Fora

Drawing stumps again

2010-02-22T21:49:00.004Z

This ill advised comeback is now being ended, so once again I would refer readers new and old to the intro and outro, which explains a bit about the blog.

The reason for the comeback - and its end - is that I have some new blogging projects on the go. If anyone is interested, leave details in the comments section or contact me if you already have the details, and I will let you know.

Regards to all

Umpire

(For more about the song from which I borrowed the title, see here. The song itself can easily be found on Youtube.)

The BBC and America

2010-01-10T22:44:00.002Z

The BBC explains why Copenhagen failed to produce a deal. Of its eight reasons, here is number two:

"Just about every other country involved in the UN talks has a single chain of command; when the president or prime minister speaks, he or she is able to make commitments for the entire government.

Not so the US. The president is not able to pledge anything that Congress will not support, and his inability to step up the US offer in Copenhagen was probably the single biggest impediment to other parties improving theirs.

Viewed internationally, the US effectively has two governments, each with power of veto over the other.

Doubtless the founding fathers had their reasons. But it makes the US a nation apart in these processes, often unable to state what its position is or to move that position - a nightmare for other countries' negotiators."

Here's a quick rewrite:

Just about every other country involved in the UN talks is either totally undemocratic, as with the dictatorships or communist systems, or the executive has total control of the legislature. When the president or prime minister speaks, he or she is able to make commitments for the entire government, and tough luck any internal dissenters.

Not so the US. The president is not able to pledge anything that Congress will not support, which reflects the carefully crafted checks and balances stopping a president getting too much power - or either house of Congress.

Viewed internationally, the US effectively has some restraint on the power of its government, which the vast majority of UN members do not.

Doubtless the founding fathers had their reasons. Prominent amongst them was the desire to avoid the corrupt European monarchies from which many Americans had fled. But it makes the US a nation apart in these processes, so much more complex than one man tin pot despots.

Back to the BBC's reasons. In case we miss the point, no's five and six have a swipe at the US as well. Then we find the author has a sense of humour, or at least I'd like to think so. He asks:

How do you campaign in China - or in Saudi Arabia, another influential country that emerged with a favourable outcome?

Unless you want jail, torture or death, not in a manner which displeases the government. This means on many issues indeed, not at all.

The noughties tv review

2010-01-10T16:40:00.003Z

I have been watching the above (sorry, so many channels I can't remember which one), a semi-ernest look back at the last decade. I have one comment so far. The episode I watched told us in one segment about the 'handbag wars' between manufacturers of luxury goods. Then in another segment about the replacement of the class system aspirations with that of the aspiration for more consumer goods. In another, the decline in inhibitions (or public standards of behaviour as they used to be known). Footage of loutish drunkeness on the high st was screened. And then in another segment, we were told about the crisis of personal debt in this country, fuelled in substantial part by the ludicrously easily acquired credit cards, offers for which used to pour through the letter box every morning.

Yet it didn't see fit to find any causative relationship between the three segments. Why not?

England's great escape again

2010-01-08T14:52:00.002Z

Cricket may have some complex laws, but in essence is a simple game. To win, you need to score more runs than the opposition *and* get them out twice. If you don't, you either lose or draw. Not difficult to understand. So if you have a gruelling, enthralling last day contest, and fail in the above objectives, tough luck. That's why test cricket is so special; nearly isn't enough. This series, and the Ashes before it, have been compelling, wonderful contests, even if the cricket hasn't been of the absolute first order. Never mind ODIs or 20/20, there simply isn't any sporting contest worthy of comparison with Test cricket. The most titanic rugby or football contest ends in 80 or 90 minutes, and is not the same thing.

The Bishop and the Taliban

2009-12-14T09:38:00.000Z

According to the Telegraph, the new Bishop for the armed forces, the Rt Rev Stephen Venner, says that the Taliban "could be admired for their religious conviction".

Isn't their religious conviction the reason they are the Taliban in the first place?

The Vogelenzangs and the Criminal Law

2009-12-13T13:11:00.004Z

This story has been doing the rounds in the Sunday press today. Two British hoteliers, who seem to have been inspired in their treatment of guests by a certain well-known comedy programme from thirty years ago, insulted a woman's religion when she was checking out. Principles before repeat business it would seem.

Not much of a story except that, to general amazement, the law decided to become involved, and the hoteliers found themselves the subject of a criminal prosecution. No greater condemnation can be bestowed upon someone by society than adjudging them a criminal. For certain the hoteliers were awful hosts and therefore, one assumes, awful businesspeople, but that's not the same thing as being a criminal.

The particular criminal law they were prosecuted under was the Public Order Act 1986, under provisions added by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. I wrote about this before, and my views have not changed. If their manner crossed the line into genuine harassment, then the old laws about harassment etc would have sufficed. If the problem is that they were knocking a religion, then that's not a problem - this country is not a theocracy. Therefore, the 2006 Act is and always has been a totally unjustified incursion on our liberties.

Needless to say I assume there are still some unsolved real crimes in that part of the world which better deserved the police's attention.

Rod right for a change

2009-12-12T16:01:00.003Z

Rod Liddle has been stirring up a lot of trouble on the Spectator's website recently with his remarks about race and culture, about which I may get around to blogging, but he is right on the rather more tranquil subject of cricket in this case. England's win in the Ashes this year seems to have fallen victim to ignorance, apathy or Sky, or all of the above. But anyone who thinks a win over Australia forgettable is painfully ignorant of history. Almost never have the Australians been an easy victim in cricket, hence victories over them should be long cherished.

Confusion and delay in modern intellectuals so-called

2009-12-10T14:23:00.004Z

With the ever-increasing numbers of universities it must be correspondingly more difficult for any academic in any field to get noticed. One has to say something either very clever or very stupid. Proof of this long-held suspicion of mine comes from this story, about a Canadian academic called Shauna Wilton, who has opted for the latter.

Ms Wilton has been studying Thomas the Tank Engine. My two children, love the stories and as a result I have some familiarity with them. I have always thought them to represent pretty good values on the whole. For example the catchphrase about the engines wanting to be “really useful” has been thoroughly productive when encouraging the children to tidy up after themselves and, indeed, to do the right thing generally.

