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Well, not quite, Max Zorin, but in less than three hours, future generations of British schoolchildren will no longer think that Queen Victoria reigned longer than Elizabeth II just because chronological years didn't fully match regnal years.  Instead, come 2016, they will either say that they reigned for exactly the same number of years (invalid after February) or reach for the history books.  Reach for the history, boys (and girls).

Political correctness must fall (except Donald Trump's version of it)

Tony Abbott, deposed prime minister of Australia, the 'mad monk' (he had trained for the priesthood), seemed like an Australian version of George W Bush, except for being even more zany.  But he has recently come to the defence of the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel Colleage, Oxford, with an articulate and well-argued plea against its proposed removal (the College has already bowed to pressure and removed the name plaque beneath it).  Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African student, is the prime mover in the campaign.  A strange fellow who has compared the French tricolour to the Nazi swastika and sees racism everywhere he turns in Oxford, he is part of the 'Rhodes must fall' campaign in South Africa that saw the removal of statues of the former prime minister of South Africa and founder of the De Beers diamond empire as 'an architect of apartheid', like those of communist leaders post-1989.  It seems a long time since the BBC launched a £1m per episode miniseries of him starring Martin Shaw that spectacularly flopped (flying the Union Flag upside down didn't help).
The South African campaign was tacitly backed by the Jacob Zuma administration seeking to distract the populace from its own unpopularity (yet still confident of remaining a one-party state) - this backfired after Zuma sacked the only popular member of his government - the finance minister - and then sacked his successor within the week after a storm of protest.  He thus became the subject of the campaign 'Zuma must fall'.  Oops.
The right-on, left-wing student campaign is oblivious to nuance and context.  They would rather fight historical crimes with cheap stunts than current racism, such as why American grand juries, often guided by the prosecutor, fail to charge police officers who kill black people, including children (and let it be clear, this is just to charge the cops, not convict them).  Tony Abbott, a Rhodes scholar himself, said that in the 21st century, Rhodes may be considered racist, but he was "a man of his time."  Indeed.  The actions of the student campaign imply that anyone who has taken a Rhodes scholarship is guilty of association with dirty money.  Guess what, Qwabe is a Rhodes scholar.  Hmm.
Why stop at Rhodes?  Why not haul Winston Churchill down from outside Westminster for being partially responsible for a famine in India?  Why are there statues of Richard the Lionheart and Oliver Cromwell, respectively slaughterers of Arabs and Irish?  Tear them down!  Why not stop all productions of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, who was a genocidal megalomaniac?  Why not stop all productions of Shakespeare full stop, given the anti-Jewish sentiment in The Merchant of Venice?  Let us ban all books of Charles Dickens who demanded vicious vengeance against Indians during the course of the Indian Mutiny.  Gandhi was an appeaser of Hitler - disgraceful (don't see too many statues of Neville Chamberlain).  And, of course, Nelson Mandela was a man of violence before his incarceration.  He may have been responding to the brutal apartheid state, but he firmly believed in armed revolution - the twinkly-eyed septuagenarian who emerged from prison in 1990 had come on a journey where he was unrecognisable from his former self, yet still called Colonel Gaddafi his friend - 'Mandela must fall'?
Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were racist by the standards of today, but progressives today often still cite them as role models.  Abraham Lincoln may have freed the slaves but he was still hesitant about extending the franchise to them as federal law.  Many of the Founding Fathers kept slaves themselves.  As with Rudyard Kipling, we call them 'men of their time' - ignorant of the sensibilities we have built up since then.  By contrast, the student union seem even more retrograde, the proposal to remove the Rhodes statue equivalent to one pope digging up a despised predecessor - Formosus - placing his corpse on the papal throne and subjecting the deceased to a litany of abuse.  Then again, the Russia of Putin likes to convict people who are dead.
Once again in this country, we see the intolerance of liberal self-righteousness rear its head.  Qwabe brings an anti-European authoritarian air and youthful fanaticism to this particular hand-wringing from a country steadily retreating from democracy.  Trying to make history tidy by sweeping uncomfortable bits under the carpet invokes the cliche that we are destined to repeat it.  I would be highly critical of Rhodes if he was alive and airing unreconstructed views about the 'destiny of the white man' - but he's not, he's been dead for over one hundred years.  And, ironically, there would not be a South Africa as it is constituted today if it were not for him.

Crackers!

Here's your high-brow Christmas cracker joke:

Batman and Robin were walking along when they came across some men dressed as legionaries.  Robin turns to Batman and says, "Holy Roman Empire, Batman!"

