valentine’s Day, one distinctly runs the risk of being ripped-off.  Set aside reserving a place for a restaurant in advance just to be guaranteed a space with your beloved, the prices are ramped up to eye-watering levels.  Is that the chilli? No, it’s the bill and it’s making me bilious.

One year, Altaa and I went to an Indian restaurant in Canterbury Street, Gillingham.  I suppose we were lucky to actually get to sit down as, later on, people who had booked had to queue outside waiting a for a table to become free.  This wasn’t a matter of punters being tardy with their foods.  We had to wait forty minutes before our chosen selection eventually turned up.  Even then, it was not of a high standard.  To top it off, Altaa and I had an argument over something and we both left the restaurant unhappy (though not before collecting the complimentary red rose at the exit).

This year we decided to try Gurkha Cuisine in Whiffen’s Avenue, Chatham.  The premises had previously been occupied by a Greek eatery, then by a Chinese operation. The current Nepalese occupants had proudly laminated and stuck up a broadly positive review by BBC and The Times food critic Giles Coren.  I had asked earlier in the day if they had any special tariffs for 14^th February and the reply was in the negative.  Being a bit out of the way and not especially bustling in general times, I hazarded that a table would be available.  Otherwise, the prime benefit would have been the fresh air walking down the brow of the hill.

Thankfully, this proved the case – a few tables were off-limits to the man and woman off the street but overall we were given the freedom of the dining area.  Without a menu before me, I could not relate the specific names of the delicacies we ordered, yet the starter that we shared was reminiscent of Mongolian buuz and there was a spicy dip for them.  This was followed up by two lamb dishes with pilao rice and standard naan bread.  We opted for a lamb double so we could share each other’s dishes and have red wine together – a fruitful proposition given that with regard to the liquid refreshment (which was poured generously) I had to polish off Altaa’s wine when she felt unable.  The desert list was a bit disappointing comprising solely ice-cream in various formats.  We declined and I paid Sangita at the till, returning the billing booklet plus tip.

We left the Valentine’s Day choice this year in a happy frame of mind.  Gurkha Cuisine can be assured they played a large part in this.

Justice Served

In the 1990s, the science fiction show Sliders was much in vogue. Like Quantum Leap, its genre compatriot, it rounded off each episode with a teaser for the next one (at least, that’s how I remember it after more than a decade). A particular instance is lodged in my mind and not subject to the vagaries of memory. Having entered a new dimension, they accost a fellow to make inquiries of the different reality in which they now find themselves. The man reacts with horror at the approach, fearful of ‘President Hoover’. John Rhys Davies as the Professor exclaims with ill-concealed incredulity “Herbert Hoover is president of the United states?” The visibly harassed man corrects him in a beat “J. Edgar.”


This is the reputation of the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - a megalomaniac whose monstrous caprice could destroy a person’s standing at a moment’s notice and who sought to repress freedom at every turn. As such, it would not be totally surprising that he would find some nefarious way to prolong his life by several decades in order to perpetuate his tyranny. Clint Eastwood, fresh from the drubbing he took in trying to celebrate the invigorating triumph of South African Rainbow Nation joy, primarily through Nelson Mandela, in Invictus, on the latest step in his directorial path seeks to recultivate the man J. Edgar Hoover.

Oliver Stone tried similarly to rehabilitate Richard Nixon as a tragic hero in the manner of Macbeth. In Nixon, Hoover was portrayed as little better than a pederast, with a predilection for servant lads of darker skin, in Bob Hoskins’ cameo of him. Eastwood’s J. Edgar is not slow to enumerate the faults of this ultimate lawman, but shows him as all too human than as a mythic villain.

For Eastwood, it is Hoover who is the tragic hero, with Nixon bringing dark forces in his wake, exemplified by Leonardo di Caprio’s Hoover’s tirade against ‘moral decay’, sniping “evil flourishes” just as newsreels show newly elected President Nixon giving the victory sign from his motorcade. Hoover clambers over dead bodies as he makes his name – John Dillinger, the Lindbergh baby – but these are not of his own making (much as he strive to claim over Dillinger, resenting Agent Melvin Purvis’s centrality in that case and resulting celebrity). Appealing to the Republican instincts of Eastwood, Hoover was a patriot in the truest sense (deriding the ‘opportunist’ Jo McCarthy); however misguided he may have been in his later years, he always sought to do what he thought was right for his country.

