Diary of a Ghost Writer

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T12:56:00.000+01:00

My thanks to those of you who have enquired about my health. I am receiving the very best of treatment with a course of chemo-therapy, the side effects of which are best described as being like perpetual mal de mer without the benefit of an ocean voyage!
It being that time of year may I wish you all the very best for 2009. In view of the rather depressing economic news from Britain I thought it would be cheering to look a little further ahead to see what the future decade might hold for its citizens.

The news that Zimbabwe has offered financial assistance was welcomed by the man suspected of being in charge of the British government. He said that the nation was well placed to weather the financial crisis and pointed out that Britons had never had it so good. Rarely have so few had to get up and go to work in the morning, a clear indication of the value of a welfare state.
On the other hand, Bangladesh had declined to assist, saying they doubted Britain’s ability to repay a loan and President Obama vetoed the idea of incorporating them within the United States, suggesting however that Cuba might be interested in colonising the islands.

From a military point of view, Britain remained a formidable force. The Royal Navy’s one remaining ship, the former Isle of Wight ferry, was back in service, having had her boilers scraped and was patrolling the narrow seas once more.
Regrettably, the army, last heard of in Afghanistan, must by now assume to have been lost, but the air defence of Great Britain, now in the safe hands of the Southend on Sea Aero Club, was once more taking to the skies. Whenever they could afford the petrol, their Piper Cub could be spotted zooming through the wild blue yonder as the crews honed their skills with practice bombing runs on the whelk stalls on the sea front, evoking memories of the proud days of the Battle of Britain.

On the domestic front, considerable economies have been made. All Job Centres have been closed due to lack of available work and the NHS has been outsourced to a call centre in Mumbai where callers are greeted with an attractive jingle entitled: ‘Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.’ All A and E casualties are now redirected to the Red Cross caravan located near Eastbourne pier.

In place of the old banking system, households have now been issued with a plastic model donkey having a slot for coins in its saddle. The conventional piggy bank was vetoed by the Muslim majority of the population and, on reflection, it was agreed that a donkey was probably a more appropriate symbol to reflect the fiscal policies of government.
The man who is thought to be in charge of the nation’s coffers said that the nation was well placed to weather the financial crisis.

‘Jobsworth’ has now been recognised as a professional qualification with degree status and members are asked to wear their badge with pride. Some 85 per cent of the population are now official ‘Jobsworths.’

CCTV cameras are now in every home to monitor the domestic alcohol consumption and other valuable statistics for government use, and garbage collections are now made on an annual basis. The Immigration Service has been done away with as being of no value and a number of illegal immigrants, apprehended trying to leave the country, have complained that their Human Rights are being breached by making them stay.

The proposed takeover of the rail system by Hornby was rejected in that it would be taking miniaturisation too far but a dramatic improvement for travellers was made when it was discovered that, by removing all the seats from trains, more passengers could be carried. The cost of the removal of the seats was easily covered by an increase in fares.

The police are to be congratulated on their ruthless pursuit of old age pensioners who are assaulting the flower of Britain’s youth. This has had a salutary effect on this dissident section of society and means that youngsters can now roam the streets, safe in the knowledge that their human rights will be protected at all times. To encourage a community spirit amongst the young, knife sharpening classes are being held in the more deprived areas.

The woman who is rumoured to be in charge of home security has stated that the nation is well placed to weather the current crisis. She recommends that flak jackets be made mandatory for those who wish to venture out.

One continuing source of concern is the exchange value of the pound sterling to that of the euro, or for that matter, to the Zimbabwean dollar.
One solution would be to make the smallest denomination, say fifty pounds which would reduce the number of zeros to a manageable amount.

But Britons should take heart. The nation is well placed to weather the current financial crisis. And you know it must be true, for the people who are thought to be running the country all say so.

Happy New Year.

National Health

2008-10-23T10:16:00.001+02:00

Being diagnosed as having cancer is not going to be the high spot of anybody’s life time but, if it has to happen, it might be as well to have it happen in France.
Having felt under the weather for some time, I went to see my local doctor. He earns about half the salary of a British GP, works longer hours, makes house calls and always seems to be able to fit in a same-day appointment.
After examining me, he says I need to see a specialist and he then calls the local hospital.
“When would I like an appointment? Would tomorrow be OK?”
These are words that I understand are seldom, if ever, heard in the British National Health Service.
So at ten the next morning I am at the hospital. By 10.05 I am being examined by the doctor who says that he will need to perform an endoscopy. When would that be convenient for me?
We consult diaries and pick a date a couple of days off. He then says that I will need to be examined by the anaesthesiologist. When? Oh, right now.
A few minutes later I am given an ECG and a check-up by this gentleman who pronounces me fit enough for his side of the business. I’m out by just after eleven.
On reporting to the hospital at eight in the morning I’m shown to my room, 201. This has two beds, an en-suite bathroom, TV and bedside direct dial telephones (there’s a small charge for these). It looks like a modern motel room with extra plumbing.
Following the operation and a short time in recovery, I’m back in room 201 by eleven. A procession of nurses troop in and out, usually to ask “Ca va?” or to check my blood pressure.
When the consultant appears, unfortunately it is with bad news. I will need to make a return appearance. He arranges the appointment on the spot and it is later confirmed in writing.
My treatment will start immediately.
I understand that UK doctors are being rewarded for not sending patients to hospital.
I wonder how I would be placed had my doctor accepted such a bribe?

No Colour Baa

2008-10-11T08:24:00.001+02:00

In these times, when skin colour, religion and ethnicity seem to be an obsession with humans, it is pleasant to report that in the animal kingdom, (mutton division), no such problem exists.
My somewhat charmingly eccentric neighbour, Jean-Paul, has a varied selection of livestock in his paddocks, to whit: two mountain goats, twelve donkeys, three Cameroon sheep, two Alpacas and a Baker’s dozen of very black sheep.
Amongst this flock there is a rotund and well padded female that goes by the unlikely name, for a French sheep that is, of ‘Sheepy.’ Apparently Sheepy was a domestic pet but she grew too large to get in and out of the family Renault and so was, so to speak, put out to grass among Jean-Paul’s flock.
Rather as do many British matrons, when let loose south of the English Channel, Sheepy revelled in her new found freedom, loosened her stays, unhooked her corsets and forsook her formerly blameless existence for one of hedonistic delights.
The result was that, the other day, she produced a snowy white lamb.
Questions were asked, of course, but she repeatedly responded with a ‘baa’ or occasionally a ‘bah.’ Sheep in this part of the world often still use the old ‘langue d’oc’ making an accurate translation difficult but it is pretty certain that “mind your own business” would be a colloquial interpretation.
But in spite of her offspring standing out like the white sheep of the family, Sheepy is as popular as ever in the flock. No stigma seems to have been attached to the event and the snowy white lamb is gambolling (I understand that this is what lambs do) quite happily with her black friends.
From this we can conclude that either sheep are colour blind or that they are far more tolerant than we humans.
Personally, I prefer the latter explanation.

I'm Banking on It

2008-10-09T08:41:00.000+02:00

It’s time, I feel, for a career change. Not that I am the least bit unhappy in my chosen profession but, on viewing the salaries and bonuses that seems to be the lot of others, I can see that I’m missing out badly.
After all, how often have you heard of a government bailing out an impoverished writer? Not often, I suspect, even though they may have the finest collection of rejection slips known to man.
So I am searching for another means of earning my daily bread. I’ve had one or two other professions and this time I am looking for one that does not have too much accountability. For example, I was an airline pilot, a job that, in the event of you making a serious error, can leave a large hole in the ground and a number of law suits. Much the same applies to bus drivers, train drivers and all those whose daily work demands a degree of competence.
My search has whittled down to the only profession where there is a large reward for failure and little accountability.
I shall become a banker.
Uncertain though I am on how to enter into the industry, I reason that, given the obvious incompetence of those at the top, it can’t be all that hard. Especially now that the rules of the business seem to have been changed.
Formerly a banker was charged with the safekeeping of other people’s monies, which he was then entitled to invest safely and securely to generate a modest profit for himself and his depositor.
Now of course, the money can be used in any frivolous fashion for huge salaries and bonuses to those who act rather more as though they are betting on the 3.30 at Newmarket.
And when it all comes tumbling down, now the government can be relied upon to use taxpayer’s cash to pay you off and provide a nice little pension.
So banking it is.
But hang on a minute.
I’ve just read that an Afghan refugee can get £170,000 worth of benefits per year from the British government without having to lift a finger.
That must be even better than banking.
Wonder what an Afghan passport costs on the street?

"I'm on the Plane..........."

2008-10-02T08:57:00.000+02:00

The announcement by Ryanair that they were going to allow the use of mobile phones on their flights brought out the usual comments from the ‘We hate Ryanair’ crowd with a backing chorus of ‘Down with O’Leary.’
But it makes a lot of commercial sense. At £2 a minute, I doubt there will be many conversations of the “I’m on the plane….” line but many of us would have welcomed such a facility at almost any price when flights have been delayed or diverted. Being able to contact your ground transport in good time is invaluable in such cases.
And if it makes money for O’Leary, I’m all in favour. Thanks to his operation, by booking in advance, I can fly from my home in France to London and back often for less than the price of a one way ticket on the laughably named ‘Stansted Express’ into London.
Mr. O’Leary is unlikely to ever be confused with Mother Teresa and there are many who feel that whatever charm school he may have attended should have their licence revoked forthwith. But he has a way of stating obvious truths which would render him a totally ineffective politician.
Responding to a claim that the phone conversations would disturb fellow passengers, he replied, “All our flights are noisy. If you want a quiet flight, go fly with someone else.”
Overhearing someone’s conversation might be a relief from the normal cacophony of a Ryanair cabin which is run rather on the lines of a Middle Eastern street market.
But it suits me just fine. The aircraft are modern and clean, far cleaner than the aforementioned Stansted Express which I can only conceive was devised to make Eastern Europeans feel at home, as it closely resembles a Bucharest commuter train from the Cold War era. The crews are professional and personally I have always found the cabin staff pleasant.
I board and read my book, oblivious to the cries to make me a millionaire by selling me a scratch card or a mobile telephone system, to say nothing of a gourmet (judging by the price, that is) sandwich.
Economically, Ryanair’s service is invaluable to me.
So go ahead. Please buy a sandwich or two and use the telephone while you’re on board.
I promise I won’t listen.

Palace Coup

2008-09-29T08:41:00.000+02:00

Clearly the British government must be disappointed that, owing to the prevailing credit crisis, plans to dismantle the monarchy have had to be put on hold.
In place of the original scheme to turn Buckingham Palace into a super Tesco and to bulldoze Windsor Castle to enable accommodation for the illegal immigrants employed by the Home Office to be built, they have had to content themselves with simply denying Her Majesty the funds to prop up her mouldering palaces.
Yet, in terms of value for money to the taxpayer, Queen Elizabeth the Second must outshine all the muppets in Whitehall, their function, after feathering their own nests, being to dispense the public purse to incompetent bankers and businessmen in return for failing to do their job, and to sink whatever is left into a black hole in Stratford E.15.
The amount required to maintain the royal estate is derisory when put alongside such items as the property portfolio amassed by a former Prime Minister on the backs of his electorate, the bonuses paid by city businessmen to themselves, usually for failing to perform, and the ridiculous salaries earned by soccer players.
When the year 2013 comes around and the taxpayers are remembering the glory of the Olympics and looking at the red ink that resulted, visitors will still be flocking to Buckingham Palace, as A.A. Milne wrote “To press their noses to the rails, and watch from there the changing of the guard.”
I doubt that many will be travelling eastward to view whatever is left of the giant jelly mould that was the Olympic stadium.

Prudent Pierre

2008-09-26T08:56:00.001+02:00

“You need a new laptop,” she said. I have to agree. Mine is eight years old and was designed by someone who had an apprenticeship in anchor and anvil design.
Like many old things, it’s a bit slow to start but it handles my mail and word processing stuff well enough.
And a new one is going to set me back 500 euros.
France is not immune to the world financial crisis, it’s tax time (d’habitation and fonciere) and any day now M. Oignon will be showing up with a trailer load of my winter wood and wanting cash.
And unlike the residents of the UK, I can’t just charge it to my credit card and hope to defer the pain, for the French banks have a delightfully old-fashioned approach to money. I have no credit – it’s a debit card and to make it work, the money has to be in the account.
This fiscal backwardness of the French credit industry is one reason that the citizens suffer less at these times than do their counterparts in Britain and America. Food prices are up, there will be some tightening of belts and reduction in embonpoints, but homes are not being repossessed and no more than the usual number of bankruptcies are on the horizon.
Consumerism is as strong here as anywhere but consumer envy is not. Monsieur may buy himself a sporty new car but it will be for his own pleasure, not to impress his neighbour, who will still stick to his trusty ten year old Renault.
And banks do not distribute their largesse without making sure that they are going to get repaid.
As a writer, my income tends to be cyclical. To negotiate a modest overdraft arrangement on my current account, I had to take out a life insurance policy just in case I should hop off the twig and not be in a position to repay it.
And some years ago, a loan of 4000 euros entailed a two hour meeting with my ‘conseiller’ at the bank, who needed to know exactly what the money was to be used for.
Enforced fiscal prudence of this sort may be distasteful to those who are used to living with a free-wheeling economy but it does make for a more contented life.
So the new laptop’s on hold.
And I think I hear M. Oignon’s tractor coming up the driveway.

Why Can't the English.....?

2008-09-24T08:03:00.001+02:00

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, recently made a pledge that every child in the country should have Internet access.
It would have been more to the point had he said that every child in the country should have access to a good education delivered by competent and disciplinarian teachers.
We almost all make use of the internet in some way or another – but it is not an educational or teaching tool. Quite the reverse. Much of the information that might be gleaned from it is erroneous or heavily opinionated and a bit like listening to the speakers in Hyde Park.
The idea of students rushing to Wikipedia, that cornucopia of mis-information, instead of conducting serious research, might appeal to the instant gratification brigade but it’s not going to do much for education.
And, rather than being glued to a computer screen, perhaps something could be done about the speaking of the English language. As Professor Higgins remarked, “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?”
Having just returned from a sortie through Britain on public transport, I can honestly say that most of the conversations I overheard might just as well have been in Urdu for all the sense they made to me.
However, on reaching my destination, a charming old English style village pub that would have warmed the heart of John Major, it was an enormous relief to find that I could understand the bartender perfectly.
He was, of course, Polish.

Oh Dear, Auntie!

2008-09-11T08:26:00.000+02:00

In days of yore, dear old auntie BBC could be relied upon as a bastion of commonsense and reliable news reportage.
But that very British disease of ‘dumbing down’ has struck.
Even reporting cricket matches on their Internet site has been delegated to some young honchos who apparently watch the matches, rather embarrassingly I feel, on Sky TV. From their comments, I can only assume that they have never played the game.
The other day I saw that they have hired a bus, suitably decorated with BBC logos, which will, wait for it, ‘Cross America!’ Wow! On board will be another incisive reporter who will interview the common man (or, I suppose, woman) on the presidential race.
It was billed, breathlessly, rather as would be a trip up the Amazon in a canoe or Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone.
Now it may have escaped their attention that every day, Greyhound buses criss cross America with fares at rock bottom prices. If their intrepid reporter really wanted to meet with a cross section of the American public, all he had to do would be to board one and save a vast amount of the licence fee payer’s money.
And yesterday, Andrew Marr, who really should have known better, was there in the bowels of the earth as they fired up the Cern project.
“Phew,” he said, “That was a relief,” when the end of the world did not take place.
Well, it was hardly likely.
It was a test run and it is not until they fire a beam in the reverse direction and make the two collide that there will be any chance of a cataclysmic event taking place.
But for the BBC, who cares nowadays if the story is accurate.

Bully for Him!

2008-09-09T10:24:00.001+02:00

Some time ago I read H.W. Brands excellent biography of Theodore Roosevelt,
‘ T.R., The Last Romantic.’
It provides a clue to the fascination that now possesses so many Americans with the McCain/Palin duet.
Roosevelt, who was an accidental president, coming to office after the assassination of President McKinley, was both an American hero and, even better, a ‘good ‘ole boy.’
He became one of the most popular of presidents in American history.
His hero status came, oddly, from the somewhat trumped up Spanish American war when, in spite of having no military experience, he had volunteered for the Cavalry Rough Riders. This ill-disciplined rabble was made up primarily of disgruntled cowboys and Roosevelt managed to be commissioned as a Colonel. The Cuban expedition was almost as disastrous for the Rough Riders as a later Bay of Pigs but, largely due to Roosevelt, they survived and the action culminated with his famous charge up San Juan Hill. Like McCain’s imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton, the story was retold at every opportunity, with suitable embellishments, so much so that Edith, his wife, well aware of her husband’s proclivity for exaggeration, took a trip to Cuba to “see just how big that hill really was.”
No matter. Roosevelt was a folk hero in spite of being unable to lobby successfully for a medal (they gave him one posthumously in 2001).
But his other appeal was that he was an outdoors man and a hunter. In fact on his frequent expeditions to the west, he managed to shoot so much wildlife that it was a miracle that any were left for later generations.
Like Napoleon’s better generals, he was a lucky president. Nothing terribly untoward happened during his watch to dent his image in the public eye. His greatest achievement was the construction of the Panama Canal, which, in conversation, he tended to imply he had dug himself.
But by today’s standards, he would have been described as being a war-monger. Diplomacy was foreign to him and, at one stage, he advocated the annexation of Canada to remove the last traces of British rule from the Americas, all of which, both north and south, he regarded as potentially United States territory.
But it’s this sort of home spun patriotism that appeals to many Americans – along with the ability to eviscerate animals (it qualifies as the equivalent of a PhD. in many states) - which makes the McCain/Palin ticket so popular.
With all his many faults, Roosevelt was a good and honest man, and his life story, with his achievements over great odds, an inspiring one.
Someone of similar ethical standards would make a refreshing change in the White House.

The Stasis are Coming!

2008-09-06T09:49:00.001+02:00

The last time I visited a country where neighbour was encouraged to spy on neighbour and where children were prompted to report even their own kin for breaches of the state rule, was East Germany at the height of the Cold War.
But later this month, I shall be visiting another nation that has lost its moral compass, to use a favourite phrase of one of its leaders, to such an extent that I shall be regarding every small boy who looks twice at me with grave suspicion.
Of course, if I look back at him, I may be arrested as a suspected paedophile, so it’s not going to be a happy visit I feel.
The French learned their lesson over denouncing each other during the revolution when they rather lost their heads over the business, which resulted in a good many innocent people losing theirs. Now they keep very much to themselves as a result.
But from the comments I am reading in the media, the vast percentage of the public resent this, along with all the other bureaucratic intrusions into privacy and their daily lives. The only ones in favour are, I suppose, the jobsworths who will make up this sinister underground network of Stasi type spies.
But there seems to be little enthusiasm, other than writing to the press, to take any action against such an affront to democracy.
In France, we take to the streets and vote with our feet, arms and the occasional bottle or half-brick to express resentment against government policies. It seems to work.
But I notice a good many of those that write to complain seem to think that every ill that assails Britain is on account of their quasi-membership of the EU.
If that were the case, how is it my trash gets picked up without fuss weekly?
Blaming the EU for every petty restriction on life in the UK, restrictions which don’t seem to bedevil the other states, must be the reason the Aussies came up with the phrase, “Whingeing Poms.”

Olympian Tax

2008-09-04T09:00:00.000+02:00

In London there are a couple of old age pensioners who will, no doubt, shortly be arrested by a posse of armed policemen, backed-up by some of Ms. Jacqui Smith’s Gestapo of badge carrying jobsworths, who will whisk them off to the nearest hoosegow. Their heinous crime is that they fail to see why they should help pay for the Olympic Stadium, a facility that is hardly a community amenity or service, and that they, along with most of their fellow citizens, will never use.
It seems to me that they have a point. Having to live in London surely counts for a few penalty points to start with and the Olympics, whether they interest you or not, are not London’s, they are Britain’s.
That they should be penalised for someone not getting the arithmetic right does not seem fair.
Of course, if they were terrorists, illegal immigrants or criminals, they could claim that their Human Rights are being breached. But such recourse is not available to honest taxpaying citizens of Great Britain.
Whether or not a stadium is required in Stratford E 15 is another matter. The official line is that it will rejuvenate the area. My mother came from Canning Town and, from what I recall, the place was pretty lively and not in much need of rejuvenating with a feisty and down to earth population.
A friend of mine got his first job selling Caxton Encyclopaedias door-to-door. His sales manager, a man with a sense of humour, assigned him to Stratford E 15.
He sold no encyclopaedias but said that the advice he received from the inhabitants on the various uses to which he could put his books, together with further instructions on just where he could put them, stood him in good stead in later life.
I hope they build the stadium strong enough and allow plenty of space for graffiti. It’s a robust neighbourhood
And what of those who, having contributed, willingly or otherwise, fail to see 2012 in? Are they eligible for a rebate or possibly a voucher towards their funeral expenses?
Surely the people should have been able to have a vote on the matter.
But I suppose the same thing applies to appointing a Prime Minister.

"Yo, Mr. President!"