I'm here all night.

Dogs are soppy - shock claim

Research (though who knows who's paying for it) has shown that dogs can demonstrate empathy towards each other.  No shit!  Despite empathetic skills being commonly thought to reside only in the higher primate species (though some humans may be exempt), some scientists - peer review please! - now claim that it extends to canines.  I thought it was known for years that wolves had empathetic skills hence their ability to operate so effectively as packs rather than tearing each other apart.  Dogs aren't so far down the gene pool from wolves that they would lose this trait.
I've seen a cluster of stray dogs hang around on a corner abutting some of Bucharest's less busy thoroughfares as if they were humans.  I've seen dogs constantly on the fields near me being very attentive to each other.  Once when a very big dog accidentally rolled over a very small dog in an overly frisky game of chase and a pronounced shrill yelp was elicited, the smaller affected dog was furious at this seeming betrayal and his larger friend was as sheepish as dogs can look.
It's not just canines.  Once, when the grass had grown particularly quickly in the summer, one of my parents' cats - named Kay - was chasing butterflies amongst it.  As he surveyed his quarry, ready for the pounce, his tail waved up back and forth in the air.  At this point, his brother - Barnaby - came outside and from his vantage point, all he could see was a furry snake arcing back and forth out of the grass.  He immediately leaped at it and bundled into his rather bemused brother - the butterfly flew off.  Showing remorse, Barnaby licked his brother for unintentionally colliding with him.  Now, observation is only part of the scientific arsenal but I'll never forget that moment for as long as I live.

At last, Episode VII

Wait 10 years for a new Star Wars film. The cinema advises us to turn our phones off, which I dutifully do so. I'm reading in the quiet, "A long time ag..." Ping-ping ping-ping, ping-ping ping-ping goes off someone's mobile phone in the row behind me! They obviously hope the caller will ring off as they do nothing about it. I turn round and say "Shut the f**k up!" which I feel perfectly entitled to do under the circumstances, prompting them to finally get the phone out of their pocket and reject the caller. At this point, we're a paragraph into the 'road' sequence. Apart from that, good movie.

It is essentially a splicing together of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi two 'episodes' later, with new characters filling old roles and old characters filling older ones.  It remains to be seen how many times they can blow up a big planet-thingy and still keep the crowds returning (it just failed to beat the box office record for the opening week) - interestingly, Lawrence Kasdan who co-wrote the Return of the Jedi is on hand here.  The five minute coda is also a misstep - The Empire Strikes Back didn't need Han Solo to be found before the thrilling credits music. 

But the pleasure here is seeing a homage-laden tribute to the original trilogy and the action does go at a lickety-split, with plenty of humorous moments thrown in.  It is the spirit of the original trilogy retooled for the 21st century, putting behind us the rather po-faced prequel trilogy.  It is never less than pleasurable.  Four out of Five.

BBC Sports Personality of the Year

So after all the fuss, Andy Murray (for the second time, third if you count Young Personality of the Year) won and Tyson Fury didn't.  Trust the British people and they came up with the right result.  Fury didn't finish second (Kevin Sinfield) or even third, poignantly taken by Jessica Ennis-Hill, which must have been sweet for her.  He finished narrowly behind her in fourth (thus off the podium) and almost 300,000 votes behind Murray.  Fury even issued an apology (for 'hurting' people), which shows a growing awareness of media savvy to knock off some of the rough edges.  But I'll say it again, Andy Murray won, Tyson Fury didn't and trust the British people.

Watch out for the thought police

Although it is fashionable these days to claims Socrates as homosexual, the jury is still out as his pupil Plato did not record any romantic affiliation of his mentor (beyond the latter's self-deprecating comment on his ugliness). I'm sure Socrates would have welcomed women to his classes had they not been barred from Greek intellectual life, except in the fields of poetry and the priesthood. Further, homosexual studies are dead against applying the mores of the last 50 years to any period before that.

Yet even if Socrates were inclined that way, I have a feeling he would be defending Tyson Fury from the calumnies being poured over his head by the liberal establishment, whilst censuring him for his threats to journalists. I am, of course, referring to the controversy of the boxing heavyweight champion of the world (and effectively undisputed given that one of the belts he won from Vladimir Klitscho was removed in the days after due to the boxing politics that have debilitated the sport) being on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist.
The BBC, quite commendably, have said this is not an endorsement of his view that the legalisation of gay marriage is a beginning of the End of Days or his condescending remarks about women that wouldn't be out of place from the 1970s. He is there simply for his sporting achievement, not for his personality (making a bit of a mockery of the title).
But 'progressive' lobby groups, led by LGBT activists have set up a petition to have him banned and one LGBT campaigner even reported him to police for his comments about gay marriage, under the 2007 Equality Act (or more accurately the Hemlock Administering Act).  Socrates would have been shocked at the actions of these thought police.  The ancient philosopher famously claimed to know nothing - the perfect way to debunk the arguments of those who challenged him.  He would not need to attack the self-evident crassness of Fury but the righteous intolerance of those who wanted him silenced and marginalised.