Others have sneered at Hoover’s transvestite inclinations and homosexuality. Eastwood (whose elegiac and restrained music composition epitomises his subject’s buttoned-up demeanour) is the thoroughly modern director, making the film as much a love story between Hoover and his deputy Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) as it is straight biography/hagiography. It reminds me of a man I spoke to over the telephone in my work capacity, who had called to place the death notice of his male partner in 2009. They had been together for 55 years, separated when this man with whom I was conversing had to be admitted to hospital for two weeks. When he came out, he was told his companion had passed away a few days before, but more than that, the man to whom he was devoted had died alone and it is this that caused him most distress. Tolson, who had greater health problems than Hoover following a stroke, also outlived his lover. The transvestite issue does veer into Norman Bates/Psycho territory with the mother-worship (though who wouldn’t be in awe of the formidable Judi Dench) but it is not overdone, with Hoover seeking strength in the absence of her.

Miss Gandy (Naomi Watts) could have been a beard to Hoover (of whom you might say it was ironic, given his distaste for facial hair), yet her devotion to her job as his secretary was close to the role of a wife, along with Tolson, moderating Hoover’s more manic designs. After we hear Nixon order his underlings, with suitably purple invective, to recover Hoover’s confidential files on anyone who was anyone in America, we see Miss Gandy shredding them to abide by Hoover’s wishes that these files should never fall into the wrong hands.

Though the ageing process looks impeccable, for some of the obsessive-compulsive behaviour of Hoover, di Caprio could reprise his role as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, while look to The King’s Speech to see an exemplar of a man overcoming a stutter. Indeed, Hoover is so analytical and socially obtuse, he is near autistic. One could intuit that this led to the control freakery. – the film certainly does. The envy of Bob Kennedy’s fireplace is nicely done. Further, he is an exceptional fit for Tolson, desirous of glory and adulation as his partner is retiring in nature.

As it in part depicts the early days of the FBI, it is a little bit of a shock to know how limited they were. Not only did they have no official firearms (Hoover distributing them to his men before a raid, saying there was nothing in the law about using guns for personal use), they could not even make arrests.

The period styling is top drawer and the familiar Eastwood motifs are there, such as the chiaroscuro (particularly highlighting the verticality in di Caprio’s face, to illustrate the difference in Hoover’s public and personal nature) and showing violence is messy, self-destructive and cowardly, not inspiring in the slightest. The cross-cutting across the eras serves the narrative well, especially in the denouement when Tolson tells Hoover how it is.

I never managed to see that Sliders episode that followed on from the entrée of the previous story but I doubt they did the justice to J. Edgar as Eastwood has done. Yes, he died in office like a pope or a king, but the FBI was his baby and protecting it and America was a passion of his and sometimes he overstepped the mark. Sympathy? Controversial but probably, overall, right.

The Copper Bullets on target to take the big game of Les Éléphants

I’m happy that Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations for the first time, 19 years after their national team was wiped out in an air disaster not far from the stadium where the final was played – echoes of Manchester United under Sir Matt Busby rebuilding after the Munich air crash of 1958 to win the European Cup ten years later. Côte d’Ivoire may have only won it once (1992) and have been favourites for the last four tournaments including this one, but Zambia had done a Dutch – twice finalists in 1974 (incidentally the year the Netherlands lost to the Federal Republic of Germany) and 1994 but never hoisting the trophy. That said, the Zambians pursued a style of play belying their status as underdogs. It still ended up 0-0 but of the more entertaining variety and there’s always the tonic for neutrals of penalties afterwards.


Whatever the criticisms of the regimes of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, there has been no instability that led to the Togolese bus being shot up in Angola and as, largely, a contiguous square with the island apostrophe of Malabo, it made more sense than co-hosts Ghana and Nigeria in 2000 who did not share a border of either land or sea. I see South Africa are now the next to manage the party (just a year later, to avoid clashing with the FIFA World Cup, before reverting to a two-year format. Goodness me). At least they can’t balls up their qualification for that time around given their bye for entry. It still is a source of amazement that any football association worth their salt did not understand the rules for progress (and surely the media would have had numerous trails about what was needed), thinking goal difference was the key aspect when head-to-head was the first deciding factor, so the team played for a draw when they needed a win. Intriguingly, Libya has been selected for the 2017 tournament, which will be 35 years after they entertained the footballing cream of the continent – a free country with, hopefully, a bright future.