2008-09-01T09:52:00.000+02:00

The normally convoluted gyrations of an American presidential election took a surreal turn the other day with John McCain’s selection of a running mate. Apparently chosen by means of a pin and a copy of the Alaska telephone directory, it was all the more surprising when it was revealed that they had only met once before. McCain’s appeal to red-blooded Americans is that he is an acknowledged hero with, for once, a genuine claim to courage in adversity. Whether his ponderings in the Hanoi Hilton, where he apparently turned to politics, would make him an effective leader of the most powerful nation in the world is another matter.
But for many, including some of his own associates, the problem with his selection of Ms. Palin is that, potentially, there is the frightening prospect that, in the event of anno domini or a reprise of the Lincoln Theatre scenario catching up with McCain, a moose-burger chomping mom would have her finger on the trigger of the most powerful weapons in the world.
Her grasp of foreign affairs might be illustrated by the fact that she only recently applied for a passport.
It might well be a vote catching ploy but for the world in general it is a very disturbing development.
On the other side of the ballot box, Obama has all the charisma and erudite charm that McCain lacks. But, realising his own lack of experience, he wisely opted for Joe Biden to boost his credentials.
The United States sorely needs to rebuild its image with the rest of the world, an image that has been tainted, often unfairly, by years of the Bush administration and Barack Obama is hugely popular outside of America.
But there still runs a deep vein of racial prejudice in the American psyche and even those who see Obama’s undoubted merits will probably shy away from making him their president.
This is not the blatant racism of white supremacists but the quieter conservatism exemplified by organisations such as The Daughters of the American Revolution. This innocuous sounding group, who once vetoed Marion Anderson performing at one of their meetings on grounds of race, were embarrassed some years ago when, having rejected a membership for admission to a black woman, found that her ancestors had indeed fought on the side of the revolution. The rules were hastily amended to state that all were welcome, regardless of race or creed. The bye-laws might have changed but it is unlikely that the thinking has.
When Winston Churchill lost the post war election, his wife remarked that it was a blessing in disguise. He retorted that it seemed particularly well disguised.
Obama may feel the same way should he lose. But any incoming president has a mound of useless baggage left over by the Bush administration to cope with. He might well be better off letting McCain wrestle with it for one term by which time, the public will have a better handle on Barack Obama.
In this case, let’s hope for the longevity of John McCain. An Annie Oakley as president does not bode well for any of us.

Flights of Fancy

2008-08-27T09:59:00.001+02:00

For some reason, the media seem to lose whatever collective marbles they possess when it comes to reporting incidents or accidents involving air travel.
Yesterday’s headline in the on-line edition of the Daily Telegraph, now virtually indistinguishable in both layout and content from the Daily Mail (Celebrity Sightings, anyone?) was a fine illustration of journalism at its worst.
Rather than discuss the matter with someone who might know, they chose to interview the self styled explorer and loud mouth, Pen Hadow, whose walk to the North Pole seems to have done little for his ability to read a passenger briefing card.
There must be many retired, experienced airline captains out there (myself, for one) who would be only too pleased to correct the egregious errors of fact perpetrated by reporters and thus foisted on a gullible and innocent public.
Mr. Michael O’Leary, who is not recognised in the industry as bearing much resemblance to Mother Teresa, is perfectly correct in this case, and is rightly concerned that his airline, which performed absolutely correctly in this instance, is being maligned. The crew behaved exactly according to the book.
Mr. Hadow’s claim that “the masks weren’t working” is rubbish. If no oxygen had been flowing, both he and his son would have been in no fit state to make the self-serving statement to the press later.
The lack of passenger announcements is hardly surprising as the Flight Attendants masks have no microphone and, whilst the flight crew do have microphones in their oxygen masks, both crew members are busily occupied and not in much of a position for a chat with the passengers during a precautionary rapid descent.
There is the other factor that it was a Ryanair flight. Whatever its shortcomings, the airline offers a tremendous service with modern aircraft (a more up to date fleet than British Airways) and well trained crews at bargain basement prices. And, horror upon horror, it’s an Irish airline – and a very successful one.
I fly them on a regular basis and have no hesitation in saying that they operate to the highest standards. Once I felt the need to question an approach that I felt had not been performed well. The company not only checked the tapes (all flight parameters are recorded nowadays) but took the trouble to call me back and discuss the procedure.
The public cannot be expected to be conversant with the degree of expertise and professionalism in the industry. It would be a help if the media, instead of attention grabbing headlines, reported soberly, sensibly and factually. It would mean the loss of words such as ‘terror’, ‘plummeting’ and ‘plunging’ along with the stories of hero pilots wrestling with the controls to avoid the school, orphanage or dog’s home, take your pick.
And a few words of praise for the flight crew might not come amiss.
Mr. Hadow advertises himself as a ‘motivational speaker.’
Somehow, I don’t think Mr. O’Leary will be calling on his services in the near future.

Hello, Hello.

2008-08-26T10:44:00.000+02:00

“Your phone’s ringing.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“Well, no. I wasn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m busy doing something.”
“It might be important.”
“So is what I’m doing and if it is, they’ll call back. Then, if I’m not busy, I’ll answer it.”
“You’re weird.”
Personally I prefer the term eccentric.
It is, of course, entirely due to my inability to perform that function which is a sine qua non of modern society, to multi-task. You know, doing several things indifferently at the same time as opposed to concentrating on one and making a decent job of it.
No wonder the financial markets get themselves in such a mess. Just look at those traders with a phone in each ear – but I suppose it’s the reason they earn those huge bonuses. Surely they must get it wrong sometimes when their left ear doesn’t know what their right ear is telling them.
Telephones are an intrusion of privacy as far as I’m concerned although here, as so often, I am clearly out of step with society. As witness the proliferation of mobiles and the inconsequential chatter that results.
And as for answering at mealtimes, forget it.
I last received a call on mine in May – and then it was a wrong number so I feel many of my friends have got the message.
Nearly always, at the end of a business call, I wind up saying “Let me have that in writing” so they might just as well have spent the money on a stamp in the first place.
All in all, I feel that when Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” if Watson had ignored him and got on with whatever it was he was doing, I’d be a lot happier.
I suppose he could always have sent him a text message though.

O.H.M.S.

2008-08-24T09:51:00.001+02:00

Many years ago when I was called upon to perform some trivial service for Her Majesty’s government, I was made to sign a register, much as was Gary Glitter. In my case, it was the Official Secrets Act, a document that Eliza Doolittle might well have described as ‘words, words, words’ and which certainly did nothing to inhibit Kim Philby and a few others from spilling the beans.
In my case, as a confirmed coward, it had the salutary effect of sealing my lips on reading that the penalty for breaching the confidentiality would ensure that I was shot at dawn for three mornings running.
Even now, when some fumbling judge would undoubtedly reduce the penalty to an ASBO, the government can rest assured that their secrets are safe with me. Doubly so, since I can no longer remember what the secrets were.
It seems to me that the difference between spilling the beans and losing them is one of semantics, as is the difference between official secrets and personal data vouchsafed to a government.
As I am certain that ministers are signatories to the Official Secrets Act, surely it is time to invoke the act in this case, preferably with the original penalties in place.
Ministers like to refer to themselves as ‘honourable’ and so, alternatively,
could do the honourable thing and fall on their sword.
But I’m sure that they can quote a Health and Safety regulation that will deprive the British voter of even that minor pleasure.

Not a Glittering Performance

2008-08-22T12:32:00.001+02:00

The insalubrious affair of Mr. Paul Gadd has shown firstly that, when it comes to deporting undesirable persons, the Vietnamese government are streets ahead of the British, and that, secondly, Miss Jacqui Smith is a nincompoop. But then you knew that already.
Seeing that an obnoxious glitterati was about to be returned from whence he came, Miss Smith seized the opportunity to burnish her dubious ministerial credentials by making it a cause celebre.
Trumpeting to the world the strong line she was going to take, she assembled a posse of PC plods to meet Mr. Gadd at London’s Heathrow Airport. As he had committed no offence and therefore the aforementioned plods could not arrest him, perhaps their only function might have been to get his autograph. They might have been better employed on the streets of London.
On hearing of the unwelcoming committee that was being prepared for him, Mr. Gadd, whose IQ seems to be a touch ahead of Miss Smith’s, not unreasonably decided to look elsewhere, but without success.
With some justification, Mr. Gadd pleads that he has served his time and is now a free man. He holds a passport issued to him by the British in 2002 after his conviction for a rather unsavoury sort of voyeurism. Now, although he has committed no further offence in the UK, the proposal is that he should now forfeit it. Had he been a murderer, having paid his debt to society, as the saying is, he would be free to come and go as he pleases.
As reprehensible as he appears to be, in the paedophilia stakes he is barely a runner. There are thousands far more dangerous than he still at large and unfazed by Miss Smith’s headline grabbing announcement.
Personally I would not want him in my country but, as a UK passport holder, he has the following inscribed within:
“Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.”
Miss Jacqui Smith’s name is not mentioned but the document was issued by a government of which she is a minister.
Apparently Mr. Gadd will appear once more on the sex offenders register.
He probably won’t be bothered. They’ll most likely lose the memory stick with his details.

Two Horses

2008-08-17T10:54:00.002+02:00

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of that motoring icon of France, the Citroen Deux Chevaux. Whilst the people of France may have taken it into their hearts, Citroen has been trying to disown it for years as a car that does not fit into their image of today.
But, like so many of my era, I learned to drive on one. And if any car is going to stop Frenchmen in their tracks and lead them to stand and stare, it is the passage of a Deux Chevaux. Old timers mourn that the body of later models no longer appears to have been knocked together out of corrugated iron but rejoice that the gear shift is still an inverted hockey stick.
It is not, of course, a vehicle that will appeal to the Jeremy Clarksons of this world. That particularly obnoxious and over remunerated motoring correspondent, who recently commented on the smelly, obese, unwashed citizens of Britain standing at a bus stop as he swept by in his Rolls Royce, would be unable to find enough of his tasteless ramblings to describe his contempt for such a car.
But it was a car designed with a purpose in mind.
France, then as now, was an agricultural community and the far flung communities of farmers desperately needed a car that could get them to market.
Citroen came up with a specification that demanded that it be able to be driven over ploughed fields without breaking any eggs, hence the remarkable suspension that tended to create severe cases of mal de mer in the early models, which lacked shock absorbers.
Perhaps the only other model that is still viewed with dewy eyed affection is the much later and more advance Renault Four, the ‘Quatrelle.’
Whilst the Deux Chevaux has long been out of production, France has never forgotten that many of its citizens need some form of transport to and from their isolated communities. For these, there is the ‘Sans Permis’ car, a low powered vehicle that can be driven without the need of a drivers licence.
As well as those for whom it was intended, it has become a Godsend to those that have lost their licence.
The Sans Permis is not a great performer, especially on hills.
If there is any justice in this world or the next, it would be that Mr. Clarkson is condemned forever to be stuck behind one in his Rolls Royce.
Perhaps he might then learn some manners.

A Giant Leap for Mankind

2008-08-15T09:52:00.000+02:00

Britain has a long and proud history of innovation and invention. From these small islands have come developments that have changed the world.
From Penicillin to the cavity magnetron, now in every micro-wave, to nuclear power to the railway, even if the latter seems to be running on the wrong lines at the moment, Britain has led the way.
And now, after years of trial, error and disappointment, they have achieved yet another breakthrough for man (and, of course, women) with what must be regarded as the Holy Grail of educational achievement.
I refer, of course, to the unfailable exam, the A level.
The potential of this development is almost unlimited, once the idea catches on. Babies can receive their qualification at birth and, instead of taking a miserable gap year in which to goof off, they will be able to spread themselves over four or five. And once the Driver’s Licence people cotton on to the idea, the saving on L plates will be enormous.
The system has not, however, yet attained perfection. Out of sheer wilfullness, obduracy or an unpatriotic desire to sabotage the government, there are still three per cent who succeed in failing.
In addition, regrettably, there are degrees of unfailure. These tend to lie amongst that notorious class of subversives; those who refuse to take government approved subjects such as meeja studies and hairdressing, and perversely insist on attempting the old fashioned topics of science, mathematics, languages and English. I understand a quango is being formed to deal with the matter since the future of government would hang in the balance should such intelligentsia be allowed to flourish.
No doubt the newspapers will be disappointed. There’s not much point in showing pictures of joyful teenagers getting their exam results when they’re pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps a shot or two of the three per cent who fail might work.

Brought to Book

2008-08-14T08:30:00.001+02:00

No doubt there are many fond parents in Britain, who, on learning that their 14 year old offspring have a reading age of 11, are desperately searching around for someone to blame.
Top candidates would be the schools and the teachers, the Minister for Education, Nu Labour and that all time favourite of the British to account for every ill that besets them, Brussels and the EU.
But perhaps they should look closer to home.
On the rare occasions when I venture across the threshold of what, in the good old days before surveillance, was an Englishman’s castle, it’s hard to see where the incentive is for a child to take up reading. Most doctors’ surgeries have a more comprehensive selection of reading matter.
There will be of course, that curse of humanity, a television or two and undoubtedly a brace of expensive computer games. But books? Unlikely.
I was extremely fortunate in my choice of parents. My father had a modest but eclectic library to which, as soon as learned how to care for books, I was allowed untrammelled access. From the age of ten onwards I could drift through the plays of Galsworthy, the burblings of Bernard Shaw, struggle to understand Shakespeare and occasionally come upon a gem that has stayed with me the rest of my life.
One such was P.G. Wodehouse and his recounting of the affairs of the Drones Club, ‘Young Men in Spats.’ At the time I had no idea what a spat was nor, for that matter, a drone but the stories amused and entertained me even at that early age. And, as I re-read them last night, they still do.
Once the basics of reading are mastered, all that is needed is the incentive to want to read.
For the price of a Nintendo or similar piece of electronic mind wasting equipment, a parent could equip their child with an extremely good library.
Then, perhaps, with encouragement, an enthusiasm for reading may result.
Those who can read and write have a whole world open to them that is denied the illiterate.
But the process begins at home, not in the classroom.

Celebrity Who?

2008-08-11T09:00:00.001+02:00

It is an accepted fact that I am behind the times, positively antediluvian in many ways. And one facet of modern life that has passed me by is the British cult of the ‘celebrity.’
If you were to ask me to name a celebrity of two I suppose I might mutter “Noel Coward? Maurice Chevalier?” Or even “Jack Hobbs?” so you can visualise the extent of my ignorance on this compelling subject that seems to exercise the minds of so many today.
Eager to attack the steep learning curve required to bring myself up to speed on the matter, I sought in vain for some suitable book of instruction. “Celebrities for Dummies” would have been useful I thought on the grounds that the two were often synonymous.
So when I spotted that the Daily Telegraph had an article that ran:
“Where do the stars go when they need to kick back and relax? Which restaurants, shops, resorts and hotels do they rate above all others? 100 of Britain’s best-known celebrities tell all,” I thought that here was a chance to get a toehold on the mystery.
Why I should have the slightest interest in where this eclectic group ate, holidayed or shopped was beyond me, but the list of 100 names was promising.
One or two I recognised, David Blunkett for example, although I had not realised that he was a ‘celebrity.’ Many had names that were redolent of Easter European soccer teams and there were few that I could recall having done anything to deserve being called a celebrity or even warranting a mention in a newspaper.
The great relief to me was to find that not one of the 100 had any intention of coming to holiday, eat or shop in my part of the world.
So I am afraid that I shall just have to be content with living in the past and recalling genuine celebrities that I feel might have been deserving of the title which, like so many titles and awards today, has been reduced to a meaningless absurdity.
Jack Hobbs sold me my first cricket bat – now there was a celebrity.

Wots It Mater

2008-08-08T08:35:00.001+02:00

Perhaps nothing illustrates the laissez faire attitude to education as much as the suggestion that students should not be penalised for not knowing how to spell.
This brilliant notion comes from a professor of criminology, whose services are no doubt in great demand today. I’m not quite sure of the function of a ‘professor of criminology’ unless it’s to train future criminals, a service which has been sorely lacking since the days of Bill Sykes, but I take his point that correct spelling is not a sine qua non for ransom notes etc.
For the rest of us, however, orthography does matter. To say that a misspelling is acceptable is akin to saying that 2 + 2 = 5 – it’s close enough so why penalise the student?
I always felt a bit sorry for the pompous Dr. Johnson, who first compiled a modern English dictionary, as he always had that sycophantic Scot, Boswell, hanging around and recording his conversation.
“Get a life, Boswell,” said Johnson. Boswell, who obviously misheard him, thought he said “write my life” and the rest is history.
Noah Webster used Johnson’s work to write his own patriotic American dictionary, eliminating double consonants, adding a few of his own and changing some endings quite arbitrarily. This led to the popularity of “Spelling Bees” in 19th, century America, nobody really knowing exactly how to spell a word any more.
American children can thank their lucky stars that Benjamin Franklin, normally a bastion of common sense, had his suggestions rejected by Webster. These were to add six new characters and to drop all silent letters.
The notion of simplifying, or ‘dumbing down’ English is not new. Even Bernard Shaw suggested it but thankfully nobody took any notice of him.
The criminology man cites the word ‘fifth’ as an example.
“Where did the ‘f’ come from?” he asks. It is sad to find an ‘academic’ with so little knowledge of the source of his own language.
And his pronunciation could do with a little sharpening up.
The word is not pronounced ‘fith.’
So I shal continew to spel jest the wey I wont – that’s if I nede to pars his crimmenology exam.

A Risky Business

2008-08-06T08:35:00.001+02:00

The inhabitants of Ripley, Derbyshire, can thank their lucky stars this morning.
Thanks to Health and Safety, those well known promoters of fun and frolic, they have been spared the terror of the organ grinder and his stuffed monkey whilst a ‘risk assessment’ is being carried out.
This follows a similar exercise on that insidious example of non-PC thinking, the Punch and Judy Show, leading to both events being cancelled.
So the kids can now go home to their Nintendos and violent video games.
Another crisis averted thanks to the watchful eyes of Big Brother.
Simon Gladwin, head of landscape services, who should know, landscaping being widely recognised as being a risky business, said:
“We always require that anyone organising a public event or entertainment on land managed by the borough council completes a risk assessment.
In cases such as this, where performers are unable to supply a personal risk assessment of their activities, it is the responsibility of the organiser to provide the risk assessment.
These are not required for every performer. We simply require an assessment that takes into account the different activities taking place in each location.”
The organ grinder in question has been performing for fifteen years without complaint or incident which would seem to be a more than adequate endorsement of its lack of risk potential.
The town council's summer entertainments programme has now been suspended until further notice.
What a pity that the electorate of Britain did not conduct a similar ‘risk assessment’ of the Labour government before they voted them into power.
Ripley would then have had its Punch and Judy Show and its Organ Grinder, complete with stuffed monkey.
As it is, they seem to be in Westminster at the moment.

A Lesson from Toy Town?

2008-08-05T11:01:00.001+02:00

It’s not been a good summer so far in our part of France but this morning dawned bright and beautiful.
So delightful was it that Mr. Barclay and I (Barclay is a Labrador, by the way) decided to extend our normal walk to take advantage of it.
As he said “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.” Not sure where he read that but you know what Labradors are like.
Our peregrinations led us into the nearby village and past the town hall, the Mayor’s office. As you know, in France the Mayor is the arbiter of your destiny in any town, even in the sink estates of Paris, where the job must be akin to the fabled wheeling a barrow load of stones uphill.
If you wish to get married (and no good friend can talk you out of it) you go to the Mayor.
Need to extend your house? Go see the mayor.
When our internet connection was failing repeatedly, we didn’t call France Telecom, we called the Mayor’s office, as it was he who had lobbied for the service to be available in his town for the benefit of his constituents (he’s an elected official).
If your trash does not get picked up, complain to him, as he is the one who has hired the contractors to do the job.
It’s the original one-stop shop, a supermarket of local government services.
Those of you who are old enough may recall a children’s radio programme, ‘Toy Town.’ This was, of course, in the days when the BBC had some taste.
Based on the stories by S.G Hulme-Beaman, it peopled Toy Town with such characters as Dennis the Dachshund, Mr. Grouser and Ernest, the policeman. But the main character was Larry the Lamb who, when in trouble, would always run to the Mayor.
“Please, Mr. Mayor, sir,” he would bleat.
Toy Town was as peaceful and well ordered as are most French towns so perhaps there is something to be said for Mr. Mayor being in charge.
Any Mayor here who had the audacity to fine one of his citizens for overfilling their trash bin would soon find himself out of a job.
I called a friend in England.
“What,” I asked, “is the name of your Mayor?”
“Dunno,” he replied. “Why? Does it matter?”

Gullible's Travails

2008-08-04T11:17:00.001+02:00

If I were to tell you that at this very moment, there are over 100,000 people in this world awaiting a return of $55,000 in return for a subscription of $35 or so, I’m sure you would question my sanity.
If, moreover, I were to tell you that, in order to reap this vast return on their ‘investment,’ the aforesaid 100,000 were sending off their personal details including copies of passports, birth certificates and driver’s licences to an anonymous E-Mail address, you would reckon that it’ s high time the men in white coats came to carry me away.
Yet that is exactly what members of the so-called Global Pension Plan are doing.
As Einstein once remarked, he suspected that there was no limit to human stupidity, and GPP, along with a number of copycat scams, are doing much to prove his hypothesis.
It is almost the perfect crime. The amounts lost per individual are low enough to discourage them from taking any further action, the funds are collected by way of one of the on-line money exchangers, effectively disguising the money trail, and the only communication is by way of E-Mail to an entity calling herself (or quite possibly himself) ‘Stella.’
The website promoting this remarkable opportunity is naturally hosted anonymously and contains no address or telephone number.
Members who have stumped up their money console themselves with the thought that, “Well, it’s only a small amount,” but the sum total is not a bad return for the crooks. And, if not used to fund their personal life styles, who knows to what use the funds are being put? Terrorism and drugs are high on the list of possibilities.
And now, with a prospective database of over 100,000 financially gullible persons to work with, even if identity theft is not a problem, the future for the scammers is looking bright.
I forgot to mention that the scheme was supposed to have closed nearly a year ago but ‘administrative problems’ have held up the payout, giving the lucky punters more time in which to buy additional policies which have become mysteriously available.
Law enforcement is not in the business of preventing fools from parting with their money, but much could be done by outlawing the so-called money exchangers and removing the possibility of registering websites anonymously.
Google ‘Global Pension Plan’ for all the gory details.