It is interesting that the Equality Act was piloted by Harriet Harman - her ultra-liberal credentials not at issue, given her interactions with PIE in the 1970s - but it is a highly divisive piece of legislation.  It is in direct counterpoint to the US Constitution's First Amendment - the right to free speech.  And it makes redundant the phrase attributed to Voltaire - "I disagree with you but I will defend to the end your right to say it." - as the police would have become involved long before that point had been reached.  It is fundamentally a bad law, indicative of the way Labour lost it's way in its third term.

Fury is a fool and may have mental health issues (one too many punches to the head, perhaps), a point lost on the 'progressives' in their fury.  His statements are gauche, but the homophobia and misogyny are comparatively light.  I don't think Jessica Ennis-Hill (also on the shortlist) would have lost any sleep over that 'she slaps up well'.  That a women's place 'is in the kitchen or on her back' is the kind of thing said ironically by university students everywhere and Fury's manager did say his client likes to wind up people.  And if his religious views are found offensive by some, well then they are protected under the provisions of the Equality Act too (though a provision of a right to free speech would be a firmer guarantee).   He may not like gay marriage (which, as genuine liberals admonished Nick Clegg, does not make you a bigot) but in his interviews he has not veered into overt homophobia of the general kind or launched personal attacks.  Shane MacGowan of The Pogues used far harsher language to describe The Pet Shop Boys after they beat his Fairytale of New York to Christmas No. 1. What is terrifying is that people are expected to be conditioned in to what they like and don't like according to the prevailing morals of the day.  We are still as much in a 1984 society as in George Orwell's day.
Yet there are plenty of people who don't see a contradiction in the term 'liberal intolerance'.  "I am intolerant of intolerance," is still something that can lead you to commit acts that far exceed the 'crimes' of those who you despise.  Socrates would never have agreed with it.

The best way to undermine Tyson Fury is to vote for one of the other candidates - by all rights, enough people would be repulsed not only by Fury but pugilism in general.  Trust in the instincts of the British people to not vote for him in sufficient numbers. Trying to sweep him under the carpet and forget him, will annoy far more people through such intolerance than his comments have done.

To kill a Mockingjay

Although the Confederate flag has been lowered on official buildings in the Deep South, the Confederate spirit lives on.  Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Hunger Games series, although not born and raised in the south, imbibed anti-federalist, anti-UN sentiment at her alma mater in Alabama and now resides in 'eerie' Indiana.  So 'peacekeepers' are the henchmen of the bad guys and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wears an outfit typical of the US Civil War era.  There's extra but it's more evident in the first two films.
Okay, it was a big book but when Mockingjay was split into two movies as is the Hollywood fashion these days, to the first installment, I said to myself 'no dice' - I was not willing to swell the coffers of Hollywood just so they could pump me for more money by splitting it in two.  Scathingly, one does not need to watch Mockingjay - Part 1 to get the gist of Part 2; essentially, Peeta has been rescued and most of the other districts have fallen to the rebels.  I really wanted to enjoy Part 2 and though for its running time I did, on reflection it dissipates as quickly as morning mist.
The first two editions of the Hunger Games were really very good, so that this one is so derivative is disappointing.  The purity of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is preserved through her compassion for civilians, even though it imperils her life, but it's a little obvious.  The platoon that is picked off one by one by an assortment of hazards is highly unoriginal, replicated across many genres with both militarised and/or civilian companies.  Although we don't know who's next to get it, many will die.  Some of the deaths are predictable - just married? (you're toast).  An authority figure? (nice knowing you).  Family member? (better get that tombstone ready).  To its credit, even in the most brutal of circumstances, sentimentality is eschewed until the very end.  Also, the pursuit by the mutts in the underground levels is genuinely terrifying, much reminiscent of Aliens.  The score tries to throw us off, throbbing to a climax when nothing is there and going silent when again the coast is clear.
Yet it's trying too hard to shake off the familiarity.  There's a dour love triangle going on.  One death is so telegraphed ahead that the 'shock' change of target isn't a surprise at all (again, this has been done far better in other films).  Also, the floating 'gifts' are so obviously bombs.  Here's where I'm going into spoiler mode.  Katniss got involved in the Hunger Games to save her sister but at the last this is irrelevant as her sister dies as one of the medics (yet at least the latter had a full war so it wasn't so sad).  But then again, Katniss did bring down the old order and help prevent its replication.  Further to the film's credit, there is no climatic showdown between Katniss and Snow (at least not where each has an even chance).
This is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's last movie and like many a great actor who has departed on a low note, this has been true of him (what completed scenes they had left of Hoffman plus stock footage).  That's not to say The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is a bad film but it's not really worthy of a second viewing.  5 out of 10.

