The shirt off the back? No, the kilt off the midriff.

I awoke this morning to the first news item on Radio Five Live being that gambling establishments will be subject to new regulations, including barring their clients form betting on more than they can afford.  Some should apply that to Alex Salmond who is gambling the entire Scottish economy's future on black (though red has been pre-ordained by Westminster and Brussels) - a roulette with a Russian flavour.  Standard Life doesn't intend to play the Christopher Walken figure out of The Deer Hunter and is making contingency plans to shift jobs and operations south - what a blow to Nationalist pride that would be should the financial equivalent of the Stone of Scone (RBS has forfeited its hallowed position) relocate its headquarters from Edinburgh to London.

Soft power squelched

Despite the anti-homosexual laws brouhaha, it has to be said that the Sochi Winter Olympics were a success, a snowflake failing to grow into an Olympic ring notwithstanding.  Not that I can say that of course for I watched maybe something in the region of 1-2% of the whole event.  The exorbitant costs, the kickbacks to oligarchs, the maltreatment of migrant labour - three issues related to the construction of Sochi alone, let alone wider human right issues in Russia were studiously downplayed.  The general consensus though, epitomised by Sir Steve Redgrave, has coalesced around that it was a positive and Russian analysts trumpet Russia's projection of 'soft power'.  That's not to say it wasn't taken extremely seriously - no jokey blaring of The Beatles' Back in the USSR, especially with the line about "take me to the snow-capped mountains way down south," but all the same it was hailed as a glorious sporting triumph.
Even before Vladimir Putin's precious showpiece had concluded, attention was shifting to the Ukraine.  To 'lock in' soft power, there has to be a period of calm and stability where the honeymoon glow extends into a gradual changing in attitudes towards the progenitor - there has to be a critical mass prepared to exercise the benefit of the doubt.  But events in the Ukraine - a revolution without a hubristic colour - have humiliated Putin, who still cannot grasp the concept of 'soft power'.  Back in the USSR seems to have been his message to Ukrainians via the medium of the Eurasian Economic Union.  Therefore, there have been unscheduled military exercises in western Russia (but curiously nothing east of the Volga River), fighter jets put on high alert and the ratcheting up of rhetoric from the Kremlin towards Ukraine, though disclaiming that such aggressive statements have anything to do with the intense sabre-rattling threatening to burst out of the scabbard - it's all coincidence.  This is not to say that tanks will be rolling across the border and bombs dropped on Kiev - Ukraine is far more powerful and important than Georgia and it doesn't have de facto independent regions with whom to contend, an autonomous Crimea the extent of distance from metropolitan control.
With the fall of Viktor Yanukovych (reportedly seen in a sanatorium outside Moscow, he'll probably take Russian citizenship to avoid extradition and copper-bottom it by being 'elected' to the Duma), Putin is making his displeasure known, to the street opposition, the official (now former) opposition and the West.  His blinkered idea of power being solely 'hard' has been disastrous to Russia's image, however, all Sochi soft power scorched away like a blowtorch to those snowy slopes.

Cutting one's cloth to match one's means

The news this week that the USA was down-scaling its military reach so that it could fight one regional war and provide air support in another is a tacit abandoning of the 'two-power standard' a little over a century after Britain abandoned its own version.  Each standard may not be directly comparable - Washington's current military was designed to fight with full spectrum abilities in two regions, whereas London insisted that its navy was the same size as the next two strongest navies combined - but they illustrate domestic preoccupations that balk at the cost of such a large part of the government budget being hived off to fund a force that is overwhelmingly powerful.
Britain was placed at a disadvantage when it developed the Dreadnought as it made all its previous battleships obsolete, greatly straining the standard previously maintained, but it had no choice because a year later Imperial Germany had it own 'all big gun' ship.  Frantic attempts to keep ahead of the Germans were successful (except in the development of fatally compromised battlecruisers) but it explains why the UK so willingly signed up to the Washington Treaty of 1922 limiting capital ships.  World War One had exhausted the coffers and the two power standard died.
America also seeks to balance the books.  The Sequestration brought about by Congressional intransigence forced several parts of the navy to be mothballed.  But when the country spends as much as the next five bigger military budgets combined (a five-power standard?), it was seen as a luxury that couldn't be afforded in more pinched times.  Hence, if the USA fronts up against North Korea, say, it can only provide limited support, mostly air, against another 'rogue state'.  The USA's stand-offishness with Syria indicates though that Europe must take more responsibility (not exactly forthcoming) as it prepares to go toe-to-toe with China if need be, a regional conflict erupting over anything from a reckless Pyongyang, Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands.  It can still project its power anywhere in the world, but whatever the consequences of the Pacific Pivot, the USA has tacitly acknowledged it is just a superpower, instead of a 'hyperpower'.  Military unipolarity is at an end.