All the time in the world

Visiting the chemist’s yesterday, playing on the store radio was that soft-focus Phil Collins’ cover of the Supremes ‘You Can’t hurry love’.  Collins, while tolerable in Genesis, becomes exceedingly irritating when solo and, for this number, somehow I imagined him having toilet trouble.  Renamed ‘Constipated Phil Collins’, I composed a rewrite that he should be singing, in 2003 whilst I lived and studied in Finland and emailed it to a friend back at Canterbury University and while both our college accounts have now been disbanded, I have made an effort to recreate what went before, after being reminded of those headier times.  The chorus line is indelibly carried on at my convenience when Mr Collins receives a royalty in earshot of myself.

I need to dump, dump,

Ooh, ease my mind,

And I need to find time,

Shouldn’t have had that pie.

My mama said:

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you’ll just have to wait.

Shit don’t come easy,

But it’s a game of give (nnnhh) and take.

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you just have to wait.

Just trust in a good time,

No matter how long it takes.

How many colon-aches must I stand,

Before evacuating my bowels is no longer banned?

Right now the only thing that keeps me hanging on,

When I feel my sphincter, ooh, it’s almost gone,

I remember mama said:

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you’ll just have to wait.

Shit don’t come easy,

It’s a game of give (nnnhh) and take.

How long must I wait,

How much more can I take

Before faecal matter

Causes my colon to break?

No, I can’t bear to live my life flatulently,

I grow impatient for a laxative to call my own,

But when I feel that I, I can’t go on,

Well, these precious words keep me hanging on,

I remember mama said:

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you’ll just have to wait.

She said shit don’t come easy,

Well, it’s a game of give (nnnhh) and take.

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you’ll just have to wait.

Just trust in a good time,

No matter how long it takes, now break (aahhh)!

Now excrement don’t come easy,

But I keep on waiting,

Constipated,

For that pharmacy I can reach all night,

For some tender liquid

To flush me right.

I keep waiting,

Ooh, in agony.

It ain’t easy (poo don’t come easy).

No, you know it ain’t easy.

My mama said:

You can’t hurry poo,

No, you’ll just have to wait.

Shit don’t come easy,

It’s a game of give (nnnhh) and take.

You can’t hurry poo,

Think of my diarrhoea ,

What a mess was the loo,

Not to mention the urea!

Harmony in numbers

When people in football rave about symmetry, it is usually the fleet footwork of the players they are commending.  At this moment in the fixture season though, Newcastle United have a strange alignment of numbers.  They have 42 points so far, unremarkable in itself.  Yet 42 points is the equivalent of 14 wins and there are 14 games left in the season, so Newcastle have accrued exactly the same points remaining in the season.  To do so, they have won 50% of the games, with 25% handed out to draw and thus the remaining 25% to defeats.  Such round numbers at this stage of the fixture list is bizarre; however, whatever result is achieved today, they will fall out of sync from that moment on.

A tale of two names

With Charles Dickens’ bicentennial birth anniversary all the rage, here’s a fun game to paint oneself as a Dickensian character.  Take the Christian name of a great-grandfather and add it to the primary school you attended.  I choose to come out as Henry Napier, a fine Victorian name as Napiers (related and unrelated) were very prevalent in the British Army during the nineteenth century.

England to go a-Capello

They didn’t think it was all over but it is now. Fabio Capello walks away from England football national manager, over interference from the FA over who can his team captain, with John Terry being dropped because of the racism charge. Don Fabio may believe in innocence before being proved guilty one couldn’t have Terry lead out the national team with such a cloud hanging over him. Given that when he arrived on these shores he was baffled by the importance that the role of captain had to an English team, has he had such a change of mindset? It is possible that the Italian also thought he was being set-up to be the fall guy in the event of failure in Poland and the Ukraine in the summer.

If the latter was the definitive reason to jump ship then it is a shame that Capello felt the need to learn only 100 English words for his vocabulary (as was his boast), as he then might have heard Stephen Hester on Radio 4, the RBS chief saying that, despite the brickbats, it would have been ‘indulgent’ for himself to resign. Indeed, the banker drew on ‘inner reserves of strength’ to carry on in his job. Capello was being paid five times more than Hester per annum and one would have felt the former could have drawn on some inner reserves after being feather-bedded with £24 million in four years. His compatriot, Carlo Ancelotti, put Capello to shame by becoming fluent in a new language at a not youthful age but when you are in semi-permanent residency in another country (namely the Italian’s own), the compulsion was in all likelihood lacking.