I should have realised of course that anything suggestive of discipline, or values of any sort, would get up the nose of modern academics. According to the report:

“She was critical of the fact the show only has eight female characters out of the 49 who feature.

"The female characters weren't necessarily portrayed any more negatively than the male characters or the male trains, but they did tend to play more secondary roles and they're often portrayed as being bossy or know-it-alls," she said.

She also objected to the way the show portrays Thomas, Percy and James slaving away for wealthy bosses like the Fat Controller.

Any attempt to break out of this controlled hierarchy to gain individual power, show initiative or dissent is met with punishment, usually because it goes wrong, she said.”

I would note first of all the supreme irony in her statement that the female characters are “bossy or know-it-alls” when it is hard to think of a female better meeting that description than herself.

I would also invite her to look after two children aged two and four and encourage rather than punish dissent or attempts to gain individual power.

The original author of the stores, Rev Awdry, lived in a time when children were told to respect authority, have a work ethic, and to understand the difference between right and wrong. I am not convinced that the abandonment of such values, at the behest of bullying fools like Prof Wilton, has been a wholly positive thing, given the social statistics in Britain today.

The class of Gordon Brown

2009-12-06T20:58:00.004Z

According to the BBC website, Gordon Brown made a cheap jibe at the fact that David Cameron went to Eton. We were, presumably, invited to infer that made him some sort of elitist toff unsuited to high office. Plenty of the Have Your Say commentators agreed. I would observe:

When a politician for the incumbent party runs out of things to say, having an irrelevant dig is one way of passing the time.
Brown has form on this: he lied about Laura Spence and Oxford in a particularly unedifying episode some years ago.
At the time he did so, he was the Chancellor, and the PM was Tony Blair. Who was educated at Fettes. Which is a private school, like Eton. Many of Blair and Brown's colleagues in the Labour Party also benefitted from a private education, and bestowed the same on their children.
Therefore, in trying to make an issue of the matter, Brown was instead making a fool of himself. Surprise, surprise. Beats talking about the Iraq inquiry, or the Great Depression he has led us into (despite promising an end to "boom and bust"), or equipment for Afghanistan.

It is an utter non-story, therefore. So why was the BBC even bothering? Need I bother guessing? No, I will stop bothering with the whole thing.

Nick Griffin on Question Time

2009-11-22T12:24:00.001Z

Recently the BBC's Question Time gained a lot of controversy by including on its panel the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Before the programme many asked what he was doing on it, and whether it was wise to invite him; afterwards the issue seemed to be whether the programme, by spending about 90% of the time on him, did him a favour, on the grounds that there is no such thing as bad publicity and that Griffin was able to whine that he'd been the victim of a lynch mob since no other guest has ever received the same sort of sustained attack.

As to the first question, Griffin should indeed have been invited. The way to stop his ilk is to expose them for what they are - uncultured bigots. In the event it took only about two minutes for him to be thus exposed and thereafter the programme actually became quite dull, shooting fish in a barrel.

And yet, all the while I became rather resentful about the programme. The reason was that far too little attention was paid to why Griffin had gained the unprecedented electoral success (unprecedented for the BNP and any of its antecedents such as Mosely) which led to the BBC thinking it had a duty to invite him in the first place. And a pretty good reason was sitting on the panel with him, Jack Straw. Griffin himself alluded to this at one point when he claimed he'd never hurt anyone but, by contrast, Straw had the blood of 800,000 Iraqis on his hand. Later on David Dimbleby asked Straw if it was his party's failures on immigration that had led to Griffin being there. Straw gave a rambling, irrelevant and inaccurate reply wittering on about Enoch Powell (who had little if anything in common with Griffin) before simply barking "no" when pressed about it.

Griffin's figure of 800,000 was of course an exaggeration, but it is true that Mr Straw over the past twelve years has been a senior member of the Labour Cabinet, and at times the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary. The cabinet works by way of collective responsibility; each member takes equal blame for its decisions. Other than arguably Brown or Blair, therefore, it is hard to think of anyone who could be more personally culpable than Straw for the following:

(a) The war in Iraq, in which (i) we were lied to about the reasons for war; (ii) there was a criminal failure to equip British troops properly for the inevitable insurgency that followed the invasion; (iii) there was a far worse criminal failure to prepare properly for the aftermath of the invasion. In WWII the Americans set up a substantially funded committee to plan for occupying Germany, as early as 1942. By contrast they started one for Iraq a couple of months before the invasion and had it run by the Defence Department, not the obvious organ of the State Department. Britain, even worse, left the whole thing up to the Department for International Development which was headed by Clare Short, who had vocally opposed the war and practically went on strike regarding planning the aftermath. They may as well have sketched something on the back of a fag packet. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died probably needlessly as a result, and in the final analysis we were given Basra to run and turned it from a city relatively peaceful though under the iron fist of a secular dicatator to being a hopless mess fought over by armed gangs including hardline religious thugs funded by the theocratic dictators of Iran. Mr Straw has yet to apologise to anyone for any of this.

(b) The Afghan invasion. I still maintain that the West could not have ignored the country after 9/11, but having gone in there, and achieved stunning early success in removing the Taliban as a governing force, they got distracted by Iraq, leaving the Taliban plenty of opportunity to regroup as another Iranian-backed insurgency. Now we are severely bogged down with no exit strategy, with far too few troops using inadequate equipment (imagine if the Iraqi budget had been poured into Afghanistan instead; hell there might even be another helicopter or set of body armour) and rapidly diminishing public support. Again, no apology or explanation from the man of Straw.

(c) The worst recession in decades, with debt at 1970s levels of GDP. Mr Straw no doubt nodded approvingly when Gordon Brown told us a while ago that he'd banished boom and bust.

(d) Inept tinkering with the British constitution, including the wholly fatuous Supreme Court (cost £60m according to official figures, interesting given that there was a £90m shortfall in the court system's budget last year), the ham-fisted effort to reform the Lords, and the farce of the office of Lord Chancellor (they tried to abolish it and failed). Indeed, Straw himself is presently the Lord Chancellor, though he's still Mr Straw and sees nothing incongruous.