Tailoring one's approach

Harold Wilson once said that the Labour Party was a moral crusade or it was nothing.  After achievements in combatting sexism and racism in the official sphere (with still a long way to go amongst society), liberals - across the political spectrum - started angling around for a new cause, a new moral crusade about which one could be righteously indignant.  I say this because though there is a massive publicity frenzy at the moment regarding the LGBT movement, once it is seen as being more or less sorted, liberals will scrabble around for another oppressed minority about whom they can fulminate.  I don't remember there being a massive campaign in the 1990s regarding gay rights, bar the courageous and occasionally controversial efforts of Peter Tatchell and Stonewall.  Even Chris Smith as Culture Secretary in 1997 was rather low-key.
Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, however, yesterday signed into law a bill that criminalises homosexuality throughout his country, similar to how it was in pre-1967 Britain.  He didn't do it quietly at a midnight session but was determined to do it in the full glare of the international media.  It was interesting though that his decision to publicise his actions was done to thumb the nose at those he would term colonialist or neo-colonialists.  As in Russia, LGBT rights activists may have overreached themselves prompting a backlash.  It's all very well being determined to cut a swathe in a largely secular country where a large part of the population wants to be seen as right-on but the defeats in non-Western countries cut to the core of whether universal human rights exist, let alone universal gay rights.  Are rights seen as critical in the West applicable everywhere or is that the arrogance of the West?
Now, it must be said that those of a homosexual or other sexual orientation should be free to live normal lives and not have to endure harassment or casual prejudice.  That is my personal position.  I have to state it as there is a difference between being critical of a minority and being critical of the tactics of the advocacy for such a minority.  Just as criticism of any intemperate actions made by the Israeli government and those who defend such actions is not a criticism of the right of Israel to exist, free from fear (though wilfully interpreted as such by some organisations to engender silence), the same applies ot criticism of gay advocacy as not being a denial that those in the LGBT community deserve to live ordinary lives (again this can be wilfully misinterpreted).  It is a deep irony that those who support actively a group that has throughout history being characterised as sub-human should deny this minority the very human trait of fallibility.  If advocacy can be improved, that can only be for the better.
In fact, maybe the worst thing for the LGBT community is to have been adopted by the mainstream.  On legalisation in 1967 (despite vigorous denunciation of the government from Viscount Montgomery), Joe Orton was concerned as, for him, being gay would no longer be special, the thrill of the illicit gone.  But it had to happen.  In one way though he was right.  It is now a lazy, cynical shorthand for those who are not of an LGBT persuasion to proclaim themselves as supporters as proof of their progressive and modern outlook.  Such laziness results in harrying countries such as Uganda, Russia or Poland, rather than trying to understand them to bring about the change that is needed.  In countries of a more conservative hue than the West, a more softly-softly approach combined with education rather than megaphone diplomacy could reap rewards in the long-term.  The 24/7 news agenda makes us impatient but changing the mindset of a population does not happen overnight and breeds resentment if pushed too hard.
Certainly, those who have launched official verbal broadsides at gay people in general are rambling in their mindsets.  Museveni, in power for over 30 years, has also railed against miniskirts as pornography and vowed to ban them.  The instigator or Russia's anti-gay laws attacked Channel 4's Jon Snow for colluding in the massacre of Orthodox Christian Serbians at the hands of Kosovan 'terrorists'.  For the Russian, he is always partying like its 1999.
But Channel 4 is victim of its own excess.  Chronicling the vicious persecution of the punk rock group Pussy Riot and their fans by Cossack militiamen, Channel 4 decided to interview Anna Matronic, of the pop group Scissor Sisters and noted LGBT activist, in a videolink to New York about this naked crushing of LGBT rights in Russia, when Pussy Riot were protesting about human rights in general.  Channel 4's editorial team thought: Sochi Olympics, LGBT boycott, Pussy Riot/something something human rights - must be an LGBT story as if there are no other pressing human rights outrages happening in Russia.  Again, Channel 4 was bombastically angry, reeling off the sections of Uganda's anti-gay bill, including a part that forced people to report those they suspected of homosexuality, despite this part being dropped from the final bill.  If one cannot be dispassionate, at least be correct, for getting it wrong  (as Stephen Fry did when he effectively said that Poland built the WWII extermination camps) undermines your case in such parts of the world.  Again, it comes down to the effectiveness of advocacy.  Being sloppy in one's tactics just doesn't cut it.
The supposed boycott of Russian produce during the Sochi Olympics will have to continue indefinitely, presumably, otherwise it would be an inconsequential flash in the pan.  But as a gay friend said, there were far worse human rights abuses in China during the 2008 Olympics (culminating in the ludicrous Potemkin-style 'protest parks' where one had to apply for a permit from the police to protest and when one did you were arrested; and if you protested without a permit, they roughed you up before arresting you) and the LGBT activists didn't kick up a stink there.  That's why she had no qualms about watching the Sochi Olympics in her downtime.  This blinkered aspect of activists to others deprived of their rights hampers the case for LGBT advocates.  If Russia hadn't enacted an anti-gay law, would they have protested?  Would Channel 4 have called up Anna Matronic?  It makes them seem self-absorbed.  If they talked of the denial of a vast panoply of human rights, amongst which one was the rights of the LGBT community which was their speciality, they would have far more traction to their valuable argument.
Over-reaching is a natural impulse.  Adding asexuals to their campaign banner (LGBTA is in increasing use) is another irony for those who are asexuals were accused of being closet homosexuals anyway!  Each country (or in the USA, each area) must be approached in a way that appreciates the facts on the ground and can challenge them in a way that local people will understand - where their eyes are opened to the fact that to be in the LGBT community is essentially not chosen but a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.  They only form between 3%-5% of the population so what is there about which one can be frightened?  This way, the anti-gay rabble rousers are circumvented and a ground swell in the population at large provides the momentum for change.  In some countries that will take a long-time, but like being gay, nothing can be done about that.

Hiding one's head

The Crimean War has afforded some iconic moments that have been seared into history.  The Charge of the Light Brigade as been immortalised, whereas the incomparably more successful charge of the Heavy Brigade has been consigned to a footnote in history.  Florence Nightingale is etched into the popular consciousness with International Nurses' Day celebrated on her birthday every year, even though she never set foot in Russia and never got further than Scutari in the then Ottoman Empire.  The war, not exclusively fought in the Crimea, was also responsible for several pieces of clothing coming to prominence.  The cardigan (after the eponymous Lord) was one.  The Balaclava, named after the besieged city on the outskirts of Sevastopol, was another, pioneered by the British to protect their heads from the biting cold.

How ironic it is that the dethroned Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, should last be spotted skulking around plotting his escape in Balaklava, which gave its name to the headgear of choice of those who ousted him.  Or rather contributed to ousting him.  For like Nero, he jumped before he was pushed.  Not just a brutal autocrat but a brutally ineffectual autocrat.  Not for him, the nerveless, unashamed butchery of that other Russian client, Bashar al-Assad.  Vladimir Putin relied on him to quash the protests - on 17th February, the Kremlin released a further tranche of its $15 billion subsidy and on 18th, Ukrainian interior ministry forces opened fire on unarmed protestors.  But Putin leaned on a broken reed and so has stumbled into humiliation.  Whether Yanukovych would be welcome in Russia is a great imponderable, if that should be his destination.  What is certain is that Ukraine is no longer an option where he can continue as even his party and strongholds have turned against him.

A chill for the authoritarians

The Battle of Poltava in June 1709 marked Russia's eclipse of Sweden.  The Swedish force of Charles XII had been severely depleted by the coldest winter on the steppe in living memory (the next coldest winter would be in 1812 and then in the early 1940s - Russia have found the winter a very useful ally, similar to how the Japanese felt about the Kamikaze) and divisions in the Swedish camp allowed the troops of Peter the Great to rout the Swedes.  Charles XII fled south to Constantinople and the Great Northern War was as good as over (though drag on to 1721).
Poltava is now a stronghold to the authoritarian Victor Yanukovych, increasingly a creature of the Kremlin, but in recent days there has been discontent about the government's killing of unarmed protestors.  The street opposition (as opposed to the formal opposition) have endured the winter which though harsh has been milder than usual and now they see springtime.  Yulia Tymoshenko has been released from a prison in another Yanukovych strongpoint in Kharkhiv and given that the embattled president and senior Russian advisors are alleged to be in the city, it seems to be part of a calculation to dampen down the crowds which are even gathering there.  All of Yanukovych's sweeping accumulation of executive power has been revoked by parliament.  Only in Donetsk and the Crimea have there been demands for a harsher crackdown, something unlikely now the Interior Ministry has apparently switched sides.  Yanukovych is a slippery character but hopefully the EU will keep up the pressure to pin him to these new commitments and maybe release some cash to help out a country which was effectively purchased by the Kremlin for $15bn in the last few months.

The revolution begins

Well, I've finally joined the Twitter 'revolution' (probably as it enters its Brezhnevite 'stability of the cadres' decline).  I've linked to this blog on my Twitter profile (@AlexanderCPlumb).  To come from Twitter to this, it may be generous to describe the blog as 'minimalist'.  But the style is intentional.  I'm following a German book reviewer who hosted a television show where he dispensed with all the fripperies of modern cultural review shows.  There were no segments of authors or celebrities reading the books under discussion, overlaid with appropriate melodies.  There were no projections of the book cover and/or author projected onto the wall around the reviewers.  There was no media razzmatazz whatsoever.  It was just the views of himself and his assembled cabal of assessors.
Now, the name of this German man escapes me (and Google is no help, bringing up most unwanted references through any number of combinations - I won't say what typing in 'German book reviewer stripped down' hauls in through the trawl), but his style I found bracingly iconoclastic.  Were I to start adding pictures and videos and other aspects that can distract I would be going against the ethos of what I'm doing here.  As the saying goes, only dead fish follow the flow.  'Hard opinion' may be hard sell but in its own way it makes it stands out for not bowing to trends, allowing me to focus just on ideas, feelings and events that occur.
And I can't be bothered to make this an all-singing, all-dancing blog either.