A Christmas film to cherish

Watched Die Hard on the big screen for the first time.  For one night only, the Odeon were screening this 1980s 'Christmas' classic.  Prepared to pay full-price for it, the ticket was actually a very reasonable £5.  It was on one of the smaller screens in the multiplex but that did not diminish its impact and I had only come across it by chance scrolling through the list of films for this Tuesday (yesterday).
Considering how flabby future editions of the series got, one is tempted to regard this as a standalone effort, especially given the horrific injuries John McClane suffers that would see him almost permanently off active-duty or out of the picture altogether (and there doesn't seem to be any intimation that he will be going to hospital as the end credits roll).  Bruce Willis (with hair!) really inhabits the role, compared to the way he telephoned it in (or when in Russia, telexed it in) later.  Though I've seen it  more than a few times - the high-octane action and insistent score are made even more absorbing when shown as it was meant to be.
There are all the great scenes, such as the Rolex given to Holly McClane by her company, which Hans Gruber holds onto at the last - in essence the company is killing her and John's unfastening of the clasp to send Gruber to his death, symbolically breaks her loose from the company.  There is also John's contemptuous remark about glass that comes back to haunt this bare-footed warrior.  Of course, there are the flaws (e.g. Argyll breaks out of the undergound car park but neglects to tell the police of an unconscious bad guy still in the bay; a bullet impact to an admittedly grievously wounded villain to the very extremity of his shoulder is enough to take him down; John kills other 'terrorists' but only - we see - tries on the shoes of the first one he bumps off; Merrill Lynch signage on the supposedly Nakatomi Corporation tower, etc.)  but they are almost to be celebrated in their own way as going to make up this great film.  There are also a few scenes that don't really add to the plot (and I had forgotten) but as I've said it's all part of the fun - the gunman waiting around the corner before Sgt Al Powell (Reginald Veljohnson) turns around and heads back to reception; the woman in a state of undress in a tower across the way that gives John a tension-reducing few seconds.
A lot of guys working on this project cut their teeth here and went on to dominate Hollywood in the 1990s.  Leaving aside John McTiernan as director, you have Jan de Bont (e.g. Speed) as director of photography and Joel Silver (e.g. The Rock) also involved in production.  Andreas Wisniewski is fresh from Timothy Dalton's 007 debut in The Living Daylights and Robert Davi would soon be appearing in Dalton's valedictory Bond Licence to Kill.  Naturally, Alan Rickman is electrifying as a the dastardly mastermind Gruber.  After Richard E Grant pulled out of playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, would Rickman have got the part had he not been so compelling here (in what is arguably still a silver screen career-defining performance).  All in all, an outstanding film, with no substitute for it being on the big screen.

I'm every detainee, it's down to me

It's silly but whenever Shaker Aamer, the last British resident to be held in Guantanamo Bay and recently released, is mentioned in the news, I just can't get past my mind Chaka Khan's I'm Every Woman.  Maybe it's appropriate as Aamer is Saudi in origin and on the weekend, Saudi women were elected for the first time to councils in the Kingdom.  Still, Aamer's claims of assault and brutality against him in the presence of British personnel is serious and the Foreign Office's standard disclaimer that British officers were active or present seems so much like a shallow lie.  Although he has said he won't do it, he has every right to sue.
In other news, the clearing of 'Dr' Neil Fox, the radio DJ, of sexual harassment charges has a series of implications, notably linked to the pursuance of celebrities and the credibility of evidence.  For me, I can still enjoy lines he said (quite ignorantly) on Brass Eye - "there's no scientific evidence for it, but it's a fact."  Also, his appearance as a 'judge' on the 2008 spoof, featuring Peter Kay, Peter Kay's Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice is comedy gold.