(e) Immigration. According to the former Labour speech writer, Andrew Neather, they made a hash of immigration and just decided to stamp everything approved. This bothered no-one since they figured that immigrants historically vote Labour and, if the place was swamped, at least it would become truly multicultural, which would "rub the right's nose in it". Instead of course this deception of the electorate has now come out, Griffin is laughing all the way to the polling station and is seriously threatening to rub the left's nose in it instead. My own view on this, being an immigrant married to the daughter of immigrants, is rather like my view of the EU. One can see the sense in some sort of European harmonisation of laws etc, but doesn't thereby have to support the EU, which is a corrupt, bloated farce of a bureaucracy. Similarly there are many reasons to support a certain amount of immigration but that's no excuse for abandoning border controls altogether or setting up a system which positively encourages abuse (preventing asylum seekers from working legally for a start). Mr Straw's opinion? None that he bothered to share with us; instead he just sulked "no" when Dimbleby asked if he felt responsible.

And the result of all this? Griffin and his moronic followers doing better than ever in the polls. This may be Labour's worst legacy of all.

Defence Procurement

2009-11-18T10:31:00.002Z

Two letters in the Times for September 18 enthusiastically supported the Eurofighter programme, on the grounds that for the first time in four decades the RAF has a world class multi-role jet, that jobs in the North of England and Scotland would be imperilled without such programmes, and that if it were cancelled virtually no cost savings would be made anyway.

Only the third point has any validity. The first and last consideration in defence procurement should be obtaining the best quality equipment for our forces given the resources available, not in providing a substitute unemployment benefit for the incumbent government’s marginal constituencies. I would far rather have to inform a factory worker that he or she is being made redundant than have to explain to a soldier’s parents that their child has been killed due to inadequate equipment. And the fact that it has taken four decades to produce a worthy partly-British built combat jet is an argument against, not for, attempting any such folly in the future.

The only actual combat role which it is possible to conceive the Eurofighter undertaking is that of supporting ground troops against insurgents. Such a role can be carried out more effectively - and cheaply - by unmanned drones (which can loiter for many hours and involve no risk to pilots) and attack helicopters.

Strategic bombing would be more effective, cheaper, and far less risky to personnel if undertaken by cruise missiles (or stealth aircraft, which the Eurofighter is not) rather than conventional fast jets. Air combat, if it is ever undertaken again, will be determined by whichever side has the better early warning and control systems, and air to air missiles, not dogfighting skills.

The United States’ military budget exceeds the next largest by a factor virtually unprecedented in recorded history, and the cost-effectiveness of purchasing American equipment often corresponds. Further, there is no chance of Britain undertaking major combat operations without at least some American equipment and assistance or - it might as well be conceded - political approbation. Our troops would be best served by acting upon, not trying to deny, those facts.

The Intro and the Outro

2008-10-10T12:50:00.012+01:00

A recent promotion and one or two other events in real life have left me with insufficient time to spend on this blog. As a result, and with some considerable regret, I have decided to end it. This will accordingly be the last post. It will also be the first post for anyone who happens to stumble across the blog in the future. I thought I would therefore try and say a few words about the blog and the blogging experience by way of both conclusion and introduction.

This is, or was, the blog of a half Kiwi/half English lawyer who likes cricket, current affairs, law and various bits of Western civilisation. It contains a few arguments and rants by me on various issues, usually whatever was current in the daily press, and also links to other sites I find interesting. More information on my personal tastes can be found on my profile on the right hand side of the screen.

As to cricket, I am entirely high church, without apology. That is to say, test cricket, and little else, holds my attention. I tried to enjoy the last limited overs world cup; I failed. Five nil defeats in the Ashes provided more enjoyment, and that's saying something (and nothing good either).

Politically I suppose I incline towards the Classical Liberalism of JS Mill. Needless to say I find it hard to identify with any of today's political parties. Hence I find so much political comment in the UK so tedious. Too many commentators blind themselves to the failings of their own whilst aggressively traducing the 'other side'. Even esteemed journalists like Polly Toynbee aren't immune; indeed, she might be the paradigmatic example. Besides, virtually all of British Politics was neatly summed up more than twenty years ago by Yes Minister.

As well as issues of the day, I have posted some modest efforts on somewhat weighty topics such as religion, climate change and animal rights, which I'm beginning to wonder might be the same thing, or at least variations on a theme. I have also attempted to discuss discrimination and multiculturalism and learned how much of a hornet's nest one might end up poking.

Looking back I see I have 81 posts tagged "Law", but I hope most have been written on a subject and in a way that might be of interest to general readers too.

Culturally I am unapologetically in favour of classical Western Civilisation, at least when there was such a thing. Modern art I despise. Most (though not all) of what is in the Tate Modern and almost every Turner Prize entry in history is crap. Some is literally crap. A torn canvass is not a work of art. Nor is a screwed up piece of paper. Nor a room with the light flickering on and off. Gangsta’ Rap and Simon Cowellesque fluffy pop music is not as good as Bach or Beethoven or Pink Floyd or Clapton or Led Zeppelin or Alison Krauss. Enough said.

Similarly, I disdain witchdoctors and spin doctors. Homeopathy does not work. It cannot, on its own terms. Nor does astrology. The Easter Bunny isn't real either. I could go on. I have, at length, already.

I do, however, enjoy military history, in particular the Great War, where curiously the popular British view seem to be the opposite of party politics: they dish the dirt on their own, whilst blinding themselves to the failings of others. I also enjoy films, particularly those of Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick and Martin Scorcese. Most of my cultural witterings were done under this link or this one.

It only remains for me to offer thanks to all those who have contributed to the comments over the time I have been writing it, they have enriched the blog immensely. I would like to say a few words about everyone out individually, but fear that I have neither the time to say it properly and, worse, would be bound to forget someone! I will still try and visit my favourite blogs when I have the chance - and, who knows, like a professional boxer, will unwisely decide to come out of retirement from time to time here. For now, however, it is time for a break, and a substantial one at that.

Thanks once again for stopping by.