Say 'Cheese'

2008-08-01T08:29:00.000+02:00

The idea was that we took a few publicity pictures in London.
“Uh, uh,” said the photographer, sucking in a breath. “Tricky.”
Apparently, he said, if you want to take pictures in central London you have to apply for a permit at Charing Cross police station, a process that can take up to 28 days. Then, as a part of Photo Safety Identity Checking Observation, no doubt referred to in casual conversation by PC Plods as a PSICO, you are required to wear "a thin fluorescent waistcoat" kitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The RFID is a cheap and "passive device that needs no batteries" according to the Metropolitan Police, whom I thought should have something better to do than pursuing professional photographers going about their business.
Frankly I was sceptical but saw no point in going all the way to Charing Cross and waiting 28 days or so while they shuffled the paperwork.
So we went to Paris where the pictures were shot in one day, several of them including policemen who were good enough to hold up traffic for us in the process.
I still could not believe that taking a picture in London could be such a bureaucratic nightmare but then I read of an author, Mohammed Hanif, who ran into trouble whilst trying to get some publicity shots for his latest book taken in Covent Garden. A security guard repeatedly foiled him by putting a hand over the lens.
Subsequently they were chased away from other locations before finding sanctuary, rather appropriately, in a church where the verger apparently knew nothing of the latest regulations in force in Bonkers Britain and let them take their shots.
The Metropolitan Police allege that “cameras are potentially more dangerous than guns.”
I suggest that they should take a look at little old ladies wielding umbrellas.
Now there’s a serious menace for you.
Watch out for a ban on these – unless, of course, you apply for a permit to Charing Cross police station.

Trashure Island

2008-07-30T08:00:00.000+02:00

Never in the field of garbage collection has one nation got its knickers in such a twist over the simple, if smelly, task of picking up its trash.
It seems that Britons are the world leaders in producing the stuff, which is not surprising when you visit a supermarket. Nothing, apparently, can be presented au naturel. It has to be shrink wrapped in some clear plastic and seated on a bed of rather less clear plastic, none of which is edible (this sometimes includes the contents) and thus has to be thrown away.
And the throwing away part is no easy matter, since those employed to cart it are highly skilled professionals. An overfilled bin is an insult to their craft as is one where the alignment of the wheelie on the pavement does not conform to the council’s specification.
The shock and horror that faced some sanitary operatives who returned to work after having been on strike for a week can only be imagined. There was a plethora of bins, up to their microchips and overflowing with the additional garbage that had accumulated.
Naturally, in the face of such moral turpitude on the part of the householder, they refused to empty them.
I spent a good many years in a country that was as close to Third World as I care to get. Not much worked in the area of public services with one notable exception.
Our trash was collected with impressive regularity each week – and moreover in any container that we liked to dump it in.
If our trash can was not outside the house on collection day, they would come into the yard to look for it. Mind you, there was a bit of a downside to this as it meant we had to chain down anything moveable lest it be mistakenly identified as trash in their eyes.
But we never had a problem with their collecting the stuff.
In Paris last week, as I was walking to catch the Metro, they were picking up the garbage. It was a sight that would bring tears to the eyes of any British Council Sanitary Worker (aka Dustmen)
For these Gallic traitors to their profession were picking up bins without testing to ensure that they could be moved with two fingers, throwing in bags that were clearly not of the specified colour and quality demanded by British councils and, horror upon horror, actually collecting stuff left out in all manner of cardboard boxes.
And some of the items were so heavy that any self respecting British operative would be able to claim his disability allowance just on the strength of it.
Clearly we have much to learn in Europe on the subject.

Square Bashing

2008-07-19T09:29:00.000+02:00

One of the solutions often advocated to the problem of Britain’s yobbish youth is the bringing back of National Service. And certainly, on the face of it, it seems a sound idea.
Due to an accident of birth, I found myself the proud possessor of a British passport, one of the unlisted benefits of which was that I was entitled, absolutely free of charge, to a minimum sojourn of two years as a member of the armed forces of the United Kingdom.
In this respect I was luckier than a friend of mine from Newcastle. On the strength of having a German mother he had opted to take German nationality. Much to his horror, he found himself drafted into the Wehrmacht, despite not speaking a word of German.
The location for my indoctrination into the ways of the military was RAF West Kirby, on the Wirral peninsula. As I had already been the beneficiary of several years at an English boarding school, I was rather better placed to survive than many of my fellows.
Out of curiosity, the other day I Googled ‘West Kirby’ and there was an aerial view of the camp. I had never realised how big it was, but then, during my time there, we were too busy polishing things to do much sightseeing.
Then I found a fascinating article by Don Adams who had been a recruit there.
In it he described all the horrors I remembered only too well, as well as a few that had mercifully been erased by the mists of time.
I could smell the brasso, the blanco and the boot polish along with that strange odour, redolent of dead bodies, that emanated from the cookhouse, just like it was yesterday.
Those of us that survived those ten weeks emerged as far, far better beings than when we first passed through the gates of West Kirby, I am sure.
But how could this happen in today’s state of supreme nannydom?
For a start, it seems that every day I was there, my human rights were violated at least ten times.
Then there was the racial and ethnic abuse:
“Oi, ‘op to it, you ‘orrible little frog!” to say nothing of the homophobia: “Yer marching like a bunch of effing poofters.”
No, no Nanny. It would never do. The Drill Instructors need serious counselling.
And this is before we get to the Health and Safety issues. There are not enough clipboards in that department to record the daily breaches that occurred during my stay there.
Those of you that experienced the joys of National Service and wish to recapitulate the delights of ‘square bashing’ will appreciate Don Adams very accurate article. And for the rest of you, I am sure you will agree that nothing else will be sufficient to drum some sense and discipline into the yoof of today.
Don’s website is at: http://www.ventnorradar.co.uk/WK01.htm

In Vino with Difficulty

2008-07-18T10:07:00.001+02:00

Surrounded as we are by vineyards, a sight that would bring a flutter to the heart of any oenophile, you would expect that buying the stuff would be a walk in the park, or at least a vineyard.
In Britain, you can wander into any plonk-selling establishment, pick up a few bottles, check on any BOGOF offers and depart in the flutter of a credit card.
But here, in the heart of the wine country, it’s not that easy unless, of course, you go to a supermarket.
Almost every vigneron sells direct to the public. But the first challenge for the public is to catch your vigneron, for most are one or two man or woman operations and, just when you want to place your order, there they, a few hectares away, pruning their vines and out of earshot.
The other day, we needed to re-stock our wine racks and sallied forth to our neighbour, Jacques, from whom we buy all our drinking plonk. He produces a complete range from a sparkling Saumur to a sweet, dessert wine, the Coteaux du Layon, all of excellent quality, from his 14 hectares of vines.
It’s only a hundred metres to his establishment and we are in luck. There he is, fiddling with one of the giant machines that now are involved in wine making. No more happy peasants dancing barefoot in barrels.
“You are busy, Jacques?”
“Ah, oui.”
“Can we buy some wine?”
“But of course.”
We are equipped with our order, duly filled out, and a bundle of Euro notes in the other hand.
“You will taste, yes?”
“No, Jacques, not necessary. You are busy and we drink enough of your stuff.”
He looks downcast, surveys our order glumly – and reaches for a bottle.
An hour or so later, and having sampled his entire range, we stumble home, 50 litres of good wine better off and 100 euros poorer.
Thinking about it, it’s much more delightful than buying from a supermarket even if it does take longer.
And sometimes there’s even a BOGOF offer or, more accurately, an AUOUL.

French Lesson

2008-07-17T07:51:00.001+02:00

Apart from a few notorious hotspots, the sort that occur in any major city worldwide, France is a peaceful and well ordered country.
Crime is the exception rather than the rule which is why it is currently so attractive to British expatriates.
And yet, unlike the UK which is, as Shakespeare pointed out, surrounded by a moat which should keep the bad people out, France has a long and scarcely patrolled border with the rest of Europe.
The reason for this disparity has now been revealed in a damning report.
It seems that UK police make just 20 requests to Interpol each day for details about non-EU criminals, compared with more than 20,000 a day by the French.
Only seven requests a day were made by forces looking for conviction information about a foreigner.
An 11,000-strong list of terror suspects, held by Interpol, was hardly used, while the UK Border Agency did not have a link to Interpol's lost and stolen documents database. France makes over seven million checks a year.
Naturally the Home Secretary, Jacqui ‘U-Turn’ Smith, had a standard government-speak response.
She said: "We will be producing a full response and action plan in the autumn.
We will immediately press ahead with work to improve access to overseas criminal history information to help deport foreign nationals who break our laws."
It might not be a bad idea if she got in touch with the French Minister of Justice, Mme. Rahida Dati, and asked for a few tips on how to manage matters or even how to brush up one’s appearance.
But don’t worry. She’ll have a “full response and action plan” for you by the autumn.
Meanwhile, all you international criminals out there who want to get into the UK, now’s your chance.
You don’t want to be caught by Ms. Smith’s ‘full response and action plan’ do you?

Revolution, anyone?

2008-07-15T11:48:00.001+02:00

It was Bastille Day yesterdayand, in spite of the British media telling us that we’re the most miserable lot in Europe, I saw no sign of incipient revolution amongst my neighbours.
There was a festival with fireworks, music and dancing, you know, the sort of thing that really miserable nations get up to in order to take their mind off current woes - and with not a Health and Safety numpty in sight to spoil the fun.
But it seems to me that if any nation should be contemplating revolution, it should be the British.
Matters there must be akin to those in Paris on the 13th. of July, 1789 and Downing Street can surely hear the rumble of the tumbrils.
But no doubt Miss Jacqui Smith will have an initiative in hand to stave off the inevitable, such as showing a few severed heads in hospital emergency rooms to discourage les autres.
But unlike the French, who stormed The Bastille, rather unnecessarily as it turned out as it only held seven prisoners - but it’s the thought that counts –
the British can save themselves the trouble.
The government have already released most of the really dangerous ones back into society.
In the spirit of entente cordiale, I’m sure we can rustle up a few guillotines for you.

Law and Order

2008-07-11T09:21:00.001+02:00

The Romans were very fond of snappy catchphrases, many of which have survived through the centuries, unlike the witticisms of a Harriet Harman or Gordon Brown which fortunately die on the spot.
‘Cave Canem,’ ‘Cui Bono,’ and, very appropriately for government statements, ‘Cum Grano Salis,’ are all as fresh and relevant today as ever they were in ancient Rome.
One rather verbose contribution was: si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi: “if you are in Rome, live in the Roman way; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there.” This would probably not have caught on had not an alert sub-editor on the Forum Times seen its potential and condensed it into a rather more manageable “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” which, in popular parlance was even further truncated into “When in Rome” followed by a series of dots. Quite how this was represented in Latin I know not, but you get the idea.
The phrase, in Churchillian terms, set Europe ablaze and, by and large, with a few nasty exceptions, most accepted that it was a civilised matter to behave according to the mores and customs of one’s host.
The phrase crossed the Channel to Britain but it seems that the message did not.
Even during the Hundred Years War, when British soldiery were rampaging through France, Froissart, himself something of an Anglophile, remarked, “The British in France enjoy themselves in their own miserable fashion.”
Thus it should come as no surprise to find that many British abroad see no reason to feel obliged to act in compliance with the laws and customs of the land they are visiting.
Dubai has one of the most tolerant and far-sighted regimes in the Arab world, making it an almost crime free and secure nation for both residents and guests.
No doubt it comes as a surprise to some British that, in return, they enforce the laws of their nation. This is rather the reverse of standards in the United Kingdom where grandmothers are hauled into court for protecting war memorials against the depredation of mindless vandals and citizens are not allowed to protect their own property from state coddled yobbery.
A land of Topsy Turveydom.

Bibliofool

2008-07-08T09:27:00.001+02:00

“Why,” said my intelligent and well organised friend, “Don’t you have the books in your library catalogued and arranged in some sort of order? I have noticed,” he continued, “that you frequently waste much time searching for a book and then come away with some totally irrelevant volume, having forgotten what you were looking for in the first place.”
I could not deny the accusation.
Once upon a time, I had invested in a computer programme to catalogue my books and my wife had spent many hours entering the data. The file remains on the hard drive of her computer, unmolested. For the designers of the programme had omitted to take account of human frailty i.e. that a book taken from a shelf is rarely replaced in the same slot.
My friend is of the sort that buys his books from Waterstones or Barnes and Noble where the philosophy is a place for everything and everything in its place.
Not for him the excitement of prowling the dusty and uncategorised shelves in a decrepit bookshop on Charing Cross Road or rummaging through one of the ‘boites’ on the banks of the Seine, hoping to unearth a gem.
Yesterday I needed to look up some information on the exploits of the US 8th. Air Force and the disastrous raid upon Schweinfurt. Vaguely I recalled having a couple of books on the subject tucked away and, sure enough, I found them both within minutes.
Then my gaze wandered and lit upon my 1887 copy of A Textbook on the Steam Engine. For the next thirty minutes I was enthralled by the hiss of steam and the evocative smell of hot oil.
Reluctantly, I replaced the book, naturally in a different spot, and there, alongside, was a copy of the best book ever written on the Schweinfurt raid.
Elmer Bendigo had been a navigator on the operation and his book, ‘Fall of Fortresses,’ is the most evocative account of the disaster that befell the 8th.
Elmer had been a reporter in civilian life and brought a keen eye and a poet’s pen to the affair.
His is the only book I know that paints a true picture of the courage of the men of the 8th.
Now I know that you will say that, had my library been better arranged, I would have found the book earlier.
But then I would have learned nothing about Murdock’s slide valve, patented in 1799, nor of the surface condensers patented by Mr. W.S. Hall in 1831 for his locomotive ‘Wilberforce.’

The Dastardly French

2008-07-02T08:55:00.000+02:00

Those of you who have ever watched the French Gendarmerie Nationale at work, taking care of business, will not be surprised to learn that France has one of the best records of anti-terrorist activities. There is a certain ‘joie de vivre’ and disregard for political correctness in their actions that warms the heart of any law-abiding citizen.
It will, therefore, be equally unsurprising that an outfit calling themselves Human Rights Watch are protesting at the somewhat Draconian tactics being employed so successfully.
They feel that terrorists and potential terrorists will become upset that the dastardly French bang up some of their number without so much as a ‘may we’ or a ‘by your leave’ from any bleeding heart groups. Even worse, they frequently ship these poor innocents, whose only crime is a desire to kill or maim their fellows, back from whence they came with barely a second thought.
It is, of course, a flagrant breach of their Human Rights which in other countries, no names mentioned, would entitle them to free accommodation, public assistance and free health care for them and their families plus headlines in the tabloid newspapers to advertise their mission.
The good news for the French is that, not only will they be completely unfazed by the pontifications of the Human Rights Watch group, but that any intelligent terrorist will hot foot it across the Channel to a more welcoming environment.
You can hardly blame him.

The Boneless Wonder

2008-06-30T08:10:00.000+02:00

“But you have not imparted to me,” remarks Veneering, “what you think of my entering the House of Commons?”
“I think,” rejoins Twemlow, feelingly, “that it is the best club in London.”
When Charles Dickens wrote ‘Our Mutual Friend’ he can have had no idea of just how good a club it would become.
Veneering was duly voted in (unopposed) to the constituency of Pocket Breeches for the trifling sum of £5000, but there is no record of his having claimed for a second home, groceries, travelling expenses or the employment of Mrs. Veneering. It seems he was there to serve the constituents, not to augment his income.
A new book by David Craig, ‘Squandered,’ throws an interesting light on the costs of the British parliamentary system that might surprise a public already pretty inured to hearing of the excesses of those they had elected to represent them.
There are in all 1,021 politicians to represent the interests of fewer than 70 million people, or one for every 68,000 citizens.
Apart from these, there are also hundreds more politicians in the House of Lords and thousands in local government, jobsworth to a man, or possibly, woman.
By contrast, in the United States, there are 435 members of Congress - one for every 680,000 citizens.
The total cost to the taxpayer of the MPs alone is now well over £366 million a year.
As much of the legislative load is now passed along to the European Union, Craig argues that halving the number of MPs would save the nation some £180 million each year. It might, of course, mean that some would have to put in a full days work or even to make some sensible decisions on behalf of the nation.
But the Tourist Board should also be encouraged to promote Parliament as a source of education and enlightenment as lesson in how not to run a country. For never, in the field of human conflict, has one government got so many things wrong and so many been made to suffer for the errors of so few
However, that farsighted politician, Winston Churchill, was not unaware of the potential entertainment value to be derived from the House of Commons.
He said that, as a boy, he always looked forward to the arrival of Barnum and Bailey’s circus, but that there was one exhibit he was not allowed to view as it was ‘too revolting a spectacle for the human eye.’ It was the side show called ‘The Boneless Wonder.’
He continued, “Now, after thirty-six years, where do I finally find this freak show? Not in the circus, but in the House of Commons, sitting on the front bench – the Boneless Wonder.”

A Small Step for Old Men

2008-06-28T07:38:00.001+02:00

British septuagenarians must be rejoicing today that a 73 year old janitor has successfully sued his employers because he fell off a step ladder.
As a means of augmenting the rather niggardly government old age pension, this looks to be a winner.
No doubt applications for the job of caretaking are escalating – have stepladder, will travel – and many are secretly practising the arcane art of teetering on the top step.
But there must surely be some concern here for the learning curve of those who have passed three score years and ten, one of the few targets not set by the current British government.
Surely, after all those years, they should know that, if you lean over too far, you will fall?
Here’s a golden opportunity for the authorities to introduce yet another degree course.

Sorry Sir Robert

2008-06-26T09:26:00.000+02:00

No doubt Robert Mugabe spent a sleepless night recently, knowing that in the morning he would no longer be Sir Robert but just plain old mister.
I was so worried about the poor old dear that I pulled up some pictures of his palace on the internet and visualised him wandering aimlessly through the 30 jewel encrusted rooms or pottering about the 44 acres of manicured garden, uncertain as to what further blows might befall him.
And then Britain launched their ultimate weapon. They would apply sanctions against Zimbabwe.
In the good old days they might have sent a gunboat, although this would have presented a logistical problem here, but in default of much in the way of armed forces nowadays, it had to be sanctions.
A chilling response that must have sent shudders through his ancient frame.
Now anybody who has spent any time in Cuba will be aware that sanctions only impinge on the little people of a nation. The top echelon remain totally unscathed and, in fact, many of the more enterprising citizens can turn the situation to their own advantage, although not that of their fellows.
There is much blathering about a humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe that sanctions can only serve to acerbate.
But meanwhile, the major supermarkets are happily buyng from a desperate nation forced to sell their products at rock bottom prices.

Life-Style Gurus

2008-06-23T10:59:00.000+02:00

When I was living in the United States, I always felt that the last person I would want to see in my house would be the life-style guru, Martha Stewart, telling me how to run my daily life.

However, I had never considered her to be a real menace to society.

The British authorities are clearly more perceptive than I, since they have denied her a visa to visit their islands.

The reason given is that, horror of horrors, she did a bit of tax fiddling a while back. Now we all know just how upright and honest all the members of Her Majesties Government are, confining their financial skulduggery to getting the taxpayers to cough up for their second homes etc., so I can see how offensive Miss Stewart’s misdemeanour would appear in their eyes.

Yet many others, guilty of far more heinous crimes, are allowed to set foot on the sceptred isle, many of them without shoes or visible means of support until they get their first benefit cheque.

So for Miss Stewart, I can offer a solution.

She has ample resources to purchase a fake passport, and recent events have shown that being caught with one is no hindrance to leading the good life in Britain.

And, if she plays her cards right, in a trice she could being in comfortable accommodation paid for by the government and drawing more benefits than the age old pensioners around her who have paid their dues to society over the years.

Now that’s what being a life-style guru is all about!

The Merry go Round Broke Down!