Recherche du temps

Plenty in the Labour Party are furious that at the same time as Ed Miliband was taking an impassioned stand against phone-hacking in general and the Rupert Murdoch empire in particular, Tony Blair was acting as a consigliere to Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch and the latter's son, James.  In an email read out to the court as part of the ongoing trials into phone-hacking, Brooks explains Blair's intent to aid herself, Murdoch Jnr and "KRM" - Keith Rupert Murdoch apparently but it should always have been Kermit.
For me, the big revelation was that the former prime minister and alleged war criminal advised setting up a "Hutton inquiry" to 'clear' the name of Brooks and her associates.  It can't simply be Brooks' interpretation of the procedure as she outlines the exact same wording as was used to set up Hutton.  Blair was trying to absolve the Murdoch chiefs of any guilt, irrespective of whether that was founded i.e. a whitewash.
The judge from Diplock completely skewed the evidence presented to him, ignoring whole tranches that was critical of government and pouring his scorn solely on the BBC, leading to the departure of the BBC Director-General and its Chairman.  Maybe an inquiry for the Murdoch business would also implicate the BBC.  The death of David Kelly was almost a side issue for Hutton, despite that being the central part of the inquiry.  No matter how hard he tries, Iraq will always dog Blair.  What's surprising is how he encourages it.

Sidestepping Godwin's Law

Usually, comparisons with the Nazis are overblown and such hyperbole discredits the arguments of those who wield it.  Barack Obama has successfully faced down the Tea Party in his presidential re-election, despite their claims democratic socialism (which he doesn't espouse anyway) and national socialism are synonymous.

When the United Nations makes the comparison officially, one must take stock, however.  North Korea's hermit state's atrocities are of such a systematic scale and horror, that the main author behind a report into human rights in the country said the crimes of Nazi Germany spring to mind.

China dismissed the report, calling for 'constructive dialogue' into the human rights 'situation'.  Kim Jong-Un may be interpret that as 'constrictive' and throats.

Testing times

When I was in Tampere in Finland, on a Sunday it was my custom to attend the Anglican-inflected English service at the Nordic Church in the afternoon and then be present at the English Pentecostal service in the early evening which slotted in nicely after the first had finished, though involving a short distance to travel.  I appreciated the different styles and it also meant I could sleep in on Sunday mornings (the Pentecostals ran a translation service in their main hall for the morning alongside the regular native congregation but, Finnish being Finnish, one of the most formidable languages in Europe, the translation could be stumbling and halting, denying the sermon much of its power).
There was always useful applications for the spiritual life and I still cherish these.  One of these, however, particularly got up my nose.  One Finnish man using the tongue of the Anglo-Saxon (though in the standard way rather than being directly moved by the Holy Spirit) said that if we had faith in God, we should be able to hold up poisonous snakes in each hand and rely on God to stop the slithering (and surprisingly dry to the touch as I found out at London Zoo) lizards from resorting to their natural inclinations.  The man, a very occasional preacher (I wonder why, not), was no doubt sincere but he was also deluded.  By focusing on the Old Testament, he had forgotten the New.  One key passage when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness to throw himself off the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and be rescued by angels, as was alluded to in scripture, rebukes the devil, throwing back at him Deuteronomy "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."  One cannot use the Old Testament in isolation (unless you are Jewish and then you can, if in slightly different ordering).  And this man, in front of all the people taking notes, was advocating that God should be put to the test!
I raise this anecdote as it has been reported that Jamie Coots, an American preacher and star of of the reality television show Snake Salvation, has died at his home in Kentucky after being bitten by a rattlesnake (Rick Santorum has lost one primary voter for his 2016 presidential bid).  Taking a perverse view that being perforated by reptile fangs nine times and even losing part of a finger in one incident, was "a victory to God's people that the Lord sees fit to bring me through it," Coots managed to turn it to coin in best American tradition with his reality show that profiled Pentecostal snake-handling pastors.  He himself lost his snake venom 'virginity' in 1998.  Undeterred by multiple failure to ensure that the snakes he picked up desisted from their violent objections, Coots died less than an hour after he ordered doctors away from his home.  How would God's plan be enacted if they intervened, would have been his viewpoint.  Well exactly and that plan has now been executed, literally.

Forethought and lack of it

Scarlett Johansson is embroiled in a controversial saga of her own choosing since stepping down an Oxfam ambassador.  When she became the brand face of SodaStream, she may not have known that the company had a plant in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.  Oxfam informed her and asked Johansson to disassociate herself from SodaStream.  Instead, not only did Johansson choose her commercial ties over her humanitarian ones but, probably because of some staggeringly bad advice, she has released a statement announcing her parting of the ways with the charity by making no bones about Oxfam asking her to boycott Israeli products as part of the "divestment and sanctions movement."  Oxfam however did not ask to boycott SodaStream (and does not hold a position in any boycott 'movement), merely stop promoting it, so it comes across as bitterness from Johansson or, more likely, her advisors.
Anything related to Israel is controversial as the partisans are so polarised - only the antagonists in Syria are further apart.  This makes it a minefield for anyone who wanders off-piste as they will be instantly shot down by one side or the other.  Such has been the fate of the celebrity photographer Rankin (real name John Waddell) and his idle speculation.  I had never heard of him before he was elevated into the spotlight following an interview in The Independent, where he said, "I think the reason that she's not backed down is because, in America, the Jewish zealots are so powerful.  Especially in the entertainment industry, what they could do her career.  But the main thing in all this for me is that kind of extreme Judaism.  That extreme belief that this is their homeland and those people are worthless to them.  That's very powerful in America.  They will blacklist you.  They will blacklist you.  It's worse than McCarthyism."
Pretty crude yet incendiary stuff.  Johansson's global profile is such that it would raise questions were  she to suddenly disappear from cinema screens.  Again, I think it is her advisors who panicked, in thrall to the same (illusory) fear that Rankin alludes.  Extremists of all kinds are dangerous people and it could be said the settlers in the Occupied Territories need to possess such a mindset to tough it out when surrounded by hostile locals and international opprobrium.  One might even go as far uyuhguhvhvjhvjhvvhjvhvkhjvvkjhjvhhjvsaying the settlers are as dangerous to the long-term security of the State of Israel as the original Zealots were to Judaea 2,000 years ago, when they brought about the destruction of Jerusalem by sidelining the moderates in the Jewish Uprising against Rome, except that with the modern settlers the threat to a predominantly Jewish state be internal as a one-state solution will have an overwhelmingly Muslim population.
Rankin's loose talk though gives succour to anti-Semites.  His focus should not be on 'extremist' Judaism but hardline right-wing Zionism which dominates the Zionist cause to the exclusion of all other forms, dismissing them as traitorous and so bringing reluctant mainstream Judaism onside for they see no other way.  In the course of an essay about diasporas, one of my case studies was the original Diaspora and there are some interesting and diverse views under the banner of Zionism, most of which are positive and constructive and it is a shame that Tea Party-style conservatism has come to be synonymous with Zionism.
Rankin also does not draw enough distinction between Judaism and conservative Judaism and Israel and the Occupied Territories, with his mention of 'extremist belief' and 'their homeland'.  Rather pathetically, he fails to untangle the distinction in his apology, which makes him sound just like a closet anti-Semite.  He admits he was glib on such a "difficult and sensitive subject," and a spokesman said the remarks were at the same time "half-baked" and "spun."  Saying though it was not his "official position" calls into question just what exactly is his unofficial position.  Rankin's brutal disavowal of his comments furthermore is cack-handed, as rather than being at the mercy of terrified advisors (occupying the same mindset as Johansson's), it makes it sound as if he has been 'leant on' and so inadvertently gives validity to his newspaper spiel.
It wasn't just left there though.  More forethought was lacking in the person of Mark Gardner, of the Community Security Trust, which campaigns on issues of anti-semitism.  Stating the remarks revived long-standing slurs alluding to the power of Jews over the media and Hollywood, he demanded that both Rankin and The Independent repudiate the comments.  Leaving aside that Jewish people do have a valued position in the entertainment industry and the BBC gave airtime to Simon Schama and Alan Yentob in separate documentaries to extoll the virtues of Jewish talent and in Hollywood, from David O. Selznick and Louis B. Mayer through Mel Brooks, Roman Polanski and Woody Allen to the Coen Brothers to name a few (as South Park once quipped, "Come on Jews, show the gays who really runs Hollywood.") and that this was all achieved through many Jews, like many Irish, having an uncanny knack for storytelling.  Leaving all that verifiable and uncontroversial fact store aside, by Gardner making demands of Rankin and The Indy, he is asserting the very power over the media that he decries as false.  He really should think his statement and his tone through more carefully to improve his advocacy for (as Gardner well knows) anti-Semitism is a cancer that never really goes away, as the vicious hoax about Israeli hospitals sterilising black mothers from having more children proves.  If Jews are successful, we should applaud it as they enrich our lives, rather than view it as a sinister conspiracy.  After millenia of persecution, Jews are entitled to a homeland and the State of Israel serves that and a two-state solution guarantees its long-term security.  Finding a middle ground and compromise is invaluable to ending prejudice and Johansson, Rankin and Gardner need to take that on board.

