Look on my works and despair

My warnings about the dangers of adopting a presidential system, as Turkey has done, seems to be borne out by the unveiling of a new palace for the president, despite the previous one proving no slum to 12 consecutive chief exceutives, including the current incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who felt moved to create the ugly modernist mish-mash as part of his drive to make a 'new Turkey'.  Follies rarely come with a bill of $350m.
With 1,000 rooms spread over 200,000 square metres, it makes Ceaușescu's (unfinished) Palace of the People look restrained in its modesty.  When construction began, the Romanian despot had already converted his position into a fully-fledged executive presidency.  It is a peculiarity of autocratically-inclined presidents that, Ozymandias-like, they must stamp their legacy with a symbol of their megalomania.  Francisco Solano Lopez, the nineteenth century tyrant of Paraguay who through war and execution reduced the population of his country by more than 80%, not only constructed an extravagant residence but an opera house worthy of Paris or Milan.  He was killed by a Brazilian soldier on the same day that he had signed his own mother's death warrant (he had previously had her flogged for questioning his hereditary right to rule, saying he was a bastard in the official sense of the word).
Viktor Yanukovych, the kleptocratic former Ukranian president who seemed to take as his role models Sukarno, Mobutu Sese Seko and 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, had his Mezhyhirya estate on the most distant outskirts of Kiev extravagantly upgraded to make it the last word in opulence.  After he fled taking the easy way out like Nero (he was not overthrown), ordinary Ukrainians walked around the grounds stunned at the size of the garage, private zoo and three floating duckhouses (eat your heart out, ex-MP Peter Viggers).  Coincidentally, it had also been the retreat of pre-World War II local communist chief and then that of the Nazi governor for this part of Ukraine.
No doubt, Blaise Campaoré in his 27-year rule as president of Burkina Faso had a luxuriously outfitted palace, trappings denied to his population which bumped along the bottom of the UN Human Development Index.  He won't be able to enjoy that anymore, having fled in the last three hours to the safety of Ghana, only a day after he said protests that killed 30 of the opposition wouldn't oust him.  He had over-reached himself proposing a draft law that would extend his reign.  Erdoğan may reach a tipping point eventually too but not yet.

A cut Dr Beeching cannot be blamed for

Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would be sad.  The Signal Box, a train model railway emporium in the liminal space between Chatham and Rochester has closed.  Despite a guarantee of 'World Wide Mail Order' from the purveyors of Hornby and others, Sheldon being fictional did not aid in this regard.
I noticed this as I made a fruitless trip to 'Thai Market' ('The convinent [sic] Oriental store') for kimchi.  Despite Shakespeare's injunction in Henry VI, Part II, to kill all the lawyers, they have proliferated into the vacant space where once miniature trains whizzed around.  So basic are their occupation of the premises that they have left much of the letterwork on the windows in situ (and there are two large stains on the thin, grey carpet).  Maybe the considerable shopfront was too expensive to redecorate bar the most perfunctory signs; maybe they just couldn't be bothered - a tired firm in a rundown urban locale.  Most of my peregrinations from the dockyard town to the cathedral city have occurred on Friday night as colleagues migrate from one pub to another when the cover of darkness obscures the awful truth.
In all honesty, I cannot say I was a patron but the existence of such a shop harks back to a more innocent and simpler age, with old verities persisting into the 21st century.  The warm glow of nostalgia is not always a commercial banker though.

Death by 1,000 cuts

Come back Mohammed Morsi, all is forgiven!  Well, almost all.  At least he was an elected figure who could have been removed at the next general election.  Now the army are back in control and conducting the same sham elections as they had been doing under Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak - Mubarak only fell because the military establishment didn't like his succession planning and withdrew its support.  So the man that is now president is former general Abdel Fateh al-Sisi, a person with similar opinions on democracy as Belarus' dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko - Jeffersonian or Madisonian al-Sisi is not.
The latest crackdown has placed all civilian infrastructure (a posh word according to David Blunkett, even though technocracy is the opposite of posh), that is parks, university campuses, roads and bridges under army jurisdiction.  The presidential decree lists all these as "equivalent to military facilities" and anyone accused of committing a crime in these areas will disappear into the military tribunal system.  It is a further triumph of the military as democracy in Egypt dies by a 1,000 cuts.
It is not unlike the Emperor Diocletian 'rationalising' the administration of the Roman Empire, dispensing with the last vestiges of civilian rule left over from the Republic (or in Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, imperial lackeys and thereby the cinematic audience being informed that Emperor Palpatine had dissolved the Galactic Senate).  Not that Diocletian was unpopular for doing so - he gets a bad rep largely through his ferocious persecution of Christians.  Al-Sisi has also been known in the last few years to whip up popular resentment against the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt.  Al-Sisi's popularity in the middle-classes isn't dented though -as The Guardian put it "many Egyptians welcome Sisi’s response to Friday’s attacks [in the Sinai peninsular], with his strongman rule seen as the only bulwark against the chaos wrought elsewhere in the Middle East by extremists such as Isis."  After the chaos since the Arab Spring, Egyptians want peace and view the unravelling of Syria with ever greater horror.  On Sunday, 17 editors from both state and private newspapers issued a joint statement backing the government's fight against terrorism and reiterating “our rejection of attempts to doubt state institutions or insult the army or police or judiciary in a way that would reflect negatively on these institutions’ performance”.  It's a party line but one that the middle-classes can swallow.
Diocletian did the same in his day, giving over twenty years of internal peace and prosperity after a sequence of ten emperors in 17 years and the temporary breakaway of huge sections of the empire in east (Palmyra) and west (the Gallic Empire).  He governed with a co-Augustus and two vice emperors known as Caesars (the Tetrarchy).  However, in 305 Diocletian stepped down, promoting his junior colleague in his place and twisting the arm of his co-Augustus to do the same.  This experiment in a 'constitutional military' settlement ended in civil war and Constantine I ('the Great') unifying the whole edifice under his sole command.  Yet as the factions marched against each other, squandering lives and resources, they promised to keep themselves in check if Diocletian would come out of retirement to return as dominus (lord).  Diocletian's response was "If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn't dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed." With every Egyptian president that there has been either dying in office (Nasser, Sadat) or overthrown (Mubarak, Morsi), it is inconceivable that al-Sisi will ever come close to paraphrasing that ancient statement which emphatically rejected power.

