It's good to remember

Just days after mentioning Bob Hoskins consummate display as Manuel Noriega - a reference that proves his centrality to much of popular culture in a way similar to Kevin Spacey (even with the phone(ish) ads) - he has now passed on, aged just 71, from pneumonia.  Unlike James Gandolfini or Philip Seymour Hoffman who had still so much to give, Hoskins has left us the gift of smorgasbord of his talent and though he was winding down and officially retired, star turns could still have been donated to us.
Admittedly, most of his filmography I have yet to see, but iconic roles in The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa (rated as the only actor who could have carried that picture to the extent he did), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as well as less honourable choices as Smee in the Spielberg flop Hook (amid a whole cast of Hollywood heavyweights) and Mario in the awful Super Mario Bros (opposite the late Dennis Hopper as the reptile archvillain).  There were small roles that are notable in Brazil and as J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon, a far less kind portrayal than Leonardo di Caprio's flawed hero.  Apparently, he was Odin in Son of the Mask for which he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry as Worst Supporting Actor - I have seen the end of that 2005 film but the candidacy was probably deserving as for me the role was utterly unmemorable.  A few blips are permitted any actor though, especially as if anything it keeps them in the public eye (and thus in the minds of movie producers).
Bob, you will be missed.

Revving down

It seems after three series, the comedy Rev. has come to its conclusion.  St Saviour's Church is not just shut but sold off and Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander) has resigned from his position as vicar.  There seems to be little wriggle room for a further series and it wouldn't be necessary, even if Adam officiated at a different church, because, as with a church community, Rev. was more than the eponymous figure.  It was a pretty brutal rounding off for any comedy.  Usually the last-ever episode (ill-advisedly) tries to cram all the famous high points from the whole saga into one half-hour segment, as with Seinfeld, among others.  Throughout the third series, the church was constantly under threat from closure but there was always a sense that somehow, as in the previous two series, St Saviour's and Adam would somehow pull through.  It was not to be.
In retrospect, closure was inevitable as every effort at saving the church fell through, through either the personal issues that Adam allowed to be exposed or through the small-minded, un-christian behaviour of the congregation.   The church hierarchy was more of an enemy than an ally, church commissioners greedily eyeing up the property value of an inner-London church.  The show recognises a reality.
There was a lovely tableaux of the Easter story (albeit a little late) but unlike Jesus appearing to his disciples, the congregation had nothing but contempt for Adam after he resigned.  It was only after an unexpected intervention by his wife (Olivia Colman, excellent in everything she does) that allowed Adam one final hurrah, as the stalwart church members turned up for last Easter at St Saviour's, including even Archdeacon Robert, giving some hierarchical sanction to breaking into the sealed-off church.  At the end, Adam baptised his baby daughter.  The legitimacy of the Easter Service is questionable and the baptism downright illegitimate as with the church being sold, it would have been deconsecrated first.  Certainly there would be no issuing of a baptism certificate and the privileges that confers such as being on a church electoral roll or allowed a burial in any church grounds.  Indeed, as his daughter will not remember this and with no official document, the point of the baptism seems a little odd.  There has been a few missteps by the writers of Rev. but overall it is a vivid and realistic picture of parish life that is painted and it definitely filled a hitherto unexplored niche on TV.  There have been some excellent moments of the ridiculous such as when Adam explained to an imam all the tiers of the episcopate above him, when arguably his front-of-house, as a humble priest at the bottom of the pile, is the most important role when it comes to ministering to the community.  There was an excellent cameo in the penultimate episode (to cap a list of notable guest appearances from others in the acting and comedy professions, especially Hugh Bonneville) with Liam Neeson reprising his Aslan role as an Irish vagrant who talks to Adam.  The audience is left wisely to make up their own minds if this was Adam meeting God for real or a hallucination, not unlike Neeson's Ra's al-Ghul appearing to a broken Bruce Wayne in the dungeon in The Dark Knight Rises.
I think Rev. could have gone on for a few more series but the creators may have felt the law of diminishing returns might kick in, with no new directions for their characters, whilst ensuring that no-one can come along to revive Rev.  Going out on a high point in the depths.  Poignant if not exactly affirming, but there were many pleasing aspects along the way, as we might remember the deceased.  As is the modern way, Rev. lives on in us.

La Decima beckons

In the draw for the Champions League semi-final, I wanted Real Madrid to be drawn against Bayern Munich, rather than the Bavarians face the comparatively shot-shy Atletico Madrid or Chelsea.  Bayern never really convinced against Arsenal or the Manchesters City and United (apart from the game at the Etihad).  The firepower that Real could unleash against a shaky Bayern defence would put the Germans to the sword.  And so it proved.

A one-nil victory in the Bernabeu to Real did not tell the full story, when despite only one-third of possession, they should really have scored three.  In the Allianz Arena, they were magnificent, inflicting Bayern's joint-heaviest European defeat and their biggest ever in the European Cup.  Pep Guardiola's side were 3-0 down at half time, leaving them needing to score five goals (even four would have seen them exit on the away goals rule).  Cristiano Ronaldo put the icing on the cake to make it 4-0 in the 90th minute, shooting under the wall from a free-kick as I thought he would being on 24m from goal, reminiscent of an Alan Shearer effort against Poland when he wore the colours of England.

I've felt, even when Bayern were in the World Club Championship against lesser teams, their defence was always their Achilles heel, especially Dante, whose defending is far from divine but certainly is a comedy.  It really is a disgrace to have such a mediocre player in one of the great European sides - I can't understand why Bayern just don't buy a better defender.

A tenth (and eleventh) European Cup title has been the dream of Real since they won the ninth in 2002.  The match between Atletico and Chelsea will probably being as dull as it was in the first leg and in all those Liverpool-Chelsea semi-finals when Mourinho was in charge.  Although it would be a homecoming of sorts, as the final is staged in Lisbon, I can see it being just as turgid if Mourinho makes it with Chelsea this time, but I would be happy if any of the three remaining teams hoisted the trophy.  For Guardiola, it's back to the drawing board because the European stage has moved on from tiki-taka.

Military matters

As India continues its marathon general election, corruption is one of the key issues. Anna Hazare, the anti-corruption campaigner who rattled India’s political establishment in 2011, may not be the force he once was, but his ideals remain a powerful motivating factor with graft scandals rocking the Congress-led government. How one defines corruption is notoriously difficult, multifarious as it is, ranging across sectors such as the government, police, judiciary and the corporate world for example; where certain practice is cultural rather than deception; and the scale ranging from low-level nepotism to active subversion of the entire body politic. And if definitions are elusive, measurement is further hindered, already suffering from the very nature of corruption being hidden. To the social scientist, measuring perceptions of corruption are the most accurate, if fuzzy, guide.
The complacency of the corrupt is the most common cause of prosecution and this was on international display at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, where kickbacks led to shortcomings in construction and accommodation. It plagues the defence industry too. India’s defence ministry cancelled on 1st January this year a $573m contract with Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland to buy luxury helicopters for VIPS. Italian prosecutors had arrested the boss of the helicopter maker’s parent company in February 2013 and suspect around ten per cent of the deal was in bribes paid by AgustaWestland to Indian officials to swing the deal its way. Having received three helicopters, New Delhi halted deliveries of the outstanding nine.
Though this would not have a detrimental effect on the Indian military, it is indicative of the defence ministry’s handling of such allegations. The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) asserts that India’s defence procurement sector continues to be rocked by instances of corruption and wrongdoing that have the potential to compromise the country’s military modernization program, with three major scandals leading to the blacklisting of nine companies in the last eight years and the jailing of the former chief of the Ordnance Factory Board in 2010.
India’s efforts to counteract such corruption has been stymied firstly by contradictory policies by various government agencies, secondly, by what the ISN terms ‘systemic complexities’ that have allowed the Ministry of Defence and its Integrated Headquarters to function in a closed and relatively autonomous manner for generations to this day and thirdly, the complexity of defence procurement is an open door to malfeasance, where a constellation of oversight committees cloud accountability, provisions are vaguely worded and sometimes purchases are made for strategic reasons to satisfy the vendor.
Further, the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is slow in its examinations. The Bofors scandal in the 1980s, where the Swedish industrial giant allegedly supplied the highest level of government with kickbacks to win a contract to supply field guns (the outcome where the then-government fell and with it the contract has negatively affected the artillery arm of the Indian Army) took two decades for the CBI to file a closure report, a decade to file a similar report on the role of South Africa’s Denel in an ordnance factory scam and seven years with regards the Barak missile scandal in the 2000s (alleged bribes for Israel to supply India with the missile systems). This reinforces both vendors and end-users losing if large arms deals go wrong.
Defence minister A. K. Antony has pushed ahead recently in blacklisting contractors, cancel contracts and punish individuals has had effect but, with the complexity and opacity of defence procurement procedure and conflicting edicts from different government agencies, suggests, as ISN claims, “New Delhi’s push for transparency will fall short of expectations for the foreseeable future.”