134 minutes a tour de force

Around 1900, the author Henry James and a group of his friends undertook a tour of the southern USA, trying to investigate its economic decline.  Friendly with the anti-slavery campaigner Fanny Kemble, James and his confrères sought to establish if the South had only slavery going for it.  They concluded that it had and the Emancipation of the slaves had plunged it into penury, something for which the South had only itself to blame for maintaining such inefficient practices that could only work through slavery.  Over 100 years on, many in the South have still to come to terms with the American Civil War defeat.  There are many in Britain who thought and think the South's cause was noble - at about the same time James was conducting his sojourn, Lord Salisbury, the late nineteenth century British prime minister, opined that London should have used force to defend the South, faced as it was 35 years later by the united USA superseding it in sheer economic power.  This is a wrong-headed view as amply demonstrated by 12 Years a Slave.
The subject of the film led no fewer than six production companies to attach itself to the project (something which would have enraged Homer Simpson).  British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor leads a powerful cast and his acting is majestic.  It fully justifies its length as you know eventually that Solomon Northup will gain his freedom, but at each turn the hope that emerges turns again to despair as it is repeatedly dashed.  The film leaves one's heart heavy but burning at the manifold injustices perpetrated by the likes of Tibeats (Paul Dano) and the psychotic Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).  Truly, slavery was one of the most monstrous institutions of evil that was on Earth in modern times, a cruel, vindictive system that bred and legitimised sociopaths.  Even kinder slave owners such as Mr Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) were still practitioners of it and regarded slaves as property rather than people.  And as with all unjust systems, it intimidates the good, even Mr Bass (Brad Pitt) who turns out to be Northup's key to salvation.
Tragically, in the antebellum age, Northup never saw justice for his kidnappers, though prosecuted, were acquitted because as a black man, he could not testify in a court of law.  Even the date (possibly 1863), circumstances and location of his death are unknown so we will never know if he lived to hear about Lincoln's Gettysburg address and the 1865 law abolishing slavery.  The savagery to which he was subject must surely have shortened his life.  What one is left with is that the South had to be defeated and so the process of the fight for racial equality (which still continues) begun.  I would give this powerful, moving film five out of five.

That Seventies Show

As Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues showed, the 1970s was a time of bombastic clothing, economic mediocrity but also a creative flowering that has continued through to this day, not in its ingenuity but in its repetition.  It would be harsh to class American Hustle as unoriginal but David O. Russell's film does have many a seventies motif to go with the setting.  It's a homage to all those seedy political thrillers and the voiceovers, the put-upon Italian-American who lives at home with his parent(s), (thinking of Saturday Night Fever) and the gangsters of Martin Scorcese's early career.  Of course, clichés only exist because they have kernels of truth to give them life and Russell has superbly recreated a millieu that in lesser hands would have drifted into ill-judged parody (as there are many funny moments).
It starts with the scam artist Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale, excellent as always) meticulously pasting a toupée onto his combover and dressing smartly to cover his paunch - indicating that every aspect about Irving is fraudulent, from his activities to the image he presents to the world.  He meets with an associate, Richie diMaso (Bradley Cooper) and a female accomplice Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who are trying to sting New Jersey mayor of Camden, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) into accepting a briefcase packed with money as a bribe.  DiMaso's gauche eagerness ruins the transaction and as Irving races after Polito to smooth his feathers, the narrative unfurls to the past before seamlessly merging with the future.
It seems like an innocent love story between Irving and Sydney who go on to develop a commercial relationship in ripping off desperate suckers in the economic turmoil of the seventies (their first meeting is dated to the death of Duke Ellington in 1974 and they are forthright in their opinion of Jimmy Carter), as both Irveing and Sydney are permitted voiceovers.  However, it quickly emerges that Irving is still married to the phenomenal bimbo Rosalyn Rosenfeld (Jennifer Lawrence, brilliant again) who is also an expert at manipulation and deflecting all responsibility from herself.  At one point, she sends a microwave (which was a present from Polito to Irving) up in flames, after mocking the instructions not to put metal inside, which is symbolic in how she almost destroys the best laid plans of her husband and others.  Yet, she makes out this further fire in the home is not her fault.  Irving has also adopted her son and so he has vulnerable love to warm his cold blood.
At times, the movie plays us.  When Irving questions why Sydney has had two lunch dates with a potential mark, we think it is sexual jealousy but actually it turns out to be professional caution and very wise at that.  Irving and Sydney become beholden to FBI agent diMaso, who lives in a grim apartment with his mother who has a face like the flat of an iron and a fiancée who seems to have all the colour washed out of her.  His circumstances and competitive nature make him determined to not settle for what he has (which is understandable) but takes him into a situation that is spinning beyond his control and his mania leads to assault his immediate boss.  His patter allows him to escape being charged proving he is as much a con artist as Irving and Sydney.
DiMaso's plans initially centre on Polito but soon range much wider.  Polito was based on the real-life Angelo Errichetti who died in 2013.  Errichetti arranged bribes to pass to local politicians and even a national senator as part of waving through a regeneration plan.  In the film, this even extends to high-profile gangsters Robert di Niro has an uncredited role portraying another sociopath, Victor Tellegio (a play surely on Las Vegas' Bellagio casino); ironically, the actors in the positions of Tellegio's consiglieres do get a credit.
The movie at times does display the vaulting ambition of diMaso and is half an hour too long - partly, I was affected by entering the cinema with a mild headache and leaving it with less than mild throbbing behind my eyes.  Curiously, Irving and Sydney mention fleeing the USA for Romania (twice) and Estonia.  A move to behind the iron curtain would be a brave action - of all the countries to discuss to where one would take flight, these seem bizarre in a 1970s setting.  For sure, Ceaucescu was loosening his connections to the USSR, simultaneously being courted by the West and Romania would be just about viable as a destination.  But Estonia?  This was part of the USSR and it was a diplomatic fiction that the USA pretended it still existed as an independent entity.  Irving and Sydney would be treated as defectors, traitors to their home country and viewed with suspicion by their new one.  When so many aspects of the movie rang true, this jarred, though the caveat at the very start that "Some of this actually took place..." covers a multitude of sins.  Overall, I still prefer Russell's Three Kings, but it's better than I ♥ Huckabees.
The qualities of the picture overcome this.  It is continually interesting and usually exhilarating.  The A-List cast all deliver strong performances and Bradley Cooper is a revelation - this role is well tailored to his acting abilities.  Jennifer Lawrence nails her infuriating character but does smoke in a way that irritates real smokers (so I've read), inhaling and blowing straight out again.  Amy Adams is convincing in both her original American accent and her scamming English cut-glass voice - at times I forgot that her RP delivery isn't her character's natural sound.  Jeremy Renner plays Polito like Michael J. Fox in Spin City, which was the correct path - to make him a guy with whom we can have sympathy, even if he did veer on the shady side at times for the best of the community.  Christian Bale is professional in everything he does and you think of Irving rather than Bale when watching and listening.  The styling and the environment are lovingly conveyed by the production staff.  The movie prompted me to research what parts were true and it is good when a film can stimulate you like that.  Russell is a maverick, not dissimilar to Robert Altman who has his fair share of hits and misses.  The former could have a blowout in his next offering, but the light from American Hustle will last long.  Four out of five.