Don Fabio claimed that the England task would be the crowning moment of a glittering career. His pedigree was impeccable with league titles from managing AC Milan, Read Madrid and Juventus (though the two from the last were stripped after the Calciopoli match-fixing, referee-tapping scandal). A Champions League win and two other European Cup final appearances boded well. As Giovanni Trappatoni, Serie A’s most successful ever manager, found out, a good club coach does not always translate into a good national coach (scraping some success with Ireland, he was disastrous in charge of Italy). Far from being the apogee of his life to date, an underwhelming World Cup and now dropping England in trouble just months before the European Championship, it appears like Capello was looking for one final big pay cheque.

It could not have been better choreographed for Harry Redknapp. Cleared of cheating the public purse (as I knew he would) earlier in the day, he is now in the frame to be England manager (the verdict from Southwark Crown Court may have played a part in the FA’s just intransigence). He may not be so different to Capello, as ‘Arry admitted in a police interview that he writes like a two year old and the Italian maybe little better in English handwriting. Hopefully, Redknapp will be patriotic enough to take a pay cut (both from his Tottenham position and what he can expect to receive as England manager). Importantly, he will get tournament experience with the pressure not as high as it might have been had he been in position for longer.

Duck Soup anyone?

As if to reinforce my previous post about the ridiculous nature of the hyperbole over the Falklands, on the day the Argentinean government renames their top football division Cruiser General Belgrano (how odd to commemorate a military loss and one that induced the rest of the Argentinean fleet to stay in port, probably saving many more lives), Fidel Castro, in support of Cristina Kirchner, ridicules the Royal Navy for only sending one small ship because they no longer have any aircraft carriers to dispatch. Therefore, he thinks that if Britain had serious military clout, like 'the Yankees', they should have sent an aircraft carrier. But Kirchner is calling the hot-button issue in her latest political manoeuvring, 'a militarisation' of the region. Not according to Castro, with his one small ship claim. His attempt to poke fun thus backfires on him and his ostensible ally Kirchner. Well, I suppose the ex-revolutionary has to occupy himself somehow in his retirement.

It's a load of bolos

In election year, rhetoric can become ramped up to such a fever-pitch as to threaten pandemic, witness the Republican Primaries. It is estimated that up to a quarter of the world’s population will vote (maybe more so as a result of some countries where ballot-stuffing is the norm) in 2012. Understandably, everyone is trying to get the edge over their opponents, the key theme that will propel them to power or keep them there. Anything can be fair game.

Argentina is not one of these countries to hold a plebiscite for their representatives, yet if feels like election season. In Buenos Aires, President Cristina Kirchner is a wily operator but is displaying all the diplomatic tact of the now resident Carlos Tevez. The UK government, exasperated by the unremitting bellicose statements coming out of the presidential office, has decided to issue the equivalent of a slap in the face, the idea of getting someone to calm down. It is sending not just the most modern ship in the Royal Navy but posting the heir presumptive to the British throne to be an integral part of a sea-air rescue mission service. This has not gone down well from the River Plate to the Andes and Kirchner has pledged to take the issue, a controversy she has whipped up of her own accord, to the United Nations General Assembly to score a moral victory, knowing that if presented to the Security, the UK (at the very least) would veto any proposal. At a time when there is strong talk of presenting the atrocities in Syria to the General Assembly to build international support to condemn the Assad regime, this Argentinean conceit is a sideshow at best and an insult to the very serious situation in Syria, all for electioneering. Though she has managed to corral support among her fellow South Americans, the General Assembly usually upholds the right to sovereignty first and self-determination second – on neither count is Argentina on strong ground.

One should consider the history of the Falklands. From 1770 to 1820, it was an uninhabited archipelago claimed for the crown of Spain. With Madrid in no financial position to defend such a distant and unprofitable outpost after the loss of its mainland Latin American empire, when the nascent Argentina claimed ownership of Las Malvinas in 1820, it was not disputed. It was not long in the possession of the men from the pampas, as Britain added the islands to its burgeoning empire in 1833. Given that Kirchner is a name of German origin (and Germans in South America do not have a fine reputation), it probably means that the Falklands have been British longer than the Kirchners have been Argentinean (into whose family the current president married) - indeed, there are very few Argentineans who are truly indigenous in their descent. Along with South Georgia, the islands were an important coal-refuelling stop in the south Atlantic Ocean. It was the scene of the December 1914 Battle of the Falkland Islands, where the renowned Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee perished, after inflicting a defeat on the Royal Navy a month before at the Battle of Coronel. This time, the tables were turned after a powerful squadron had arrived in Port Stanley the day before to look for him, yet in the end their prey came to them.