2008-06-21T09:17:00.000+02:00

Yesterday proved to be something of a banner day chez nous.
It had started normally enough. Arising betimes, as Samuel Pepys might have said, I hit the button on the coffee maker and went to what, in moments of euphoria, I refer to as my office. It’s actually the bit of space to the left of the deep end of the grand piano – our cottage is very small.
Opening up my mailbox, there they all are. All my old friends from the E-Mail community.
There’s Olga, who says she has seen my profile and would love to get in touch. Says she’s a nice girl which is something of a disappointment but hey ho.
A large number of on-line pharmacies are there promising that, with their help, I can do Olga a lot of good.
And of course there’s my old mate, Dr. Bango Obango, a high mucka mucka in the Central Bank of Nigeria who has been wanting my banking details for yonks so he can send me several million of whatever currency it is that they use in Nigeria. I’m embarrassed that I haven’t obliged him, so I’ve sent the banking details of one of my defaulting clients instead. It’s the least I can do.
There were a few E-mails demanding my attention but before I could respond, the connection went dead.
For a moment I was non-plussed.
There was I, cut off from the civilised world and even Great Britain.
Of course, there was quite a lot of work that I could have been getting on with but, without Internet connections, it all seemed a bit pointless.
So I went and sat in the garden and read up on some notes. Then I took a nap. It was all rather pleasant.
Alexander Selkirk must have felt much the same way as he watched his ship disappear over the horizon. It was a lot more peaceful without all those rowdy sailors.
And then my Man (actually woman) Friday arrived with a lunch of baguette, pate and a bottle of wine.
As the geeks had still not been able to splice the bits of wire together, I settled down to a quiet afternoon of contemplation.
And it occurred to me that former captains of industry had managed quite well without our ‘must have’ technology.
Take Isambard Kingdom Brunel for instance. He never even looked at the Internet and look what he accomplished without Cad Cam, mobile phones and the like. He even did most of his travelling on horseback which, I suppose, would have been quicker than using today’s public transport.
But he didn’t have to waste his time sitting at a computer.
So, having ruminated on this, rather as cows do, which is, I suppose, why they are so placid, I’m thinking of going back to the idea of Rowland Hill.
But hang on a minute. That doesn’t seem to be working too well nowadays either.
I bet they’ve been computerised.

Persona Non Grata

2008-06-18T09:47:00.001+02:00

To an outside observer, it is hard not to form the impression that the management of Great Britain PLC have lost their collective marbles.
In fact, for all I know, marbles may have been banned by the Health and Safety people as a hazardous sport.
But the failure to deport an acknowledged terrorist and, in default, house him at the expense of the British taxpayer to the tune of £500,000 per year, must be well up there in pantheon of governmental stupidities.
Having arrived some years ago on a forged passport, that alone should have been sufficient for him to have been returned from whence he came – no questions asked. Many nations, the United States for instance, ask that visitors hold a return ticket, a sane and sensible precaution, to save their taxpayers the expense.
No doubt the excuse will be that to deport this man, who happens to be a Muslim extremist, would somehow infringe an obscure EU regulation concerning his ‘legal rights’, the usual evasion for taking positive action.
But the other day, the French decided that one of their citizens, legally resident and properly documented for many years, was persona non grata by way of having been accused of war crimes in his state of origin.
Without fanfare, nor protest from any group, he was shipped back to face the music.
The British seem to be in thrall to anything that concerns those of the Muslim faith, the overwhelming majority of whom are, of course, good honest and valuable members of the community.
And this must surely be the only reason for awarding ridiculous amounts of damages to a young lady because she was rejected for a job at a hairdressing salon. Her feelings were hurt.
This should open the floodgates for anybody who has failed a job interview in the past and I am going through my letters of rejection at this moment.
Although I have never seen it, I understand that Sir Alan Sugar has occasionally been unkind to candidates on ‘The Apprentice.’ So he better watch out.
I suppose the only safe solution would be to hire everybody that applies.

Au Revoir, George

2008-06-17T09:30:00.000+02:00

Personally, if I had been the most disastrous president of the United States in living memory, I think I would have foregone a European tour. A quiet retirement to my Texas ranch where I could have busied myself assembling my Presidential Library of cartoon pop-up books and chatting with God occasionally would have done me.
Or had I been Britain’s most expensive premier, I would have serenely spent my days shuttling between my mansions, most of which appear to have been subsidised by the British taxpayer, and quietly counting my ill-gotten gains.
But world leaders seem loth to abandon the spotlight. Which is, I suppose, why I was not cut out to be a world leader, nor, as I see, to even be recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours yet again.
However, I am applying for a cleaning job with the Speaker of the House which should take care of that for next year.
President Bush arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport, apparently unaware of what a disaster area it was, since he turned down the offer of a military base, and brought with him a carbon footprint almost as big as Texas. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what a carbon footprint is, but, as it seems to be the phrase du jour, I thought I’d throw that in.
In France, President Sarkozy had welcomed him, Gallic tongue in cheek, and, secure in the knowledge that he was only in power for a few more months, assured him of France’s friendship with America. Why America should doubt that, I have no idea. George Washington’s forces were 50 per cent French and the War of Independence had been largely subsidised by French money.
In Britain, Brown was probably equally relieved to say au revoir.
But during his visit, Bush said that Iraq was now free and life for the Iraqis was now infinitely better than before.
I beg to differ. I am currently working on a book concerning the exploits of the British military in Iraq and in particular, the deed that won Corporal Hayden of the RAF Regiment, the Military Cross. The incident, in which one of his men was killed, was known as the battle of Al-Wiki Market, an incredibly fierce gun battle – and just one of the many that are a daily occurrence for British and American troops in the region.
It was several years ago that Bush, complete in Mickey Mouse uniform, landed on the deck of a US carrier and, backed by a banner declaring ‘Mission Accomplished,’ declared the war to be over
If this is the sort of peace that the United States brings to the world, Heaven help us.
Let us hope that the next president is less myopic.

A Touch of Deja Vu

2008-06-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

Visiting the United Kingdom nowadays, I get the strange feeling that I’ve been in this sort of environment before.
I can’t say it’s a sense of reliving a former pleasurable experience – rather more a sense of unease and insecurity.
And it was not until the other day that I recognised where I had felt the same way in the past.
Many years ago, for my sins, I spent a good deal of time in the Eastern Bloc countries. In most of these, life was pretty good for a visitor from the west, especially if he had a spare pair of jeans to flog on the streets of Moscow.
But there was one notable exception.
The People’s Paradise of East Germany presided over by Mr. Honegger.
There, every citizen spied upon his fellows, uniformed Stasis were on every corner and a slew of pettifogging rules and regulations ensured that almost every citizen became a quasi criminal.
Reading the current crop of offences committed by the beleaguered citizens of Britain reminded me of that former communist state.
In the UK, I fear that at any moment some CCTV camera will catch me breaking some cockamanie by-law that will end up in court.
Failure to swipe one’s Oyster card correctly, even though the correct fare is offered, is a case for the courts. Standing in a First Class rail carriage is equally heinous, even though the company, who have gladly accepted the exorbitant fare, have failed to provide adequate seating.
Tourists better adopt the same procedure that applied behind the Iron Curtain and keep their cameras securely packed away. They might be accused of being terrorists and, if the government have their way, be incarcerated for six weeks whilst the authorities find out that they aren’t.
The nation is now overwhelmed with little Hitlers, all eager to impose their pseudo authority, indicated by a dayglo jacket and a clipboard, on a strangely quiescent public.
And, what a surprise! A government hotline set-up to enable neighbour to spy upon neighbour to report tax cheating has been abused.
It’s a pity George Orwell’s not around to write a sequel to 1984.
But I suppose there is little better to be expected from a government that rate traffic wardens above soldiers when it comes to rewarding them.
After all, the enemy rarely spit upon soldiers.

Sorry, Wally.

2008-06-09T10:14:00.000+02:00

In my peregrinations around the streets of London, a city of endless fascination for me in spite of its present troubles, I take a keen interest in the little blue plaques affixed to houses indicating that they were, in the past, the place of residence of some person of note.
Most of the names I recognise, but some, such as ‘The Honourable Twistleton ‘Thumper’ Cholmondley lived here, 1779- 1801’ are beyond me. And I suggest that most people feel the same way, possibly other than descendants of the aforesaid Thumper.
Thus it seems strange that the group who allocate such things – I assume The Committee for the Sticking Up of Blue Plaques on the Houses of Notables – have rejected a request to place one on the former residence of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, in Bryanston Square.
The house in Bryanston Square played a pivotal role in the future of Britain and, love her or hate her, Wallis Simpson may well have proved a bigger blessing to Britain than the Lend-Lease programme by removing a rather vacillating although likeable King from the chessboard.
A popular ditty of London kids at the time ran:
“Hark, the Herald Angels sing,
Mrs. Simpson’s pinched our King.”
The reasons touted for the rejection are specious and based upon the idle gossip and speculation surrounding the Duke and Duchess.
As were many others, they were initially in thrall to the apparent successes of the Nazi regime.
The committee cite the rumour that Wallis was not only the lover of the German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, but that she was also guilty of passing along state secrets as reasons for the rejection.
There is not a shred of reliable evidence to support either supposition.
Wallis had little love for the Royal family from which she was so rigorously excluded and, for their part, the Royal family returned the compliment with knobs on.
But once war had broken out, both Duke and Duchess forsook all connections with the Nazi regime and David ranged himself wholeheartedly alongside his brother, if not without maintaining a constant bleating over the refusal to call Wallis Her Highness.
For their part, the Germans occasionally fantasised about restoring the Duke to the throne once they had subjugated Britain but there is not the slightest indication that Wallis was ever considered in the Mata Hari role.
In fact, she worked remarkably hard in The Bahamas providing much needed recreational facilities for the airmen stationed there by running a canteen and social centre.
That most diligent researcher of Wallis, her biographer Michael Bloch, although admittedly an ardent Duchessophile, had unrestricted access to her documents whilst he was working as the amanuensis of her attorney, the formidable Maitre Suzanne Blum. He found nothing that would give any credibility to any such stories of treachery.
The Blue Plaque Committee might do well to consult historians rather than tabloid newspapers when making their decisions.
However, I can relieve them of one decision for the future.
The flat I occupied as a student in Brook Mews North, Lancaster Gate, is no more. I suppose they could stick a plaque on the pub on the corner, however.

Bravo, Boris!

2008-06-03T08:15:00.000+02:00

If the new mayor of London wanted a ringing endorsement of his ban on alcohol on London Transport, he certainly got one at the weekend.
The mindless display of blatantly anti-social behaviour and hooliganism exhibited by the morons who engaged in the pre-ban party just served to indicate how valid his argument was.
Those who participated must be proud that, thanks to YouTube, their display of British culture and good manners has been flashed around the world, a salutary reminder to prospective tourists that, for the nonce, they would do well to avoid the septic isle until sanity is restored and civilisation, lacking for some years now, has been re-instituted.
The alleged organiser of the affair says he is fearful for his job. If he worked for me, he would have nothing to fear since he would no longer have a job. Customers of his present employer, The Royal Bank of Scotland, must be comforted to know that their bank employs such sensible staff.
But it does serve to put Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ into perspective.
That appears to have been quite a pleasant evening by comparison.

Hay Fever

2008-05-29T10:13:00.000+02:00

The Hay Festival celebrates its twenty first anniversary this year, a cause for some celebration.
Envisaged as a get together for the folks who write books and those that read them, it has been an admirable venue for all those that value literature and the arts.
This year has been no exception with the appearance of many literary lions to talk about and read excerpts from their works. This is what the fair was all about, I thought.
So why, oh why, did the organisers feel it was necessary to inject ‘personalities’ into the mix?
The former president Jimmy Carter for instance. An admirable man in many ways but his presence seems to have been solely to put the boot in to poor old George Bush and have little to do with literature or the arts.
Then there was Jamie Oliver, a cook, I understand but one whose literary abilities I had not recognised. And I suspect that my mum cooked just as well.
Next the obnoxious blowhard, Jeremy Clarkson, whose proud boast of having exceeded the speed limit by a substantial margin on a public road should surely result in his having his collar felt by the local fuzz.
Arthur Scargill made a cameo appearance but what artistic value he brought to the event escapes me – and a good many others.
No doubt Cherie Blair mounted the podium to explain just how hard it was to make ends meet with four mortgages now that her husband was no longer being subsidised by the British taxpayer.
And last but not least, the walrus moustachioed John Bolton was wheeled out for reasons best known to the organisers. Here the high spot must have been the attempted citizen’s arrest by the Guardian newspaper’s resident loony, George Monbiot. Not that I disagree with his motives but assassination might have been more dramatic and effective.
For all the above personalities, none of whom have any real connection with literature or the arts, there is a corner of Hyde Park reserved for them. A literary festival is not the place for them to mount their personal soapboxes.
And it seems there is now something of a backlash from those who feel that the festival has lost its way.
No longer held in the town of Hay on Wye but at a spot well outside the town, it is being challenged by those who wish to return to the original format.
The ‘Real Hay Festival’ deserves the support of all those who are interested in literature – and not in the opinions of paid for celebrity guests.

Waxing Lyrical

2008-05-28T10:07:00.000+02:00

There’s nothing much wrong with Miss Amy Winehouse’s lyrics that any self-respecting hack from Tin Pan Alley would turn his or her nose up at. But why an eminent university would have thought that they were worth including as an exam question is another matter.
The danger is that, by including them in the same breath as Sir Walter Ralegh, her fans might be deluded into thinking that she was a great lyricist.
Her work rates comfortably with the average puerile contributions of the majority of writers of popular songs, but why the university should have selected hers in preference to some of the legendary great lyricists, beats me.
You only have to compare her rather pointless ditty with the inspired output of Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Allan Jay Lerner, Noel Coward and hundreds of others to see the paucity of talent in her offering.
It does, of course, make the answer to the exam question pretty easy.
Sir Walter gets eight out of ten.
Miss Winehouse, one out of ten. Should try harder.

Living dangerously

2008-05-27T08:34:00.001+02:00

Am I alone in seeing the inadequacies of the revered British Health and Safety Gestapo?
I appreciate that many of their staff are doing their very best to bring joylessness to Britain. Banning carnivals from hanging banners across streets, stopping the erection of two foot deep paddling pools and advocating the chopping down of monkey puzzle trees, those survivors from an antediluvian age, since the needles might prick some one (early man was not sufficiently advanced to recognise this threat) are fine examples, but do they go far enough?
On a recent visit to that sceptr’d isle, set in the silver sea, I could not fail to spot that, as Shakespeare had pointed out, Britain is surrounded by ocean. And that, even worse, much of this is accessible to the public. Sometimes, rather than a gentle slope down to the waves, there is an appalling drop from the top of a cliff.
How on earth this has been missed by the authorities I know not, but presumably they haven’t read their Shakespeare or perhaps been on holiday in Britain lately.
As a matter of urgency, surely the entire coastline should be protected by a ten foot high breeze block wall with occasional slots for viewing purposes so the public could get a glimpse of the dangers they were being shielded from.
The publicity given to the recent cheese rolling contest must serve as a wake-up call to the Elf’nSafety people to get on their bikes (with helmets, of course) and hurry on down to stop such madness. After a few hundred years, it’s about time to do away with such heathen entertainment and get people back home where they belong in front of their television sets and with their Nintendos (having read the warnings on the instructions, of course).
My cousin, who is a writer and broadcaster in the United States, once wrote that, on unpacking some piece of newly purchased equipment, he read a warning that on no account must he put the plastic bag over his head. As he pointed out, up until then, the idea had never occurred to him.
Perhaps an embargo on the British walking the streets in a casual and haphazard fashion would cut down on many unfortunate accidents and incidents.
As the deputy Prime Minister has so ably demonstrated, it’s perfectly safe -provided one takes adequate precautions in the shape of a stab proof vest and a few accompanying police officers.
Health and Safety really need to address this by supplying such material – especially to innocent visitors.

Pastures New

2008-05-24T09:17:00.001+02:00

Having just returned from a few days in the Promised Land, you know, the one promised by T. Blair and G. Brown, I can understand why so many of its citizens are fleeing the coop. That number is dwarfed by those that would like to but are unable to do so for various reasons.
But the problem is where on earth do you flee to?
Australia would be a good bet I suppose and the United States citizens certainly give Brits a warm welcome, but the days of:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

are long gone. In their place is a mind boggling bureaucracy that might deter any would-be immigrant.
Then there is the EU, many states of which are certainly attractive. If you have been offered a job there and have the appropriate language skills, they have much to offer over Britain which is rapidly approaching a state of anarchy.
But for those simply yearning for greener pastures there are enormous problems.
Firstly, many have obtained their knowledge and admiration for the continental way of life from a brief holiday sojourn – a far cry from living as a resident.
The problems facing them at home are all too often merely transferred to another jurisdiction with the added disadvantage of being in a different language.
Then there is the life style. Continental living, whichever state you choose, is not the British way of life and few adapt readily to the change. Imports of Marmite and PG Tips plus get togethers with other expats do not a life style make.
And Britain remains a wonderful country in spite of all its current problems.
I spent time in a small and attractive market town in East Anglia. On remarking how pleasant I found it, the response was “Ah, but you should see it at night!”
Now with the overwhelming unhappiness of the electorate with their government, with a Prime Minister who is in place, not at the behest of the people, but by a form of political nepotism, and with the rule of law now subservient to the rule of political correctness, health and safety and absurdities of human rights, is it not time for the electorate to take their country back from its inept government?
Governments in democracies are meant to be the servants of the people. The present incumbents clearly treat their citizens as a rather productive cash cow. How many former Prime Ministers have amassed a multi million pound property empire? Winston Churchill had to have his country house paid for by the generosity of a friend.
Rather than leaving a badly listing ship, it would be more productive to stay on and fight for the Britain that has been lost during the past years.
A bloodless revolution would not be the worst idea – and paying politicians a reasonable salary to ensure that they remain pro bono publico – and nothing more.

Plonking Platitudes

2008-05-16T09:05:00.000+02:00

Reading the transcript of Gordon Brown’s latest speech led me to thinking that all politicians should be required to take a practical examination in the art of speechwriting before being allowed into office.
Quite when it became de rigeur for politicians to employ speechwriters I am not sure. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s homely fireside chats were crafted by a team of writers that included J.K.Galbraith. He commented that he and his fellow scribes would listen with interest to see which of their ‘bon mots’ had been included. Galbraith was, of course, a writer of some considerable ability and this was reflected in FDR’s speeches.
Winston Churchill scorned any assistance as much as he spurned the platitudes that trip so readily off the tongues of modern politicians.
Don’t they ever read the stuff before they get up to speak?
This is a bit rich coming from someone who, once upon a time, earned his crust as a government spokesman, but in my defence I would say that it was for a former Commonwealth country that needed all the help it could get!
My partner in crime was a local man, and the finest exponent of the words and works of William Shakespeare that I have met before or since. If we were guilty of any platitudes in our work, they would most certainly have been Shakespearean ones.
Now it seems that the wordsmiths resort to the Thesaurus of Hackneyed Phrases when composing for their masters – and it shows.
My old English professor swore that he could tell which of his students had access to Roget’s Thesaurus just by glancing at the submissions.
I wonder if Gordon Brown, whom I understand is a well read man, ever contemplated replacing his weasel words with something on the lines of “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ ’”
Even a little plagiarisation would have worked wonders.

The Fruits of Failure

2008-05-13T09:38:00.000+02:00

It would be manifestly unfair to assess the seaworthiness of the Good Ship SS Great Britain through the distorting mirrors of the media.
But, good grief, if only ten per cent of the horror stories I read are true, it’s about time that the citizenry woke up and shook some commonsense into their so-called leaders.
There is something seriously amiss with a nation that can provide shelter, jobs and accommodation to foreigners, many illegal, at the expense of their taxpaying citizens.
Whose youth are skewered regularly in the streets within sight of a cctv camera but out of sight of a policeman.
Where, when called to deal with a homicidal gunman, the police are then criticised for firing too many shots. Presumably they should have waited until he had killed a few passers-by.
Where a man is thrown into a police cell for tossing an apple core but where a family, terrorised by an intruder, are told that there are no police available to deal with it.
Where executives of companies are awarded ‘performance bonuses’ as the fruits of failure.
Where drunken, drug taking ‘celebrities’ are idolised daily in the press and often given preferential treatment in the courts for their actions.
And, where Health and Safety regulations prevent, amongst a whole slew of perfectly normal activities that have been around for centuries, your rubbish is not being taken away because your dustbin is too full.
The list is endless.
How this can have happened, in just a few short years to what was, perhaps, the finest nation in the world, is debatable.
But a clue can be found in the string of obnoxious, self-serving auto-biographies now reigning down upon the public from former ministers and their associates, who are receiving ample rewards for their disloyalty.
There is, it would seem, little honour amongst thieves, now all so eager to distance themselves from the navigation department of the ship of state.
The people of Britain should take note of the chunks of ice falling onto their deck.
With a government, led by (incredibly in a democracy) an unelected Prime Minister, who are clearly incapable of even re-arranging the deck chairs, it’s every man and woman for himself.
Which is, I suppose, how a former Prime Minister can add yet another expensive property to his portfolio whilst his former citizens, whom he was supposed to be serving, see theirs being re-possessed.
It’s the fruits of failure once again.

Down the Tube

2008-05-08T09:23:00.001+02:00

If the new mayor of London does nothing more, he will have earned my gratitude by banning booze on London’s transport system.
But the enthralling question is: why did it take so long for someone to see this as a problem?
Perhaps the answer can be found in the ‘celebrity news’ columns of the tabloid newspapers where, on a daily basis, there are pictures of nonentities stumbling out of night clubs, drunk or drugged or involved in other embarrassing escapades.
“Too much tipple almost topples Kelly Osbourne after a wild night out” and
“The trouble with Peaches and why I fear she'll end up like her mother Paula Yates,” are but two of the headlines in one tabloid this morning – and this is before we get to the pictures of Amy Winehouse which much surely be enough to put anybody off their morning cornflakes.
So getting drunk and taking drugs is in fashion, encouraged by the media of the masses. And not surprisingly, many young people see nothing wrong in this and find no reason not to emulate them.
I must say, Pete Doherty looked remarkably chipper and almost civilised on release from jail the other day. Wormwood Scrubs must suit him and perhaps a longer stay should be arranged. It’s a pity that Mr. Johnson’s admirable incentive will be proscribed by a lack of suitable accommodation for infringers.
Last time I rode on a late night tube train, I reckoned that half of my fellow travellers would have been better off sobering up after a night in the local cop shop.
Why Anglo-Saxons feel this need to deprive themselves of their senses on a regular basis is a mystery to most Continentals. We’re not without our fair share of alcoholics, of course, but public drunks are carefully tended by the Gendarmerie here in France, long noted for their tenderness and compassion when it comes to dealing with malefactors. They have a deep rooted and highly effective system for discouraging repeat offenders.
And, as far as I’m aware, unlike the British police who have The Independent Police Complaints Commission to face the moment they take any positive action, the Gendarmes merely retire to their nearest post for a quick Gauloise having dealt with the situation – no questions asked.
But the good news is that finally the elaborate CCTV system that monitors Britons throughout their daily lives has finally produced a positive result.
No, silly, it did not prevent any crime being perpetrated, but it did lead the owners of a lost cat to find their pet.
So all those millions of pounds invested in the system have finally paid off.