When in the clear was never so murky

The inspiration behind the naive, ridiculous, happy-go-lucky DJ characters Smashey and Nicey was man-out-of-time Dave Lee Travis (who reportedly remarked about the Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse sketch, "What's funny about that?").  Known as DLT, a play on the BLT sandwich, he was a regular on Radio One (until axed) and Top of the Pops.  Aung Sang Suu Kyi said his radio show gave her hope when she was kept under house arrest.  At the University of Kent at Canterbury, one of the blocks is called Darwin and it's two lecture rooms known as DLT1 and DLT2 and whenever entering either, I felt I was going into the belly of Dave Lee Travis.  That seems a lot more sinister now.
Today he was acquitted of ten of the twelve charges of rape and indecent assault, a week after William Roache was given the same verdict on his court case and a few months after Michael le Vell walked free.  Of all the 'celebrities' taken to court or merely accused post-Savile, only veteran TV show host and commentator Stuart Hall has been convicted.  The jury couldn't reach a verdict on the other two ranged against Travis but that suggests he will avoid punishment for those as well.
Rape and indecent assault cases are the hardest to prove as usually it comes down to one person's word against another.  The Crown Prosecution Service officially sets a threshold of 50% chance of conviction but there may be political pressure to bring more rape cases to trial given the dismal figures that currently abound.  However, all the defendant has to do is prove 'reasonable doubt' and by the letter of the law, they have to be acquitted.  Yet it is commonly accepted that physical sexism 'went on' for a long time without a fuss being made about it.  The verdicts though are taken as cut-and-dried.  One tabloid headline upon Roache's acquittal was 'Keep Ken and Corrie On' but there would have been headlines prepared had it gone against him, such as 'Cock-Roache' or 'Setting the Bar Low'.  Such is the cynicism of journalists.
I also get the feeling but without any proof that celebrities get an easier ride because of their recognition.  People may have grown up listening to the tones of Travis; juries might associate Roache as his Coronation Street character Ken Barlow.  Hall may have been avuncular and a former favourite at many a village fete but could have been loathed for his role on It's A Knockout.  One would expect juries to be intelligent and impartial and any prejudices knocked out of them when they made their deliberations, but humans are fallible and stubborn.  I do prefer to have these eminent entertainers acquitted of the charges but the suspicion remains that they did indulge in things decades ago that could be described generously as borderline.

Any trick in the book

It seems that some people (mainly right-wing hacks) really can't stand the UK meeting its United Nations commitment of making 0.7% of its GDP available as international aid.  If it isn't inappropriate to have such a policy in an austerity era, it's that no-one else does it (Norway is the only other country ever to have reached the target) or we are sending it to countries with space programmes like India.  Their vociferousness is only superseded by their denial of climate change being man-made.  Now the charge is that the aid should be redirected to help flood-hit victims (as mainstream opinion turns against climate change denier quacks).
As David Cameron said, it's not an either/or decision - Britain can afford both.  Indeed, it is quite creative to link flooding to foreign aid contributions.  What other wheezes can be dreamt up by those of a xenophobic hue to deny the less well-off British aid?  A historical football club like Portsmouth FC is struggling to pay off its debts and stay in the football league - a reduction in international aid could stop this!  Cutting the top rate of tax to 40% - who cares about those earning less than a dollar a day, what about those earning more than 200 dollars a day?  HS2 could definitely be built, er, scrap that one; that would alienate much of the middle England readership in whose acres the route will run.
Basically, there will always be economic exigencies that demand the aid budget be siphoned off, in the good times and the bad.  That no-one else (bar Norway) can attain it should be a source of pride for this country, not mean-spirited grousing.  India would push ahead with its space ambitions irrespective of whether segments of its population received much needed British aid.  Attaining the 0.7% target is one of the few unalloyed achievements of the Coalition and maybe that's why there are such determined efforts to undermine it.

Down and dirty

There was much petty criticism and snippiness by the SNP of David Cameron's love-bombing speech of Scotland from 'Mt Olympus'.  Pursuing a scorched earth policy knowing that if they lose the vote narrowly, independence will be off the table for a generation and if they lose heavily, off the table for half a century, the SNP make all kind of vulgar, outrageous and personal accusations.  They give ammunition to all those who say that referendums are flawed constitutional devices where those who participate vote for reasons other than that under discussion.  The SNP know that if they play honourably, they will lose.
To say a Conservative prime minister is the democratic reason for breaking away is an insult to the Scots who, within living memory (albeit not my living memory), voted in such numbers as to give the Tories a majority north of the border.  Nationalists of all hues like to erase awkward history, such as demanding that the independence referendum not coincide with the 500th anniversary of the annihilation at Flodden by a depleted English army (Henry VIII with the main force in France) where the Scottish king and most of the Scottish nobility perished along with their army; but with the 700th commemoration of victory at Bannockburn (Scottish forces led by a man who had a rival murdered during a church service).  There is so little talk in the debate that during the Second World War, the SNP leadership of the time made little secret of their readiness to be collaborators should Germany have successfully mounted an invasion of Britain, much like the Croats who peeled off from Yugoslavia.  The SNP hierarchy were imprisoned for their treacherous outlook.
Calling the prime minister a coward but dressed up in the local dialect as 'fearty', hails from the same folksy tricks as practised by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W Bush to advance flawed agendas.  Look at me, I'm one of you.  Just focus on me and my opponent and don't look in this or that direction.  We're the new Celtic Tiger (Ireland's economy implodes).  Forget that, we're the new Iceland (Iceland's economy implodes).  Iceland?  Not us - we're the new Denmark.  Be afraid, Danes, be very afraid.
And to say that the SNP would not politicise the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the manner that Cameron used the Olympic Stadium to emphasise Britishness - this from a party whose leader unfurled a Scottish saltire within seconds of Andy Murray winning Wimbledon slightly tarnishing the first British triumph in 77 years by instantly associating it with politics (Murray has studiously avoided getting involved in the independence debate and his oft-quoted 'any [football] team but England' to win the World Cup was in the context of light-hearted joshing with Tim Henman indulged in similar faux braggadocio).  Make no mistake, the SNP will miss no opportunity to associate themselves with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
It's not that I don't have sympathy for an independent Scotland - the perverse decision to finance an obsolete irrelevance as a nuclear deterrent (we could help the USA more if the money was redirected to the rest of the military) and station it as Faslane is a powerful driver for the independence movement.  I just think that the country is stronger, economically, politically and culturally, as a single unit (as the Czechs and Slovaks, especially the latter, found out to their lament after the Velvet Divorce).  Moreover, the conduct of the SNP is disreputable and antagonises because it is designed to be antagonistic.