The Financial Crisis

2008-10-05T22:21:00.008+01:00

During the Vice Presidential debate the candidates were naturally asked about the present financial crisis. I was interested to hear Governor Palin for the Republicans (answering according to her prepared script, of course) ascribe it to greed on Wall Street; that no doubt is one of the causes and will remain the media's favourite, but it is by no means the only one.

Greed in borrowing money, after all, requires two to tango: a greedy borrower wanting money that he or she can't afford to repay, and a greedy lender prepared to lend it. The benighted individuals who racked up the national debt of a small third world country on their credit cards were as greedy as the lenders who kept moronically dolling out the cash. The media were irresponsible for promoting the consumer culture and the public were irresponsible for buying into it. The state in Britain didn't regulate the lending market and the market didn't regulate itself. As a result we developed in many instances a pyramid-scheme economy.

The first manifestation of the pyramid economy was in personal debt. Credit cards were offered so easily that many (including some sophisticated city workers of my acquaintance) were tempted to borrow and borrow by the offering of no repayments for substantial periods coupled with 0% on balance transfers for new customers. As long as they could, at the end of the 0% interest period, shift the ever increasing balance onto a new provider, the cycle could continue. Necessarily the run would have to come to an end at some point, but too many people turned a blind eye to that mathematical certainty.

The second pyramid scheme involved mortgages. As long as the housing market continued to increase, people were tempted to borrow and borrow against the theoretically increasing equity. Others were tempted to try their hand at becoming property tycoons, by continually buying-to-let with as much borrowing as they could find. On paper in a rising market they were multi-millionares; once the bubble burst they were on paper very broke indeed. Once again, the housing market could not increase forever, but the borrowing culture depending upon it doing so. Therefore, it was a mathematical certainty that the market would crash in that respect too.

The third manifestation of the pyramid scheme came in how the banks dealt with the ever-increasing amount of mortgage debt on their books. A mortgage is a transaction whereby the lender makes a profit out of the fact that the borrower pays back the capital sum plus interest. Therefore, the profit is made once the borrower starts - and only to the extent that he continues - paying back the debt and interest. Yet the banks acted as though the very act of signing up a mortgage generated a profit in itself. Salesmen were awarded commissions by signing up new mortgagors. They were therefore given every incentive to sign as many as they could. The lending departments of a bank would be rewarded for this activity, as would those in charge of the bank. None of that bore any relation to the underlying profitability - or non-profitability - of the mortgage contract itself. The bank would therefore have to generate money to pay for it all. A favoured tactic was to dress up the mortgage and sell it into the securities market. Here many buyers made the mistake that small investors often do: assuming that because the product they were buying came from someone with a good name, it must be a good product. But junk mortgages disguised as Bear Sterns securites products were still junk mortgages. As each was bought and sold the vendor would have to take a cut to make the deal profitable. Thus the underlying transaction would be even less profitable each time it was bought and sold. And so, once again, a spiral with only one end was created.

Having drafted the above, I picked up a copy of the Spectator, which had a further explanation for the US mortgage disaster behind so much of the global chaos. According to this article by Dennis Sewell:

The root problem was not financial — it was political, and those truly responsible for this fiasco were not bankers, nor even Bush Republicans; they were Clinton Democrats.

For generations, America’s bankers have been firmly refusing credit to those they judged unworthy of it. Yet the mountain of toxic subprime debt that has threatened to overwhelm the entire financial system, and the astonishing number of mortgage foreclosures across the United States, is proof that, at some point in the relatively recent past, bankers radically altered their behaviour and began to shower mortgages on borrowers who had no realistic prospect of keeping up their repayments. What could possibly have induced them to act so recklessly, and so out of character? The facile answer to that question is greed, the lure of a fast and easy buck. The correct answer is that banks were bullied, cajoled and coerced into lowering their lending standards by politicians in pursuit of an ideological agenda.

(...)

The main thrust of the Clinton housing strategy was to increase home ownership among the poor, and particularly among blacks and Hispanics. White House aides, in familiar West Wing style, could parrot the many social advantages that would accrue: high levels of home ownership correlated with less violent crime, better school performance, a heightened sense of commun-ity. But standing in the way of the realisation of this dream were the conservative lending policies of the banks, which required such inconvenient and old-fashioned things as cash deposits and regular repayments — things the poor and minorities often could not provide. Clinton told the banks to be more creative.

(...)

[W]hen little or no overt or deliberate racial discrimination was discovered among the mortgage lenders, [the state] turned to trying to prove ‘disparate treatment’ of minority groups, a notion similar to that of unintentional ‘institutional racism’. If a bank refused loans to proportionally more black applicants than white ones, for instance, the onus would fall on it to prove it had good grounds for doing so or face settlement penalties running into millions of dollars. A series of highly publicised cases were brought on this basis, starting in 1994. Eventually the investigators would turn somewhat desperately to ‘disparate impact’, a form of discrimination so abstract and rarefied as to be imperceptible to its supposed victims, and indeed often only discernible at all through the application of multivariate regression analysis to information stored on regulators’ databases.

These mortgage banks, which have been responsible for issuing about three quarters of the dodgy subprime loans that are proving troublesome today, quickly took the hint. From the mid-1990s they began to abandon their formerly rigorous lending criteria. Mortgages were offered with only 3 per cent deposit requirements, and eventually with no deposit requirement at all. The mortgage banks fell over one another to provide loans to low-income households and especially to minority customers. ...

The national banks, responsible for the remaining quarter of the current subprime loans, were put under a different kind of pressure by the Clinton team to boost their low-income and minority lending too. Changes were made to the Community Reinvestment Act to establish a system by which banks were rated according to how much lending they did in low-income neighbourhoods. A good CRA rating was necessary if a bank wanted to get regulators to sign off on mergers, expansions, even new branch openings. A poor rating could be disastrous for a bank’s business plan. It was a different kind of coercion, but just as effective.

How much blame can truly be apportioned to the Clinton Administration's interventions, as opposed to the general increased recklesness of banks I cannot answer. In Britain there was not the state did not act in the same way (in Britain we tend to respond to low income/minority housing problems with council stock). The pyramid scheme I described above was clearly driven by greed and short-sightedness. The American crash, whatever its cause, only hastened the inevitable. I tend to answer the question of whether it was the greedy public, the irresponsible media, the greedy lenders, the slack regulators or the non-existent self regulators, with the short answer that it was all of them.