Rewriting History

2008-05-04T10:01:00.001+02:00

If we might paraphrase W.S. Gilbert for a moment, ‘An Historian’s Lot is Not an ‘Appy One.’ Not, at least, if you want to have a best-seller on your hands.
History is defined as the study of past events and, as every schoolboy or schoolgirl knows, was usually a pretty good period to catch up on one’s beauty sleep.
So history books tend to be for historians, amateur and professional, and as Peter Cook would have said, ‘There’s not a lot about.’
Novelists such as Jean Plaidy and Phillipa Gregory among others have mined a vein of gold by combining fact with fiction and, to their eternal credit, managed it without doing too much damage to the historical environment.
But the plain old historian wanting to boost his sales can sometimes be led into the devious path of deception. As in novels, where sex sells, the historian is sometimes tempted to include uncorroborated scandal and myth to spice up his work.
The classic example is undoubtedly that of the Hitler Diaries, an episode that brought much grief to the eminent historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper. Unwisely, he testified to their authenticity without bothering to do much forensic work. Perhaps it was understandable that his enthusiasm led him astray in this case.
World leaders invariably kept diaries or penned memoirs if only to preserve their place in history and he reasoned that Hitler must have done the same. But Hitler hadn’t. And those of us who have read the transcripts of his table talk must feel relieved that Mein Kampf was his first and last effort.
But now serious doubts have been cast upon the authenticity of some documents lodged with that invaluable, and thought to be incorruptible, source, The National Archives. At least 29 documents from 12 separate files have been identified as forgeries inserted into its records.
The forged documents all relate to alleged British perfidy in the Second World War. The archive says the papers had supported sensational allegations by Martin Allen, a self-styled “eminent” historian, in three recent books. These include claims that the Duke of Windsor was a traitor and that British agents had murdered Hitler’s SS boss, Heinrich Himmler, on Winston Churchill’s orders as well as accusing the Queen’s uncle of helping the Germans to conquer France and defeat the British army in the early stages of the Second World War.
Such claims ensured that sales of his ‘histories’ were highly successful in the popular market, one being nominated for ‘Book of the Year.’
Yet every one was based almost entirely on forged documents that had been inserted surreptitiously into the archives.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Allen denies having had anything to do with it. But it seems strange that no other ‘historian’ has used any of this undoubtedly titillating material.
An authority on the Second World War, Sir Max Hastings said: “It is hard to imagine actions more damaging to the cause of preserving the nation’s heritage than wilfully forging documents designed to alter our historical record.”

Brief Lives

2008-04-28T09:27:00.000+02:00

The news that a Harry Potter book may be a study item for exams in the UK is, perhaps, a dumbledore down too far.
With all the vast and varied range of fine books that have been written in the English language, to have selected a popular but not especially distinguished work, is an example of muddled thinking on the part of those in charge of edukayshun.
The argument is that the book will be easy to read and thus encourage the student to read more. Probably it will – another Harry Potter book to swell the coffers of Bloomsbury and Rowling.
But the whole point of such reading assignments is surely to broaden the literary horizon of the student.
However, things could be worse. They could have made it John Prescott’s biography.
But hang on a minute. Isn’t a biography a history of a life? The Oxford Dictionary says it is.
But it seems that dear old John, whilst recounting his eating habits in great detail, has seen fit to exclude the part of his life that was really the only one of much interest to the outside world. No, not the croquet playing bit, you know – the other.
It’s like writing a history of the twentieth century and forgetting to mention the world wars.
No doubt this example will encourage many other public figures to rush into print, now they see that honesty is no longer a sine qua non for their life stories.
Oh dear!

It's an Ill Wind..........

2008-04-21T08:29:00.000+02:00

It must have been with much chagrin that many of the Francophobes of the British Isles found that they could not blame the perfume wafting over them the past few days on their nearest neighbours. They did their best by referring to it as ‘Le Stink,’ in preference to ‘Der Stink,’ rather in the same way as ‘Gallic Pride’ is used, always in exclamation marks, as though having pride is something to be ashamed of.
But there was an even less salubrious breeze rustling the kilts and sporrans north of the border.
According to Hugh Cheape, a leading Gaelic historian and expert piper: “The written and received history of the great Highland bagpipe reflects in many of its parts the triumph of sentiment over fact ... an orthodoxy has emerged from surprisingly modest origins in the first half of the 19th century and it was elaborated by repetition, speculation and guesswork in the second.”
Mr. Cheape, whom I am sure knows of what he speaks, strikes me as being a brave man to have come clean.
Apparently feeling that the memory of Bonnie Prince Charlie needed a bit of a lift, two loyal pipe makers crafted what can only be described as the Airbus A 380 of pipes in the early 19th. century. This was designed so that only those who had spent an apprenticeship tossing cabers and whose legs were modelled on hefty tree trunks could perform with any ease on the instrument, the behemoth of blow.
Pipes had, of course, been around for centuries but were hardly the gargantuan model now on display, requiring lungs like blacksmith’s bellows to operate.
Queen Victoria was delighted. She seems to have been easy to please and commanded a piper to play every morning outside her bedroom window.
We have a similar performance here by the feral cat population but find that a bucket of water and a half brick usually take care of it.
Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was about as Scottish as spaghetti bolognese, arrived on the Isle of Eriskay and was fortuitously befriended by a Piper MacNeil from Barra who was visiting at the time. It now seems that his pipes would have been little more elaborate that the sort of pibrochs that are still to be seen at the festivals in Brittany today, the biniou, although history says that an air for pibroch and bagpipes, ‘My King has Landed at Moidart’ was number one in the charts for a while shortly after.
Apart from royalty, bagpipes have had a mixed reception down south, where they are generally thought of as an ill wind that no one blows good. In Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat,’ he gives a graphic description of the trials of young Jefferson attempting to learn the machine.
The main trouble for we Sassenachs is identifying a melody and not confusing it with the tuning up bit.
Sir Henry Wood summed it up when he said that personally he had no aversion to the bagpipes but he did feel that they were heard to best effect from the far side of a mountain.
In his new book, to be published by the National Museums of Scotland, Mr Cheape claims the Highland bagpipe was never used to lead the Scots clans into battle against the English, nor was it used to play laments to fallen chieftains.
He added: “We have to admit that the great Highland bagpipe that we now know was part of this invention of tradition.”

It's Not Easy Being Green

2008-04-17T09:05:00.000+02:00

Kermit the Frog was so right when he sang his mournful little ditty.
And yesterday I found out just how hard it was when, quite inadvertently and without malice aforethought, I contributed my mite to the demise of man.
Or so my bank tells me.
It happened thus.
As many of my clients pay, when they feel up to it, in the coinage of Her Britannic Majesty, I maintain a modest Sterling account with a UK bank.
Thanks to the Internet, this I can administer on-line, albeit a little tediously due to the precautions taken to avoid it being rifled by unscrupulous bodies. This I am happy to accept as the price of convenience although I have my own strategy for avoiding fraud which is by never having enough in the account to warrant the most desperate scammer troubling with it.
However, I felt that it would be handy to have a debit card by which the modest funds could be accessed when needed. The bank’s website offered credit cards, which I avoid like the plague, and it was only whilst waiting on line for some transaction to take place that I spotted a very small item mentioning that debit cards were available.
I suppose they’re not much of a money spinner for the bank since there was no indication of how to obtain one.
So I fired of a message via the website service, optimistically labelled ‘Help,’ and asked how I could obtain one. Apparently this was beyond ‘Help’s’ area of expertise for I received a message from the delightfully named Sasikala Tnirumoorthy suggesting that I telephoned the Business Card centre on an 0845 number. Apart from the fact that this is far from being a free call and does in fact contribute to the bank’s coffers, my service here in France does not allow such calls.
There was then a bit of a lull in affairs, so I enquired, quite politely, that surely in some sequestered nook of the bank there would still be some relic of a bygone era who could write to me.
By now the shades of night were falling fast and there was a new name carrying the banner marked ‘Help’
He wrote “I provided you with a phone number as it is a quick and convenient way for you to receive a card for your account and is also better for the environment than sending out paperwork. What I have done now is sent you a Debit Card application form to your correspondence address, which should be with you within the next 10 working days.”
So you see, by asking for a letter I have upset their Green Credentials.
And this is the bank that, every month on the same day, send me a statement of my account plus a statement of the interest earned – in separate envelopes.
I’m tempted to alert them but they’ll probably just ask me to call an 0845 number.
So you see, it’s not easy being green.

Hogwarts Ahoy!

2008-04-16T07:53:00.001+02:00

There is something singularly unedifying in the sight of one of the world’s wealthiest authors traipsing into a court room to do battle with a harmless geeky fan who merely wanted to publish a lexicon of her work. Money does have its privileges since Miss Rowling requested that she should not have to come eyeball to eyeball with her naïve fan, a request that seems to have been rightly denied. However, she does have a ‘special room’ for her to retire to after the stress of her court appearance. Let’s hope her loyal and now litigated against fan has the same courtesy shown him.
It seems Miss Rowling is upset. She herself had intended to write the sort of lexicon of her Harry Potter books that she is now attempting to stop and would have donated the proceeds to charity. She feels ‘violated,’ it was “an act of betrayal” and she was unable to put pencil to paper for months, her creative juices having been cut off in mid-flow by this dastardly deed. It had, she said “decimated my creative work over the last month.” She would cry – except that it’s not British to do so.
I know exactly how she feels. Not so long ago, I was at work on my definitive history to be entitled, ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’ Proceeds were to have been donated to the SRG (Society for Retired Gladiators). I had already got as far as the part dealing with Libanius, the Sophist of Antioch, when a friend said, “’Ere, it’s been done already.”
And so it had been, by some bloke called Gibbon.
Well, I felt violated, betrayed and, not being British, shed a few tears. My creative work was decimated for a month. I also found that this Gibbon fellow was not worth suing having been dead for a while.
Undoubtedly Miss Rowling, who can probably afford expensive legal counsel, is correct that, in the eyes of the law, a certain amount of plagiarism has taken place. In my library I have a book which consists almost entirely of quotes from Winston Churchill, a rather better writer than JKR, dare I suggest. There has been no suggestion of taking the compiler to court.
But in this case, as so often, the law is an ass – and so is Miss Rowling, who has metamorphosed remarkably from looking like a rumpled bag lady to celebrity status, complete with wardrobe malfunctions that allow the tabloid newspapers to feature her bosom.
If Mr. Vander Ark’s book were to have any effect at all, it could only be to increase the sales of Miss Rowling’s work.
Perhaps the many fans of Harry Potter could now stand up and tell the author, whom they have made unbelievably rich, to go back to Hogwarts and learn something about public relations.
Good luck to Mr. Vander Ark.

A Way with Words

2008-04-14T09:49:00.001+02:00

It’s difficult to find anything good to say about Robert Mugabe but if there had been a verbal jousting contest last week between him and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, there’s little doubt who would have won the prize. Or in this case, the coconut.
For whilst Mr. Brown was castigating his ungrateful electorate, telling them that they would not recognise the booming economy he had engineered for them if it were handed to them on a skewer with Béarnaise sauce, Mr. Mugabe stuck to a telling one-liner.
Gordon Brown speaks from the Roget’s Thesaurus of Parliamentary Platitudes, published a few years ago by the firm of Wriggle and Squirm (edited by A. Blair).
Mr. Mugabe tells it like it is, in this case for once. Brown, he says, is a tiny dot on this world.
He would have got more applause had he used the word blot but one can’t have everything.
It is not, perhaps, quite in the same rich vein as the words used to the Duke of Windsor when he was Governor of The Bahamas. Remonstrating that Alfred du Maurigny had not addressed him as befitted a member of the Royal Family, du Maurigny replied:
“Sir, you are but the governor of a pimple on the arse of the British Empire.”
Not surprisingly, the Duke tried to have him hanged subsequently on a trumped up murder charge.
But Mugabe was right. Brown is proving himself to be not only a dot on the horizon but a pretty insignificant one at that.
Rhodesia, if we may revert to its proper name for a moment, was one of the better products of an often flawed colonial empire. It was both loyal and productive, even with the antagonistic Ian Smith in charge. Replacing him with a repulsive bully such as Mr. Mugabe has proved to be, was one of the classic errors of judgement of a former Labour government.
The population, both white and black, have been suffering for years under this tyrant with barely a murmur of complaint from Britain.
Now Mr. Brown has searched to find the right words. He is a well read man and one would have thought that he could do better. No hint of positive action as was taken against an equally ruthless tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
He said the situation in Zimbabwe was “appalling” and that the world’s patience was “running thin.”
But of course there’s no oil in Zimbabwe.

Olympian Folly

2008-04-12T14:55:00.001+02:00

In ancient Greece there wasn’t much in the way of popular entertainment. Most of the plays were on the gloomy side although Aristophanes was good for a laugh and still is.
It seems most of the intelligentsia sat around philosophising with an occasional chat on the state of the Hemlock crop that year.
So it was not surprising that the younger and more frivolous members of society looked for a way to blow off steam. Olympia seemed to be a likely place, quiet and out of the way, today’s modern rock concert venue, and so it was there that the boys set out to have fun.
The Olympic Games were born.
Wisely, they excluded WAGS (Women of Ancient Greece) from the festivities and the whole thing went with a swing for a few hundred years until the Romans(who had hastily found Christianity) twigged that it was all a benefit event for Zeus, who not being a Christian, was thereby excluded from sponsorship and the event fizzled out.
For a good many centuries the world was left in peace, until at the beginning of the 19th. Century, a Greek poet, tired of scratching out stanzas, took it into his head to revive the games.
Those of you who thought that Much Wenlock in Shropshire was a sleepy, behind the times sort of a place should think again. By 1850, they had their own Olympic Games.
Worse was to follow for a Frenchman, Baron de Coubertin, (and ardent Francophile though I am, I feel he has a lot to answer for) proposed making it an International event.
And the world has not been at peace since.
Why nations should vie with each other to build bigger, more expensive and ultimately useless stadiums for athletes when they could be putting the funds to some better use for their citizens, is a mystery.
The event causes turmoil, back biting and dissent every time and the British taxpayer will long rue the cost of yet another whitest of white elephants arising in the swampy paradise of Stratford, E15. They’ll be a long time paying – and for what?
Probably the happiest man concerned is the mayor of Paris, whose city was lucky enough to dodge the bullet.
Perhaps the best thing to emerge from the games in modern times was Leni Riefenstahl’s magnificent film of the Berlin Olympics.
Pity it was sponsored by a dictator.
But then Britain has an unelected Prime Minister which is, I suppose, the next best thing.
And if Beijing have a film made of their efforts, the sub-titles should be good for a laugh anyway.

Popular Taste

2008-04-11T10:56:00.001+02:00

Something of an oxymoron perhaps, but it does explain why a respected UK publishing house has elected to dump all their more serious forthcoming books in preference to an output of chicklit, misery memoirs and ‘celebrity’ biographies.
Looking at the bookshelves labelled ‘biography,’ it seems the stores are stretching the definition of the word. It’s hard to see that Amy Winehouse, Pete Docherty and a good many other luminaries of the pop and sports world have had much of a life to write about so far. In many cases, ‘get a life’ might be more appropriate.
But from the point of view of the publishers, it’s not hard to see their reasoning.
Although it’s a point missed by many frustrated authors, they are in the business to make money and as such are driven by consumer demand. And a glance at the popular tabloid newspapers must be very reassuring to them.
News is buried deep in an effluent of chit chat about nonentities, most of the female variety having IQs that are exceeded by their chest measurements, and charting their unsteady progression, often recounting how hungover they are having visited x number of bars and night clubs.
It’s hardly surprising that the young have a drinking problem in Britain. And that’s in addition to racy accounts of their marital, extra marital and just plain one night stands. Great role models.
Every country has its tabloids, France has one called, rather appropriately I feel, BlaBlaBla and America has its National Enquirer, but nowhere are they read as avidly and by such a wide spectrum of the population as in Britain. Neither are they regarded as ‘news’ papers.
And so the publishing business has to go with the flow.
And a pretty dismal and sewer-like stream it is.
Joseph Bazalgette managed to clean up the drains of London and prevented a further ‘Great Stink’ in the 19th. century.
Cleaning up the popular press might be a start for Britain in this one.

Happy Families

2008-04-07T08:34:00.000+02:00

In the middle of the 19th. Century, John Jacques II, in between inventing the games of tiddlywinks, snakes and ladders and ludo, came up with Happy Families. It was, in those days, a pretty straight forward business.
Miss Bun, the Baker's daughter was unlikely to have one in the oven nor would Mr. Bung the Brewer have been caught selling cut price lager to teenagers. They were, indeed, happy families.
Britain is now one of the nations that, with the tacit encouragement of government, has largely abandoned the family unit in favour of an arrangement more usually seen in the feral cat population.
The social benefits of this become obvious when a mother with a brood of children from a diverse range of fathers can afford to take a six month vacation in India on the benefits provided for her by the rest of the taxpayers. A social paradise indeed.
And other mothers apparently swap partners with the same regularity as they change their underwear, although, judging from the unsavoury pictures in the tabloid newspapers, this may not be all that often.
It's hardly surprising to find so many teenagers hanging about on street corners of an evening. If they went home, they would probably not recognise the man of the house.
John Jacques II would have his work cut out for him to re-invent his game in Britain today.

Blow Up

2008-04-06T10:48:00.001+02:00

That a group of terrorists should be standing trial in London accused of planning to blow up a substantial number of people strikes me as being odd. The trial is forecast to last six months and will therefore be a pretty sizeable expense to the tax payer (otherwise referred to as the 'blowupees' as opposed to the terrorists, the 'blowupers' ).
As most of the accused have already made their martyrdom videos which show quite clearly their intentions, surely there is a prima facie case for locking them up without trial and throwing away the key. Thus saving the taxpayer and proposed blowupees a lot of dosh as well as their lives.
But a more humane solution would be, of course, to grant them their wish and let them blow themselves up in some suitable spot such as a remote part of the Yorkshire Moors or even in that blessed plot so admired by Hazel Blears, Milton Keynes.
During the war, you know, the last really, really big one, I was sent to school in England.
It was the time of the big bang or rather the time of many big bangs and I and my chums spent many happy hours trying to emulate our elders. Modern kids, deprived of chemistry lessons, would have found themselves at something of a loss but I and my explosive cohorts had a remarkable degree of success. (my father wisely had me set up my laboratory in a disused Anderson shelter at the end of the garden).
We were, I can safely say, experts on producing sizeable bangs from the simplest household materials.
But had we been asked to produce the results from the materials we could smuggle on board an aircraft, I feel we would have been confounded.
Thus I think that, rather than wasting the time of the court, the accused should be allowed to take their materials on board a disused aircraft parked somewhere out of the way and challenged to blow it up.
Personally, I think they would fail.
But of course the airports would hate to have to get rid of all the jobsworths whose mission in life is to impound your toiletries and generally to make your travelling experience a miserable one..

Celebrity Chefs

2008-04-03T09:37:00.001+02:00

Mr. Gordon Ramsey, who, I understand, was a pretty good chef in a previous life, has opened his restaurant in Paris. Well, not really Paris. It's in the banlieue of Versailles which has lost a lot of its appeal since the Sun King died.
He (Ramsey, not the Sun King) is incensed that the notoriously testy food critic of Le Figaro has excoriated his efforts already.
“But he hasn't even tasted the food” cries Ramsey, for once composing a sentence that doesn't have to be filled with asterisks.
He misses the point. France has many indifferent chefs, many good one and some very famous ones.
What it does not have is 'Celebrity Chefs.' The French have this quaint old fashioned idea that a chef's place is in the kitchen – cooking by proxy is not their idea of how a restaurant should be run.
When I go to eat at one of our local establishments, Hotel de Paris (it's not in Paris but never mind) I can rest assured that not only will my meal be prepared personally by M. Didier Jarnot, le patron, but that it will be dished up by some member of his family.
In my village, at the one eating place which does a three course lunch for a hefty 12 euros, you will quite likely be seated by the chef himself. That's assuming you can get in, as the place is full to the brim at midday.
There is a daily TV programme where a chef is invited in to show how he prepares his favourite dish. They come from restaurants all over France and, having demonstrated their ability (and some of the recipes are wonderful) they disappear back into the kitchen from whence they came, never to be heard of again – unless you go to their place.
Many years ago in Paris, I used to eat at a little restaurant tucked away in a side street off the Champs Elysses.
Chez Joseph made few concessions to the tourist trade and Joseph would recount fondly of his one claim to fame.
During the war, he was give the dubious accolade of being sufficiently good to have his establishment reserved solely for Wehrmacht officers.
At Christmas 1944, when food was desperately short, he threw a dinner party for his friends. Held in the basement of the restaurant, the festive board was graced by the presence of several chickens, smuggled in from the shores of Lac Leman where one of his resistance friends, Freddie Lowenbach, ran a clandestine poultry farm.
“The birds were excellent,” he recalled, “ But what made them even tastier was that, over our heads, the Wehrmacht officers were celebrating with sausage and sauerkraut.” And, he added, “I was never any good at making sauerkraut.”
When he retired, instead of selling his business, he just closed it down.
“It was my cooking that made it. No one else could do it,” he said.