Not dead after all

The resurfacing of Kim Jong-Un last week at an event congratulating athletes who had competed in Seoul was welcomed by a distinct relief in news reports.  It could be that any scintilla of stability in the Korean peninsula is to be welcomed and had King Jong-Un been overthrown, the hermit kingdom's intentions could have been more inscrutable (and dangerous).  There is also a grim fascination at how this "most dysfunctional of families" (as one Singaporean analyst told me, even before the lastest Kim ascended the throne) can hold on to power.
It reminds me of China in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period following the fall of the Tang imperium and before the rise of the Song rule, specifically the Later Tang which alone of the Five Dynasties in this 50-year era managed three emperors, the last lasting barely a year.  A warlord to inaugurate the regime, a son as right-hand man to succeed him and a gauche princeling soon deposed by another warlord.  That Jong-Un has not been made to 'jog on' and displayed no diminution of the tyranny practised by his father and grandfather is a little surprising - probably accounted for by imitating his father's 'military first' policy, which abandoned the Juche ideology of Granddaddy Il-Sung.  It is curious mix of the Castro brothers in Cuba - Raúl succeeding Fidel - and Nicolae Ceaușescu, the first communist to have a monarchical coronation ceremony, complete with sceptre and orb (representing monopoly of force and 'universal' dominion).
'Fat Kim', as he is mocked in South Korea, allegedly had a surfeit of cheese (in much the same manner that King Henry I perished through a surfeit of lampreys and the worthless King John met his end through a surfeit of peaches) to prompt his month-long absence.  Allegedly his girth had made his ankles crack, hence his limp in the last posted appearances before his vanishing act.  This suggests a steady degeneracy in the dynasty - Il-Sung, the former guerilla leader, maintained a trim figure, Jong-Il was like a sodden tennis ball and Jong-Un approximates to the Blob from Marvel Comics.  Kublai Khan suffered from the change from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle.  Gout in later life meant his feet became swollen and he needed to wear shoes sewn from Korean fishskins (something for Jong-Un to consider?). Kublai's size increased to the extent that he needed to be carried around on an elephant palanquin.  Other incapacitated rulers throughout time had to be transported in a litter.  For Jong-Un, the dustbin of history beckons.

THE EU (or the eu - smallprint)

While PR firms rate little above estate agents, bankers and politicians, the EU should seriously think about hiring one.  Of course, no time is ever good to announce that some countries will pay more than others into the EU budget and with 28 members, there will always be a sensitive local issue somewhere in the club (in the British case, it's the Rochester and Strood by-election).  Then again, few member states have a newspaper industry which is broadly loathing of the EU and all its works.  Even The Guardian feels obliged to pick up the issue to retain 'credibility' on the EU discussion and thus, taking its cues from the press, the BBC too runs on the story.
The headline that the UK has to pay £1.7bn (2.1bn euros) extra to the EU budget by 1st December because its economic recovery has been better than expected since 1995.  Eurostat said it had previously undervalued the size of Britain's 'black economy' and concluded it was actually bigger than thought, thus the UK must make extra payments.  It's a ridiculous premise given that by its nature, the UK government does not receive tax from the black economy yet must pay for its success, yet it was agreed by the UK in the past probably to combat perceived corruption levels in East-Central Europe.  Hoisted by one's own petard indeed.
Of course, the agitprop of the EU-sceptic/phobic newspapers gives plenty of column inches to their EU rejectionist friends and prefers not just to not read the small print but deny it to its readers as well (I checked).  To restate, that's not news-reporting, that's propaganda.  To be sure, I had to read all the way down to the bottom of The Guardian article to find that the 'budget amendment proposal' concerning an extra £1.7bn is just one of seven such proposals on the table.  The results of the other half dozen calculations could actually see the UK budget cut - will this get recorded in the right-wing press?  Maybe the sceptics will put it in 'news in brief' on page 18 (on the 'invisible' side of the newspaper), the phobics will ignore it altogether.  They must have got a shock when a poll showed that were a referendum to be held tomorrow 56% would vote to stay in and only 36% would opt to leave.  As the commander of the second Death Star in Star Wars said, they must be thinking, "we shall redouble our efforts!"
So far from being a charter that penalises the successful (including Greece!) while rewarding the indolent and inefficient (fingers being pointed at France), it could be quite the opposite when the whole package is announced.  Moreover, why shouldn't the rich help out the poor to prevent dangerous imbalances that lead to strife (strife being very bad qua economic success).  Ultimately, this budget has to be agreed by all 28 member states and the UK will surely be able to marshal some allies (from governments who don't want to give rejectionists in the main governing party an open goal) to give its position a veneer of respectability.  The only slightly unfair thing is that German historic fear of inflation has hamstrung the European Central Bank's ability to fight the sovereign debt crisis that engulfed the Eurozone and by suppressing growth, Germany would get rewarded under the headline calculation.  But to emphasise again, it just one of a combined seven proposals.

After the Lord Mayor's Show...