Decline of the West

Channel-surfing, I came across (on the Horror channel of all places), an episode of the original Star Trek.  It was diverting and had some character complexity.  One of the guest protagonists was accused by the other guest protagonist of genocide but the latter was no angel himself, so his testimony was suspect.  When they returned to their home planet, they found they were the last two of their kind, as in their fifty-year absence, omnicide had been committed.  It got me thinking of specific aliens in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Cardassians, who have engaged in extermination of another sentient species.
So what is worse - the Cardassians, a militaristic race governed by a despotic government with Nazi overtones, who have the blood of others on their hands; or the Kardashians, an Armenian-American family whose sole claim to fame is through a series of inane reality TV shows?  Kim, the most prominent of her brood, had a baby with Kanye West and called her child, North.
Of course, the Kardashians are the most vile because they are real(ity).  Kanye West, admirable musician that he may be, divides opinion like no other of his genre and his much vaunted arrogance is a perfect fit for the fame-hogging family and naming a child 'North' with a surname 'West' is child cruelty.

Does he have dog tags?

The Taliban may take pride in parading a captured British special forces dog (though not quite as lavishly as the Romans displayed the spoils of war).  Their choice of name for their POW may indicate underlying problems for the Afghan extremists.  Calling him 'Colonel' (or rather DaGarwal) has afforded the dog such a rapid promotion that the movement must be struggling to co-ordinate their attacks.  Unless, of course, the canine was a double agent all along and has come home to his 'handlers' - he is certainly being treated better than other prisoners of the Taliban with a steady diet of chickens and beef kebabs.

A new talent

The development of Kimberley is fast apace. After a period in which she practised saying 'no' without any reason to object (e.g. being transported in a pushchair), last night she repeatedly exclaimed 'yes', delighted at learning a new word.  In the last week, she has also said 'me'.  This is beyond the mimicry of babies because she understands the context of their use - later in the evening, she said 'no' to being offered more porridge.  Then this morning, on the day she is exactly 17 months old, she was spoon-feeding herself.  A great labour-saving (for us the parents) ability!

Building the future, comrade

Today, I had a training day in London and so, after work, took advantage of that and, thankfully able to avoid those parts of the Tube paralysed by 'industrial action' (surely inaction), travelled to Little Portland Street (just north of Oxford Circus tube station) to attend Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen at GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design.  I was first alerted to this exhibition in the free magazine Short Cuts that's left around my workplace break area.  Much of its information on GRAD turned out to be of dubious quality but it piqued my interest before I was aware of this - a glorious mixture of film, art and history from a lost time.
Though the exhibition runs to 29th March, my timetable for things like this has a habit of slipping.  The centre has very generous opening hours, staying available to the general public until 7 p.m. most days.  Had it shut at five I may never have been able to make it and I think this underexplored place serves as a very pleasant post-work treat.  I say underexplored because although it is in the heart of London for the half hour or so I spent there I was the only visitor.  There is a certain ribald delight for some in exclusivity but I think this gem but a couple of minutes walk from the bustle of Regent Street should be 'discovered' by more, especially as it costs nothing to pop inside.
GRAD is not a big gallery, indeed it consists of simply a very large room, staffed by a solitary, pretty receptionist.  That I was by myself to all intents and purposes heightened my appreciation of the exhibits as I could ponder them in quietness and absorb myself in my thoughts with the displays (though neither would I be deterred by a deserved surge in popularity).  There were a collection of original film posters from the 1920s, excerpts from five films being projected onto the walls and two copies of a catalogue placed one on each of the benches to put into context what was being shown, moving and stationary.
As would be the way with a Communist government holding a tight grip on the reins of free expression, much film production focused on revolutionary narratives such as The Decembrists, The End of St Petersburg and The Uprising, that with an industrial theme like Oil (with the Materialism of trains, planes and automobiles - and oil wells), Cement and Engineer Strong's Project or a mixture of both such as Heroes of the Blast Furnace.  There was time for comedy to leaven the mood in the early struggles of Soviet society like Chess Fever where a distracted prodigy tries to wear his jacket only to find his pet kittens have taken up residence in it or The Three Million Case where there are standard but still funny tropes about a man trying to chat up an attractive women in a bar and accidentally toasting a less attractive madam who moved into the space behind him vacated by the more lithe member of the female species.
Of course, no such show would be complete without the contributions of Sergei Eisenstein with his two early masterpieces of Battleship Potemkin (1925, marking the twentieth 'jubilee' of the 1905 disturbances) and October (1927, where the participants did more damage to the Winter Palace than the actual revolution ten years previously).  These and many other movies had their advertising devised and produced by the brothers Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg.  Taking in notions of juxtaposition from their artistic Swedish father, they were leagues ahead of their fellow students at art college when the Tsar was still on the throne (where 'foreign' ideas were frowned upon) and so were ready to embrace the striking Modernism of the early Communist period.  One must never forget though that the Stenbergs and others were romanticising a malignant regime that oppressed far more than it liberated.  Yet one cannot deny them the exceptional quality of their art.  Other works included designing posters for Sport Fever (a predecessor of Monsieur Hulot, whilst riding a bicycle, is savaged in the buttocks by a tenacious dog), Engineer Strong's Project (a thriller where the head of a man shouting into a telephone handset, plus a floating handgun sit atop architectural schematics - its original title was Not for Publication), The Three Million Case (a devious, emerald-eyed femme fatale looms out of the poster above the slapstick thieves she is enlisting for the robbery of her husband, her face divided down the middle like a Jekyll and Hyde without the Jekyll), The Screw From Another Machine (a proto-Harvey Two-Face who has his head planted on a body for a screw.  In the top corner in miniature, a muscular, bare-chested Hero of the Revolution pours celluloid reel into an an industrial town, which could serve as branding for the origin of the film), Death Loop (featuring a naive flapper girl and a fearsome heavy of a clown) plus many more.
Some of the silver screen offerings came from abroad, such as Death Loop and Dare We Stay Quiet that emanate from Germany in its golden era for movie-making and even Denmark and the USA, all with posters specifically designed for the Russian market by the likes of the Stenburgs and their Constructivist associate Aleksandr Rodchenko.  This made up for the shortfall in home-grown output in the straitened times in which the young Soviet Union found itself.
There was also the notorious Storm over Asia (AKA The Heir of Genghis Khan) released in 1928, where a Mongolian fur trapper is found to have descended from Chinggis Khaan (not so special - 9% of Asians have a common genetic ancestor, most likely the Mongol conqueror) and made puppet emperor of a Soviet province but he turns the tables (literally!) on his Russian masters.  It is one of the five films given an airing (all concurrently in different sections of wall) next to its poster, along with The Three Million Case, October, The End of St Petersburg and Man with a Camera.  The latter is especially fascinating as we see some throbbing scenes of what life was like in 1920s Moscow that even propaganda cannot obscure.  It wasn't as bad as portrayed in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets but it was far from a socialist paradise and reminded me very much of the book Strumpet City, a tome that dealt with the various strata of Dublin society, particularly working-class life, in the years leading up to World War One.
This perusal of artifacts and film from an era when the artistic elite of the Soviet Union really did think that they were in the vanguard of the future, before Stalin did his best to stifle creativity, was most uplifting in revealing a slice of Soviet life that is not always given its due - a worthwhile diversion for anyone.  Pictures of the posters can be found at this web location: http://www.grad-london.com/whatson/kino-film-soviet-posters-of-the-silent-screen/