A Tale of Two Glass Houses

2008-04-01T12:49:00.001+02:00

“But Albert, do you really think it will be ready? We don't want it not to be our finest hour.”
“I'm sure it will be, my dear. It’s the culmination of an amazing project that began with one thought – to make connecting the world simple and pleasurable again. The result is a seamless and upgraded experience unlike any other in the world, and one that’s exclusively for our British people."
“But was it a good idea to have the place made of glass – and designed by a gardener?”
“ I assure you my dear, it will all work perfectly. Might I suggest your pink satin dress and the tiara with diamonds and feathers for the opening ceremony?”
And of course, it all worked perfectly on the opening day. As far as we know, not a single bag was lost.
But that was 150 years ago when the Great Exhibition, with a Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton, a building rather larger than British Airways new Terminal 5, was the envy of the world.
It's a pity that BA and BAA could not avail themselves of the services of Prince Albert, Joseph Paxton and Henry Cole when they decided to build their new terminal.
I bet they'd have got it right first time.
They did at the Great Exhibition in 1861 – and they didn't even get a bonus!

Plane Speaking

2008-03-28T09:03:00.001+01:00

There's going to be quite enough hand wringing over the predictable fiasco at Heathrow's Terminal Five for me not to bother with it. Except to say that one can hardly expect a Spanish operator of shopping malls to have much idea of how to run an airport. And to add that, although the excuse has been that all new airports suffering from teething troubles, this is not a new airport, merely a new terminal.
Since I am fortunate that I rarely have occasion to transit through LHR my greater concern is the news that mobile phones, that bane and boon of modern living, will be allowed to be used on aircraft in flight.
“Hello, yes, it's me. I'm on the plane. No plane, dear. I was on the train last time I called you. Yes, it only took and hour and a half to go through security so I had plenty of time to go round the shops. Just as well as they took my shampoo from me and I had to buy some more – I suppose the stuff they sell here doesn't explode or something.
Yes, it's been a good flight and a charming young man sold me a scratch card so I might win a million euros – or was it a subscription to a mobile phone company? It was hard to understand him as he comes from somewhere in the middle of Europe and his English is not so good.
I think we must be coming into land as I see the houses are getting bigger. Yes, we are. That nice young man has got quite excited about it and is running up and down the aisle. He's so excited that he's forgotten his English and is shouting 'Brace, Brace.' I expect that's Polish for 'we are landing soon' so I better get off.
I'll call you as soon as I'm in the terminal.”
But no doubt the more enterprising carriers will be offering mobile free seats – for a surcharge, of course.

Ta Ta Jaguar

2008-03-26T09:12:00.001+01:00

The news that Tata, the giant Asian conglomerate, are buying Land Rover and Jaguar must come as something of a relief to their UK workers. At all events, it will ensure a competent management is in charge, unlike the fiasco that surrounded the Rover company.
But it can hardly be good news for the Jaguar Fan Club.
“I say, old boy, what sort of motor are you driving these days?”
“A what? Tata! Never heard of it.” And the poor Tata owner will be shunned at the club and treated like a leper.
And John Prescott will never be the same when he is referred to as 'Two Tata Prescott.'
The original Jaguar was made by the SS Company, whose initials stood for Swallow Sidecar. After the war, in view of the unfortunate connotation of SS, the name was changed to simply Jaguar. But they might just as well have kept the SS bit as it has come to stand for Sheer Snobbery with the later models.
In America, it was sold as a sort of poor man's Rolls Royce and I well recall seeing a group of my fellow passengers clustered round one in the parking lot of Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
It was a dark and dirty night. “But it won't start,” they cried.
Gently I explained that this was one of the loveable quirks of the marque and that the Jaguar company had scoured the length and breadth of the globe to find a maker of electrics that would refuse to operate in conditions of humidity.
Perhaps the best description of Jaguars was that they were cars designed for those who thought they had arrived – but really hadn't.
My apologies to all of you Jaguar owners out there.
Myself, I drive a Clio!

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

2008-03-25T08:54:00.000+01:00

Shakespeare has always been a bit of a bother. Since schoolmasters, and now we must hastily include schoolmistresses to keep out of trouble, found that, with the abolition of corporal punishment, even greater pain could be inflicted by forcing their pupils to read Shakespeare, he's been on slippery ground.
It has resulted in keeping the membership of the 'Friends of the Bard' club within manageable numbers but has produced an upsurge in the rival organisation, the 'Bored by the Bard Club.'
Yet the most illiterate quote him almost daily in their conversation, a trend that has even extended into furthest reaches of the Thames estuary, that well known fountain head of modern English. Many cannot even spell his name but this should hardly be held against them as he was a bit uncertain himself.
Those of us who have grown to appreciate him have always puzzled at where he gained his knowledge from. And especially his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of Venice.
To the best of our knowledge, Ryanair weren't flying there at the time so it's something of a mystery but his descriptions are so vivid that it's hard to believe that they were gleaned from third party sources.
In a new book, Shaul Bassi, a lecturer at Venice University, and the writer Alberto Toso Fei say Shakespeare's insights have such a “local feel” that he must have gained them at first hand.
Possible, but where he fitted such a trip into his busy schedule is another puzzle and it will probably reignite the old arguments as to whether or not he actually wrote the plays.
Unfortunately, in spite of a number of learned biographies on the subject, nobody really knows much about Will and his life.
Nor do many know his plays, which is a pity.
I was fortunate inasmuch as my first exposure was by being taken to the Stratford on Avon theatre to see Julius Caesar, not by having to read him.
And I always thought that about twenty percent of the audience watching Cole Porter's wonderful musical, 'Kiss Me Kate,' were completely baffled by the plot through not knowing their Shakespeare.
But I am sure that Shakespeare himself would have approved of the songs, such as 'I've Come to Wive it Wealthily in Padua.'
After all, that's probably where he landed on Ryanair's flight to Venice.

True Courage

2008-03-22T09:49:00.001+01:00

“Corporal David Hayden has become the first RAF Regt Gunner to be awarded the coveted Military Cross following his outstanding bravery and disregard for his own safety during a sustained fire fight whilst deployed to Basrah in 2007.
Corporal Hayden served in Iraq as a Section Commander on B Flight, Number 1 Squadron RAF Regiment. On 7 August 2007, he was deployed as the second-in-command of a B Flight Multiple patrol, call-sign 20A, during a half-Squadron foot patrol in Al Waki. As his call sign came under intense enemy fire, Corporal Hayden, aided by one of his flight, ran into the open to bring Leading Aircraftsman Beard, who lay grievously wounded, into cover, personally accounting for at least one of the enemy in the process. Although being constantly exposed to hostile fire, Corporal Hayden then carried LAC Beard a further 200 metres to safety. He then returned to his call-sign to rally his men before leading their extrication from the area.
With absolute disregard for his own safety, he repeatedly risked his life in order to rescue a wounded comrade and extract his men from danger.”
These were the plain facts that won David a medal.
But there is far more behind the story of David Hayden, not just of courage in the face of the enemy but a different sort of courage. The courage to make something of a life going terribly wrong.
But for his military career, one not without its stumbles along the way, David would have remained one of the feckless, feral youths that clutter the streets of Britain’s towns today. And nobody is more aware of that than David.
I’ve been engaged to write his story and it will be a pleasure to be able to detail the life of a true celebrity who provides a good example to the young.
Of his award he says:
"I'm honoured to get this award but I dedicate it to my fallen comrades."
And of the uniform? "I'm proud of this uniform because it identifies me as a serviceman, as a protector of the Sovereign.
"I'm proud of it because the RAF Regiment has made me what I am today - a Military Cross winner. And no-one can take that away."
David, after several hazardous tours of duty, is now an instructor back home in the UK.
He says it was the military that turned him from a yob into a hero and made his life worthwhile.
They should have made him a recruiting officer!

Private Lives

2008-03-18T12:44:00.001+01:00

When Rowland Hill came up with the idea of a penny post in 1840 it seemed an idea whose time had come. It certainly beat the foot messenger carrying your billet doux in a cleft stick.
Although I wasn't there at the time, I believe that in the early days it was possible to post a letter in London in the morning and have it delivered in the metropolis in the afternoon. It was also a fair assumption that it would be delivered unopened and unread by any third party and was thus unlikely to appear in the next edition of The Times.
After 150 years of government meddling not only will your letter not be delivered the same day but the chances of it being delivered at all are slim.
So it was not surprising that many turned to the almost instant advantages of E-mail and, foolish electronic virgins that so many of us are, we naively assumed that our private messages would be just that – private.
That one of the beloved Mayor of London's staff should have had the contents of his personal mail blazoned across the pages of a tabloid newspaper was, I suppose, inevitable. The discloser of the information, who in moments of euphoria, refers to himself as a journalist, has had previous experience in such matters. And many would say of the unfortunate aide in question that it couldn't have happened to a better bloke.
But it is the equivalent of rifling someone's mailbox, extracting a letter and steaming it open. It has the advantage of course that you don't have to put the kettle on, just get an obliging geek to do the dirty work for you.
Why this is not a criminal offence beats me.
But it is just an extension of the intrusion into private life that is evident everywhere. I understand that there are still a couple glens in the Highlands of Scotland that are unmonitored by CCTV cameras along with a few spots in the Yorkshire Moors that are still lacking this invaluable piece of kit. But elsewhere it is a great comfort to know that, as you are being beaten up and robbed on the street, somewhere some jobsworth employee of Big Brother will be watching. He won't be able to stop you being robbed, of course, and the pictures will be too fuzzy to identify your assailants, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your cry for help is being watched with interest.
As far as getting the law to assist, you'd have been better off in Rowland Hill's day.
At any rate your letter would have reached them the same day.

Demeaning Deedes

2008-03-14T16:15:00.001+01:00

Few men of talent will have made what is known as 'good family men' I suspect.
Bill Shakespeare doesn't seem to have been one, Charles Dickens certainly wasn't and George Bernard Shaw only got away with it by adopting his own sage advice to those about to get married.
Now it seems that the highly respected journalist Bill Deedes has joined the throng. His biography quite rightly details his life, its highs and its lows, much as I suspect he would have wanted it.
I only met him once many years ago at some social event where we had a pretty inconsequential conversation wherein he referred to me as 'old cock.' But his charisma was apparent and I always read his columns, so full of common sense, up until his last, written the day before he died.
It is sad therefore to find that a British tabloid newspaper whose main cannon fodder is the private lives of drugged and drunk so-called celebrities has chosen to feature but one aspect of his life.
This paper obtains its circulation by not over exerting the brains of its readership and it is probably safe to say that the vast majority of them have never heard of Bill Deedes, nor would they have read any of his work. He sometimes used words that they might not have understood anyway.
However under the banner heading 'How legendary editor Bill Deedes' infatuation with a woman 53 years his junior tore his family apart,' they spend over three thousand words on his travelling the world in the company of an attractive young female reporter.
Nary a word concerning his long and distinguished career as a journalist, as an MP and Cabinet Minister nor of his service to his country in the armed forces where he was awarded the Military Cross. His later work for the charity 'Care' is not noted nor does his life peerage get a mention
Perhaps one should expect little more from this paper, whose sole interest is in titillating the salacious tastes of its more moronic readers.
The item immediately above was headed: 'Tipsy Pixie Geldof emerges the worse for wear after she parties at THREE clubs in one night,' whilst the one following ran: 'That's NOT what to wear! Trinny Woodall bares skin and bones in a gaping red gown,' and 'I won't become the new Britney, says Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus,' along with 'Britney Spears' pregnant sister, 16, covers up her baby bump' and ''I'm pregnant,' says Minnie Driver - but she won't reveal who the father is.'
Journalism at its very best, providing true role models for the young! Bill would have been proud to have been grouped in such illustrious company.
So here I would like to make my position crystal clear. If, on my reaching the age of eighty, there are any attractive and nubile twenty something female journalists out there who would like to travel the world with me as freelance reporters at the expense of a major newspaper, please form an orderly line here.
And, if anyone wishes to write my biography subsequently, they have my full permission to report on the matter.
R.I.P. Bill.

Archer on Top Again

2008-03-13T11:27:00.001+01:00

Now that England has become a vassal state of Scotland, it is time for English schoolchildren to do a bit of revisionist history. For years, the Scottish King Bruce (not to be confused with the Australian Bruce) has been held up as a shining example of determination against all odds and as an object lesson to those suffering from Arachnophobia.
But now, the English have a worthy hero of their own. Once again, Jeffery Archer has triumphed against all odds, including that of not being an outstanding novelist, and got a best-seller on his hands.
Whatever your feelings concerning his private life and apparent moral turpitude, you have to give it to him, this man's a trier. His first novel saved him from bankruptcy and his latest draws heavily upon his experiences in prison.
And, for this reason alone, may be his best yet. Here he has drawn on the events that shaped the lives of his fellow inmates which gives an air of authenticity no imagination can surpass.
Writers are at their best when dealing with environments they are familiar with. Dickens tended to flounder once he left the environs of his home town, London.
But it's Archer's sheer tenacity and Lazarus like determination not to be buried that arouses my admiration.
I understand that he is an enthusiastic cricketer. Perhaps he might consider a trip to New Zealand to show the overpaid, decorated professionals there a thing or two.

It's Foolish, But It's Fun!

2008-03-12T08:56:00.000+01:00

Back in the 1940's there was a popular song of this title doing the rounds. That it was during one of the frequent nadirs of this particular art form should be apparent when I tell you that a contemporary offering was 'Marzy Doats and Dozy Doats' which explains why the graves of Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart were in a constant turmoil at the time.
The ditty celebrated the joys of doing things frowned upon by society, climbing trees for green apples, walking in thunderstorms and excessive eating and drinking among others. After four eight bar stanzas the author ran out of forbidden fruit to lyricise over and mercifully the song ended.
But that was then and today any self respecting British lyricist should be able to come up with a list of government warnings, advisories and edicts that would enable him to give the Iliad of Homer a pretty good run for its money if he wanted to celebrate their joys.
The most terrifying aspect of the society painted by George Orwell was its infinite greyness, a society shorn of any joy and individuality. Orwell got the date wrong but he was pretty much on the money for everything else.
The other day an American researcher identified Slough as being the dreariest place on earth. He was, of course, a bit late. John Betjeman had got there first (and had to apologise subsequently) and I don't know where else he had looked but he had clearly missed Gary, Indiana and Spring City, Tennessee. For those of you living there, I too apologise, and next time I'm through I'll let you prove me wrong.
But it's not just Slough that's dreary in today's world. The cold grip of government extends even into the still beautiful countryside of rural Britain. You know, the part where the Members of Parliament have their subsidised second homes.
The original idea of a democratically elected government was that the voters should tell the government they appointed how they wished their country to be run.
Not, as it now appears, for a government, paid for by the electorate, to tell the people how they should run their lives.
That the concept of law and order has been turned on its head against the wishes of the vast majority of law abiding citizens is apparent in a new ruling that those who commit crimes because of need should be let off lightly.
The bank robbing fraternity must be especially pleased with this idea since it will undoubtedly be extended to include their profession along with drug pushers etc. in the near future.
Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks said 'Cos that's where the money is.'
Nowadays they'd have to let him off with a ASBO, I suppose.

A Tale of the Tub

2008-03-08T09:52:00.001+01:00

Wallowing in my tub the other day, I was ruminating on the parlous state of affairs mankind has got itself in to. Cows, of course, do quite a bit of ruminating and, as a result, seem to be a good deal more contented than most of us.
I was following in the steps of the many famous philosophers who have had similar trains of thought. Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Copernicus and, in today's world, Jade Goody and Margaret Hodge have all done a bit of it.
One unresolved question in my mind was this ceaseless quest into outer space to find a world similar to ours. Surely we should be looking for somewhere totally different?
Mind you, having found it, we'd probably manage to cock it up in no time at all.
But lying there, surrounded by a squadron of yellow rubber ducks, I think I may have come across one of the reasons for mankind's inability to think straight.
I refer to the excessive use of the shower as opposed to the conventional bath.
A bath gives one time to ponder, to think deeply and clearly, to come to carefully considered decisions. Showers lead to hasty actions, in case someone messes with the water pressure and freezes or boils you during your ablutions.
The invasion of Iraq, for instance, would never have taken place had Tony Blair and George Bush developed their relationship further than a similar taste in toothpaste and made use of the tub to reflect.
And where would we be if Archimedes had taken a shower? His name would merely be remembered as that of a West End restaurant or possible as a Greek shipping magnate.
And ship's tonnage would not be known as displacement.
Marat did not do too well out of the bath business admittedly but was probably deep in thought at the time, and Charlotte Corday certainly made life easier for the housekeeper who had to tidy up afterwards. Anyway, Alfred Hitchcock proved that showers were no safer.
A little known slice of history is that of Winston Churchill's contribution to victory at the front in the First World War.
Arriving at his headquarters behind the lines, he brought with him his portable bathtub complete with gas fired geyser. Spotted by the Germans, they thought it was the British new secret weapon.
At Cambrai, they were dismayed to find that it had been a deliberate ruse to confuse them, as the tanks rumbled across the battlefield.
Churchill never got the credit he deserved.
And finally, as the water gurgles down the plughole, a tub provides you with proof positive as to whether you are north or south of the equator.
And in today's uncertain world, it's nice to have something positive to latch on to.

You Couldn't Make It Up!

2008-03-06T12:38:00.001+01:00

But it seems that this is what penners of their own autobiographies do these days. Almost beyond belief, yet another tear jerking memoir has has run aground on the rocks of probity.
This time the publishers have had the good grace to pull the book from the shelves. Realistically, the authors of these falsely marketed books should be sued for obtaining money under false pretences.
I'm pretty sure that anyone's autobiography is going to contain a bit of fudging – mine certainly will – but blatant dishonesty is another matter.
It seems that publishers today are obsessed with either signing a celebrity up who can't write or a producer of a sufficiently miserable fictitious memoir of their life. Mislit has been big business for some years now but I think that future volumes will have to carry a certificate of authenticity stamp on them.
I'm not sure how other writers go about tackling these things but the last book I did in this genre involved my travelling to Lebanon and Dubai and interviewing various family members to ensure that the details were correct. Perhaps publishers should do the same before dishing out a contract.
This form of deception which plays upon the feelings of the reader is far more reprehensible than something in the flat out forgery vein such as the fake Hitler Diaries.
But many of the big publishing houses today are not the least interested in literary quality.
Coleen McCoughlin, whose bedside table contains nothing more cerebral than a telephone according to Wayne Rooney, has just been signed up to 'write' a series of novels for a substantial advance by a major publishing house.
No doubt Mr. Rooney can help her out with some of the four letter words.

And Nothing but the Truth

2008-03-01T10:36:00.000+01:00

The story broken today that Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, had fabricated most of her best-selling autobiography, ‘Surviving with Wolves,’ should come as no surprise to those of us that dwell in the murky depths of biographies and autobiographies. It won’t be the first time that the tide has gone out on the truth and exposed the claimants to ridicule.
In this case, it seems to have made Mrs. Defonseca a millionaire, although her publisher, Jane Daniel, is understandably aggrieved at having been duped. She is suing for £11 million which may take some of the sparkle off the fairy cake.
After World War II there was a spate of memoirs by allegedly SOE agents, conveniently shielded by the Official Secrets Act from any forensic investigation into the truth or otherwise of their exciting adventures.
The most enterprising of these must be a Ms. Roxanne Pitt, who accomplished the notable feat of selling her purely fictitious story to two publishers with only the slightest change in the details of her heroic exploits behind enemy lines.
As far as is known, she never set foot outside of the British Isles during the conflict.
More recently, a tear-jerking memoir of growing up in a poverty stricken Irish household came to grief when a neighbour happened to chance upon the book. The author’s sense of the dramatic had, he claims, run away with her.
Two years ago I was commissioned by a Romanian immigrant to Britain to write his story for him. His spoken English was good but, understandably, he was not up to putting it down on paper.
I first interviewed him at a luxurious penthouse mayfair apartment and, as usual, videoed his story which told of his leaving home at 17 and walking across Europe, looking for a better life. En route he had joined the Foreign Legion and suffered incredible hardships before reaching England on a forged passport. It sounded a good story although he didn’t look to me like a man who had suffered too much! He was young, slim and charming.
He claimed to own two apartments in London and we wheeled around town in either his Range Rover or his BMW as I proceeded to tape his story over the next few months.
His present prosperity at the early age of 26 came, he said, from an up-market art gallery in Mayfair. But in spite of a number of requests, we somehow always seemed to miss going down the street to visit it.
Finally, we got to the stage in his story where, having arrived in London, he earned his living by selling drugs. He hastily said that, no, he was too smart to have been a user. I pointed out that such a means of livelihood would not only be frowned upon by his reading public but would also lead to his having his collar felt by the Metropolitan Police.
He seemed to lose interest in the business after that and, as you might guess, the art gallery was a figment of his imagination.
So writers of biographies need to take care. When the eminent biographer, Philip Ziegler was commissioned to write the biography of Lord Mountbatten, mindful of his lordship’s colourful past he asked, diplomatically, what should he leave out?
“Put it all in, warts and all,” said Mountbatten, cheerfully.
Unfortunately, not all recounters of their lives are as honourable.