Back in 2004, Wayne Rooney scored a hat-trick on his debut for Manchester United, as Sir Alex Ferguson's side demolished the Turkish team Fenerbahçe 6-2 at home.  The Old Trafford outfit followed that up by eking out a miserable 1-1 draw against Middlesbrough.  José Mourinho, in his first incarnation as Chelsea manager, jibed (in a logic-defying way) that they should have saved some of their goals from the Champions League game tto beta Middlesbrough.
Now, with Mourinho back in charge for a second time at Stamford Bridge, the Blues have crushed unfortunate Slovenian champions, Maribor (who had previously drawn their previous two group stage matches with Schalke and Sporting Lisbon) by half a dozen goals without reply.  Next up in the Premier League they face Manchester United.  Will Mourinho be left ruing that he should have saved some goals from Tuesday night's pasting for the weekend?

Pontifex Maximus

Well, yes, it's been a hiatus.  Friday was applying for yet another job (this time internal to the company but no doubt futile), then out drinking with a birthday celebrated, among other things.  Saturday was largely spent hosting friends and their families with clearing up in the aftermath no small matter.  And Sunday so far has been a trip to church, a fence in serious need of a second coat of weather protection and looking after the daughter on my own after the wife takes a trip to the uni library for much of the afternoon and the whole night.
Anyway, topic up for discussion: Pope Francis.  Count Metternich, the arch diplomat for thirty years in the wake of the defeat of Napoleon, quipped, "I could have predicted anything except a liberal Pope," on the election of Pope Pius IX, who rapidly abandoned his easy-going inclinations in the upheavals of 1848.  For Pope Francis, it is still early days and the mask has not slipped.  Rather, he has gamely battled the forces of conservatism.  Like Barack Obama signing executive orders to bypass an obstructionist Congress, Francis has been making media-savvy statements to shame the upper echelons as appeal to the rest of the world that the Roman Catholic Church can modernise.  Recently, a meeting was convened to propose a new approach to homosexuals and divorcees.  A 'working paper' was released which held forth on the positive attributes of homosexual unions and how it was cruel to deny divorcees communion.  At the end of the meeting, the conservatives triumphed again, shooting down anything that could be construed as meaningful change.  But did they really win?  It was clever of Francis and his circle to release the 'working paper' as it  short-circuited the conservative backlash.  So Francis could say to those who seek modernisation of the Roman Church that he wants what they want but his hands are tied.  While the reactionaries are unhappy, they have kept their doctrine in place.  Quite masterfully, Francis has managed to keep both sides under one tent.  In a past half-century of largely noteworthy Popes, Francis really has earned the title of Pontifex Maximus.

The last drag

The news that the last tobacco plant in the UK is to close in 2017 after 150 years of business is a tragedy for the 877 people who work at the factory, but reduced cigarette consumption in the Western world is an inexorable trend and a positive one.  An EU anti-smoking directive may have sounded the death knell for JTI Gallaher's manufacturing in County Antrim but social disapproval and reduced revenues have been steadily building up since Richard Doll made his report linking smoking to lung cancer back in the 1950s.  This was coming sooner of later.
I remember the obituary for former Bank of England governor, Eddie George (a Euro-sceptic in the true sense of this label).  Famous for his chain-smoking, George did at one point try to quit for his health.  On a tour of the Ballymena plant that will close by 2017, his eyes goggled at all the cigarettes being churned out and was back puffing away before the day was out.  An amusing anecdote but this is the addictive and destructive nature of manufactured tobacco and though this will hit Northern Ireland's economy, I cannot fully support First Minister Peter Robinson's contention that this is 'terrible news' - sad for the families of the staff but not beyond that.

As slippery as her marine namesake

Sturgeons have long been associated with Russia and caviar but their habitats range further than the largest country in the world. In England and Wales, the sturgeon, along with whales and porpoises, is a royal fish, and every sturgeon caught here is the property of the Crown.  Sturgeons have been referred to as "primitive fishes" because their morphological characters have remained relatively unchanged since the earliest fossil record.  North of the Border, something like a monarchical coronation has been taking place with primitive emotions (unchanged since the earliest record) at the heart of it.
With all the the formality of a North Korean election, Nicola Sturgeon will be the sole candidate for leadership of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to replace the outgoing Alex Salmond.  With a surge in membership to 84,000, making the SNP the third largest political party in the country (by membership), this is an opportune time to take over, even if it is in the wake of defeat in the Scottish independence referendum.
After being arguably the outstanding politician of his generation nationally, Salmond hailed his replacement as “the outstanding politician of her generation in Scotland”.  Though he didn't mean to demean her with the qualification of 'Scotland', it was one of Salmond's more truthful utterances in doing so.  Salmond had to rescue the SNP from irrelevance after the party was dead in the water under the pathetic leadership John Swinney (current Treasury Minister for the SNP) who took over after Salmond's first stint, so it wouldn't be him.  The Scottish Labour Party are seriously lacking in quality (reflecting their nation as whole, much of the best talent goes south to London), the Liberal Democrats are in the same boat as Labour and the Tories are nowhere (though did poll more than 400,000 in 2010).  Further down the radar, the Green Party is anonymous and the less said about Tommy Sheridan the better.  So, of course, the mantle falls to the woman who once snapped in a public forum, "what's wrong with being chippy?"  She should be right at home with her anti-English brigade.