In more recent times, to pre-empt the 150th anniversary of British ownership of the islands, the junta in Buenos Aires, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to invade. The military government, which had ‘disappeared’ at least 30,000 people, was growing in unpopularity. Taking over Las Malvinas provided an immediate shot in the arm for the regime as wild celebrations ensued. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, acting more out of patriotism rather than electoral calculation (though it helped), sent a ‘task force’ to liberate the Falklands. Had it failed, the Royal Navy would have been crippled and reduced to little more than coastal defence of the home islands. The Argentinean bombs were only 30% successful in detonating because those maintaining the munitions set the wrong length of fuse. Had that rate been even half, it might have made the British task force untenable. In the end, Exocet missiles did significant damage but not enough and the Falklands once more resorted to British control.

With the junta utterly discredited and internationally isolated following an unsuccessful war, essentially the generals lost heart to continue in power themselves. Their legitimacy was stripped and a popular uprising restored democracy to the country a year later. Had the British abandoned the Falklands as an ‘oh well’, had many more tens of thousands would have lost their lives without even a memorial to them as the junta persisted with its iron grip? Would there be a dictatorship to this very day, obviating Kirchner’s campaign for re-election? Though it was not its original intention, the UK played a key role in ending the rule of a tyrannical clique, showing that the emperor had no clothes.

Some people say, how would London react were, say, the Shetlands Argentinean? Well, if the occupants were all Argentinean and wanted to remain tied to the mother country 7,000 miles away, that would be their right. The Falklands people determine to be self-determined in which country has sovereignty over them. No-one should take away their right to decide. The Faroe Islands are autonomous but are united with Denmark; then again, they are closer to the UK. Why should Denmark lord it over this collection of rocky outcroppings? Clearly, the UK has a stronger claim to them, despite the centuries of Danish rule. Who cares what the people who actually live there think? For that matter, a long time ago, Great Britain was part of the Danish empire of Canute the Great (the apocryphal story of him attempting to command the tide was to illustrate the piety of a king ridiculing the blasphemous blandishments of his courtiers). A long time ago. Why shouldn’t we hand ourselves, lock, stock and barrel over to control by Copenhagen, irrespective of our wishes?

But mention of the Shetland Islands was unintentionally apposite by the person texting BBC Five Live’s Tony Livesey’s radio show. For Argentinean interest in the Falklands has drastically increased since the discovery of oil, becoming hysterical when Westminster started awarding contracts to mining companies. This is the true nub – financial nationalism. No matter that Argentina operates a successful economy in contrast to much of the ‘developed’ world (the default a decade ago proving a blessing in disguise). As with any government, it wants more. Kirchner has been sworn in again (winning re-election last October) and is unassailable in the polls to be brought low, therefore the sniping from Patagonia to the border of Paraguay will continue. Let us hope that the stridency and childishness, as it is currently, will abate once the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War passes, with vituperative chuntering decreasing in equal measure from 10 Downing Street.

How much longer?

It is now 60 years and one day since the Queen ascended the throne. She is already the most elderly monarch in British history but despite having exceeded George III sometime last summer (because although the last English king to claim to be King of France reigned between 1760 and 1820, he took the crown in October and died in January – deranged for the last eight years of his life, it would have been personally and politically uncomfortable for the Prince Regent to have organised a diamond jubilee), she has still four years to go to beat Queen Victoria. Given that Elizabeth II has overseen a contraction of the British Empire even more drastic than expansion in Victoria’s time, she may choose to ‘retire’ before she exceeds her great-great-grandmother, in much the same way as Manchu dynast Qianlong (11th October 1735 – 8th February 1796) did to avoid bettering his illustrious ancestor Emperor Kangxi (7th February 1661 – 20th December 1722) in terms of length of reign, even though China reached its greatest ever extent under Qianlong.