On the Wrong Lines

2008-02-27T11:39:00.001+01:00

Thankfully I am among the millions of travellers who don't have to make use of the services of First Great Western and their railway. If reports in the British media are to be believed (and who would doubt them?) on some days the service appears to resemble a Bombay commuter train.
No doubt the directors award themselves a bonus (does everyone in the UK get a bonus?) for the number of passengers who have to stand in the toilets multiplied by the number of miles they have to travel. If so, they must do themselves pretty well.
Unusually for Britain today, it has come to the notice of the authorities that this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. I can only assume that a government Jaguar must have broken down somewhere, forcing the hapless official to have to slum it on the railway and thus raise the matter.
There is talk of First Great Western losing their franchise and unless one of the board can come up with a big enough contribution to the Labour Party, this may well happen.
Personally, I think the company should be sued for trading under false pretences.
It is not the first Great Western and I think someone should go to Kensal Green cemetery and have a quick check of the grave of Isambard Kingdom Brunel as it has probably just turned over.
When Brunel built the Great Western Railway it was a staggering example of British engineering, so much so that it was known as God's Wonderful Railway.
That First Great Western should have the temerity to play upon the reputation of one of Britain's finest achievements, seems to me to be reprehensible and probably flies in the face of the Trade Descriptions Act.

One Big Fib

2008-02-25T11:30:00.001+01:00

A few years ago I wrote a book exposing the fraudulent First International Bank of Grenada and its founder Gilbert Ziegler who had taken the trouble to change his name to Van Brink, a name thought to be a cerebral association with the company that transported loads of cash.
When justice finally caught up with the scamsters, the book, 'One Big Fib,' became a best seller amongst the legal teams wrangling over the case, an affair which became rather less interesting when Van Brink thoughtlessly died before he could be brought to trial.
One of the greatest difficulties I ran into was finding victims who were prepared to speak of their experiences. There's a sort of 'Stockholm Syndrome' prevailing amongst the defrauded which often allows the crooks to get away with it.
But with the trial now over and Van Brink's henchmen and women brought to justice, there are now those who will come forward to speak.
Bill Kurtis, the well known producer of investigative TV documentaries has put together a programme charting the events of the bank and its many subsidiaries using my book as a basis. There were innumerable mini-banks spawned by Van Brink and FIBG, all of whom promised returns on investment of over 100% per annum, often using religious affiliations to encourage investors.
The trail led from Oregon to Hawaii to Grenada and finally to Kampala, Uganda, leaving financial misery in its wake for hundreds of investors.
The programme airs on the 26th. of March, I believe on CNBC.
Perhaps it will convince many of the truth in the old saying that, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

'One Big Fib' is still available from Amazon and all on-line bookstores.

It Takes Two to Quango

2008-02-24T09:24:00.001+01:00

The other day I wrote a piece wherein I used the word 'quango.' It occurred to me later that I was not really sure what a quango was. Nothing new there I hear you say. I did know, however, that quangos were a very expensive luxury item costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds each year, money that those ignorant of or outside of the booming quango market, might think would be better spent elsewhere.
Items such as body armour for the troops, a system for retrieving lost government data discs or providing one way tickets for the undesirables of the nation spring to mind. Funding to complete the job so lamentably handled by Guido Fawkes was originally on the list but, on reflection, they would just have rebuilt the place, installed another bunch of free loaders and sent the bill to the taxpayer.
Turning to my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, I find that, along with a bunch of interesting 'qu' words, 'quango' is sandwiched between 'quandary,' a state of uncertainty and 'quant,' which is a pole used to push punts out of mud. Rather appropriate, thought I.
But the OED has few doubts. It starts of by saying 'Chiefly derogatory' and goes on to explain just why they cost the taxpayer so much money. It says: ' A semi-public administrative body with financial support from and senior appointments made by government.'
So now you know why quangos are so expensive. All you need is to find out how to become one.

The Shopkeeper and the Princess

2008-02-23T19:20:00.000+01:00

Re-reading Diana Souhami's excellent book, Mrs. Keppel and her Daughter, got me pondering just how the behaviour of both the establishment and the public have deteriorated over the years.
As the unseemly and to me, totally unbelievable, charade of the Princess Diana's further inquest unwinds, I begin to question the sanity of the British legal system. That they should be held to ransom by an immigrant bazaar owner would be unacceptable in any other democracy whose governments would not have the temerity to charge their taxpayers with the costs of such a futile and unnecessary exercise.
The absurd and surely actionable assertions of Mr. Fayed should surely be enough to have him run out of the country but I suppose this would infringe his civil rights.
During the reign of King Edward the VII, the actions of both the Queen and Mrs. Keppel were admirably restrained and civilised.
As the latter was prompted to remark during the brouhaha surrounding King Edward the VIII and Mrs. Simpson: “Things were managed much better in my day.”
But then of course, so was Harrods!

Stressed Out

2008-02-20T09:18:00.000+01:00

The British have a long history of brilliant inventions and discoveries. The steam engine, nuclear physics and penicillin for example.
But this time I believe they have surpassed themselves and set a trend that will reverberate around the world. For they have succeeded in producing what has been the Holy Grail for researchers throughout the years.
I refer, of course, to the stressless examination. Why nobody has stumbled across this before is a moot point. I suppose they were all too busy swotting up for the next bit of stress and didn't see the obvious.
Now, thanks to a decision no doubt made by a quango of some sort (for years I thought a quango was an Australian marsupial), it is possible to obtain a language qualification without having to prove one's ability to speak the language. Better still, it is no longer necessary to go through the agony of having to write anything, which gets over the difficulty posed by those pesky French and Germans of littering their language with accents, grave, acute and circumflex to say nothing of umlauts. All you need do is tick the boxes and go and collect your diploma. Brilliant!
The future ramifications of this are enormous and virtually unlimited.
Bus drivers, train drivers and airline pilots will no longer have to be exposed to the stress of having to prove their ability by a practical test. Ticking boxes is a much more restful procedure.
Doctors will no longer have to waste so much time walking the hospitals to prepare for their qualifications. A quick brush-up on the major diseases in the Encyclopaedia Britannica should suffice to get the right boxes ticked.
And similar principles can be applied to all professions where, until now, the rigours of an examination has proved to be a stumbling block.
However, looking at the state of affairs amongst the Ministers of Her Majesty's government and Members of Parliament, there may be grounds for imposing a rather more testing experience.
A practical examination as to whether or not they can differentiate between their own money and that of the taxpayer might well be advisable as there seems to be some confusion in the minds of some.
This might prove to be rather more stressfull than just ticking boxes. But I am sure they will find an easy solution.

Brussels Besieged

2008-02-16T12:51:00.001+01:00

The British antipathy towards Brussels and the diktats of the EU (although they happily accept the bits that suit their political purpose) is not ill-founded. The British are, or perhaps were, a proudly independent nation but their latest broadside against Europe is, might I suggest, a low blow.
The bureaucrats of Brussels have, over the past few years, been Kinnocked and Mandelsoned, something which even George Bush's happy band of torturers would have considered a waterboard too far.
But now Britain is preparing to launch its ultimate weapon, the Patricia Hewitt nuclear holocaust on them.
It is fair to say that during her sojourn as a minister of Her Majesties government she did serve an invaluable role inasmuch as she made John Prescott look like a statesman by comparison.
Never forget that Belgium, which we should possibly add for the benefit of those at school, is where Brussels is located, was Britain's ally in two world wars.
Is this any way to treat a former ally?
And soon the halls of the EU will be ringing with that deathless phrase, heard so often in the past in Britain:
“Maintenant, si vous me laissiez juste finir.”

Immigration Unlimited

2008-02-15T10:17:00.000+01:00

Having been an immigrant myself, many times over, I find the British attitude to their current problems quite extraordinary.
At no time did I expect my hosts to change their ways, religion or even eating habits to accommodate myself and my own way of life. Rather it was up to myself to be a gracious guest in their country.
And I must say it seemed to work pretty well, for my living and working in foreign fields was always enjoyable and instructional. Mind you, I had no inclination to blow any of their citizens up nor to avail myself of the benefits paid for by the tax paying natives, so I suppose they were quite pleased to see me. And I did my best to conform with the laws of the land.
I've no idea who coined that hackneyed phrase 'When in Rome etc.' but he did have a point.
But now the entire structure of British society is being changed, or rather being allowed to be changed, by this obsession with multi-culturism which does not, in fact, have anything to do with being multi-cultural but more accurately with political pandering.
Why a nation should be prepared to ignore the wishes of its peoples in preference to the demands of those who wash up on its shores from foreign lands is inexplicable – except, I suppose, to those in government who aim to gain by it.
It may be worth recalling that the last time there was an immigration of the sort now under way, it was the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon mercenaries and spelled the end of the civilisation of the Britons.
Now it seems many are following in their footsteps and fleeing across the Channel.
You can hardly blame them.

Not in Stock at Tesco

2008-02-14T10:57:00.001+01:00

There is, I am reliably informed, nothing new under the sun. And this does seem true since here I am leafing through the Army and Navy Stores catalogue for 1907. Lest you should think that I am a bit late for my Christmas shopping, I should mention that it is all part of some research into the Edwardian era, and this substantial publication, all one thousand, two hundred and eighty pages of it, provides a wonderful mirror of the life and times of the Edwardian.
Harrods, even before they became the property of an unsavoury Egyptian market trader, were mere amateurs at the retail business.
And for those of you who think that Tesco is the ultimate in one stop shopping, well I've got news for you.
Just try sauntering into your nearest branch and asking the spotty faced manager (with a degree in retailing from the East Burpingham Polytechnic) if they can provide you with an elephant's foot liqueur stand, a Mauser repeating self loading pistol and a 'Berkefeld Patent' Traveller's and Army Pump Filter, and I suspect, nay, I am certain, you will be treated like a lunatic. Ask if they will deliver to Tristan d'Acunha or Palaos Island and the gendarmes will be called to cart you away.
Yet, one hundred years ago, these were routine orders (promptly despatched, according to their catalogue) for the Army and Navy Stores.
Admittedly, you had to order in writing and not by way of the internet but at any rate your credit card was not in any danger of being mis-used.
But perhaps my favourites in the catalogue are contained in the 'Entertainments Department (second floor)' where one can retain the services of such performers as Professor Smith's Royal Punch and Judy with Dog Toby, as performed at Buckingham Palace, June 23rd., 1903, before Their Majesties The King and Queen and Royal Family.
Or you might prefer to engage 'Wallah and Jarhoo, the Royal Durbar Entertainers with their Indian Mango Mystery. Fakirs, Jugglers, Conjurers and Mystery Men in Native Costume (Note: These Entertainers are NOT natives but appear exactly as natives of India. The entertainment is very wonderful and clever.)'
On second thoughts, I don't think Wallah and Jarhoo will be a good idea, race relations being what they are in Britain today, and you'll be better off hiring 'Herr Moritz Francois Blue Hungarian Band who will show up in Handsome National Uniforms complete with the Famous Hungarian Czymbalo.'
You've probably got some European neighbours who will appreciate them.
But I bet you can't get them at Tesco!

Oops Ups!

2008-02-12T09:59:00.001+01:00

It's not very often that I regret living in the country. But yesterday was one of those times. Now I would be the first to admit that our cottage is not the easiest of places to locate, having no street address and therefore no number. But it's the same as thousands of other little places in France and, to make life easier, the Marie have thoughtfully placed a diagram in the town square directing the benighted traveller to these out of the way spots.
We can't be that hard to find. The mail man delivers the bills promptly each day, the electricity man comes to check the meter regularly as does the water man and we show up on Google maps.
In fact the only ones unable to locate us seem to be the Jehovah's Witnesses – and United Parcel Service.
UPS deliver stuff far and wide around the globe, day after day, using the latest in modern technology and a fleet of brown vans. But our place has got them beat.
Not for the first time either.
Expecting an important package from the UK, I duly checked the tracking number and viewed its pilgrim's progress, which seems to have been about as fast as Chaucer's lot. Our package arrived on-time overnight in Angers, our nearest city, and was duly loaded onto one of the aforementioned vans and headed south towards us, a mere 25 kms. away. It returned to Angers like a man with his braces caught on a door handle and the tracking log says, plaintively, that the address was insufficient for delivery.
No doubt dismissing the driver as an incompetent fool, it was sent off again the next day presumably with a more seasoned navigator at the helm. It came back to Angers with the same result.
The third time it happened, I suppose they were out of drivers willing to venture once more into what must have been a terra incognita for them, for the tracking log was prompted to say that 'an exception' had occurred, whatever that may mean, and that they would be writing to us.
Remarkably, the letter arrived overnight at the exact same address that UPS were unable to find.
By now I had E-mailed UPS office in Paris, pointing out that we had been at the same address for ten years and that it was the only one we had. Would they like us to move to make things a bit easier for them?
An apologetic reply has been received and I now note that the tracking log of our package says that it is being re-delivered to 'a new address.'
I'm just wondering whose address they are proposing to deliver it to.

Lessons of History

2008-02-08T10:46:00.000+01:00

It was, perhaps, a tad unfortunate that the publishing of my latest book, Assaulting Britannia, a history of the invasions of the British Isles, should coincide with the news that 55% of British schoolchildren think that Winston Churchill was a mythical figure but that King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table were for real.
It's easy to blame the kids as being moronically uninterested in the subject of history as it keeps them away from their computer 'shoot 'em up' games, but the fault lies surely with those that teach history today.
I recall that when I was sent to school in England, the textbooks we were provided with were of mind boggling ennui and, for me, the situation was only retrieved by my having two history masters who not only knew their subject (they were Oxbridge MA's) but who could bring the stodgy matter to life.
There is a wonderful story by Richmal Crompton in the William series, entitled 'William and the Temporary History Master' wherein the master, a Mr. Renie, attempts to rouse William's interest by encouraging him to act out famous events in history. Anyone who has read the William books will realise that this was a recipe for hilarious disaster. I suspect that, if they were published today, the Health and Safety people would be carting the worthy Miss Richmal Crompton off in handcuffs, as the stories deal with such subversive matters as the climbing of trees, use of catapults and, heaven forbid, bows and arrows.
But Mr. Renie was right in principle, just unfortunate that he ran up against William Brown.
There is, as Peter Cook might have said, a lot of it about when it comes to history and a teacher can do little more than scratch the surface. But he could at least make it enjoyable.
The history books used in school are written by worthy academics but few have the wonderful sweep of history and the English language of a (no doubt mythical) Winston Churchill in his 'A History of the English Speaking Peoples.' It may not be academically pleasing, slightly prejudiced but undeniably readable and would make a great introduction to the subject were it available in the classroom.
On the subject of mythical characters, isn't it a pity that Tony Blair wasn't amongst them! If the old adage of George Santayana that 'those who ignore the lessons of history find themselves doomed to perish by them' is true, Britain is in for a pretty rocky future.

One Born Every Minute!

2008-02-07T09:24:00.001+01:00

When I was a kid, I read in one of my father's magazines, an article entitles 'Fifty Ways to be a Sap.' I assume it was an American magazine by the title and remember only one of the fifty ways mentioned which has remained in my memory ever since. It was 'A Sure Fire Way of Killing Ants.'
For one dollar, sent by mail in those pre-internet days, you would receive a small package consisting of two blocks of wood together with the instructions: 'Place the ant on one block, then smash it with the other.'
Even in my youthful innocence I could see the beauty of this scam. Firstly, the promised results were achievable and thus it could be argued that the contract had been fulfilled. Secondly, the amount of money involved was so small that nobody in their right mind would be prepared to go after the promoters.
It was a perfect swindle.
This came to mind when looking at one of the many and various internet scams that are blighting the network. Back in November I mentioned the so-called reverse pension plans that have sprung up to part the unwary or plain greedy with a few dollars, euros, pounds or whatever.
The most popular, if that's the right word, of these is one called the Global Pension Plan where, in return for 30 Euros, participants will receive 55,000 when the membership reaches 100,000. The closing date for this remarkable piece of fiscal legerdemain was originally August but was then moved to December and, incredibly, members were given the chance to subscribe for 250,000 additional pensions. From their promotional material:

“The Global Pension Plan is nothing more complicated than a simple Pension Insurance. Now, Insurance policies have been traded on the open market for years. In the same way that there are companies that will buy your outstanding Invoices at a discount giving you cash immediately and then they collect the full value from the clients. Your Pension Insurance Policy will be sold to an Investor at a discount, giving you cash immediately, and then they collect the full amount at maturity.
This is a simplistic view of a complicated and unique process developed by the GPP consortium. It requires 100,000 people for the plan to work and this is where you can benefit.
It costs just EUR 30 to register as one of the 100,000 and when that target is reached the scheme will be closed and you will receive EUR 55,000 ... as long as you are less that 67 years of age at that time or EUR 110,000 if you are less than 28. You can also receive EUR 2,000 for everyone you refer who joins in the 100,000 membership.”

Of course, neither the insurance company involved nor the principals in this scheme can be revealed and the sole contact the 'investors' have is by way of an entity named Stella who has an anonymous E-Mail address.
Claimed to be a Trust located in Lichtenstein, GPP's original instructions for sending the money were by way of Western Union to Inara Astica, Oksana Snetkova or Ivita Vingra, all of whom seemed to share the same address of Gertrudes 15-31/35 in the city of Riga.
Cheques could be sent to The Oceanic Trust at BCM Drawbridge House, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3XX, England, a maildrop shared with an unlicensed Somalian bank, Oceanic Bank.
Subsequently, payment options have been through various dubiously legal money exchangers and, as the funds still seem to be rolling in, further delays in paying out are in the pipeline.
These schemes are always promoted by 'cheerleaders' who post enthusiastic endorsements on the internet forums, in this case from as far to the west as Kelowna, BC to Europe and the UK. All work under assumed names.
But the chance of the punters receiving even two little blocks of wood for their money is no better than slim to none – and probably not even that good.

A Load of Old Rubbish

2008-01-31T08:08:00.000+01:00

How a once great and powerful nation can prove unable to pick up its own trash on a weekly basis is beyond me. Perhaps they've looked at the example of Naples and decided, as quasi and reluctant members of the EU (unless it suits them), that a bit of trash on the streets won't hurt.
And this does not only relate to the hordes of youths roaming the streets at night.
In France, where the towns are run as a sort of private fiefdom and the mayor is God, failure to pick up the trash weekly would be a guillotining offence and it would be a matter of personal pride that he should provide his townspeople with the best possible service.
Yesterday in my mailbox was a four page glossy magazine, published by the private contractors who perform this service for us, illustrating exactly how they go about it.
A full explanation of the process of recycling was included together with description of their fleet of truck and pictures of many of their operatives, none of whom seem to have complained about the weight of the bins they have to lift.
If, by chance, as my wife did the other day, you put something in the wrong bin for recycling (they're colour coded and provided free of charge), instead of a swingeing fine or summons, you get a polite note pointing out your error.
It's a highly efficient and reliable service reinforced by the public disposal units in every town, the déchetteries, where you can dump any surplus rubbish.
Perhaps if the British had a better organised system for the collection of waste, some of the government computer discs that get mislaid on a daily basis would come to light.

Dumb and Dumber

2008-01-29T09:13:00.000+01:00

The news that some commercial operations are to be allowed to issue their own diplomas and degrees has been God's gift to the media since that purveyor of hamburgers to the proletariat, McDonalds, happens to be one of them. They can now trot out that weary and over-used line “D'you want fries with that” for a cheap laugh.
These qualifications that undoubtedly will be of as much value as the burger paper they're printed on will hardly cut much ice with any reputable seat of learning nor employer. But at any rate McDonalds are an efficient, highly organised company from whom much might be gleaned that would be of value in a commercial world.
The same can hardly be said of one of the other companies. A qualification from Network Rail would best be concealed, I feel, for one anxious to further a career in commerce.
As to FlyBe, quite what a future trolley dolly can learn from them I fail to understand.
But it is, of course, wonderful PR for the companies concerned and for G. Brown Esq. whose contribution to education will probably earn him an honorary degree from the Hamburger University.
Why there is so much resistance to teaching the three R's in school (you know, reading, riting and rithmatic) I will never understand. Once you have mastered those, all options are open to you since from then on, if you really want to, there are no barriers.
My cousin, the son of a jobbing builder (and not a very good one at that) was under pressure to join the business. With no more than a council school education, as it was then called, he put himself through university, becoming a famous Harley Street consultant.
Ernest Bevin, virtually self educated, became Foreign Minister.
And Charles Dickens, with no formal education, no, not even a diploma from the shoe blacking factory where he worked, is as fine a writer of the English language as can be found.
Winston Churchill, although benefiting from that now much despised institution, the public school, never achieved a degree, other than honorary one's granted him many years later.
The 'Have Your Say' columns so popular with the media have been full of complaints about this 'dumbing down' of the educational process. It seems that this has been going on for longer than we might suspect since many of the complainants don't seem to know how to spell 'dumb' and a few other hard words.
But let us look forward to the day, which cannot be too far off, when every child born in Britain receives a degree along with his, her or its, birth certificate.
It was Darwin, I believe, who propounded the theory of 'The Survival of the Dumbest.'