How do you eat yours?

The impartiality of the BBC is a tendentious concept and while it is tempting to write off all of the obloquy the Beeb receives at the hands of right-wing pundits as fundamentalist scree, cracks do appear in the façade.  Covering the story of molestation accusations against the late Labour and Liberal politician Sir Cyril Smith, they carried a soundbite from the current Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, a Labour politician, excoriating the Liberal Democrats for their handling of the issue.  The very next clip, seemingly designed to undermine Danczuk's righteous anger, had Smith wearing a big, red Labour rosette.  Making sure Labour can't ignore the sting of the allegations might be described as aggressive impartiality.
On other cases, Auntie does show the (soft) left-wing side that her media assailants assert is her beating heart.  The benefit cut to public housing that the government labels the removal of the spare room subsidy may be said to have been characterised successfully by Labour as 'the bedroom tax'.  The Beeb can still claim impartiality because it can refer not just to the policy's critics who use the term, but also, surprisingly, to a housing association that deploys the phrase.  This allows the Corporation to write the headline "Bridgend tenants' anger at Creme Egg 'bedroom tax gift'" which sails very close to the wind of implicitly opposing this policy.  Very naughtily, near the bottom of its online article, the BBC sneaks 'bedroom tax' into square brackets - punctuation which is a wholly independent editorial device.
The story as such concerns a housing association (Valleys to Coast or V2C) in Bridgend that thanked residents for paying the hike in their taxes by 'rewarding' each household with a free Cadbury's Creme Egg.  Avoiding the danger of goo escaping from broken eggs that fell through letterboxes, V2C said residents could pop into its office during the month of April to collect this 'small thank you'.  Some found the V2C letter insulting and can you blame them?  Why not also give the residents coloured beads and shiny bells that came out of last Christmas' crackers?  The spirit of the Iberian colonisation of the Americas lives on.  I would like to think that if residents could get the covering foil off without tearing it they could get a rebate on their rent.  Such careful unwrapping is a time-honoured activity after all and to get money back from doing that no less ridiculous.

One for all and all for one

As Russian forces approach to within one kilometer of Ukrainian territory, the Ukrainian border guards must have one of the most unenviable jobs in the world at present.  First they get pestered for interviews by Stacey Dooley from BBC Three (over their country being used as transit hub for South American drugs cartels); now they are like the defenders of Vienna in 1241 as the Mongol juggernaut lay within striking distance (only to withdraw  on the death of the Grand Khaan, Ogedei).  The BBC should send a member of the UK Border Agency over for their foreign reality show Toughest Place to be a...
Just as Russia presented the annexation of the Crimea as a fait accompli, so should the West do something similar.  Announce suddenly that Ukraine is now part of NATO, preempting any counter-strike from Moscow, as occurred in Georgia in 2008.  Video released of John Kerry and the Ukrainian government signing accession documents behind closed doors.  That would really put the wind up the Kremlin!  A provocative move yet it would allow Kiev to adequately deal with the criminals who masquerade as rebels as Vladimir Putin is brazen but would be extremely imprudent to further test the West's commitment to Ukraine with military action.  An attack on one NATO member (in Europe; Turkey is sadly excluded from attacks that originate from outside Europe) is considered an attack on all.  That would be the World War Three that the Ukrainian prime minister accuses Russia of wanting.  And even Putin and his cronies would balk at that.

History repeating, both times as tragedy

Oh for the days when Ukraine was only beset by a House of Cards-type scandal of the Ukrainian president being tape-recorded ordering the death of a prominent journalist.  Leonid Kuchma was seen as a pro-Moscow puppet with authoritarian tendencies who groomed his protégé, Viktor Yanukovych, to succeed him before being thwarted by the Orange Revolution after allegations of poisoning against opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko and mass voter fraud.  Yanukovych pressed Kuchma to inaugurate him on the spot but Kuchma, showing a curious deference for the constitution not unlike Vladimir Putin, refused, despite claiming Yanukovych was the rightful victor.  For the 2010 election, he compared Yanukovych and challenger Yulia Tymoshenko as choice between 'bad and very bad', praising Arseniy Yatsenyuk (who was eliminated in the first round.  Yatsenyuk is now prime minister but the situation could not be worse.
After losing its feet in the Crimea, the Ukrainian duck is now threatened with having its tail feathers plucked in the east of the country.  Russia views the Ukraine as its backyard and none of the west's business, in much the same way that the USA enforced the Monroe Doctrine in the post-1945 world, especially in Panama when it deposed former pupil General Manuel 'Pineapple Head' Noriega (played convincingly by Bob Hoskins in a dramatised history).  Moscow cites the bombing of Kosovo and the 2003 invasion of Iraq as justification for its own action but it might just as well cite Panama in 1989 as the Cold War wound down.  the big difference being that all three were under dictatorships while Ukraine has been set back on the path to democracy after the Yanukovych tenure and Russia cannot allow that to spread.
The West's powder-puff reaction to another democracy and the post-Cold War settlement has been disgraceful.  There are some useful idiots who believe that the 1990 Peace of Paris was unjust to the USSR/Russia, just as appeasers in the 1930s felt guilt about the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles for Germany.  Yesterday, President Obama said new sanctions were ready to roll within days but was hesitant about doing anything really effective until Europe made matching commitments - reminiscent of France only prepared to drive back Germany's militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 if Britain joined it; London chose to stand aloof with disastrous consequences given Hitler had ordered his generals to flee with their tails between their legs at the slightest hint of outside intervention.  Instead, all was quiet on the Western Front, emboldening the dictator.
During August 1938, the German press was full of stories alleging Czechoslovak atrocities against Sudeten Germans.  In the same month, Berlin sent 750,000 soldiers along the border of Czechoslovakia, officially as part of army manoeuvres.  After internal violence and disruption ensued in Czechoslovakia in early September 1938, with the Sudeten German leadership under orders from Hitler to be as provocative as possible.  Fast forward to 2014.  The Russian media is full of stories of 'fascists' in charge in Kiev, attacking ethnic Russians.  Moscow has sent hundreds of thousands of troops along the Ukranian border, officially as part of army manoeuvres.  As a result of pro-Russian provocateurs, internal violence and disruption has ensued in Ukraine.  If it wasn't so sad, the similarity would be hilarious in how obvious it is.  Karl Marx said history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce, but this is far from the ridiculousness of Louis Napoleon (III) and the only farce are the bare-faced lies spun by the Kremlin.  And once again, the West is prepared to throw a fellow democracy under the bus.  The first time was through fear of war, this time through fear of economic conflict.  Excessive psychosis in both instances led to moral exhaustion.  After the Sudetenland fell into German hands, the West sat back as it watched The Third Reich swallow up Bohemia and Moravia - where there were few Germans - in March 1939.  Crimea is now lost forever to Russia; will Donetsk, Kharkhiv and other cities go the same way.
I think the proper response was that of the anti-appeasement activist F. L. Lucas of King's College, Cambridge, where follows an excerpt of his letter to the Manchester Guardian on 15th September 1938 (before the Sudetenland was snatched from Prague):
"Many honest folk feel it hard to deny the Sudetens self-determination, if they want to belong to the Reich. But then, can we deny it to the Czech areas among the Sudetens? Then what about Sudeten pockets in the Czech areas? Self-determination must stop somewhere. In politics, as in physics, you come to a point where you cannot go on splitting things. You cannot have self-determination by villages. You may split Czechoslovakia now. In a few years it will be one again. Only it will be German [a very prescient observation]. That is all.... You cannot by any juggling with frontiers abolish racial minorities in Europe. And you cannot totally ignore geography. It follows that where you cannot move mountains you must move men. If the Sudetens are irrevocably set on being in the Reich let them go to the Reich instead of expecting the Reich to come to them. The Germans are the later comers in Bohemia."
If the ethnic Russians are irrevocably set on being in Vladimir Putin's Russia, then let them go there - they are even more late comers in this area of the Ukraine than the Germans in Bohemia.  Russia is in many ways a very recent creation.  China could get tough on its claim to the Maritime Region which Russia acquired in 1875.  Previously under Manchu control for nearly three centuries, it easily outstrips the time Crimea and Russia were one.  To gain Sevastopol but lose Vladivostok.  Would that be worth it?
The West's disgusting acceptance of Moscow's fait accompli in Crimea must not be repeated.  The USA and Europe must move in firm agreement to resist the aggrandiser.  The corrupt and sometimes brutal days of Leonid Kuchma, when Ukraine was far from the centre of world politics, must seem now like a relative paradise to many Ukrainians.