Amongst her contemporaries, Elizabeth is not unique. Bhumibol Adulyadej (AKA Rama IX), King of Thailand, has overseen what once was known as Siam since 1946. Indeed, if she is to beat records for monarchs, she is still in the junior league. Rameses II, the New Kingdom Pharaoh and the Ozymandias of Shelly’s poem, racked up many achievements between 1279 BC and 1213 BC, to earn the sobriquet ‘The Great’. Austrian (then Austro-Hungarian) Emperor Franz Josef straddles the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more than Victoria, taking up the cudgels of control in 1848 and, having guided his Habsburg realm to ever greater decrepitude, popped off in 1916, having played a key part in dragging his dominion into a war that would destroy the multi-ethnic entity. Louis XIV, the Sun King, allegedly born with a full set of teeth, certainly chewed up much of Europe over the 72 years the Bourbon was the sovereign of France, between 1643 and 1715, maintaining French integrity but running up ruinous debts that hobbled his successors. Yet our Liz will have to beat records for human longevity, let alone the span of her years as head of state if she is to be the all-time ruling champ. According to the most credible sources, Pharaoh Pepi II of Old Kingdom Egypt was the ultimate authority for the Nile region (in various states of collapse, maybe appropriate for Elizabeth II) for 96 years. Then again, after he shuffled off the mortal coil, there was no Egypt anymore as he had been the last thread of continuity and the civilisation entered the First Intermediate Period. Taking into account the last three, maybe long reigns aren’t always to be celebrated.

The 1980s animation The Snowman with the crystal voice of a young Aled Jones, implied that come morning the men of ice would be no more.  Well, I can say Fred, my snowman, is made of hardier stuff.  His right eye, his nose and his lips may have fallen off (a worrying condition) and a few of his buttons dropped from the coat, but with a bit of remedial work, he was as good as new (his cucumber right eye slipped out again – probably not cancer though).  His head is now sloping forward ominously but it means he no longer eyeballs us (literally) in the upstairs bathroom.  Mind, the ball of his body and the compacted ice above will probably last at least a week given the temperatures in the core will be so low and insulated from the outside as to remain solid for some considerable time.

Up their own arses, not up in the air

In line with seeking to talk up the business, BAA, owners of Heathrow, resort to risible farce.  Despite cancelling 50% of flights, the BAA chief says the 'snow plan' has worked 'far better' than in previous years.  Well, it couldn't be worse than a closed airport.  This time they had the gritters but I doubt a North American airport would get away with cancelling half of the flights in conditions Heathrow has to deal with.  BAA sound like dodgy spivs ( much in the same way that the BBC has chosen to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 60th year on the throne with a programme called "The Diamond Queen" - I thought they'd moved to Salford, not the East End).  Of course, things are never perfect but in such circumstances, humility and a promise to do better would go further than all the transcontinental flights that do manage to leave.

Diplomacy shot down as Syria is shot up

Could any other conclusion have been expected?  Dictators supporting a dictator, it’s QED.  As British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said, the ones pushing for a UN Resolution to scold President Bashar al-Assad, for seeking to crush his citizens with wanton violence, removed all offending passages and beefed up assurances that military action would not result from it, yet this was not sufficient for Russia and China and they vetoed it, blowing a raspberry in the face of the other 13 members of the Security Council voting in favour.  Acting like petulant children, Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao now serve as apologists for child killers.  Angered by feeling duped into abstaining on a no-fly zone motion on Libya that was pursued aggressively by NATO and led to the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi, they are extracting their revenge on the West through the blood of the Syrian people.  Proxy politics of course, but curious in picking a fight that will damage their own standing with the Arab world.  They also have domestic considerations – the elites in Moscow and Beijing both fear an upheaval that will sweep them away and the winter protests throughout Russia rattled the Kremlin, before they realised general apathy would win the day.  Finally, Russia is a long-term ally of Syria and both it and China have extensive military contracts with the Ba’athist regime.

Aside from Russia, China and Iran (playing an important part in training Syrian forces loyal to the regime as Turkey does with the rebels), plus the Iranian satellites Iraq and Lebanon, the only country happy with the situation is Israel.  Disappointed on the fall of Hosni Mubarak – a man with whom they could do business - in Egypt and aghast when a Cairo mob laid siege to their embassy, I imagine Tel-Aviv is quietly happy with the chaos in Syria.  While speaking in ominous terms of the intentions of Iran, they have been silent on their relations with Damascus.  