The much more important question is what to do next. Talk of a taxpayer bail-out needs more detail. Take the housing market. Are we to give taxpayers' money to the homeowners, thus giving them a windfall for silly borrowing (at the expense of those such as myself who deliberately maintained conservative mortgages)? Or are we to give it straight to the lenders, thus giving them a windfall for silly lending and enabling them to reposess the houses of the failed borrowers and give themselves a second windfall, and thus also enabling them to continue the pyramid scheme lending system for longer? This I find particularly infuriating given that those in charge of the lending institutions have paid themselves absurdly high bonuses over the years (most of which they pumped into the housing market thus fuelling the boom and the continuation of the pyramid scheme) and didn't always pay taxes with any enthusiasm, the taxes they now seek to have given to them to save them from themselves.

Stephen of Rough Trade gives his thoughts here. I agree with his conclusion that the chips should be left to lie where they fall. The only argument I can see for the state intervening is that it would have to deal with the fallout of the destroyed savings accounts should it come to it (by the social welfare safety net) and so if it could intervene to prevent that happening it might as well. But I'm not comfortable with the proposed uses of taxpayers' money that I have seen. The British state is guaranteeing deposits up to £35k; the Irish and Greek governments have offered unlimited guarantees. This is the sort of rash financial act that caused the crash in the first place: if things got really bad, the only way the state could make good that promise would be by printing more money a la Germany in the 20s or Zimbabwe today; far from saving everyone's savings it would render them worthless. Else the state just borrows and borrows on more and more unfavourable terms and leaves the next generation to pay the bill (in other words, just like rash credit card behaviour ....).

Better, I would submit, that we allow the market to take the consequences. If the state must intervene, let it do so to only to the extent of ensuring an orderly wind-down of failed institutions. In other words, no more Northern Rocks. Let the state appoint administrators to selll off the assets in an orderly fashion and decide the best way to deal with those that are left broke, but no more lending and no more allowing unsustainable businesses to continue. In the usual course of events, of course, it is illegal for a company to trade whilst insolvent. There are sound reasons for this, and they apply with equal force when it is the state behind the insolvent company.

That proposed solution may seem harsh. But if it means a lesson to this generation on the value of things as well as their price, then so much the better.

Post script: here, from Stray, is an entirely different way to reach the same conclusion.

The Gurkhas and the Chagos Islanders

2008-10-02T14:01:00.004+01:00

Stephen of Rough Trade correctly applauds the court decision to allow former Gurkha soldiers to settle in the UK. He contrasts their victory with the continuing plight of the Chagos Islanders, who were evicted years ago so the Americans could build their base on Diego Garcia and keep it secure (from those well-known insurgent islanders ... or not ....). I have commented thus:

The two cases are distinguishable, if on a morally tawdry basis. The Gurkhas are about the most respected fighting unit in any army in the world; they have given magnificent service to Britain in every single conflict in which they have been involved. Whichever demented idiot thought they ought to be excluded from living in the country for which they have fought with such distinction ought to be taken out the back and physically re-engineered with a Kukri knife. This is, after all, the country which can't bring itself to deport admitted terrorists. I despair.

The Chagos Islanders are innocent people who got turfed out of their homes because our very much bigger brother the Americans decided they wanted the land for defensive (and often offensive) purposes. As we are in thrall to our bigger brother, we complied. Much as there was no arguing with China when they wanted Hong Kong, irrespective of what anyone actually living there might have wanted. So we can write off the unfortunate plight of the Chagos Islanders to realpolitik, but there isn't the beginning of an excuse - bad or otherwise - for the prior exclusion of the Gurkhas.

RIP Paul Newman

2008-09-29T12:10:00.001+01:00

Lord Reith, who was the head of the BBC in the days when that was something to be proud of, issued many sound edicts. One was that the word 'famous' was redundant. If someone was famous, he reasoned, they didn't need to be called so, and if they weren't famous, they shouldn't be called it. If that axiom was in force today, most of Britain's 'celebrity' media would be out of a job, and I for one wouldn't be shedding any tears.

One person who was genuinely famous however was Paul Newman, who died over the weekend. He was most famous to an older generation than mine, it is true; not simply for his great acting skills or his looks (there was a trace of irony behind his piercing blue eyes: he was in fact colour blind) but also his salad dressings. Here is a good example of Newman's greatness and the accompanying smallness of most so-called 'celebrities'. It began when he asked a shopkeeper to sell some leftover salad dressing of his. The shopkeeper agreed, but only if he could put Newman's face on the bottles, or no-one would recognise the connection. Newman agreed, but reasoned that if he was going to do something that tacky (his word), the money ought to go to a worthwhile cause. And thus one of his extensive charitable causes began. That's the sort of thing great people used to do.

Back to Newman's acting. I suppose modern audiences might not be so familiar with Cool Hand Luke, The Sting or The Hustler. They might, however, have seen Newman's last film, Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition. It also stars Tom Hanks and Jude Law, amongst others. Newman effortlessly acts them off the screen. That's what great actors have always done.

Cricketing thoughts

2008-09-26T11:29:00.002+01:00

Some fine words here by Mukul Kesavan, trenchant and depressing in equal measure. I agree with every word, and that's why I am in a rather more glum mood than normally obtains on a Friday:

"You can't help feeling that at the very moment that Twenty20 cricket, in the shape of the second IPL season, threatens to take centre-stage in world cricket because of its showbiz potential, its silly money and its compressed excitement, the Indian Test team is about to lose the star quality that sustained it in recent times. Ganguly's gone; now think of the Test team without Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble. You're left with one quality batsman, Virender Sehwag; one promising one who's yet to make his Test debut, Rohit Sharma; one spinner who occasionally runs through a side, Harbhajan Singh; and a bunch of interesting but injury-prone seamers. Not the best ingredients with which to sustain interest in Test cricket at a time when the long game is under siege.