Home comforts

In this last round of qualifying matches for the football event Euro 2016, it has to be the greatest achievement of the Home Nations (the Republic of Ireland includes here as part of the British Isles) since qualifying for international tournaments became standard.  At one time or the other, one of the five has always fallen flat.
To be sure, England's uninspiring 1-0 win over Estonia by the Baltic Sea is utterly forgettable but it complements the set all the same.  Wales triumphed 2-1 over Cyprus in Cardiff despite being down to ten men for much of the second half.  Then last night, Scotland claimed a battling 2-2 draw from early group pacesetters, Poland in Warsaw and in the same group the Republic of Ireland drew with World Champions Germany with the last kick of the game in the Ruhr industrial heartland of the latter.  But the best result of all was unfancied Northern Ireland, for so long whipping boys, making the journey to Greece to beat their tasty hosts 2-0 in Piraeus.  This kept up the province's 100% record with three wins out of three.
It can't last.  England will almost certainly qualify for Euro 2016 in France.  The Welsh momentum is still precarious and still largely dependent on Bale dragging opposing players to him, allowing his teammates to flourish.  Scotland and Eire are in a very tough group, fighting each other while Germany will eventually come good and Poland are always dangerous.  As for Northern Ireland, it would be lovely if they could get over the line but so often in the past a fine little run has flattered to deceive.  It would be salivating to see all five make it to France, even if it is within a bloated expanded set-up of 24, rather than the usual 16 standard going back to the last century.  Ironically, all five may have qualified within stricter criteria with fewer finalist for the full tournament, so it would be sad if their qualifying feats were cheapened by this fact.  Still, good times for the moment.

Champions of the World - sort of

Last night, the Brazilian national football team continued on their path to rebuild the reputation of decades comprehensively trashed when losing to Germany 7-1 then the Netherlands 3-0 at their own World Cup.  Japan, who were decent enough to qualify for FIFA World Cup, were taken apart 4-0 by Brazil in Singapore (Brazil doing a version of the Harlem Globetrotters).  But a far more important match took place at the weekend.
One way of looking at the unofficial world champions contention is that the first team to beat the most recent World Champions takes the crown.  Scotland claimed this in 1967 when they did one on England.  However, the Unofficial Football World Championships (UFWC), another method of calculating it, goes all the way back to 1872 when Scotland and England first squared off. Thus it ding-donged back and forth around the globe, with countries like Zimbabwe (much of 2005) and North Korea (2012-13) wielding 'the belt'.  Going into the 2014 World Cup, Uruguay held the honour, but lost in their first match to Costa Rica.  Unbeaten all the way to the quarter-finals, they lost to the Netherlands, who subsequently lost to Argentina, who themselves lost to Germany in the final in a 'unification' of the official and unofficial world cups.  In a rematch in Germany in September, the World Champions/world champions were thrashed by Argentina, who took the unofficial crown.  They held it until they faced Brazil last Saturday in Beijing.
Despite Brazil's players complaining that the Chinese capital's smog was akin to standing next to a bonfire, they sunk Argentina 2-0, both goals coming from Diego Tardelli (overlooked at the World Cup).  So a kind of pride has been restored to the Verde-Amarela, as they can cavort as the unofficial world champions.  Not as good as the official crown but a consolation prize all the same.

The last casualty

In 1241, a Mongol army entered Poland committing the same kind of rapine and pillage that it had wrought across Russia.  The horrors heard of the Horde from refugees roused not just Poland, but also the Holy Roman Empire to fling back this war machine from back whence it came.  Henry II the Pious of Silesia (thus High Duke of all Poland) had added to his allied force troops from Moravia and Bavarian volunteer miners - the latter reminiscent of the Peasants' Crusade of 1096 that was massacred by the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia.
All in all, the Europeans easily outnumbered the Mongol host.  And the joint-Polish-German force was annihilated, Henry, for all his piety, ending up with his head paraded on a pike.  As if to prove that their enemies did not learn from the errors of others, to repeated success, the Mongols adopted tactics independently of a knowledge of the Carthaginian military genius Hannibal but using the same strategem as deployed at Cannae - a feigned retreat in the centre while the flanks held firm so the main body of the opposing army was swallowed up, dissolving into confusion as attacks ranged in from all sides.  They were also masters of what has come to be known as the 'Parthian Shot' - cavalry riders firing backwards while ostensibly fleeing.  The Mongol ingenuity had been deployed across much of Eurasia and until 1260 (in the Levant) was invariably irresistible.
After the battle, the Mongol horde turned south.  The Poles rejoiced; they thought they had repulsed the invader, that the Mongols' victory was a Pyrrhic one and that the battle, though ending in defeat, was a necessary sacrifice.  Thereafter, 9th April was for long time celebrated in Poland as thanksgiving for being delivered and Polish children are still taught how the European allies had successfully stopped the westward advance of the Mongols at Liegnitz.  Of course, it was nothing of the sort.  The Mongol general Subutai, one of Genghis Khan's four 'dogs of war' and now masterminding the invasion of central and western Europe under Genghis' successor Ogedei, had sent that Mongol force as a diversionary incursion (another 'feint' cut a destructive swathe through the Balkans) while the main army advanced on Hungary.  The northern expedition was merely regrouping with the main battleforce for the assault on Vienna and beyond in 1242 (the Hungarians being similarly overrun).  Then, unknown to western chroniclers of the time, the Mongols went back home to elect (or rather 'acclaim') a new khan on learning of the death of Ogedei.
The myth-making in Polish history came to me on learning of events in another thoroughfare between Asia and Europe: Ukraine (Slav for 'borderland').  The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has accepted the resignation of politically under-fire defence minister, Valery Heletey.  This follows a rout of the Ukrainian regular army and pro-Kiev militia in late August by separatists directly backed by Russia; this forced Poroshenko, reluctantly, to agree a cease-fire, after concluding that Kiev could not defeat Moscow's aims in a straight fight.  Heletey, in a fierce debate last week, defended his handling of the fighting in Ilovaisk, insisting that despite their losses, Ukrainian forces had inflicted heavy casualties on the adversary, which he said had "stopped Putin" - the Russian president.  Like the Poles who thought they had repulsed the Mongols by suffering a shattering reverse.  As Vladimir Putin warned in a telephone call to the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, Moscow could take Kiev in two weeks were Putin minded so to do.
Poroshenko, ahead of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Milan later this week, stated on his website," I don't have illusions. These will be difficult talks. But I am ready."  It is Heletey who is having his 'head' (or at least his reputation) paraded on a pike, being made a scapegoat for the concessions Poroshenko will have to make to get Putin to back off.  A far cry from Heletey promising a triumphal procession for Ukraine in the Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in March as revenge for the abrupt departure of pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych for exile following protests.
It is said that the last casualty of 1968's Tet Offensive by the Vietnamese Communists was US President Lyndon B. Johnson, as he chose not to seek re-election when, to the US public at least, his policy in Indo-China seemed in tatters.  The last casualty of August's crushing catastrophe seems to be Valery Heletey.