Israeli politicians know that with Assad utterly discredited at home and abroad, then as long as he and his cronies cling to power, there will never be any international pressure in the slightest to hand back the Golan Heights and turn a forty-year cease-fire into a peace treaty.  Israel used to boast about being the only democracy in the region and claiming moral superiority as a result, yet they did not want their neighbours to emulate them, for they feared the antagonism of the Arab street would translate into parallel results at the ballot box – the cynical braggadocio has come back to haunt them and made their security – Israel’s understandable ultimate concern – more precarious.  They place no faith in the theory that democracies do not go to war having exploded it in the conflict with Hamas (who won the Palestinian elections all those years ago; Hamas successfully goaded the Israeli Defence Force into attacking after the former faced political defeat in the Occupied Territories and thus became martyrs instead of fall guys). Therefore, both sides of the Knesset will be delighted should no regime change occur in Syria, with the Alawite elite left too weak to rule and too strong to let others rule and so, in effect, neutralised.  Let Russia and China take the flak - now that is clever proxy diplomacy, with the proxies not even aware of their nature.

Cuise Control

When Hollywood stars fade amid the tumult in the galaxies of the studio system, they do not always go quietly into the night. Some, like Charlie Sheen (who, despite being TV’s best paid actor, was on a comedy show he felt was beneath him, with a credit rating of zilch in the movie industry), go supernova, before collapsing into a black hole of self-regard.

Others whose thermo-nuclear furnaces are ailing, draw on goodwill reserves in what originally propelled them into the firmament, to kick-start their careers again. After languishing in the doldrums when the acclaimed Copland took him nowhere commercially, Sylvester Stallone fought back with a new Rocky and another Rambo – now he can finance pet projects like The Expendables (whose forthcoming instalment will need more wit than just assembling wizened action lunkheads together). Duayne Johnson was dropping off the stellar radar entirely, before he tagged along with the fifth Fast and Furious flick - the reward is to star in the sequel with the crummiest title ever: Journey 2 The Mysterious Island (following on from Journey To The Centre Of The Earth) alongside Michael Caine (who knows a thing or two about bad title, bad movies and a combination of both).

After a misconceived collaboration with Cameron Diaz (who ironically looked older than him) in Day And Knight, the future of Tom Cruise’s career was talked about in disparaging terms, how he was idling away to insignificance. Cruise shot to fame with adrenalin rushes, slowed down when aiming for Oscar respectability with Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut, before realising the Academy would never give him the statuette he craved and resumed a central role in films that blaze away at bad guys. Yet firmly in the Roger Moore age bracket during the latter’s James Bond period, it was openly questioned where Cruise would go from here. Rich enough to retire and tour the world preaching scientology, that obviously did not chime enough with Cruise’s sensibilities. He fell back on his banker of recent years, the Mission: Impossible franchise.

In contrast to the previous Missions and following the current vogue for subtitling, the numeral is dropped altogether and replaced with Ghost Protocol. Essentially, it’s mad scientist threatens the world shtick but from the opening credits it’s clear that Tom cruise is the major backer for this picture and he’s going back to what he knows best (such as hiring actors not too tall to embarrass him – one ogre of a prisoner is probably only 5’ 11”). Simon Pegg reprises his role, Ving Rhames in a non-combat cameo, with Paula Patton and The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner tagging along for the ride. Brad Bird is the director – a consultant for The Simpsons during the 1990s, he went on to ‘shoot’ The Incredibles and Ratatouille (both Oscar winners) and his wit, though not overarching, is telling. That noted populist JJ Abrams is on board is no surprise either.


Ghost Protocol (GH from here on in) begins with a panorama scanning over Budapest. It reminded me that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy adopted a similar approach but an agent jumping backwards off a building, blasting would-be-assassins as he fell before landing in a crash mat that seconds before had the size of a chewing gum packet, is about as far as you can get from the Gary Oldman vehicle. There’s the inevitable roadshow of other glamorous locales: Moscow, Dubai, Mumbai, San Francisco. But if anyone thinks that being a secret agent is an ace profession, the part is tinged with tragedy making GH quite hard-hitting in real time.

It takes in current affairs with the re-set in relations between the USA and Russia a key component – fractious but working towards the same ends. I was a little baffled that Putin would allow a Hollywood crew inside his inner sanctum, much less destroy one of the Kremlin gates and a lot of Red Square (with CGI). There is the quid pro quo as the male Secretary of State (move over Hillary) gets a bullet in the head.