Right to reply

I am glad that some eminent figures have not just responded to the Humanist association's attack on David Cameron's pretty mild comments about Christianity.  A letter to The Telegraph today does not have quite the star quality or quanitity of Monday's letter (Professor Roger Scruton the most high profile) but three-quarters are professors and all hold PhDs, skewering a main atheist claim that religiously minded people and their apologists are stupid.  Citing Christian humanism, it evokes the history that the first humanists were Renaissance christian men-of-letters and how Anglicanism in particular is a liberal 'public orthodoxy' which 'imposes no civil penalties on non-Anglicans', which is why it is generally supported, something which gets up the noses of convinced atheists.  It does not deride Humanists, merely expressing the benefits of religious 'establishment-lite' and saying that the Humanists need to offer a better alternative if they are to be more persuasive towards the two-thirds who claim to be religious, if only of a fuzzy kind.  The response from the chief executive of the Humanist Association ignored the pluralistic aspect in today's letter, stating the need to build an inclusive national identity not a narrow one.  When people are convinced of their cause they tend to ignore the bits that disagree with them.  Being slammed by both atheist Nick Clegg, of Muslim heritage Nadhim Zahawi MP and Hindu Alok Sharma MP displays that Christianity is far more inclusive in its approach to faith and national identity than Humanism.
Going on to say they didn't want  'a war of words over religion' (despite initiating it), shows how aggressive atheists couch their language regarding religion in terms of conflict, for unlike Gibbon and fellow eighteenth-century sceptics who detested Christianity's pacific nature, since war was discredited by the First World War, it has become fashionable to label religion as the source of most, if not all, conflict (historically inaccurate anyway).  If you are instinctively opposed to two separate things, it is understandable enough to want to link them.
In the end, both letters won't change the mindsets of those on the other side.  I wonder though if today's letter will get as much coverage in the national media as Monday's did.

The unselected one

Trading places is a fond literary and cinematic conceit - The Prince and the Pauper, The Man in the Iron Mask, hey, there was even a 1980s movie offering called Trading Places.  Manchester United fans must feel like the fall guy in A Tale of Two Cities as they go from champions to seventh place while bitter rivals Liverpool go from seventh to champions-elect.  Sir Alex Ferguson made 'knocking Liverpool of their perch' one of his motivating mantras, but now the Reds are back on it.  This is one of the reasons why pressure on David Moyes led to his removal as manager.
Moyes had been Sir Alex's personal choice, inspring the banner 'The Chosen One'.  This association goes back more than a decade as in a Guardian photoshop competition had Sir Alex as Dr Evil (from the Austin Powers franchise) with Moyes as his Mini-Me, a riff accompanying the juxtaposition about two obsessive, not sunnily possesed Scots.
Moyes though shrunk in the role rather than growing and even from a neutral perspective I felt Moyes had to go after the crushing home defeats to Manchester City and Liverpool.  The humbling of the mighty had ceased to be funny.  I would have given him until the end of the season however.  If one was being cynical, Moyes was a patsy, designed to soak up the shadow of Sir Alex so that Moyes' successor would be afforded brighter comparisons with the predecessor.  Ironically, it was Ed Woodward, who bears almost as much responsibility for Man Utd's on-field decline after two failed transfer windows, who told Moyes his reign was at an end.  Even terminating Moyes' contract was conducted shambolicallyby Woodward.
Louis van Gaal has emerged as the favourite to occupy the Old Trafford hot seat, primarily because of his imminent availability after the World Cup, but he has his flaws in a glittering career.  Currently in charge of the Dutch national side, it was 13 years ago under him that the Netherlands failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, a mere four years after finishing fourth at France 1998 and two years after reaching the semi-finals of the 2000 European Championship.  A second stint at Barcelona sums up his erratic mercurial career - despite having an immaculate Champions League record, winning 12 out of 12, in La Liga he won only four games and was sacked with Barca just three points above the relegation zone (the caretaker coach who took over subsequently guided Barca back up to finish fifth and in some form of European football).  Having missed out on Moyes, Tottenham Hotspur look set to miss out on van Gaal, yet in both cases they might brief a sigh of relief.
Where Moyes goes now is almost of as much interest.  Apparently Newcastle United are odds-on favourite to snag him, with Alan Pardew on a dreadful run after his team secured another season at the Premier League top table.  But the reason for the poor form is that the tiny squad have decided that if the owner shows no ambition, why should they?  Would Moyes want to submit to a capricious mean-spirited chairman who only wants to take millions out of the club and paring the squad to its barest minimum so that he can do so.  Pardew is not a great coach, so hands-on that he can't organise two matches in the space of a week, but he's being forced to play with one hand behind his back while taking all the brickbats for the silent owner.  Why would Moyes want such grief?  Spurs, Celtic and maybe Southampton and West Bromwich Albion are in the frame but it would be best to go abroad and rebuild his reputation there.  Russia and the Ukraine, typical under the radar leagues, are off-limits with the recent Moscow-inspired tension.  In the West, there are some middling leagues where English is spoken relatively well - the Netherlands, Belgium, the Nordic leagues and Switzerland.  Steve McLaren prospered in the first, Roy Hodgson in the latter two (i.e. five).  Don't be parochial David; be bold as you failed to be at Old Trafford.

When opposites unite

There is a political theory that the political spectrum is not so much horizontal and linear as a circle and the extremities of left and right are actually very close in spirit.  How else would Irving Kristol go from arch-communist to neo-conservative?
In this vein, what do Islamic extremists who protest at military memorials and Nigels Farage's UKIP have in common?  Burning the Union Flag!  One of the campaign posters for UKIP has the British flag consumed with flames from the centre to reveal the European Union flag and the unproven assertion ("it's a figure we have estimated," said Farage in the first debate without providing any methodology) that 75% of British laws are made in Brussels - without references, some might call that a lie.