Morecambe Rock

Over recent years, church roofs and war memorials have been stripped of their metal by opportunistic amoral thieves (one may think thieves inherently amoral but some only steal items which can be claimed back on insurance rather than family heirlooms) but now a heinous act has been committed which people do care about, deviancy that may have sprung from the pages of Brighton Rock - Eric Morecambe has been nobbled!
To be precise, his statue in the sleepy (cliche alert) seaside town of Morecambe (where he was born, as John Eric Bartholomew) has been savagely attacked.  The bronze figure of the beloved comedian had been a principal attraction of this coastal outpost in north-west England since 1999.  Obviously not all the locals were enamoured by it, as a 32-year old from Morecambe has been arrested on suspicion of attempted theft - the miscreant sawed through the standing leg of the statue (the other leg was cocked in traditional pose of ol' Eric), letting the whole body fall to the ground where it was found lying on Saturday morning.
It was a pretty stupid commission as even the most unscrupulous of metal dealers would balk at accepting such a haul to melt down into unrecognisable ingots.  If it was just vandalism, one would be shocked at the petty thoughtlessness of the criminality but one might justify as it drunken high larks.  The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens has been the subject of many assaults. On April 24, 1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the Situationist movement. The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue. On July 22, 1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men. In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left a 18 centimeters (7 in) deep cut in the neck.
On January 6, 1998, the statue was decapitated again; the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby TV station, and reattached on February 4. On the night of September 10, 2003, the statue was knocked off its base with explosives and later found in the harbour's waters. Holes had been blasted in the mermaid's wrist and knee.
This shows that even a supposedly tolerant, cultured civilisation as Denmark suffers from rude actions but its citizens are too intelligent to try and steal it for melting down.  Even Eric Morecambe would struggle to find sunshine in this.

Voyage of discovery

The release of documents running to 10,000 pages during Bill Clinton's presidency by the Clinton Presidential Library (a building of which George W. Bush, when visiting at its inauguration, was heard saying, "A submarine could destroy this.") has apparently sent reporters seeking scandal, even though the library staff know exactly what they are doing in protecting their benefactor's reputation.  Indeed, this could be used to spike controversy over the Monica Lewinsky affair before Hillary Clinton makes her presidential run (if successful, would she get her own presidential library or just expand her husband's?).
There are some titillating titbits including an email redacted in its entirety bar the title 'Monica Drinking Game'.  I think it's fair to assume that redaction would not be necessary were this referring to Monica from Friends.  What interested me though was a note discussing how Mr Clinton should respond if asked by reporters whether he was planning to watch an interview with Miss Lewinsky being done by Barbara Walters by suggesting he say that he “usually watches ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ at that hour”.  You can really hear Clinton's voice and easy-going charm in that statement, even though his advisors are 'war-planning' this (the idea was eventually dropped).  It is also interesting that Clinton would be watching Star Trek: Voyager, giving it the presidential seal of approval.  Does it reveal an inner nerd or was he simply getting his rocks off watching the character Seven of Nine (wearing a silver jumpsuit) who had recently joined the series at that time?

Paint it black (and white)

Once audacious by-election winners, the Liberal Democrats lost their deposit for the tenth time in this parliament, in Clacton-on-Sea, just a day after they closed their annual party conference in Glasgow.  The purpose of the system of deposits is to reduce the prevalence of 'fringe' candidates or parties with no realistic chance of winning a seat.  In this way, the Lib Dems are withering on the vine.
It is not surprising.  Junior partners in coalitions get little of the credit (usually attributed by many in the electorate to the majority partner) and all of the collective blame for failures.  In Germany, the Free Democratic Party, socially liberal and classically liberal and frequent coalition partner to both left and right since 1949, suffered the wrath of the German electorate for the policies taken during the Great Recession.  In 2013, it was wiped out, failing to make the 5% threshold of voter support (via proportional representation) and thus was not represented in the Bundestag for the first time in its history.  Ironically, the ruling conservative fraternity of Angela Merkel, the CDU/CSU, gained more votes than at the previous general election as hitherto Free Democrats voters transferred their votes to them, yet it was a Pyrrhic victory.  Falling short of the 51% majority and with the absence of natural coalition partners the Free Democrats, Merkel was forced into awkward accommodation with their socialist rivals, the SDP, in a so-called Grand Coalition.  However, though the Liberal Democrats may be devastated, coalitions are still unsual in British politics Labour or the Conservatives will seek to govern as a minority administration if there are no suitable junior parties to provide them with a majority - no Grand Coalitions here.  In an irony on this side of the North Sea, the Liberal Democrats may be saved by the iniquities of first-past-the-post balloting (supposed to provide the strength of single party government to compensate for its unfairness) - for so long they have - justifiably - railed against it, while their vote may evaporate where they have no MPs, the incumbency factor for their sitting MPS may allow to scrape by in survival with just 25% of a constituency's voters.
Meanwhile, UKIP cavort after their Douglas Carswell won the Douglas Carswell mini-election i.e. the Clacton by-election.  Carswell is now the most senior elected UK politician for UKIP, a bit like Boris 'The Animal' Johnson when winning the London mayoral election in 2008 while the Conservatives languished in Opposition.  If Nigel Farage fails to win in South Thanet come next May, there may be a palace coup and Carswell becomes the UKIP leader.
The United Kingdom Independence Party is bit like the Russian Liberal Democrats, the latter acting more like illiberal anti-democrats.  The Russian Liberal Democrats' leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is like Farage, throwing in what he calls common sense but what is an affront to all the senses and all decency.  Farage's latest wheeze, after his racist comments about Romanians, is to say the first kind of people to be blocked as immigrants would be those who are HIV positive.  No doubt, Farage associates this with licentiousness, criminality and homosexuality (UKIP opposed gay marriage) but it is another example of scapegoating that UKIP so enjoys.  Interestingly, Carswell refused to back this policy position, which is not a shock since Carswell's father was one of the people who first identified AIDS.  Zhirinovsky also has a novel approach to migrants - to eradicate bird flu, he proposed arming all of Russia's population and ordering them and the troops to shoot down the migrant birds returning to Russia from wintering.  In April this year, a month before Farage's car-crash interview where he made prejudicial remarks about Romanians, Zhirinovsky, when asked whether Russians should reciprocate the Ukrainian sex strike, replied that all Ukrainian women were "nymphomaniacs" like the journalist who had asked the question, Stella Dubovitskaya. He then ordered two of his aides to "violently rape" the pregnant journalist for Rossiya Segodnya, who had to be briefly hospitalised for shock.  Farage says he won't ally himself with France's Front National because of ex-leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's comments about Ebola solving France's immigration anxiety and then makes crass statements about blocking HIV positive victims.  Like Zhirinovsky, like Le Pen, like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, like Jobbik, like the Tea Party, Farage is an incorrigible demagogue, avoiding the nuances of mainstream politicians (but not Sir Edward Leigh, a Tory ex-minister who said Labour would 'open the tap of immigration' as if border control was reduced to the level of water management) and painting matters in black and white.  Less educated people like this rhetoric as it speaks to their level - usually ones for avoiding polling stations, UKIP has induced them to engage for all the wrong reasons, for if UKIP holds the balance of power, all minorities will suffer.