A sliver of sanity smuggled into St James

But only a sliver.  Joe Kinnear may finally have brought his farcical reign as director of football at Newcastle United to an end, yet the squad remains kyboshed for the rest of the season, Mike Ashley is still the owner and Alan Pardew can't handle more than one game per week.  It used to be a source of pride for me that, while others lost their head (coach), Newcastle United for the first time since Bobby Robson (later Sir Bobby) have actually had some managerial stability.  Swansea City today granting Michael Laudrup his wish and making him redundant allowing him a severance package that he would not have received when he walked away in the summer would have been another manager that Pardew outlasted, but after last Saturday's humiliation and the previous two derbies making a run that's the worst for 90 years, plus winning only one of seven derbies, Pardew's stock is at a low ebb.  So scintillating if scoreless at Norwich, so pitifully pathetic four days later.
True, the top four goalscorers at the club were missing through being sold, suspended or simply not interested in playing through knocks.  The long absence of Fabricio Coloccini, the club captain and defensive lynchpin, has undertones of broad dissatisfaction at being held to his contract instead of being allowed to return to his native Argentina, much like Robin van Persie's interminable injury problems for Manchester United seem to reflect his anger at being at a club that has fallen so far.  Even taking into account the loans (and Loic Remy will leave in the summer, if not convicted of rape beforehand in his much deferred trial), the squad is weaker than when Kinnear arrived and it was already a small squad then.  Newcastle United are the only Premier League club not to make a permanent signing over the last two transfer windows and somehow have struggled up to eighth (though will probably finish ninth come May).  Last August, despite promising to work 24/7 to bring players in, Kinnear took a two-week holiday - try and find another director of football taking such an ill-timed rest.  Kinnear said judge me on transfers but when that window slams shut it was all about results - a coded threat to Pardew.  Well, Kinnear was judged and Pardew kept his job through getting just enough wins to avoid being replaced by Kinnear in the dug-out.
I half suspect Kinnear was brought in to get the best value for Yohan Cabaye - Ashley believing Kinnear's craic about his experience and worldwide contacts.  £19m is a significant increase on the £4.5m paid to bring Cabaye to St James Park (or the Sports Direct Arena as it was then known) but with his performances over the season, a veteran rather than just grizzled negotiator would have wangled £25m out of Paris-St Germain.  I'm sure that didn't go down well with Ashley, the ultimate businessman, who probably finally realised his folly and asked his friend to step aside.
In football, everything Ashley touches turns to fool's gold, but when he lets the professionals get on with it, the club is - surprisingly - run well.  Who would have guessed?  Derek Llambias was informed that he had resigned as director of football over the radio by Kinnear and then resigned properly as managing director when Kinnear vetoed the free - that's right, free - transfer of a defender with Champions League experience on the grounds that he had never heard of him.  Llambias had spent a year cultivating the defender Douglas only to see it go up in smoke on the say-so of a has-been only days after the latter was in post.  Ashley's petulance extended to not replacing Llambias as managing director as a way of saying 'nah, nah, nah, we can do this without you'.  Talk now is of Llambias returning but Ashley would have to eat a gargantuan slice of humble pie and he doesn't do humility.
The thing is, despite being a billionaire and being able to guarantee incoming players even if sales don't occur (like Joe Lewis at Tottenham Hotspur, where Ashley has many friends), Ashley isn't just not investing in the club for whom he has fallen out of love, he's milking it for all its worth.  £11m taken out of the club last year.  With the increased TV deal and shirt sponsorship, £18m is projected to be exacted this year, as Ashley pays down his 'interest-free' loan, a loan whose interest is paid for by the millions of pounds of free advertising for his company Sports Direct (of which he is founder and majority shareholder) on the hoardings around the stadium as well as the ill-judged change of the historic ground's name.  He had put £100m of his fortune to stop the club going bankrupt because he didn't do due diligence when he bought it in 2007.  Sir John Hall proved he was Thatcher's favourite businessman by taking the money and running, otherwise he would have had to stump up the money to rescue his footballing golden goose.  Best let someone else shoulder the responsibility of saving the ailing bird.  Ashley's gaucheness though still contributed to the club's relegation a year later.  Ashley stumped up another £20m to ensure the club returned to the promised land of the Premier League at the first attempt.  Now he wants it back, all of it.  Which is not unreasonable in most businesses but to have withdrawn it at a slower rate would have allowed Newcastle Utd the funding to provide a squad capable of repeated top ten finishes and cup runs, be they domestic or European.
The only consolation is that the more money Ashley takes out, the further his asking price for a buyer falls.  Valuing the club at £100m, come May, the bid price will be £191m.  Five years after that and his debt will be virtually cleared and Ashley's tenuous hold on the moral high ground will have have completely crumbled away, like a rock fall at Beachy Head.  The trouble is Ashley won't care who he sells to, indeed might get a perverse pleasure of screwing the club over one final time, by selling - for the right price - to someone that is worse than he is, say, an asset-stripping private equity firm (it almost happened under the Hall/Shepherd 'stewardship').  How the club has survived the vicissitudes of so many self-serving owners is testament to the bedrock of the fans and the occasional geniuses to have graced the badge, both on and off the pitch, as well the hard work of a phalanx of honest triers.  But the ease that comes is only fleeting.