Know thyself

Theists have a tough time, at least with how the English language is structured.  I remember a young Austrian women being asked if she was religious by fellow expatriates (this was in Romania) and when she said she was atheist, she was accepted into this nice secular consensus.  "No," she countered, "I said a theist.  I believe in a God."  Awkwardly but swiftly the conversation switched to something else - the consensus had been challenged!
Really, the language should follow the example of 'agnostics' or 'ag-nostics' even if the pronunciation makes no sense since it should be 'a-gnostics' i.e. lacking in spiritual knowledge.  That indefinite article is a tricky one so 'at-heists' would similarly make no sense but at least be consistent and stop causing theists bother.
The term 'agnostic' was coined by the biologist Thomas Huxley, who didn't characterise himself as Christian (he defended Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in a famous debate in 1860) but didn't want to rule out the possibility of an overarching omnipotent being who set the universe in motion.  A determined opponent of organised religion, his intellectual heirs in the field of biology are the most ardent atheists in the scientific canon.  However, Huxley, were he alive today may well have declined to append his name to a letter to The Daily Telegraph denouncing David Cameron for calling the UK a Christian country, allegedly because it fuels sectarian divisions.  Indeed, Huxley went much further than Cameron would ever suggest and advocated mandatory readings of the Bible in school because he believed that the Bible's significant moral teachings and superb use of language were relevant to English life. "I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches".
I know it's April but the first was twenty days ago.  These 55 figures (though Dr Simon Singh appears twice, he is only counted once but it bulks out the list of signatories) are drawn from the worlds of science, politics, comedy and general popular culture.  There is not a single religious figure on there.  So this instantly gives the lie to "we live in a plural society," how Britain is shaped by, among other things, "non-Christian" forces and how "it is wrong to try to exceptionalise [Christian] contribution [to social action] when it is equalled by British people of different beliefs."  They don't care about other beliefs, only their own 'non-belief'.  Otherwise, they would have asked figures from the world of Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism and so on to add their name.  Oh, wait a minute, maybe they did  and were told (politely) where they could take their letter.  The letter claims repeated surveys show Britain is not a Christian country, ignoring the repeated surveys that show people of other faiths are very happy for Christians to be prominent in exercising their faith.  It demonstrates a melting pot but it is also a guarantor of their own religious freedoms, fearing if Christianity were to be emasculated, they would be next on the list for the militant atheists.
Further, religion is a glue - it binds people and society together.  Clement Attlee recognised that, trumpeting his firm belief in Christian ethics, if not the 'mumbo-jumbo' as he put it.  Huxley was of much the same opinion.  We may have many different faiths but this is an advanced Western country with a long tradition of tolerance.  There is sectarian tension in Nigeria and Syria but we are not those countries.  Even Northern Ireland has calmed down to the extent that a former commander of the Provisional IRA can now sit down and have supper with the Queen.  Today, the funeral of Peaches Geldof takes place in the church where she was married.  Not only was she allowed this when it was her second marriage, but in the last year of her life she became enamoured by an institution with strong links to the occultist movement, so much so that she tattooed it onto her arm.  Yet the family are allowed to bury her in accordance with their wishes - they are not turned away.  So much for sectarianism.
Looking at those signatories, these opinion formers, legislators and barristers bear a large responsibility for the problems that face the UK today.  They are the agents of division, seeking to erect a wall between themselves and other religions/Christianity (they get their terms so mixed up in their passion) and not only of that but also social fragmentation and atomisation.  Anyone who starts talking of a post-Christian world has already made up their minds and, ironically, are not open to reason or reasonability.  I remember talking to some colleagues in a university workshop that involved team-building and while searching for characteristics that could draw us together, I asked "Is anyone religious?"  Two of team replied, smilingly, "Of course not, we're scientists."  So closed were their minds, that in addition to making religion and science mutually exclusive planes of existence (see what I mean about 'division), they laughed the idea that they were engaged in what they regarded as fairy tales.  As intellectual snobbery goes I found it hard to top, yet in the interest of team-building I searched for other characteristics - in a not dissimilar way to David Cameron (although he may have electoral calculations on the mind too, showing conviction and wooing back disaffected Tories).  Again, when Professor Anthony Flew came around to the idea of an intelligent design behind the universe, his 'friends' bided their time and after he died, accused him of being senile when he had no right of reply.  What a cowardly act of treachery but I'm not going to say that this is true of all atheists, just as I wouldn't claim my views on a range of matters represent this country.
Further, the intentions of the signatories are devious.  They know full well, despite their claimed association, that the population does not support their firebrand atheism.  Apathy however is their fellow-traveller and the more they curtail Christianity, the greater the apathy will be and so the closer the atheists believe they will be to achieving their objective of eradicating religion.  No doubt, they would deny my assertion furiously but to me their cloak of even-handedness is quite transparent.
Some of the usual suspects are missing from the list - Stephen Fry (watching his beloved Norwich lose to Liverpool?), Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais, Rowan Atkinson - but maybe they had better things to do with their Easter Sunday.  There are still plenty of regular Christian-bashers though - Philip Pullman, still struggling with the break from his vicar father, Polly Toynbee, who wanted the big-screen adaptation of Narnia banned as it was 'Christian propaganda', Martin Rowson, a cartoonist never afraid to but the boot into a Christian story.  There are also those less prominent in expression of their belief systems (which we all have to explain our conception of the cosmos), Tony Hawks, Dan Snow, C J de Mooi (given the latter's supercilious TV persona, is he really an asset?).  I can't claim to recognise all but I'm not surprised Richard Herring, Peter Tatchell or Terry Pratchett (a self-proclaimed humanist) are on there or for that matter professors, Jim Al-Khalil (presenter of Radio 4's The Life Scientific), Steve Jones and Alice Roberts (a regular on Coast).  I wonder how they organised the precedence of the list, as comedian Tim Minchin is third, above far more august names - perhaps it was the order people responded to Al-Khalil.  Maybe some on the list are purely motivated by an ignorant and ill-founded fear of the mixture of politics and religion.  But I can see for a hefty swathe it is another opportunity to vent their loathing of all expressions of Christianity (and they mock Christians for having hang-ups!).  These are all talented, intelligent people with social consciences who let themselves down by their own irrational fears of a large chunk of our national heritage (and also of the initial success of Archbishop Justin Welby and Pope Francis) and thus alienate Christians specifically and other religions more generally.
The National Census - the ultimate survey - registered that 60% of people recognise themselves as Christian - a 12% drop on 2001, partially as a result of anti-religious charismatic figures gaining more publicity, partially as a result of a vigorous campaign to stop people identifying themselves as Christians focusing wholesale on negative attributes and its effect on public policy.  This campaign was as mean-spirited as the Scotland 'No' camp but did not shoot itself in the foot through this.  Yet despite it efforts, more than half the country still saw themselves as Christian - the very opposite of what the letter claims (the scientists at least should be ashamed).  Furthermore, we are not Christian in a narrowly constitutional sense.  Our culture, law and politics have been shaped profoundly by a Judeo-Christian worldview.  It is accepted widely that the foundational blocks of western European countries (yes, including Spain and Portugal) have been Greece, Rome and Christianity.  The numbers that attend a church regularly for the purposes of worship may be small - and Church of England numbers seem to have plateaued out - but until the world is that envisaged by Aldous Huxley - Thomas Huxley's grandson - in Brave New World, it is arrogant and offensive to talk of a post-Christian society and, anyway, that is very different to post-religious society which is ultimately their aim but far from being achieved.  The fanatical atheists have had their way for too long down - it's about time there was some pushback.