Divided rule rather than divide-and-rule

As the battle rages for a hitherto largely unknown city of Kobane in what once was Syria, despite having a powerful tank arm watching on, Turkey sits on its hands and a US-led makes haphazard bombing runs in an operation of dubious legality but strong morality, a counsel of despair has taken root, where supposed allies are preparing their scripts as whom to finger for the blame.  The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has already conceded that the town will inevitably fall.  Not wanting to aid the Kurds (twelve were killed in Turkey in pro-Kurd protests) with whom they have fought a decades-long insurgency until two years ago, nor do they want to give succour to President Bashar al-Assad by doing his dirty business for him, Ankara's position is worryingly similar to Josef Stalin's in World War Two, halting his Red Army forces before Warsaw and letting the Germans destroy the Free Polish uprising, the Nazis crushing the remnants of an independent Polish cadre that could have opposed a communist takeover when peace was finally achieved.  The Islamic State is significantly degrading the Syrian Kurds and their environment to ensure that they will never be a thorn in the side of the Turkish state again.  Meanwhile the three dozen Turkish tanks stand idle.
The hesitant US-led bombing reflects Barack Obama's cautious foreign policy.  While the US airstrikes have had some success in Iraq, the international consensus wishes to preserve the regime in Baghdad.  In Syria though, notwithstanding Assad's policy of letting IS dispose of the Free Syrian army for him, there is uncertainty whether damaging IS in Syria really serves the aim of driving Assad from power.  As Ahmed Shekho, 24, head of the Syrian Kurdish students union, said, "For the Kurds, the American air strikes were the only hope, but they seem to have been more effective in Iraq. There's a valley to the south-west of Kobane that had 2,000 Isil vehicles in it for 11 days, yet the Americans have never targeted them. It's as if they only want to scare them or do a little damage."
Erdoğan has made noises about co-operating for a ground invasion, but he won't risk Turkish blood despite the nudges by the West to intervene.  Similarly, with a month before the mid-term elections in the USA and Democrat candidates finding Obama as toxic to their chances as Republicans with George W Bush in 2006, the White House will not contemplate any boots on the ground whatsoever, even were Obama inclined to take a more decisive role in Syria (and every inclination shows that he isn't, even if this pushes the matter onto the next president's agenda - a timebomb for any Democratic presidential candidate).  And in all this time, as its enemies point fingers at each other, IS drives relentlessly through these divisions, armed with the latest US weapons so kindly donated by a previously fleeing Iraqi army.  As with Erdoğan's predictions about the fate of Kobane, it is a tragedy foretold.