In contrast the limited-overs teams are full of exciting young players made for that format: Dhoni, Yuvraj, Raina, Robin Uthappa, Praveen Kumar, Rohit, the brothers Pathan - the list seems endless. If I were a young boy excited about cricket today, why would I follow the fortunes of a middling Test team packed with players of moderate ability once our veterans have retired, taking their glorious careers with them?

Worse still, the Australians, who single-handedly kept interest in Test cricket alive by geeing up the Test game, upping the run-rate, forcing results (generally wins for themselves), and nearly making the draw extinct, are themselves entering a period of ordinariness and decline. It's typical of the times that the most celebrated new entrant into the Australian Test squad is Shane Watson, the quintessential Twenty20 player, who made such a huge impression on the first season of the IPL. And I don't think Jason Krejza and Bryce McGain are going to take the Test world by storm simply because Australia have been scraping the barrel in search of spinners to replace Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill. It costs me to say it but this golden age of Australian cricket, from Mark Taylor to Ricky Ponting via Steve Waugh, through which they produced a whole regiment of modern greats, gave Test cricket a longer lease of the cricketing limelight than it might have had in the normal course of cricket history. If we're at the end of Australia's modern heyday, we might well be looking at the end, not of Test cricket, but of its reign as the hegemonic form of the game."

Certainly test clashes between Australia and India without Warne, McGrath, Langer, Gilchrist, Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and others won't have the same ring to them, but as the author suggests, this could be a far greater malaise indeed.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday - Glamour Girls of the 1960s

2008-09-24T09:16:00.004+01:00

Taken at the Goodwood Festival of Speed over the weekend, these finely turned out young ladies are supposedly representative of the 1960s. I wasn't alive in that decade, so am unable to confirm either way, but if it wasn't the 60s, maybe it should have been. Rose-tinted spectacles might explain the colour of the outfits anyway.

The Thin Red Line: Melanesian songs

2008-09-23T10:54:00.004+01:00

Stephen of Rough Trade and I have been discussing films. One in particular which I singled out for praise, and he hasn't dissented, is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Superficially it is a war film; to me, that would be like calling Strauss' Blue Danube a tune to which people like to dance. Pressure of work, including an overseas trip for which I am about to leave, precludes a detailed discussion of my own views at the moment. To kick off the discussion, however, here is an example of one of the incidental pleasures of the film, a song by the Melanesian choir which forms an integral part of the soundtrack to the film. The accompanying images (of course I lifted it all from Youtube) are rather shaky shots from the film, but they too give some idea.

Why English football is not a real sport

2008-09-23T10:11:00.000+01:00

One thing I can't stand about football is the pathetic diving and otherwise ludicrous overreactions in search of penalties. Not much of that goes on in rugby league.

Pink Floyd again

2008-09-23T10:02:00.000+01:00

Introducing this song in their famous Live 8 reunion, Roger Waters explains that it's for everyone whose not here, "particularly of course for Syd". And now, of course, Rick Wright isn't here either. Waters said how emotional it was standing up there with the three others after all those years. He couldn't have known how much extra weight those words would carry just three years later as, now, they won't be standing together again however many hatchets get buried.

Rick Wright's death

2008-09-15T21:05:00.005+01:00

Founding member of the greatest rock band in history, Rick Wright, has died. His BBC obituary is here. I've said a bit about the Floyd before, and will try to again when I have time.

Double-Dutch pronunciation

2008-09-15T13:58:00.003+01:00

Whilst perusing the Times' Letters' page, I was reminded of this classic of English literature, written by a foreigner, of course.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-15T09:47:00.002+01:00

I haven't followed the US Presidential Election closely enough to blog about it. I am reading more as the time draws nearer, however, and in the meantime found this illuminating.

Thoughts on Kubrick

2008-09-11T21:21:00.005+01:00

If I had my way, the font for this blog would be futura medium . That was Stanley Kubrick's favourite and, as with most things Kubrick, was not a decision he arrived at lightly. I was absolutely thrilled to learn that Kubrick's legendary boxes - containing endless details of his day to day life including of course his films - is being archived in London and will be available to the public. Recently BBC 4 screened a film about the boxes - over a thousand in number, and starting from about 1968. Therein lies the first source of disappointment: Kubrick's greatest films were all made prior to 1968 (that being the year of release of the greatest of them all, 2001). Therein lies the second source of disappointment: perhaps the more obsessive he became over his films, the less great his films became. Clockwork Orange is still a great film, Full Metal Jacket is half a great film, The Shining is almost great, while Barry Lyndon is beautifully made at least.

Which leaves his final film. A person whose view I greatly respect hates the film. Overall the critical reaction might best be called 'mixed'. That was sort of my own reaction when I saw it nearly ten years ago: it was beautifully shot in many respects, without exactly resonating greatness in the same way his previous masterworks did.

More recently, however, I read this in Wikipedia, pertaining to another person I greatly admire:

In a special edition of the television show Roger Ebert & the Movies, director Martin Scorsese named Eyes Wide Shut his fourth favorite film of the 1990s. For the introduction to Michel Ciment's Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, Scorsese wrote: "When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick's death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you'll see that all his films were initially misunderstood. Then, after five or ten years came the realization that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since."

I shall have to seek out the film again. In the meantime, here is something on which my view hasn't changed at all since I saw it in 1999: the trailer, which is just fantastic, partly due to the font, partly due to the use of a great Chris Isaak tune, and well perhaps which also contributed to my eventual disappointment in the film first time round, by raising expectations later unfulfilled.

Cricketing thoughts

2008-09-11T11:31:00.004+01:00

I see that the draw has now been made for the Sandford bonanza, and Steven Harmison has lucked in. Actually, despite his admirable gesture to step aside for someone 'more deserving', his selection was the correct decision. Either this is a proper cricket match or it is not. If not, one might wonder what the ECB was doing agreeing to it. If it is, then the best side has to be picked and on present form the best side includes Harmison. It is of course in the players' interest too (save for whomsoever missed out): the best side equates to the best chance of winning the spoils.