Law and Disorder

2008-01-19T10:55:00.001+01:00

If there was ever one single incident to encapsulate the dire situation of law and order in Britain today, it must surely be the arrest of an old age pensioner for remonstrating with a bunch of teenagers for stoning ducks.
The majesty of the law was sent to arrest and incarcerate briefly an innocent citizen for performing an act that should have by rights been the responsibility of PC Plod. But PC Plod is Politically Correct nowadays and thus law and order are no longer within his purview.
Yobs have rights but not OAPs apparently and together with the mealy mouthed response by the police to the killing of innocent citizens, together with a judiciary anxious not to cause offence, it's no wonder the nation is spiralling into lawlessness.
The Gendarmes in France have long had a reputation for not bothering with the niceties of political protocol when it comes to dealing with hooliganism and Germany are to be admired for their stance in shipping a notorious repeat offender off to Siberia.
London is now one of the few cities in the world where I feel uneasy to be out on the streets at night and I see that by remonstrating with any thugs, I am the one likely to be prosecuted.
But I am sure that watching the CCTV video of myself being beaten up will be a great solace to my family as well as to myself as I view it from my hospital bed, should I be lucky enough to survive.
And I'm sure a Chief Constable somewhere will have some encouraging words to say on how they are 'addressing the problem.'

Send in the Clowns

2008-01-18T09:05:00.001+01:00

Whilst France may appear to have something of a Karaoke Clown for a President at the moment, this is nothing compared with the British, who appear to have cornered the market in clowns, Karaoke or otherwise, for their government.
Recently, one minister, Ms. Harriet Harman, advocated reducing the voting age to sixteen in order to 'develop a voting habit' in the young.
Presumably this was in line with NooLabour's 24 hour binge drinking policy to promote a 'cafe culture' and anyone who has warily trodden the pavements of London late at night, can see the evidence for the success of this policy as they scrape the vomited tikka masala from their shoes.
Perhaps Ms. Harman hasn't had the pleasure of eavesdropping on the conversations of her young constituents as they ride the top of a bus of an evening. If she had, she would probably not have understood a word they were saying, such is their appalling use of the English language.
But such a policy would ensure that NooLabour could garner quite a few votes in the future.
Undoubtedly, many of the new electorate now roaming the streets at night in search of some excitement in the form of intimidation and mayhem would vote in favour of such a government and their policies.
Apart from unbridled binge drinking, there would be the requirement that all young voters be allowed to carry knives. Accidentally killing an innocent citizen by stamping on their head would be treated as a minor offence of lesser magnitude than that of parking a car in a no-parking zone.
Cocaine and drug use would be compulsory, especially for 'celebrities' and presenters of children's television programmes.
The three R's could finally be disposed of as a useless hangover from Victorian days and replaced with meeja studies (i.e. the watching of TV for a minimum of 12 hours per day).
Parents who had the temerity to scrimp and save in order to send their children to private schools to ensure their education would be heavily penalised.
And the standards for university degrees should be lowered, only meeja studies being on the syllabus, in line with the policy of 'no child shall be without one.'
It's something you can all look forward to unless you get the circus to pack up its tent and leave town pretty soon.

Funny Numbers

2008-01-10T09:29:00.000+01:00

A body with a title such as The Economist Intelligence Unit would, one might assume, be a pretty intelligent group. But in today's Guardian (so it must be true) there was a remarkable 'statistic' produced by HSBC bank people using their findings to show that Britain was an awfully expensive country in which to live.
This could hardly have come as much of a surprise to the British, who would surely not have needed the Economist Intelligence Unit nor HSBC bank to tell them that, but the more surprising thing was that the savants concluded that only Norway and France were more expensive.
It's been a while since I spent time in Norway, where I do recall that Scotch was priced in the same range as liquid gold, but France?
I spend enough time in the capitals of the two countries, Britain and France, to have a pretty good handle on the relative costs of living in each and found that conclusion hard to believe.
But then, as with all statistics, which can be rearranged to prove any hypothesis (remember, a good accountant will always ask 'and what answer will you be requiring?'), one needs to look at the parameters of the research.
For this remarkable conclusion was not reached by comparing that rather ethereal number known as a 'standard of living' but by how long the Brit's average annual spending spree would last them in France if they maintained their current life style. Even stranger, it assumed that the average Brit ate out twice a week and, if he can do that cheaper on Tikka Masala and fish and chips than in a Parisian cafe, I am surprised.
Here, in the sticks, admittedly, my local cafe does a four course meal for eleven euros but I can get much the same price at one of my favourite hangouts in Paris.
Perhaps the clue here is the phrase 'current life style,' for to eat English fashion in France would undoubtedly be costly, picking and choosing from an a la carte menu is not a good idea if you want to eat at a reasonable price. And Tikka Masala is hard to find. Portions are smaller too, as I heard one Englishwoman complaining when the main course arrived, “My Fred would have had that for a starter.”
But I think the Economist Intelligence Unit along with the HSBC 'experts' should
count themselves lucky that their conclusions didn't involve a train ride!
Benjamin Disraeli is credited with saying: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Apparently the Briton in France will run out of money after eleven months and a few days.
No doubt HSBC will make him a loan to tide him over the remaining few days, at a price, of course. After all, it was their statistic.

The Press and Probity

2008-01-08T08:37:00.000+01:00

You buy a newspaper to read the news. Right? You assume that the reporters and editors have done their best to provide you with correct information and to not deliberately mislead you. Wrong.
In one of London's less erudite papers this morning, the one I see the Brit passengers on Ryanair clutching to their bosoms as they fly off to their second homes in France, there is an eye catching headline.
“Diana told 'without any doubt' that she was being bugged by a five-strong surveillance team” it ran and continued: “An electronic surveillance expert made the astonishing discovery that Princess Diana's bedroom was being bugged after Diana asked him to check her Kensington Palace apartment, her inquest sensationally heard.”
“Ah Ha,” you say, and turn to the sport pages, since the second inquest on Princess Diana, performed at the behest of an unsavoury immigrant shopkeeper and paid for by you, the taxpayer, is a bigger bore than Britney Spears. “So Charlie boy was checking on her, not surprised.”
And so the world (well, those that read the Red Tops) now believe that Prince Charles had a bug placed in Diana's apartment. Must be true, it was in the papers.
But hang on a minute. Having produced a banner headline porky, the editor must have had second thoughts, for those that could be bothered to wade a little further into the mire would have come across this paragraph:
“He (the surveillance expert) said he was unable to get behind the wall to examine the device. But there was "no indication" that the fabric of the wall had been altered. He said he swept the room again later that day and the signal had gone. "I could not give an explanation to the reading. It could have been innocent electronic equipment in another room. But the noise behind the wall was very similar to a transmitter device."
So there was no bug. Yet the first paragraph stated quite clearly that the room was being bugged. This is, of course, by today's newspaper standards a better story than that the reading had been caused by Prince Charles' curling tongs.
All the news that's fit to print?
And I seem to recall that the newspaper in question used to have “For Queen and Commonwealth” at its masthead. Hope she appreciates their standard of probity.

Too Austentacious, Mr. Darcy

2008-01-07T11:11:00.000+01:00

It was almost inevitable that the BBC should launch another Jane Austen epic on their public. After all, they must have tons of period costumes and other bric a brac left over from their previous essays into Austenland.
If you happen to be an Austen afficionado this is well and good but for the rest of us it can only be a bit of a beautifully presented bore. Fortunately, the adaptations by Andrew Davies do much to relieve this.
Purist Austenites complain about his tendency toward bodice-ripping but, by gosh, if Jane's works need any enhancing, it's surely in the area of bodice-ripping.
Jane Austen's life was boring and it does tend to be reflected in what I always think of as her one-dimensional outlook on life. The characters move like cardboard cut outs over a pastiche of the period and, although there are flashes of brilliance in the dialogue, they tend to be few and far between. Everything is terribly upper class, as was Jane herself
I suppose I miss the broad characters and humour that Dickens brought to even his most maudlin subjects.
Bleak House, a remarkably successful adaptation, once again by Andrew Davies, was a fine example and to have compressed such an unwieldy novel onto the small screen, was no mean achievement even if inevitably, much had to be discarded.
But it does seem a pity that some of the other authors of the period are neglected.
There were plenty of them such as Charles Kingsley, Daniel Defoe, Emma Orczy, Charlotte Bronte, Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Thackeray along with a good many others.
Surely a competent wardrobe department could adapt the costumes from Pride and Prejudice to fit?
Austenmania tends to go in phases, the last outburst was at the end of the 19th. Century followed by a brief Hollywood spasm in the middle of the 20th.
She only wrote six novels, so sooner or later the BBC have got to move on.
But then I suppose there's all the repeats.

Pride and Prejudice

2007-12-29T15:42:00.000+01:00

No, not the Jane Austen classic, which personally I always found to be a bit of a bore but the unreasonable nationalistic pride and ridiculous prejudice that surfaces on the many 'have your say' opportunities in the media today. 'Blogs' in particular.
I reckon there should be a law making all citizens live and work in a number of other countries for a while. This might get rid of the stupid and bigoted ideas many still seem to harbour concerning other races, nationalities and creeds.
National pride is one thing, and very admirable too, but the playground style 'my countries better than yours' sort of arguments only serve to reveal a deep insecurity and in many cases a striking ignorance.
By chance I was lucky enough to have lived and worked in a number of different countries and continents and with colleagues of differing complexions. I would be hard pressed to say any one was better than another or that I preferred one to another.
Thankfully, each has it own strengths and weaknesses rather as we all do.
It is customary around this time of year to make some resolutions concerning your next twelve month's behaviour.
More tolerance and understanding should be on everybody's list for 2008.
A happy and prosperous New Year to you all.

An Ignorant Historian

2007-12-24T07:26:00.001+01:00

Mr. David Starkey is an expert on Tudor history. But to be a historian does not mean that one needs to be gratuitously rude, although, of course, gratuitous rudeness is his trademark.
His recent unprovoked attack on his Queen should garner him few friends since it was as foolish as it was unnecessary. But rather like a celebrity chef, he has a television series to promote.
His speciality, rudeness apart, is the Tudor period but, had he been living then, I very much doubt that he would have been quite so outspoken. The axe would have been waiting and it is a pity that the old traditions have been done away with.
Comparing anyone, let alone a monarch, to 'an uneducated "housewife" who has simply been left some wonderful possessions, and seemed more concerned with the late arrival of her gin and Dubonnet than the exhibits' (his comments on her at an exhibition) is certainly a demonstration of the educated Mr. Starkey's ignorance of basic good manners. But then, he has his television show to promote.
He also seems a little shaky on some aspects of history since, in trying, quite incredibly, to compare her with Joseph Goebbels, he attributes a quote to him that actually came from Hermann Goering.
And of course attacking someone whom he knows will not, in fact cannot, answer back is merely moral cowardice. You don't have to be brave to be a historian nor, apparently, have a smidgen of manners or respect.
He was born in 1945, the year that his ignorant housewife monarch-to-be was driving and maintaining an ambulance in wartime Britain.
Since then, his ignorant, gin swilling housewife has demonstrated more intelligence and certainly better manners than either Mr. Starkey or many of the members of her government.
The Queen, (you know, the ignorant, gin-swilling housewife) awarded him a CBE this year.
If I were her, I'd ask for it back!
So a Merry Christmas to all, with the possible exception of Mr. Starkey.

Mob Law

2007-12-20T08:19:00.000+01:00

In the United States around the end of the 19th. century, saloon-keepers and their customers in the state of Kansas were kept on the edge of their barstools by the activities of a more than usually aggressive temperance zealot. Six feet tall and weighing in at 175 pounds, Carrie Nation pursued her cause with an exceptional enthusiasm, reducing many a bar to matchwood with her woodsman’s axe. Along with her followers, chanting temperance slogans, she decimated a number of drinking establishments and consequently accumulated repeated fines from the courts for her activities, who felt that this was taking temperance a little too far. She paid the fines by charging for her speaking engagements and, more imaginatively, by auctioning off the hatchets she used in this alcoholic mayhem to her followers.
There was, perhaps, some cause for concern with the drinking habits in general of the population of the country which with good reason had become known as the “Alcoholic Republic.” Not for them was the delicate bouquet of a fine wine sought after, American liquor was normally bottled at a robust 80% proof and designed for immediate and profound effect. Prior to the Civil War, the per capita consumption of what was virtually raw alcohol had been calculated at an astounding 7.1 gallons per year per person. Allowing for the fact that relatively few women and no slaves would have been included in this computation, the whole manhood of the nation must have been staggering around in a state of permanent alcoholic bliss. Rather similar to Britain today.
The country could now seem to be in need of a few Carrie Nations as it becomes a Hogarthian experience for anyone foolish enough to walk the streets of its cities at night.
Nothing can surely point up the depths to which this nation has fallen than the advice from the police to some churches to bring their midnight mass on Christmas Eve forward to “avoid trouble.”
So in the eyes of the law, the mobs now rule.
During prohibition Al Capone may have rubbed out a few associates rather unpleasantly but at any rate the citizens of Chicago could walk the streets at night – and go to Midnight Mass.

A Slipped Disc in Iowa

2007-12-18T07:24:00.001+01:00

The surprising thing about the UK Drivers Licence people losing their data in Iowa, is not that it got lost, but what on earth was it doing in Iowa in the first place?
Surely there must be enough intelligent Central Europeans in the UK who could have marked these papers for them?
And then take Iowa itself. There are a good many Americans who are probably a bit uncertain as to where it is. About the only real advocate for the place was Meredith Wilson who wrote “The Music Man” as something of a tribute to his home state which included a song “The Iowa Way.” Perhaps it was this that swayed the DVLA to ship the information out there – they must have thought it was a safe place for it, a state where a new set of bib and brace overalls and a pair of Tuf boots is regarded as haute couture.
Most of its famous sons and daughters have taken steps to leave it in their rear view mirror as being the best view and it rarely features on the tourist route.
Bill Bryson was born there in Des Moines, the capital, and I'm not sure that he's even been back.
But the question remains. Why was it necessary to involve a company from outside the UK to do what would appear to be a routine job of marking simple exam papers?
I hope that the discs included a handy glossary for the Americans to explain the difference between a hood and a bonnet to say nothing of a trunk and a boot. British learner drivers should, perhaps, be grateful if the standards being applied are those of the United States.
When I took my test there, the questions were hardly challenging.
“Gee, you did real good,” said the lady, “You done ten out of ten right.”

A Christmas Story

2007-12-17T07:27:00.000+01:00

Winston Churchill once requested that the eminent sage and philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, be invited to dine with him. By chance, the equally eminent and not much less philosophical songwriter, Irving Berlin, happened to be in town at the same time. In one of those mix-ups so familiar to the present British government, Irving got the invitation.
Predictably, the meal was not a great success. After receiving a few baffling responses to his questions, Winston asked Berlin what he considered to be his greatest success.
After some consideration he replied, “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas,” at which the Prime Minister relapsed into a puzzled and moody silence.
On being informed of the confusion later, he found it hilarious, which is probably more than poor old Irving did.
But “White Christmas” became for many years the de facto compulsory viewing for the family at Christmas time in the US.
In 1983 however, a film director by the name of Bob Clark, whose previous cinematic efforts had been marked by a singular lack of good taste, made a movie about a boy's wish to receive a BB gun as a Christmas present and the various ploys he used to get around the standard adult objection, “You'll shoot your eye out.”
Set in the late 1930's, it was about as far removed from a Hollywood epic as could be imagined and was, in fact, shot on a low budget in Cleveland and Toronto.
Poorly received initially, it lingered almost unnoticed until released upon tape and later DVD for home consumption when it achieved cult status.
For my money, “A Christmas Story” is one of the most appealing Christmas films ever made and, when we lived in the US, was a much loved feature of the holiday.
For reasons best known to the movie moguls it was never, as far as I know, released in Europe and the only DVD's available are coded for Region One, the US and Canada. Why this should be, I have no idea, in fact I fail to understand the coding business altogether except that it is a means of adjusting the price for the various markets to maximise profits.
If you are lucky enough to have a DVD player that is an “All Region” model, the movie is available from Amazon etc. and, if you're a geek, it is possible to change the region on many models.
The film is well worth viewing if only to see how much of the wonder of Christmas that used to be such a part of children's lives has now been lost.

The French Gravy Train

2007-12-15T09:57:00.000+01:00

It is possible to sympathise with those British expatriates in France who are now being asked to fund their own health care – as opposed to having it paid for by the French taxpayer. But the fact is that the only ones affected are those who have chosen to take early retirement and whom thus, one would have thought, could well have afforded to take out some form of health insurance themselves.
It is a fact that many expatriate Brits are here, not for the beer, but for the excellent health service and the French have never ruled against retirees even though they contribute practically nothing to the economy. The problem would seem to lie more on the northern side of La Manche than with the French.
Few French retire to Britain and if they do, I suspect would be quick to hop on the Eurostar back home if they needed serious medical attention, so arguments of reciprocity are not especially valid. There are a good many young French people working in Britain and paying their taxes, as opposed to the far larger number of Brits retired in France who spend their time looking for Heinz Beans and PG Tips in the shops and who make full use of the free health benefits.
If the National Health Service in Britain were in better shape I doubt that the question would even have arisen. Expats would have been glad to return to their own country for medical treatment.
But having lived with a vastly superior system for a while, it is easy to see why many would be upset.
French doctors work long hours, make house calls and, in the case of our own local GP, are rarely home before late evening. Except for the days when he is on call 24 hours.
And his salary? If he makes 50,000 euros he's had a good year, he tells me. It's hardly surprising that we don't have many English doctors here.
But the sheer accessibility of good medical treatment is a huge attraction. Rarely is there a waiting list for treatments although there is almost always a modest charge made. A visit to the doctor is not free as in Britain, a feature that our Doctor says is frequently overlooked by his expat patients!
Although there seems to be a disproportionate fuss being made over the matter – the numbers involved are small – it's understandable if you happen to be one of that number.
But it's equally understandable that there is no reason for the French taxpayer to be lumbered with the health care of those of working age who have voluntarily elected to leave their own country for what they thought were greener pastures.

Princess Diana Inquest

2007-12-14T10:37:00.001+01:00

Some weeks ago Parisians were intrigued at the sight of a coachloads of English visitors taking a tour of Paris which included the Alma Tunnel as one of its highlights.
They were, of course, the jurors from the incredibly expensive and valueless enquiry into the death of Princess Diana and her companion at the time.
Most of those of us who have driven in Paris have had a near death experience in the Alma Tunnel so the affair was puzzling to most French who are not unused to death and mayhem on their roads. Added to that was the fact that on the night of the accident the emergency services had performed well and the conclusions of the subsequent inquest had been accepted without question.
Except by a fantasist, wealthy, immigrant owner of a prestigious London store whose son happened to be one of the unfortunate victims.
His suggestion that the accident was an assassination contrived by the British Secret Service must rank as one of the most laughable accusations in history and should have been treated with the contempt it so richly deserved by the authorities.
Even the CIA, not always highly regarded for their smarts after they tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar, would appreciate that a road accident is about the least reliable of all attempts to dispose of an unwanted person. The Russians are far better at it.
But as the pantomime evolves at the taxpayers expense, it is interesting to speculate that, had the Princess's companion been Joe Bloggs from a council estate somewhere in Heckmondwyke, would there have been the slightest chance of the matter being re-investigated?
No, I thought as much.

A Merry You Know What!

2007-12-11T10:08:00.001+01:00

Now that Christmas seems to have been officially abolished in Britain in favour of a celebration of retail mayhem and political correctness, it is pleasing to record that here in France the age old festival is as popular as ever.
In our village, the workers have been swarming up ladders, a hazardous occupation that would make the authorities in Britain weep, in order to string lighted banners across the road proclaiming “Joyeux Noel,” our Mayor has placed 4 foot Christmas trees with dummy presents at the door of every establishment in town and, please note, these are not secured in any way. As far as I know none have been lost in recent years.
The town is en fete and on their delivering my calendars from the volunteer firemen, les sapeurs pompiers, and from our postman, all wish me, not a “merry winterval,” but Joyeux Noel. The French will never let “political correctness” get in the way of a good party. And neither should the British.
But perhaps it was ever thus. During the Hundred Years War (you do remember that, don't you?) Jean Froissart wrote “The English in France enjoy themselves in their usual miserable fashion.” He was something of an Anglophile so it has the ring of truth about it and this view was confirmed for me by an article in a tabloid newspaper today (It had to be true, it was in the Daily ......). This listed the favourite programmes that the Brits would be watching on Christmas , oops, sorry, Winterval Day television. Good grief, they watch TV 364 days in the year – surely to goodness they could give it a miss for one day? Perhaps they might talk amongst themselves, as families used to, instead of watching repeats of hoary old standbys. Better still, the TV stations could close down for the day – some of them perhaps permanently!
Viewing Britain from afar, and this is probably the safest way at present, is like watching an old and valued friend losing their marbles. Seeing the dreary descent of a formerly outstanding nation into a jobsworth and CCTV controlled Stalinist regime (without the same degree of law and order) is a depressing sight.
Even pantomime is not immune to the joylessness of Britain today. The sweets, formerly tossed into the auditorium for children to catch, will now be distributed by ushers moving amongst the audience, no doubt wearing surgical gloves. It is to be hoped that they are distributed correctly according to ethnic groups to avoid upsetting anyone.
And I would caution children against booing too loudly or perhaps in the wrong place. There may be an ASBO awaiting you on your way out.
And it was not always this way. The world of Charles Dickens was an imperfect one but there was no criticism of Tiny Tim when he said:
“God bless us – every one.”
It was the spirit of Christmas – and so it should remain.