The last word

Suicide is a subject requiring the utmost delicacy.  Brenda Leyland unleashed a stream of abuse on Twitter towards Kate and Gerry McCann, was later confronted by a Sky News team and two days later was found dead in a hotel, a situation the police are calling 'not suspicious'.  It could be said that at 63, she should have known better and thinking that there no consequences of being an internet troll, when finding out that there were, died of shame.  One must think of her son, living in Los Angeles and also the Sky crew who took her to task.  It would be unseemly though to attack Leyland as then one would be guilty of hypocrisy.  Without a sufficient support network, it is callous to say 'good riddance' - life should always be treasured.
The ancient Romans had a different conception of taking one's own life.  In this macho millieu, they saw it as essentially a noble act (much like the Japanese who commit hari-kiri).  The usurping emperor Otho chose to end his life rather than risk the blood of his soldiers battling another usurper - it was certainly a more dignified end than that of his successor, Vitellius, whose short-lived reign concluded when found cowering under a propped-up mattress in the imperial palace.  So moved were they by their leader's decision that several legionaries threw themselves on to Otho's funeral pyre as an act of solidarity.
When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman world, suicide was reviled as a rejection of the gift of life donated from God.  Judas Iscariot's final act confirmed the Church's opposition.  Those that died by their own hand were considered condemned to hell and were buried outside church cemeteries.  This attitude began to change by the time of the High Renaissance - Hamlet's famous soliloquy was a meditation on suicide - 'to be or not to be' - with the reaction to Ophelia's self-annihilation castigated by her former beau and Horatio, in his despair at the conclusion of the play, talks of ending his life like 'an antique Roman' (and is argued out of it by the moody Prince of Denmark).  By the time of the French Revolution and thereafter, suicide was again seen as the honourable way out.
These days it is a political hot potato with 'right-to-die' campaigns by those physically enfeebled by some debilitating condition.  Since depression has come to be seen as a mental illness (rather than the prejudicial 'disorder') that is not shameful to be discussed, compassion from the public has been fulsome.  Radio DJ Alan Brazil was castigated for being critical of Robin Williams' suicide, his anger motivated by what he saw as the scene of destruction left amongst Williams' family and friends.  Gary Speed, already depressed by the lack of ritual following his retirement from professional football and feeling his family life was falling apart following a particularly bitter row with his wife, hung himself in his garage (found by his wife on her return from a drive to get the anger out of her system).  This drew attention to the lack of support available in a sport where guys don't talk about what's going on in their minds.  Jacintha Saldanha, a devoted Christian no less, killed herself when she felt the scale of embarrassment was too much after mistakenly putting two prankster Australian DJs impersonating Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles through to Princess Kate's maternity ward.  It was a tragic postscript to the news of Prince George.  Yesterday, I heard on the radio the Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas describe how he hated himself so much (as he struggled to comprehend his sexuality and the impact it would have on those around him) that he wanted to take his own life but "chickened-out" - a shocking thing to say, less because he did not understand that rejecting suicide is not a failure and more because his self-loathing had become so intolerable that any action he took was seen by him as cowardly.  Yet as much as we must take pains to understand the conditions that lead people to kill themselves, the devastation, even 'survivor guilt', of those left to deal without the fallout make them victims as well, something often overlooked in today's rush to absolve those who take such an ultimate decision.
My personal conviction towards suicide is one of instinctive distaste, seeing it both as selfish and weak.  Having seriously considered it in the past as a teenager and rejected it as a colossal waste (though my principal aim was to shame those who had so hurt and humiliated me), at the time I wasn't thinking about the pain it would cause my family and others who loved me.  Depression or not, that is a fatal narcissism.  Having rationally and conclusively decided against it for myself, one might say I have the zeal of a convert on the subject.  I think what would I do were I trapped in a completely paralysed body, I would like to believe I would construct a mind palace but hideous boredom would be prominent too.  Were I able-bodied, I can see no circumstance where I would end my own life - even if I lost everything, I am lucky enough to live in a country where I can find a way to rebuild my life up from the bottom.
So I am essentially unsympathetic but social mores dictate that I must be the opposite.  I thus soften my line and qualify it.  It stings when famous people for whom I have respect die, it stings more when the death is self-inflicted.  This is what I keep inside of me, outwardly I suppress it and offer up sincere (yes, it is sincere) warmth to those left behind and accept that suicide is rarely taken without much agonising inner turmoil.  I would never condemn anyone who has pondered it, to their face or electronically.  While I won't ever be satisfied with it, I won't deny anyone the right to take a more empathetic viewpoint.  Likewise, as I would not take such a harsh-by-turns-flippant line as Alan Brazil, I would hope not to feel pressure to conform to the prevailing political correctness.  We should all be committed to minimising suicide.  Brenda Leyland should not have done what she did against the McCanns (especially as the family, who let us remember have lost a young child, were vindicated with another newspaper paying out for libel) but neither did she deserve to die.  Any loss of life is sad.  Ultimately, people must not be afraid to talk of their demons and support networks must be strong enough to carry them through and show them that there is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  We will never reach a state of perfection but this is something we as a society should strive towards.

Lost in space

I've been a fan of Dr Who since my earliest memories of television and though the storylines could be a bit ropey before the first cancellation at the end of the 1980s, as a preteen this really didn't bother me and so Sylvester McCoy was the first timelord for me and thus will always be reserved a special place.  Of the subsequent Doctors (including, of course, Paul McGann who had a brief flash before he was gone again in an American co-production gone awry), Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt have all had some fine moments.  Though they could be furious at times and grim in others, there was always a quicksilver mischief to them that couldn't fail to make you warm to them.  The quality and enjoyability of the acting meant one could overlook the ludicrous premises and heavy-handed social and politically correct messages (the latter expanding since the departure of Russell T. Davies who often had a lighter and pleasantly ambiguous touch).  Not so with the current inhabitant of the TARDIS.
Peter Capaldi is a fine actor and despite this stint as a man of Gallifrey, he may be forever remembered as Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed political press secretary that dominated In the Thick of It (and the big-screen version In the Loop that avoided many of the pitfall of a TV series transfer).  Three months younger than when the first Doctor, William Hartnell, began his adventures in time and space, he clearly is meant to a Hartnell Mk II.  And it doesn't work.
To be fair, his tenure has endured a more childish than usual set of storylines that probably reached a nadir with allegedly one of the most lethal robots ever built with firing and targeting mechanisms than can be easily avoided by ordinary 20th century humans.  Marvin the Paranoid Android would have a better hit rate.  Without the threat, boredom ensues.  It didn't help that it looked like something out of Robot Wars, with that cobbled together in the garden shed appearance.  There has been a slight uptick in the overall arc though,  Coming before the shoddy robot episode, Time Heist was okay and Kill the Moon had scares and interest aplenty (even if they must abuse the timeline in full view of the world - a repeated theme of the rebooted series).  Jenna Coleman has been exemplary as a companion, her Clara the best fit since Billy Piper's Rose.
Yet it tends to fall flat whenever Capaldi is onscreen.  Now it may not be his fault - it may be the direction he is receiving - but the dour and mean-spirited, even spiteful, attitude, even if acknowledged in the narrative, not only drags one down to Earth rather than being elevated among the stars, it also reinforces impressions about Scotsmen (made long before the referendum result, it perhaps also reflects BBC anxiety over separation, despite the current Dr Who supremo, Steven Moffat, being a Scot).  It brings to mind Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons and his 'damn Scots' diatribe.  Now, Hartnell was grouchiness personified but it was a different era when relations with authority were light years from what they are now.  It worked in the 1960s for precisely the reasons it doesn't now.  It was useful that Hartnell looked aged and could pull off the gruff grandfather role whereas Capaldi comes across a presumptuous, pub bore baby-boomer, perpetually angry about being middle-aged.  Dr Who as it is currently configured is about fun and Eccleston, Tennant and Smith (Doctors with a full series behind them) gave us all of that.  Even John Hurt could raise a smile for himself and for us.  It has gone past the bedding-in period as we acclimatise to a new Doctor and cease to mourn for the previous one.  Capaldi on current projections seems badly miscast.