Rafer Janders observed that the fair thing to do would be to share the winnings amongst the whole squad. That rather reminds me of Rawls' theory of justice, which was based around the idea that society should be constructed according to a 'veil of ignorance', whereby no-one knows if they will be talented, attractive, intelligent or whatever, and presumably therefore everyone will agree to protect the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. Applied to the Sandford context it seems fair enough; after all no-one is going to be short of a quid by dividing the winnings slightly further amongst a few more players.

Harmison's selection for Sandford's squillions is, in fact, about the least controversial selection of late. Far more dubious in my opinion (though not Mr Janders') is the awarding of a central contract to Michael Vaughan. I accept that from 2002 until the very test in which he was made captain Vaughan was the best batsman in the world. At the time the question was continually asked as to whether he was a good batsman enjoying a purple patch (a la Broad in Australia 1986/7), or a genuinely great batsman. Opinion in the dailies inclined to the latter but history (that is to say, hindsight) suggests otherwise. No matter, Vaughan had a good career as a batsman and a great one as captain, his greatest legacy of course being the replacement of Ashes '81 as The Series.

I am not convinced, however, that any of that justifies Vaughan 2008 being given a central contract ahead of a younger player (namely someone whose knees are in better shape than those of a bedridden 90 year old with arthritis). His dismissals by the South African fast bowlers suggested an inability to get forward and low quick enough to defend the fastest yorkers. And his form for as long as anyone can remember seems to have consisted of the occasional place-saving hundred, sometimes - as with Lord's this year - at the expense of the interests of the team (on that occasion, the requirement was for quick runs to put NZ under pressure, not a Boycottesque ton to save his own place).

I could of course be proven wrong. But the way to prove me wrong would have been to tell Vaughan to go back to the counties and score lots of runs. So far he's only done half of that. His inclusion, therefore, seems to be one or more of the following: (i) a reward for long service, akin to the ludicrously antiquated benefit season; (ii) victory of hope over expectation; (iii) reward for being KP's mate; or more kindly (iv) to have him on hand to assist KP with his undoubted technical expertise as captain - the glaring omission on KP's captaincy CV (fair enough given KP had never been captain at county level or anything much at all before getting the job).

Selection three, or non-selection as it were, is that of Mike Selvey from Test Match Special. This is the doings either of the new TMS middle-manager, Adam Mountford, or some mandarins higher up who have offered up Mountford as the patsy to take the rap for what everyone should have known would be an unpopular decision. Either way it's a disgrace. They couldn't even announce it properly - it was left to Aggers to tell everyone informally and then Mountford to give a two-faced apologia on the TMS blog some time later. Mountford's lame effort can be found here, together with a storm of derision in the comments bar including a short intemperate one of my own. Re-reading it I see that he didn't even come out with the news properly until putting his one and only appearance in on the comments line (comment 23). He also said:

"Thanks for all the feedback - I do read it and take it on board"

By which he means that he reads the nice bits and ignores the rest; this is evidenced by his failure to appear subsequently on the comments sheet and the closing down of comments on the blog entry for Selvey.

Mountford seems to have been hired in line with some idiotic recruitment policy that either discriminates in favour of people who know nothing about the sport in which they will be working or discriminates against someone who has the nerve to speak in slightly plummy tones (dare I say it, BBC English?) and have some knowledge of the game. Saying he wanted more people with recent test experience and then going on to name Simon Hughes (number of tests played: zero) says it all about Mountford and his chums. And if anyone should dare mention the F word (what the Americans call soccer) on TMS again I shall throw a hand grenade into Cherie Blair's mouth (aka the pressbox) next time I'm at Lord's. The clue is in the name. Test Match Special. Not 'Imitation of Radio 5 Live Premiershit coverage adapted for 20/20'.

(Postscript: Mountford is at it again here. I have commented "I count no fewer than four 'amazings' in his article, together with three 'incredibles', a 'real shame' not a 'shame', 'huge' controversy and the inevitable fatuous and unwanted football reference.

Mr Mountford, hysteria does not a good article make. Your style might kindly be described as magniloquent. Less kindly it might be called tediously sensationalist.

Just imagine if TMS commentary was conducted in this sort of fashion ... "

Expect that comment to be deleted, sorry 'moderated', or perhaps I should in modern net-speak call it 'Flynned'?

Joining Mike Selvey on the unwanted list is selection four, or non-selection two: poor old Matthew Hoggard. Hoggie less than a year ago was England's premier strike bowler; as of the past week he doesn't even have a central contract. How he must be regarding the better fortunes of his fellow Yorkshireman Mr Vaughan with envious - even incredulous - eyes. There is irony aplenty, not least in the fact that Hoggie the bowler was dropped following a failure by the batsmen in the first test of the winter tour, whereas Vaughan hasn't even been dropped yet. Hoggard's (ghost written) column in the Times was always the epitome of why good players can be very bad pundits: "the lad's really pulled it out last time" ... "We're all really up for the next one" ... "That loss hurt but we'll learn from it and be stronger in future" ... "I'm not doing much as we're not playing, just walking my dogs on the Yorkshire Moors". Now, I fear, it has gone beyond self-parody.

Polly Toynbee and Gordon Brown: end of a dream?

2008-09-10T09:33:00.004+01:00

Polly Toynbee had high hopes for Gordon Brown, only to see them dashed. From being an avid supporter she went pretty quickly to this damning indictment:

Maybe he hasn't the character, the toughness, the fibre, the daring. He was always the Macbeth who failed to wield the knife. In those waiting, plotting years of half-cocked conspiracies, a Lady Macbeth would often have shouted: "Infirm of purpose!"

I'm not going to gloat too much at Polly; she wasn't to know he would be so lame and a woman can change her mind about someone anyway. What does concern me, however, is Polly's (and more worryingly Gordon Brown and all his supporters') conception of democracy. About Gordon Brown's accession I said this (in May 2007):

The other week on Question Time, Patricia Hewett was adamant that there was no need for an election because of the resignation of Tony Blair. She should have known she was walking into an elephant trap. But, said the presenter, Labour called vociferously for an election when Thatcher quit. Maybe, conceded Ms Hewitt. And, continued the presenter, you were working in Neil Kinnock's press office at the time. Cue much blushing, blustering and blundering from an experienced politician who should have seen it coming.