Ukraine punch-up leaves Putin smiling

When countries outdo each other, one would hope it would be in the fields of economics or culture. But following violent disturbances in the Kosovan parliament in recent weeks and months, its fellow Eastern European state Ukraine stole back the crown for legislature uproar. Ukraine has form when it comes to physical altercations among assembled lawmakers and this latest has left all sides rueing the incident.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, was summarising and defending the efforts of his government, led by his People’s Front party, to weed out the rampant corruption that still afflicts Ukraine, even after the downfall of former president Viktor Yanukovych. Outside parliament, around 1,000 protestors were demanding the removal of Yatsenyuk for his clashes with the party of the current president and chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko – the appropriately named Petro Poroshenko Bloc ‘Solidarity’ (to distinguish it from the more famous Polish Solidarity). Such political manoeuvring in former communist-ruled countries usually comes with rent-a-mob activists to lend credence through the media that there is a popular groundswell against their bête noire but little can the demonstrators have realised how Yatsenyuk would have been removed.
As he stood at the podium, the prime minister was approached by a deputy of the president’s party, Oleh Barna, who gripped a bouquet of roses. Rather than say it with flowers, Barna handed over the floral bunch to a surprised Yatsenyuk before proceeding to hoist the prime minister up in the air by the crotch and drag him away from the podium. Not relinquishing his ‘gift’, Yatsenyuk also clung on to the podium while his legs flailed, like a hapless victim of a school bully who wants to dispense a wedgie. Help arrived from the prime minister’s own party (one deputy putting Barna in a headlock) and the parliament’s security personnel but tempers were so heated that it descended into a mass brawl with punches thrown and Barna’s face grabbed.
Immediately prior to the incident Yatsenyuk had insinuated that as prosecutors – and not his government – pursue corruption cases and as the president appoints the prosecutor general, the political responsibility for the high levels of corruption lies with Poroshenko. One might have assumed that it was this that infuriated Barna except the possession of flowers determines that this was a pre-meditated stunt. After not letting go of the podium architecture, whether Yatsenyuk’s authority remains as before this embarrassment is moot. Nevertheless, the leader of the presidential Bloc, Yury Lutsenko, apologised on behalf of his party to the prime minister, going on to say on his Facebook page the flowers and the manhandling would probably increase the chances of Yatsenyuk remaining in position, implying public sympathy, even though he, Lutsenko, supports calls for the prime minister’s resignation.
One person who is happy, however, is Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. It was divisions and bickering between the successful Orange Revolution leaders, president Viktor Yushchenko and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, that allowed the authoritarian Yanukovych a way back into power in 2010 after being blocked in 2004 by the Orange Revolution demonstrations. A creature of the Kremlin, Yanukovych fled – like the Emperor Nero – rather than being overthrown in a coup d’etat – his security service snipers had been shooting unarmed protestors and he was in complete, if bloody, control, but he lost his nerve and escaped into exile. That set in motion the chain of events that led to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the fostering and armed support of rebellions in the east of Ukraine by obscure figures even more beholden to the Kremlin.
Since then mutual loathing has set in for both sides as Putin wages economic warfare on Ukraine. Recently all flights and overflights by airline carriers registered in each country have been banned from the respective airspaces. The corruption issue is burning in Ukraine as with the assistance evaporating from Russia, Kiev has to persuade western creditors that it is a trustworthy place to where they can grant loans and of course get their money back (with interest). The Russian economy itself is in dire straits from western sanctions over its actions in Ukraine, the counter-productive counter-sanctions, the drive for rearmament, sky-rocketing corruption and general maladministration. Yet Putin raises the stakes where he can. After continual prodding by the Russian bear of the Turkish grey wolf, the latter turned round and scratched the bear on the nose, shooting down a Russian jet that entered its airspace (the third such violation since Russia sent its own airforce to Syria). On 12th December, the Russian navy (operating from Syria) became a historical re-enactment society, firing shots at a Turkish trawler, 111 years after their naval forebears (inadvertently) bombarded Yorkshire trawlers in the North Sea. So with trouble mounting on all sides, it is very welcome for Putin that the pro-western forces in Ukraine have fallen out with each other – it’s a different cast but the same dissension.

New arrival in the family

I've rather held off blogging recently following the birth of my son, Zolbayar ('happy destiny').  He was a big baby at birth, being over 10lbs, certainly an uncomfortable weight to carry for Altaa.  Delayed after his due date through his own contentment inside, he is a December baby and came out just in time for my scheduled paternity leave.  So although I have had time off, much of it has been taken up either with him (feeding, changing nappy, holding him) or entertaining his big sister.  Unlike Kimberley, he regularly wakes up in the middle of night several times.  It beats being in the office though!