Death of the selfie

It is a commonplace that tourists have photographs taken of themselves in front of famous landmarks to 'prove' that they were there.  The Japanese and the Chinese have clichés about their families not believing them otherwise but it is true of the West as well, even with the rise of Photoshopping.  Now, of course, one doesn't have to run the risk of having a stranger you have asked for a favour running off with the camera (and all your other snaps), work out how to set the timer (if there is one) or ungainly handle a camera that might cut off the top of your head and/or key background item (unning through a few old photo albums of my grandmother's collection, there is a standard disaster shot of a giraffe with upper neck and head missing, only revealed after processing).  The quality of mobile phone (mini-digital camera) photography and the ability to delete and re-take means such gaffes are not only a thing of the past but you can take shots of yourself without awkwardly positioning yourself in front of a mirror to avoid the flash.  The age of the selfie was 2013 as the word entered the Oxford English Dictionary and it continues in 2014.  Even Pope Francis has indulged in it with and for pilgrims.
So far, so obvious.  This increased portability has not though increased people's sensitivity.  When visiting the Louvre and despite numerous visual signs that camera flashes are banned, in front of the crowd of the Mona Lisa a dozen flashes go off in the space of a second and then another dozen in the next second, with all this artificial light bouncing off the bulletproof glass back into our eyes and making it impossible for me to properly appreciate Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.  If I want a picture of the Mona Lisa, I'll buy a reproduction or a calendar from the gift shop.  It was so vexing that I turned around and admired the vast canvas of The Wedding at Cana (by Paolo Caliari AKA Veronese) on the wall opposite.  Virtually no-one paid attention to it.  Selfies made a bad situation worse.  It wasn't appreciation of art, it was about being in proximity to fame.
This vacuous narcissism reached its logical conclusion when a South Korean official took a selfie of himself alongside the names of the memorial victims of the recent ferry disaster.  This official has now lost his 'job title', partly through his crassness, partly through a clamour to find someone/anyone to blame for a catastrophe of such devastating magnitude (the only comparable calamity involving the deaths of so many children that I can bring to mind is the Welsh mining village of Aberfan 48 years ago, when slag from the coal mines placed on the heights collapsed and slid down the hill, engulfing the local school).  Whether this means he was demoted or summarily dismissed is unclear but not only did the official have the lack of empathy to take the picture but compounded this by uploading it, because the nature of the selfie is that it is 'shared', not especially to enlighten as to have a form of one-upmanship on everyone else.  Even the pilgrims who got Pope Francis to take a selfie with them would now boast of how close their got to the Pontifex Maximus - Francis wasn't taking it for himself.  Even the term 'selfie' has connotations of self-absorption.  The hapless South Korean official may have made himself a scapegoat through his cold foolishness yet sadly, in terms of how much of western society now sees itself, he was 'on trend'.  It is not the fault of technology (Justin Bieber wrote in something as old-fashioned as a visitor's book that he hoped Anne Frank would have been a 'belieber') but technology has enabled it to go further than ever before.

Milestone

1,000.  That's what this is.  It's taken me a lot less time to go from 500-1000 posts than the original half K.  Not because it was special K, rather I took several longeurs - occasionally lasting months - at a time.  I've been a lot more dedicated over the two years or so.  Even so, I decided to wait until Easter Sunday to reach this totally arbitrary figure, giving blogging a break for a few days but all those zeroes does have some personal cachet for me.
I don't especially have any news to comment upon nor am I in the mood for reviewing.  Instead, here are the intercession prayers I created and read out (adopting a stentorian voice) at the 10 a.m. service in church.  I've done intercessions in the past but as with Midnight Mass about three or four years ago, I put extra effort into these.  Not so much so people can enjoy them but, with such a large crowd on the number one event in the church calendar, to hopefully bring them closer to God.


You choirs of New Jerusalem, the call from the watchmen upon mount Ephraim is ‘Your Lord has risen’, the refrain is ‘we too shall arise’. Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise.

Creator, Master, Friend,
We know that You accept from every nation those in awe of You and who do what is right. Yet sin stalks every land in greater or lesser measure. We pray your mitigation, in anticipation of the final victory, of destruction in those places afflicted most grievously: the wracked body of Syria, the tumescent pain in the Congo, the despoiled prostration of South Sudan, the internecine strife in the Central African Republic, the fratricide in Mexico, the anguish in Afghanistan and the pregnant tension in the Ukraine. Imbue in the bosoms of the displaced hope in this world and in the hearts of those bereaved, faith in the next. A special plea to You is made for the souls of the deceased in the South Korean ferry disaster; comfort and embrace the stricken families with Your Spirit, not least in the knowledge that their belovéd have been selected for an earlier passage to the Promised Land.
Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise.

O God of Hosts,
We implore of Your divine mercy, protection and well-being on our Governor, Queen Elizabeth. We ask Your blessing on our Archbishops, Justin and John and on our Bishops, James and Brian – fill them with fortitude for the time ahead. We entreat that You fill Reverend Suzanne and all the worship team with strength – physical, mental and spiritual – as they minister to Your flock. We pray for Christians everywhere, that hardship may not always be their lot and the pleasure of knowing You elevate them to new heights of mission, setting their minds on that which is above. We beseech of You, to dispense wisdom, justice and charity to those who exercise authority in this country. May shouts of joy and Paschal victory resound in the abodes of the righteous.
Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise.

Ancient of Days,
Delight will be in abundance as we enter Your courts, bold our approach to the eternal throne, but there is work to be done on Earth yet. Give us the courage to plant vines in unpromising terrain and that the fruit borne will be most succulent. The prospect of heavenly Zion is upon us, let us not fail those who also could traverse the crystal sea and revel eternally, in the company of cherubim and seraphim, with the choicest of praises at the proximity to Your brilliant visage. May we seed a holy harvest field with sweet hosannas swelling our chests and spurring us on in this vital task.
Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise.

Name above all names,
The stone the builders rejected became the capstone. We petition mercy for those who feel rejected, the ones who have fallen, by design or accident, through the cracks in society. Give solace to the sick, the lonely, the depressed, the addicted and all and any others who hold the opinion that they are excluded. Show them that the Lamb’s high banquet is open to the penitent who accept Your magnificent invitation.
Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise.

Immortal, Immutable, Father only wise,
By Your Son, Jesus, our Saviour, the grave has been conquered, the tomb is open and a brighter dawn is breaking. By Christ’s oblation, we make humble appeal to land safe on Canaan’s side those on our prayer list, we are desirous for the salvation of the souls recently departed and those in our Memorial Book we trust have gone onto greater glory and, in a moment of quietude, we pray for those who are known most pertinently to us.

Blesséd Trinity, we commit these prayers to You. Intercede for us this Easter morn and while unending ages run. Your Lord has risen, we too shall arise!

Ha ha, happy days are here again

It is the evisceration of the traditional high street that sees bargain basement stores, charity shops and pawn brokers springing up to take the place of more august institutions.  The Co-Operative used to have a bit of an empire at one end of Gillingham High Street, closest to the railway station with a two-storey department store on one side of the street and directly across it the standard supermarket.  The department store was the first to go, now the habitat of Wilkinson, Sports Direct and Bon Marche (the latter come and gone again) and then the Co-Op relocated to the other end of the town high street having bought the Somerfield chain (which in Gillingham had taken over from Safeway) and in its original place sits now the more downmarket Nisa.
However, when pawn shops close, it may be a sign that things are on the way up.  Albemarle Bond has ceased its Gillingham operations, consolidating in its Chatham branch.  Pawn brokers do not do very well when economic times are good (for no-one needs much to pawn their items) or catastrophic (for no-one can afford to redeem their items and storage is not cheap).  The latter seems to have come over Gillingham at least fleetingly.
Today, earnings were reported to have outstripped inflation for the first time in four years and the British economy is growing the fastest out of all the most developed countries in the world.  It is a disaster for the Labour Party who were riffing on a cost-of-living crisis.  Of course, Labour can claim that the success is unevenly spread, concentrating in the south of the country, but Labour already had much of the north sewn up already - if it is to hold power without the need for a coalition it needs to makes inroads into the south, into places like Gillingham (and Rainham) that it held between 1997 and 2010.  A year to the election, Labour has just seen its trump card over-trumped by the Tories and now needs some big-hitting headlines.