Conventions of the business are followed. The villain may be Swedish (and played by a Swede in Michael Nyqvist), yet his English is of the Received Pronunciation variety with another of a European twang to bestow true dastardliness. Also, only women can fight each other and that (spoilers from here on in, though as GH coming to the end of its cinema run that warning may be redundant) the villainess suffers a suitably impressive death, being kicked out near the top of the Burj Dubai, the tallest occupied building in the world. Moreover, this is Mission: Impossible, it can’t be truly sad for the hero Ethan Hunt. It would have been a bit of a waste of saving his wife in the third film only for her to be killed off in the interim between then and now. I always felt that David Fincher wasted the opportunities of all those who survived Aliens by killing off all bar Ripley for Alien3, justifying it by scripting it that they all had face-huggers infect them – it was pointlessly punitive. Here, Hunt’s spouse is still alive as her death was faked to protect her from all those who wished ill of Hunt. Noting the credible rumours around Cruise, this could be wish fulfilment for him – married but with a wife that must remain distant – while for the rest of us it is a bittersweet denouement, giving the movie an edge that it threatened to throw away.

So a triumph, not one to live too long in the mind, but as Cruise seems to keep the Picture of Dorian Gray in his attic (along with Katie Holmes it is rumoured), he can keep going on with the franchise until retirement.  Just as long as the right short people are available under contract.  Three out of Five.

To Kick It Out kick Terry out

While the furore rages whether John Terry should go to the European Championships, now that his trial for race hate has been postponed to July, no-one questions the motives of his club Chelsea.  After all, they are the ones who have requested the delay because it might affect their players i.e. they might have to sacrifice a few hours away from the Playstation or Xbox to attend court.  It is a risible excuse.  Tottenham Hotspur manage to soldier on. The true reason is Chelsea’s cynicism, seeking to manipulate the legal process, for if John Terry was convicted his football career would be over – he certainly could not continue to be club captain – and this would damage Chelsea as they desperately strive to stay in contention for Champions League qualification for next season.  Whether Terry’s name is ultimately cleared or not, let alone justice taking its course is not important to the Stamford Bridge hierarchy and I do find their contempt for the anti-racist cause and indeed that of the English national team sickening.  Say England were to triumph in Poland and the Ukraine and then the person who led the team was convicted of race hate, it would taint the whole achievement. 

Of course, John Terry has to stand down as captain for a second time.  Innocent until proven guilty maybe but life isn’t fair and previous indiscretions have long exhausted any reservoir of goodwill.  This would really send a signal that racism will not be tolerated anywhere, even on the previous ‘sanctuary of the pitch’.  Maybe Terry should direct some of his ire at his employers for dragging it out.  In no other profession could a person of standing be allowed to continue in post – they would be suspended on full pay, with another employee standing in the breach until the charges were resolved one way or another.  Spurs are a special case because no-one could fill the manager’s role adequately.  Politicians are accused of a litany of misdemeanours, but if Chris Huhne is put on the path to prosecution by the police tomorrow, then he has to abdicate his responsibilities until the matter is settled.  If he did get his wife to take speeding points on his behalf, he has broken the law (incidentally, so has she; talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face).

I remember that a defence counsel recounted in a newspaper interview that he often had clients who liked to dress in a brassy suit and tie, in the manner of their idol John Terry dressing for formal occasions.  This suited-and-booted swagger instantly alienated the jury and made a conviction more likely.  Instead, the lawyer tried to convince the client to appear in their normal clothes to show humility and the kind of personal background they come from.  I fear come July he is going to have to become a lot more persuasive.

Notwithstanding the charges, there is an argument that Terry shouldn’t go to the Euros in a professional capacity.  No-one disputes that he has put his body on the line over the years and played through the pain barrier, but this attrition has dulled his physical capabilities.  He was part of a defensive team that was repeatedly cut apart by the German’s Young Turks (a description befitting in more ways than one) at the World Cup.  That was in 2010.  Who’s to say, two years on, the same won’t happen, if not worse?  With the voices of Jason Roberts and Piarra Power saying his presence would be toxic in the dressing room, that is the most powerful of indictments and, all in all, it seems folly to stick with Terry.  Fabio Capello and the FA have to act.