Carry On Don't Lose Your Head

Prince Charles is an odd beast.  Occupying a half-world between power without responsibility and responsibility without power, his exact role is ill-defined.  Little wonder that he struggles to make sense of it.
But he has nailed his colours to the mast of environmental stewardship (even if his Duchy Originals products rack up so many diesel miles being transported around the country), among other things, such as inter-faith harmony.  And on Friday he made an intervention, making the very sensible point that we accept the supremacy of science in every other sphere of life, except in the matter of climate change and this is because of the intimidation of corporate-backed 'grassroots' organisation.  For him, climate change deniers are a bunch of headless chickens (though a better analogy would be ostriches with their heads in the sand and, as the late QC George Carman once quipped, their thinking parts exposed).
Like the BBC, the heir to the throne manages to infuriate both sides of the political spectrum, thus must be doing something correct.  The right (generally pro-big business) are irritated at the nature of his intervention and wish someone would do an intervention on him, the left are peeved that he should intervene at all.  For the latter, hereditary monarchs (or those who aspire to the throne) are outmoded and should be seen and not heard - that's it, smile and wave, we'll get rid of you eventually!  George Mombiot once argued (and still does for that matter) that Prince Charles says all the right things but he shouldn't be in the position to say it.  Well, he is in that position so we have to deal with the facts on the ground.  Would a civic president be any less controversial? They are meant to be merely Keepers of the Great Seal for sovereignty lies with the people.  But it already does so under a constitutional monarchy.  And the presidents of Germany and Italy have key statements affecting the destiny of their country and the international climate.  India elected their chief nuclear scientist as president and nuclear testing always causes ructions in the subcontinent - in 1999, it induced Pakistan to follow suit.  What Prince Charles says and who really pays attention is small beer.  A president in a parliamentary system doesn't have a policy platform or a manifesto.  It is the choice between an unelected monarch or an elected eunuch.  Getting rid of the hereditary principle would not speed up social change (just ask the the USA) and some of the most socially equal nations on earth are constitutional monarchies (traditional Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Japan).  France effectively has an elected king.  As the difference is so small, why feed the unwritten constitution through the threshing machine to see what comes out the other side?
The right, being conservative, tend to view continuity and stability as cherishable assets.  In countries like Britain, support of their royal figurehead is high.  Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Partido Populaire, pronounced that he was convinced of the innocence of Princess Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos, in a fraud case involving the princess' husband.  This though is a side issue as the majority of the world's independent states are de jure republics, rather than merely de facto (unless you live in North Korea or Syria, which have dynasties while proclaiming themselves republics).  Conservatives are a mix of vested interests and libertarians.  In the case of the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, (forming a fifth of the top ten richest people in the world) they are both.  Always active beforehand, since Barack Obama came to office they have stepped up their financing of groups that challenge the science and intimidates the scientists.  Tragically, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is victim of this and doesn't believe in climate change, hence his lacksadaisical approach to the flooding in England, where it was the wettest January in 250 years.  Paterson views the flooding as a one-off rather than a sign of things to come, despite extremes of weather for every winter since the turn of the millennium (following the 1990s unusually dry winters).  Why dredge rivers to make them deeper and restore them to their state decades ago - it is just unnecessary expenditure.  Again, the ostrich comes to mind.  Maybe it was coincidence that the head of the parliamentary environment committee was deselected by her local Tory constituency party.  Now an independent, her last act as a Conservative MP was to ask about the response to the flooding.
The sceptics are like Eurosceptics in that they aren't really sceptics at all.  But unlike 3% of the population that rates the EU (and leaving it) as their highest priority, they are rational and know they are involved in a war in which there are no rules of engagement.  They know it is a conflict that they cannot win but equally, if they keep up the attrition, they will not lose it either and their paymasters kick the can down the road, when the next board of directors can deal with it.  Prince Charles' irruption will occupy the blogosphere and not greatly trouble the truly powerful (do they deserve their position because they aren't kings or princes, if titans of industry?).  A friend in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told me that all roads of climate change denial, through various shell companies and foundations, lead back to either ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers.  With apologies to the oil giant, scratch a denier and find a Koch.

Another star in the firmament extinguished

Soon, too soon, after the untimely death of James Gandolfini at a mere 50-years old, Philip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead in his New York apartment (not unlike Heath Ledger).  At only 46, he had enough four decades whereby he could enrich the world with his talents.  He was one of the living actors I respected most and now no more.  Genius ripped from our collective bosom.
Every film that I've known him to be in has been above average, if not outstanding - certainly Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo on the latter's radio slot struggled to name a bad film.  This is a rare quality in today's age when even stellar actors sometimes have to dumb down to pay the bills.  And, of course, he was always brilliant, even in films with which one would not associate him particularly, such as Mission: Impossible 3, where his reptilian villain was the best thing in the movie, further kudos added as he was a late replacement for Kenneth Branagh and still managed to bring his usual quality to the role.  His big breakthrough was Todd Solondz's iconoclastic Happiness where he played a monstrous yet tragic figure, a casting that became a hallmark for him - just as sociopaths were and are for Robert de Niro - culminating in his Oscar-winning turn in Capote, the filmmakers somehow transposing his girth into the pipsqueak playwright and gossip-monger.  Hoffman was one of the greatest character actors of the last twenty years and this is a tragedy that should resound around the world.

Last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again

Of late, Burma (Myanamar) has not made the news much.  Its military government has softened to a praetorian one, not unlike Turkey of the 1980s.  It tore up a contract with the Chinese government to build a controversial hydroelectric dam in the north of the country that would have directed 90% of the generated energy to China (Laos on the other hand recently took out a loan from Beijing that is almost the same size as Laotian annual GDP to build a high-speed railway that will benefit overwhelmingly Chinese commercial interests to be linked to Bangkok and eventually such a line extending to Singapore).  Most important of all in the eyes of the West it released Aung San Suu Kyi  and even allowed her to travel abroad and return to Rangoon (Yangon).  Visits followed by David Cameron and the US Secretary of State and Western sanctions were eased.  Suu Kyi could even become the country's president in 2015, based in the new capital/military stronghold of Naypyidaw (not far from the last royal capital of Burma in Mandalay).
This though does not mean Burma is peaceful.  There is the constant low-level insurgency of the Mons and the Shans fighting for their independent homeland.  Under the current government, devolution is not possible to peel off the moderate elements in these groups.  Again there is the parallel with Turkey and the Kurds.  There exists a more striking link with Burma as it currently stands and Anatolia.  Communal violence has forced 140,000 Muslims to flee their homes.  Suu Kyi equivocated when pressed on this issue, saying "the fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well."  This is despite Muslims comprising barely 4 per cent of the national population and they have been singled out since the riots in Rakhine state in 2012.  Equating the fears of a 80 per cent majority with those of a small and beleaguered minority is quite insensitive, particularly when the Rohingya Muslims, the main victims of persecution, are not even allowed to become citizens (an issue on which Suu Kyi also equivocated).
Back in the first half of the ninth century AD, in the Byzantine Empire, under the Logothete of the Course (chief minister) Theoctistus, a patrician and a eunuch, in conjunction with the Empress Theodora (not the famous one of Justinian the Great 300 years earlier), educational standards were improved to far ahead of the West, an excellent financial policy filled the treasury to bursting, Crete was recovered for the Empire and a Byzantine fleet sacked Damietta in Egypt.  This power couple restored pride to their population and began the resurgence of Byzantium that would last for another 200 years.
Where they stand condemned though is in their treatment of Paulicians, a Christian sect in the Anatolian heartland, who rejected all church hierarchy and most of its institutions and practices.  In Constantinople, a decree was signed and promulgated through the regions, demanding renunciation of the divergent parts of their belief and a return to the Orthodox fold on pain of death.  Many chose to risk the wrath of the state than sacrifice their beliefs.  A vast military expedition was sent out to put the order into effect, leading to a massacre - even by exaggerated medieval reporting, the 100,000 reported dead is staggering.  As John Julis Norwich wrote, in his A Short History of Byzantium (1998 reprint), "Left to themselves, these devout, disciplined men and women would have constituted a formidable bulwark against Saracen attacks; instead they were driven into the arms of the Caliphate." (pp. 140-1).
No-one is suggesting that the Muslims in Burma will join forces with the enemies of the country because of their being killed, assaulted and displaced.  Even a long-standing democracy in the form of India has suffered deadly anti-Muslim riots, in Gujarat state in particular (whose former governor is now a favourite to become India's next prime minister).  Yet when Suu Kyi was asked the question, "Do you condemn the anti-Muslim violence," she temporised, replying, "I condemn any movement that is based on hatred and extremism."  That Suu Kyi is a politician and must respond to the views of the electorate is not an adequate excuse, as on certain issues, politicians must show a lead, especially a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.  She became a symbol of courage and humanity with her willingness to stand against crushing autocracy and repression.  Not for the sake of herself but also of her nation must she not repeat the mistakes of history.