Derailed

The news that a City trader escaped paying next to no money since 2008 has sparked a debate whether he is a hero or villain.  Well, he got caught eventually, showing that the gambling instincts of the City are still alive and kicking, plus he had to pay back the equivalent of single day tickets for every journey he made since 2008, thus costing him more than if he had bought season tickets.  For me, forget hero or villain; this marks him out as reckless at best, a fool at worst.  That this was an out-of-court settlement showed that he was prepared to dip into his small change to avoid prison and forking out almost £45,000 hardly marks this unnamed trader out as a proletarian salt-of-the-earth.
I think this debate highlights though the rip-off prices (encouraged by Gordon Brown when Chancellor of the Exchequer) the train companies have imposed on the ordinary people.  I miss sorely the mature student railcard that gave me a third off rail travel.  And that's not counting the myriad inconveniences of weekend use.  After visiting some friends in London for birthday drinks, although a fair amount of time was spent at the flat of Jon Williams (the Jon Williams, but not the John Williams as was the confused bar banter in which I was once involved), by the time we got to the pub in Clapham Common, there was enough minutes for one drink before departing at 10 pm.  The reason - 1 hour 38 mins from Victoria to Gillingham (normally 55 mins) because of engineering works and needing to relieve my mum as babysitter at a semi-reasonable hour (20 past midnight pushing the envelope).
When I checked the schedule for Easter Sunday when Simon Savory will be bidding farewell to these shores for the City of Light across La Manche, I was balked again by the delay caused by the use of replacement buses.  One route involved a bus to Maidstone before getting on a train to London, with almost half the journey being taken for a ride away from the Big Smoke.  That's why I found it hilarious when a weblink on National Rail Enquiries asked "Long journey?  Why not upgrade to First Class from +£5.40[missing a second question mark]" First Class?  On a rail replacement bus for half the time.  What a joke.

A thorn between two thorns

The local and European elections in May are a dry run for the General Election and David Cameron is throwing out red meat left, right and centre to his troops.  If it's not rowing back on green promises and threatening to sweep all wind turbines from the countryside, it's 'banging on about Europe' as he argued that he did not want to do.  His assertion that he is the moderate between 'extremists' - those who want to leave the EU no matter what and those who want to leave the EU unchanged no matter what - is particularly fallacious.  There is probably less than 1% of the country who do not want changes to the EU - the Common Agricultural Policy is especially repugnant, hurting the farmers of developing countries by banning their products outside the tariff barrier while eviscerating the domestic industry by dumping cheap European produce on their markets.  But there is a significant section who see Cameron as the extremist for wanting a renegotiated semi-detached relationship with the EU.  That is not the story that the right-wing media want us to hear though.

G4S!#*?£!%$#

G4S are the classic example that disproves all the economic textbooks that claim that state-run enterprises will always be more inefficient than private organisations in the same business.  From their hilariously over-wrought corporate rock melody to their cluelessness at the 2012 Olympics, they are emblematic of the failings of the private sector.  And yet Government, maybe because it is Government, continues to contract out services to them.  Today I saw a G4S security van transporting money between ATMs - it possessed a yellow stripe that capped its side with a series of boasts, one of which stated "Making sentences stick."  So true, that even when those sentences (or those who have served them) expire, they still claim from the Government parole credits and costs.  Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, was motivated enough to launch a corruption inquiry against them for refusing to allow the Government access to their accounts.  Under G4S, there is no redemption - once a criminal, always a criminal.  Perhaps it's because they feel the same way about themselves.

Knowing one's Station

Today, on Palm Sunday, the Stations of the Cross were enacted in church, taking in The Last Supper, The Arrest, The Trial and The Crucifixion.  That the service started with acclamations of joy and a hymn that reflected that it captured in a swift and sobering way, how Jesus Christ was raptorously welcomed into Jerusalem and a week later was executed as a common criminal.  Inbetween each station, we sang, acapella, a verse of Graham Kendrick's The Servant King, in the same progression as the hymn.  The solemnity of the final station of the cross, however, was slightly undermined by three incidents.
Firstly, one of the congregation playing Simon of Cyrene, carrying a wooden cross of not inconsiderable weight, when turning into the Lady Chapel at the conclusion of his role, bounced the cross off the bar that is a support in the glasswork that separates the Lady Chapel from the nave.  Juddering to a stop, he had to reverse slightly, lower the cross and then exit the scene.  This was merely the appetiser.
Secondly, a gavel and sounding block was used by one of the lay readers to symbolise the hammering of nails into Jesus as he was laid on the cross (before hoisting up in the air.  I think our volunteer to be Jesus was glad we don't follow certain customs in The Philippines where people really do allow nails to be sunk into their hands and feet and then are paraded around) But, in a manner reminiscent of Jeremy Hunt's demented bell-ringing on HMS Belfast before the London Olympics, as the gavel came down for a third and final time, the force with which the reader wielded it caused the head of the mallet to snap and fly-off a short distance.  It was a comic moment further heightened by the reader's own giggling at this ridiculous and unexpected turn of events.  Whoops!
Lastly, Kimberley had escaped the clutches of my mum and made her way to the high altar where the fourth scene was occurring.  Seeing me sitting there in the choir stalls in my server's robes, she instantly was drawn to me and so I sat her there on my lap, inducing her to be silent as much as possible, with either my finger on her lips or saying 'shh' to her, eventually giving her a palm cross with which she was distracted.  As another lay reader concluded the fourth station with "And Jesus was dead," Kimberley, with unerring timing, said, "oh dear."  Indeed.

The crossing

A week-long holiday turned into a bit too much, in which I did little, even blogging.  I was planning to rectify this yesterday but a blazing headache for a quarter of the day licked by new flames whenever I espied digitally created light forced my early retirement to bed.  As I say, what a waste.
But there are far greater wastes in this world.  Last night, my wife's uncle died, at only 58, of a stroke.  He was a mining company director and had formerly been a mayor of his local town.  Yet his (second) wife died two years ago and as any loss adjuster will tell you, the death of a long-term partner significantly decreases your own life expectancy (see About Schmidt).  That his two grown-up daughters from his second marriage lived far away in the capital city enhanced his loneliness.  He ploughed his free time into sprucing up his farmstead.  Last year he built a summerhouse.  I sat with him under a demanding sun as he grilled meat and we drank beer before retiring to the shade of the actual building.  Such a shame that he put all that effort into making the summer house and then only enjoyed it for a solitary season.  It's hard on Altaa especially, not just because it happened but because she was powerless to do anything.  He faded away within days.  You think of all the good times you will have with him in the future and it's snatched away, far, far too soon.

I'm Neil Adams, aha!

Norwich City became the latest club to hit the panic button (marked 'eject') with Chris Hughton able to start his summer holidays earlier than expected.  It means not a single club out of 92 in the football league pyramid employs a black, Asian or mixed-race person as their manager, which is disgraceful.  In place of Hughton, Norwich offered their vacancy to a rookie with absolutely no previous front-line managerial experience - Neil Adams - who just happens to be white.  Why couldn't they have done that with someone who wasn't white - experience of management was clearly not high on their list of priorities, so pretty much anyone could have been put forward.  There are unemployed black coaches out there - Paul Ince, John Barnes, Chris Powell; Sol Campbell would also be up for the challenge.  Norwich City aren't racist for they employed Hughton in the first place but it's disappointing that they could not have been more a role model.
Adams, struggling to shake off an Alan Partridge tag, was working on local radio merely two years ago and, as a player, ex-Canaries gaffer Glenn Roeder, said Adams would never be above the level of an under-10s coach.  Next match is against relegation specialist (and European Cup winner as a player) Felix Magath, followed in their last four matches by the current top four in the Premier League.  Maybe Norwich are hoping for a short-term boost from a new manager (dead cat bounce) in beating Fulham at Craven Cottage (five defeats out of the last five visits for the team from Norfolk) with the final four games a write-off and hoping that the bottom three don't start pulling off miracles.  Fulham in particular have a very favourable run-in to the end of the season.
However, it all has shades of Canaries playing legend Bryan Gunn, who despite no first-team managerial record was appointed caretaker boss in January 2009 - the team were relegated to third tier for the first time in nearly half a century come the end of May.  He was reappointed in a full-time position and on the opening day of the season lost 7-1 at home to East Anglian rivals Colchester United.  Within a week, Gunn was gone.  Who knows, maybe Adams will have a run like that of Russ Wilcox, who has set a league record of most games undefeated since taking over as boss (at Scunthorpe, he is now 25 matches unbeaten).  The odds favour a Gunn re-run.