The sick monsieur of Europe

The phrase 'sick man of Europe' was a mangled interpretation of a comment attributed to Tsar Nicholas I in his assessment of the Ottoman Empire.  Of course, as an epithet it is far more cutting than the long-winded sentence used by the Russian emperor, so posterity is indebted to 'Chinese Whispers'.  Although Britain grew faster and more consistently than it had in half a century to prompt Harold Macmillan to boast to the electorate, "You've never had it so good," other countries in mainland Western Europe had even more spectacular post-World War Two growth spurts, so in the turmoil of the 1970s, the UK was not as well equipped to deal with the oil shock and union militancy.  Thus Britain became the sick man of Europe, which transmogrified into the 'dirty man of Europe', in relation to its air, rivers and beaches when economic recovery was well under way.  Now, despite the ruling of nitrogen in British cities, our rivers and beaches are far cleaner than many in Europe and our climate emissions make the UK one of the few countries to meet the 1997 Kyoto Protocols.
But if one country doesn't fir the tag, it is the job of analysts to find some other victim worthy of it.  The pain in Spain, Portugal and Greece is just seen as a normal reversion to their pre-1975 basketcase economies.  Italy too is so often derided (unfairly as its economy is not much smaller than Britain's) that to apply the tag seems gratuitous.  Of other major countries, Germany has its troubles but its underlying strengths (notably exporting and manufacturing) remain too formidable and notwithstanding the occasional dips, it keeps the spinning top going.
So that leaves France, whose spinning top, if reports are to be believed, is rapidly running out of kinetic energy and is starting to rock erratically.  The Guardian, The Telegraph, Al Jazeera, Reuters, Business Week are just a handful of the publications that have come to a settled view with particular use of the phrase.  Even France's finance minister calls the country's economy 'sick'.  According to Al Jazeera, in mid-September, "Unemployment is higher than at any time since the late 1990s and has not fallen below 7 percent in nearly 30 years - creating chronic joblessness in the crime-riddden banlieues of France's big urban areas.  France has not balanced its books since 1974 and public debt stands at over 90 percent of GDP and is rising. Statistics released revealed French manufacturing confidence fell to the lowest in 13 months in August."  There is little effort to inject more dynamism into the French economy, say by privatising a few non-essential industries, loosening labour laws (not to UK levels but to create a little more flexibility), let alone raising the retirement age, as much of François Hollande's cabinet revolted over his 'move to the centre'.  Austerity apparently, to get the economy lean and hungry as the theory would have it, is off the table.  Unions will strike at the slightest indignity (recently two Metro workers were disciplined for allegedly drinking rum cocktails while at work - this was enough to take whole sections of the Metro out of action as the union demanded redress for the punished employees).
John Lewis boss Andy Street, after a visit to Paris to collect an award (a gong that is "made of plastic and is frankly revolting" - well, he won't be winning anymore of those then), decried France as "sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat... [I've] never been to a country more at ease... nothing works and worse, nobody cares about it."  To be fair, Street wasn't mounting the empty plinth in Trafalgar armed with a megaphone and scripted obloquy but addressing a group of entrepreneurs and offering explanation as to his delay when returning via Eurostar.  The Times picked it up.
Street continued, "You get on Eurostar from something I can only describe as the squalor pit of Europe, Gare du Nord, and you get off at a modern, forward-looking station [St Pancras]."  Moreover, "If I needed any further evidence of a country in decline, here it is.... If you've got investments in French businesses, get them out quickly."
Now, I admit that a new Baron Hausmann is probably needed as the streets around Gare du Nord turn into Amazonian expanses when it rains but it is a little harsh to call Gare du Nord the most disgusting place in Europe.  It is not so long that King's Cross (adjacent to St Pancras) would have drawn similar criticism.  Luckily, I have no stakes in French businesses, unluckily, my absence of wealth means I have no stakes in any businesses.
Nicolas Sarkozy tried to reform France in a milquetoast Thatcherite way (e.g. raising the retirement age to what, until recently, is the norm in the UK), but President Bling-Bling was given the boot in favour in favour of Mr Normal.  Now the political curve seems to be Bling-Bling is the new normal as Hollande records unheard of low approval ratings in France (though he still has some way to go to match former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's 0% approval rating, i.e. a -100 score).  Sarkozy claims to be riding to rescue of France and he may win by default, if he finds himself in the second round with Marine La Pen, as Jacques Chirac did with the latter's father - French left-wing voters holding their nose to keep the far right out.  France is not in irreversible collapse and many aspects of French life easily outstrip those on the other side of 'La Manche'.  As with the UK, eventually France will recover but for the short- to medium-term there are serious dangers ahead and it is doubtful whether the current or the next occupant of the Élysée Palace can make decisive inroads into these problems.