Bearded

I mentioned the Roman Emperor Hadrian in a post a few days ago and that reminded me of a theme I've had in my mind for a bit.  Although much lauded now for 'recognising' the limits of Roman rule and avoiding the hubris of his predecessor Trajan (although Hadrian was largely reverting to the Augustan dictum created in the wake of the trauma of the Teutoburger Wald, fixing the boundary of the Roman world at the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates and the Sahara), in his day the second Hispanic emperor was much slated for the gratuitous murders committed at the start and then at the end of his reign.  Nevertheless, he was emperor and that was sufficient inducement for many to ape, in the way that many people today model themselves after their heroes.  Militarised and no-nonsense as Roman society was and distinguishing themselves from the unkempt barbarians, for centuries men of prominence were clean-shaven.  Hadrian, however, set a fashion for beards that lasted a century (with the brief exception of the co-Emperor Geta) and thereafter was on and off in terms of imperial preference.  Arguably, Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, set an even more important trend, eschewing cremation after his death in favour of inhumation (although in terms of procedure we are more familiar with the verb 'to exhume').  That, though, is another tale.
In the news recently, 'hipsters' in New York City are having beard transplants to compensate for their own wispy emanations and Will Self was struck by how many young men in London are hirsute that he felt compelled to write an article about it in The New Statesman.  Well, if the shock of the New can tolerate such garrulous effrontery because of Self's skills, then a little blog should be harmless enough.
Beards and their intermediate stage, stubble, were largely seen as the preserve of backswoodsmen or elderly gentlemen.  In the 1980s, I pontificate, this changed with the likes of George Michael going solo (no longer afraid of not being woken before one went, more a case of 'zip me up before you go-go').  To be rough-cheeked was a sign of danger, of rebellion, of couldn't care less about what the world thinks.  A five o'clock shadow is no a pejorative that applied to shifty sorts.  George Clooney has gone from modelling a burnt field to full whiskery gloriousness in some of his roles.
For a long time, I was warily respectful of beards, remembering a cartoon in New Scientist where men of the laboratory nurtured birds and nests in their face-forest, accompanying an article that also mentioned the food that became lodged, serving as a motel in much the same way that urban animal scavengers raid dumpsters.  In my more impetuous, salad days, I believed anyone who cultivated a beard under the age of 30 was pretentious.  I say impetuous not necessarily as such of the opinion, as from my careless conversation in expressing it to a friend who had cultivated the follicles on the lower half of his head.  I wasn't 'bearding' him as it were, rather he was so familiar that his facial fur did not enter into the equation of my topic.  Needless to say, he was not pleased or, should I say, he bristled (I also had cause to inadvertently impugn his support of Tottenham Hotspur, telling him I had just met at a party a Spurs fan who was not, here's the word again, pretentious, forgetting myself that he was of such a footballing persuasion).  Now we are both over 30 (born 20 days apart), I have no problem with him looking like Captain Haddock.
Many young men in my office are also following the pattern for unshaven chops to the extent that their necks are completely obscured.  I myself have a laziness when it comes to bristles sprouting from my pores.  Altaa likes it, thinks it 'wild' (a controlled wild, with the bounds of civilisation, hence a fictional wild, like a rollercoaster inducing thrills without anyone ever being in danger, in 99.99% of cases), accentuated by the fact that most Mongolian men cannot produce such excessive growth.  Until the age of 30 though, I was careful to slice it away before it became too developed.  Now I can leave it five days before I have at it with a razor, restarting the Sisyphian struggle.  When younger, my face had a habit of leaving the occasional miniature crop circles where my pores stubbornly eschewed stubble.  Vigour sapped, now my face lets through the white 'dead' hairs, giving an extra imperative to shave more regularly, certainly before it get beyond sandpaper brutality.  Whether this hairy habit will last a century as it did from AD 117 to AD 218 is moot as fashion is so fissiparous that one could wake up one day to have Will Self's epiphany in reverse and lament where have all the beards gone.

Non-mistaken identity

I understand that the teams don't want to overly raise the hopes of the bereaved families of those on the doomed Malaysian flight but to announce that they have detected radio signals from the Indian Ocean bed but don't want to confirm it as such, seems a little surreal.  It's not unlike the couple who found a time capsule of sorts stuffed with gold coins dating back more than a hundred years ago but not confirming it as theirs because Red from The Shawshank Redemption may have misremembered Andy's instructions to him, so it belongs to Red.
What else is that emitted pulse going to be?  An aged Cold War dolphin that escaped?  Aliens in the manner of the schlocky horror Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle Virus?  Another black box from a flight we didn't even know had gone missing?  I guess the toll of embarrassment in the saga of the missing Boeing 777 is that the search teams are keeping the powder in the driest possible conditions.

The end of the dream

The statistics that affect football can throw up some interesting results.  Back in 2008 Fulham were relegated at half-time, losing 2-0 away to Manchester City while their near rivals were winning. At full-time they had beaten the blue half of Manchester 3-2, their rivals had contrived to be defeated and Fulham were on the way to Premier League survival.  The win at Aston Villa today could produce a similar miraculous escape.
However, two teams won handsomely and still saw their dreams crumble. In reality, they  knew it was over though.  Today, Hearts scored four and were relegated from the Scottish Premier League.  Manchester United scored four and relinquished the (English) Premier League title. Both still had mathematical possibilities to achieve their goals at 3pm but the concatenation of results by 8pm ensured they were gone.  St Mirren's win meant they could not be caught by Hearts and Man Utd's moribund title defence was buried alive by Chelsea's and Man City's victories as the sum total of points Man Utd could finish on - 72 - would be surpassed by at least one of Chelsea, Man City and/or Liverpool who must play both of the first two.  Man City on 70pts, Liverpool on 71pts, Chelsea on 72pts, even goal difference can't save Man Utd now.

Skipping back across the Styx

On 1st April, Britain's blunder in Afghanistan came to an end or at least largely so, as it handed Camp Bastion in Helmand province to the Americans in preparation for overall troop withdrawal at the end of the year.  Those 'Welcome to Hel' banners can be packed away but it was more than just gallows humour - the mission as grim as Hercules entering Hades.
In 2006, when British battalions arrived in Helmand for 'pacification', then Defence Secretary John Reid told the House of Commons that he hoped in the time that they spent there, the army would not have to fire a shot in anger.  That the bulk of the 448 British deaths in Afghanistan occurred in Helmand bears out Reid's incompetence, a man who had nine ministerial posts in as many years and failed in all of them, surviving only because he was one of Tony Blair's pitbulls.  Yet it was his master that placed the mission in peril from the outset.
The Taliban were routed and out of the picture by December 2001, yet by actively supporting the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq, Blair put Afghanistan on the backburner, allowing the Taliban to regroup.  Thus when the British military pitched up in Helmand, they faced a formidable foe rather than a broken opponent.  It was if Blair was channelling the 'tin gods' at Simla, India, who sent in 16,000 British and allied troops into Afghanistan in the First Anglo-Afghan War - under siege in Kabul they sought to retreat; less than a dozen survived the march.
Ironically, the British held Kandahar - in what is now Helmand province - from the vengeful Afghans, in a remarkable precursor to Rorke's Drift.  But the war was lost and a more prudent retreat was organised evacuating the whole country.  One cannot help feeling that a war-weary UK has had enough and if all the gains since 2001 - elections (however ambiguous), women's rights, the trappings of the West - should fall like the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan after our departure, then so be it.  We don't want to get involved in Syria so it is illogical to stay in Afghanistan.
I follow a different line.  We should never have invaded Iraq without a far stronger humanitarian case than just Saddam Hussein was a nasty dictator (the Saudis were hardly any better but they were compliant and predictable).  We should have got involved in Syria from a very early stage, like in Libya.  Libya may have a desperately weak government but it has not turned into Somalia on the Mediterranean like Syria has and western Muslims return to their home countries after 'jihad' radicalised.  I also supported intervention in Afghanistan and had we not 'taken our eye off the ball' (as John Simpson incredulously admitted) to focus on Iraq, then we might have locked in the gains and not endured our longest conflict since the end of the Hundred Years War (counting from 1415 to 1453).  Because of the errors of Bush and Blair, a counter-terrorist campaign hand-in-hand with the Taliban to snuff out al-Qaeda now seems distinctly desirable if the invasion of Iraq was inevitable (if forever and a day wrong - ahem, Chilcot, where are you?).
448 British, thousands of Americans and other NATO soldiers (Camp Bastion was shared with the USA, Denmark and Estonia as one camp among many throughout the Hindu Kush) and tens of thousands of Afghans have died, not to mention all those maimed and horrifically injured, as Bush and Blair did their level best to discredit humanitarian intervention and Right To Protect (RTP).  I hope the Taliban don't roll up the country like a carpet (and Pakistan's Dr Frankenstein should keep away from the monster it created to counter New Delhi's influence).  The aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal - which the West precipitated - doesn't give cause for much in the way of hope though.

Poles apart

On 16th April 1940, Osbert Lancaster, the master of the one-frame 'pocket' cartoon, satirised the positions of Poland and Denmark in The Daily Express.  He portrayed a group of penguins speaking into a microphone, amidst an icy wasteland, announcing how they were maintaining strict neutrality and would "defend our territorial integrity at all costs."  Of course, by this point Poland and Denmark had been overrun making their previous pronouncements very hollow.  Lancaster was also suggesting that the only safe place in the world at this time was the South Pole because there are no penguins in the Arctic.
This geo-biological fact makes for interesting imagery in a picture meme that is going viral amongst Russian internet users.  A mass of huddled penguins are 'holding up' (photoshopped) banners and placards stating "Crimea is ours!" and "Alaska next!"  It is Dali-esque in its conceptual surrealism.  Either that or the person who created it is an idiot and there are plenty of idiots who don't know that penguins don't naturally reside in the northern hemisphere, let alone Alaska.  10 million idiots can't be wrong!  Err... The furthest that penguins stray from the Antarctic are the most southerly tips of South America, Africa and New Zealand.  Given Russia is often identified as a Brown bear, couldn't something been done with polar bears, caribou or Arctic foxes, who all range in or around Alaska?  No let's have the non-threatening, cold-loving heroes of Happy Feet.  Hey, it's all ice, isn't it?
The success of this meme is borne out partly by an online petition and partly also by Russia (in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church) petitioning to request an island in the Aleutian range as their sole property, motivating many Russians to think about reacquiring Alaska, even though it has been part of the USA (territory, then state) for 147 years, not far shy of the 171 years Crimea was under Moscow's tutelage (which is 'why' it was an 'essential' component of Russia).  Why stop in Alaska; why not claim Washington state and Oregon, all the way down to northern California where a few outposts survived until the early nineteenth century?
Alaska is oil-rich now but when it was sold at a cut-price discount (a cent an acre) negotiated by William Seward, Secretary of State in 1867, it was known as 'Seward's Folly' and 'Seward's Icebox'.  But such is the many who are giddy from being drunk with revanchism, anywhere which was part of not just the USSR but Imperial Russia is seen as fair game.  35,000 digital signatures have been placed on the White House website for a proposal (in stilted English) demanding that Alaska revert to the control of Moscow.  Never mind that it has been uncovered that this petition was created by a company with close links to the Kremlin, it takes 100,000 submissions before Jay Carney, Barack Obama's spokesman, has to respond.
Currently, Ukraine is the principal occupation of the Putin administration.  If a little cheek about Alaska can distract from their antagonism towards Kiev, so much the better.  Just as Putin said that Russia had no designs on Crimea two weeks before he sent his special forces in to secure the strongpoints, Sergei Lavrov, his foreign minister, is on the record as saying that his government has no special demands on eastern Ukraine (though he isn't part of the Putin inner cabal).  Still the line goes about fascists and extremists - the Maidan mob - calling the shots throughout western and central Ukraine.  It is all reminiscent of 70 years ago today when the Soviet Union really was fighting fascists rather than make-believe ones.  As Soviet troops poured into Romania across the River Prut, Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Commissar, informed western press correspondents on the night of 2nd April 1944 (and printed in 3rd April newspapers) that the USSR had no intention of acquiring Romanian territory.  The current offensive was merely "The first step in the restoration of the frontier established by the Treaty of 1940," which was itself a land-grab of Bessarabia from Romania permitted under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.  Molotov declared further that "the entry into Rumania [as it was then known] is dictated solely by military necessity and is in no way [my italics] aimed at the integrity of Rumanian territory or the existing social order."  Well, by 1947, under the auspices of the stationed Red Army, Romania was firmly under the control of the minority communists favourable to Moscow but even before that, in 1945, the USSR announced that Northern Bukovina (which had never been controlled by Russia) would henceforth be amalgamated into the USSR.  Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose and that is a meme with which I can agree.

Counterblast

It couldn't have been timed better but the dangerous smog that engulfed Paris and Nord-Pas-de-Calais a few weeks ago has migrated across the English Channel barely a day after the release of the IPCC report on climate change met with a sniffy response from the usual, scientifically illiterate quarters.  For having so long denied climate change was even happening, let alone man-made (and even now express scepticism), the denialists now say that little can be done to mitigate it, Britain makes a miniscule contribution to global emissions and we should all focus all our energies on adapting to the changing climate.  By and large, these are the same people who want to limit immigration and also want to slash international aid obligations, thereby making the lives of those who will be hit hardest by climate change even more desperate, encouraging migration to Britain!  Yet this smog is so pervasive it defies all available adaptation strategies - this is not simply a matter of more extensive dredging of rivers.  We should encourage greener, more efficient ways of generating energy, not because it's good for the planet but primarily because its good for our lungs.
Little can be done against the prevailing winds that have scourged the Sahara of dust and dumped it on us, but the air pollution we have produced allied with the industrial air pollution of northern Europe (a good reason to have the kind of international cooperation represented by the likes of the EU - another bogeyman of the denialists - to counteract the release of particularates in other lands) has made a toxic brew stiffer than that which Beijing usually endures (and I've encountered that smog as well).  The Medway basin was always Mexico City-lite but the haze, like the habitual fog, has crawled out of this natural pit.  I live on top of a hill with a strong breeze often prevalent but still I can see a visual dimming and blurring of the outlines of trees and buildings.
Doubly ironically, people take to their cars instead of walking, bussing or cycling in or getting the train (outright or park-and-ride), thereby increasing the pollution levels and trapping all the pollution from the car ahead of them in their own enclosed box.  This illustrates the poverty of the environmental debate in this country.  Worse than sugar, people know it's not good for the Earth but fail to link to their own circumstances their actions or are unwilling to do so.  Of course, there are powerful interests that want to keep it this way and most of them are in the highest echelons of government, media and commerce.

Unworkable

So it's April Fool's Day and, it sounds harsh, but I thought yesterday's report on outlawing emotional cruelty was an April Fool's Joke accidentally released one day early. It even uses some of the same language such as "the wicked stepmother would have got away scot-free." I half-expected a reference to Harry Potter as a real-life entity. How on earth can it be policed, let alone gauged, not just in the homes already on the social services list but in the well-to-do middle-class homes that never have their collective collars felt? I know people in the latter group whose lives were made a misery by their parents and with perspective they have come to hate their parents but unlike physical abuse, it is a fluid concept and parents may feel this is the right way to raise children. Philip Larkin has the measure in 'This Be The Verse'

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

I omit the last verse as he becomes too misanthropic and I obviously disagree about not having children, but emotional cruelty will never be eradicated unless we eradicate emotion and judgement.