Had she thought of it, Ms Hewitt could have pointed out that the PM was only one position and was not, unlike the US President, elected to that role.

I think there is a case for an election, but until recently I did not think it compelling in the instant case. That is, until I read this in the Guardian:"Mr Brown made reference to New Labour's achievements but said he was also determined to show he represented not a just a change in style, but "a new government"."Right, well, in this country we are given to understand that a new government requires an election, so I'm waiting Gordon ...

I'm still waiting, of course. The point is that major changes in government (policies or personnel) usually have to be preceded by an election. If Blair's government was to continue with only his replacement by Brown, then I would have accepted that there was no need for a general election. All indications, actions and utterances of Mr Brown have been to the contrary, however, and therefore he should have called an election before now. Continually he has sought to distinguish himself from the Blair administration (despite having held a central role in it). Worst of all was his build-up and sudden retreat (when it became clear Cameron had a strong chance of winning): Mr Brown said he wanted the voters to see his vision and plan in action before voting on it. That, needless to say, is the sort of conduct one might expect from a third world dictatorship ("elections will be held when the situation has been normalised" sort of thing) not from a democracy.

Of starry schemes

2008-09-08T12:43:00.006+01:00

Like many, I have received occasional offers from friendly and helpful people, most of whom seem to be based in Nigeria, who are anxious for me to share in their good fortune. They usually explain that they are the true owners of a vast pool of money languishing in a bank account in Nigeria, and are quite willing to share it with me in a mutual and lasting respectful relationship. This will all come to pass, they promise, if I could just help out with a (comparatively) small amount of money up front in order for them to secure the release of their benefically and legally owned funds.

These are good for the odd laugh, much in the way that I enjoy laughing at urban myths. The amusing part, to me at least, is how anyone could think they were true, when they never make sense even on their own terms. Like the urban myth about the radio exchange between an arrogant US aircraft carrier commander and what turns out to be a lighthouse: aside from the date and location changing with each retelling, they usually get something like the name of the aircraft carrier wrong, which one presumes is not a mistake the vessel's commander might make in real life.

Or the one about the chap who successfully claimed on insurance that his cigars had been destroyed by "a series of small fires", but ended up getting convicted of arson: no insurance policy ever written would cover intentional damage, and you can't be convicted of arson if you burn your own property with no damage to anyone else's.

In a similar fashion the instant-win scams usually get some key date wrong or omit some relevant detail.

About the oldest scam going is of course astrology. It is true that every celestial body exerts a gravitational force on every other. But the amount exerted on us human beings is ludicrously small: as near to zero as makes no difference. Therefore the very idea that our behaviour might be changed by the movement of Pisces or whatever is utterly, incontestably absurd. Moreover, it doesn't even work on its own terms. The sum total of astronomical knowledge when all the nonsense about star signs was first invented was far lower than it is today. Even now we do not have complete knowledge of the Kuiper belt, and yet by the logic of astrologists its discovery should have made a hash of all their previous calculations.

The puzzling thing to me has always been how on earth all the charlatans and fraudsters offering astrological advice and Nigerian banking get-rich-quick schemes make a living; in other words, who on earth falls for their snake oil and skullduggery? The old saying "if something sounds too good to be true, that's because it is" should be enough to dissade anyone from writing the cheque.

Sadly, the answer should have been as obvious to me as the fraudulent nature of the schemes themselves. Those who fall for them are the most vulnerable: the most poor, least educated and those amongst the elderly whose mental powers and therefore judgement have declined. There is a sad tale on the BBC website today about someone whose elderly mother was a very unfortunate victim. It concludes that the government should take steps to ban these scams. I doubt it would work; fraudsters will just sharpen up their practice.

A better (and indeed not mutually exclusive) solution would be better publicity: and here the BBC could help, by running a few consumer programmes exposing such scams. Or would someone acting out of misguided politically correct idiocy not want to upset the poor old astrologers?

On cricket

2008-09-05T20:18:00.003+01:00

Fine article here by Harsha Bogle on, inter alios, Kevin Pietersen:

Kevin Pietersen comes across as being his own man as well. He is confident and combative and that is often equated with arrogance. But when he meets a fork in the road, he chooses the path of aggression. In doing so he gives his team the best chance of success. It might still be early days for him as captain, but he is not feeling his way around. If he fails he will not be able to look elsewhere and good leaders are happy to live with that responsibility.

His is a great story, one of the more interesting ones in recent times. Clearly he has backed himself at all times; often he has been theatrical, outspoken and unafraid to rock the boat. When you have to struggle to prove yourself in someone else’s world, you either end up being negative and bitter or overly combative. Pietersen has evolved in an environment where he has always been the odd man out and without the self-belief he so clearly exudes, he would have been lost.

(...)

There was much written about Andrew Flintoff’s batting form at the start of the season, even suggestions about him being a bowler who does a bit with the bat. Instead, Pietersen sent him up the order, at once a statement of faith and a challenge. With the backing of the captain, Flintoff is back to being the nightmare batsman for the opposition.

And England suddenly have the right balance again; a batsman among the five bowlers and a bowler in the top six.

Next he worked on Harmison, a man of fragile temperament but enormous ability. England, much to everyone’s glee, were ready to give up on him. But sometimes the biggest brutes have soft cores, feel the same need for reassurance as average strugglers. Sanath Jayasuriya is like that. So, it seems, is Harmison.

(...) Flintoff and Harmison, available and in form, represent the best bowling England can put on the park. It is no surprise that a batsman figured that out.

Big players get frustrated playing the little leagues. They don’t need to prove themselves there, merely to show that they are ready again. England would have lost Harmison to Durham; now he has an opportunity to show the world he can travel. Pietersen’s next stop, not surprisingly, is Simon Jones. He gives the impression that he knows where to look. I think he will tell England to cut the talk and play. Unless he falls prey to the talk himself, unless he starts playing to the gallery.

Either way, England have suddenly emerged as the side to follow. There have been false dawns before, some sunrises were quickly obscured. If this one lasts, England will be very watchable.

I particularly like the point that, in captaincy as with all aspects of his cricket, Pietersen will not die wondering.

Bradman the accountant

2008-09-04T22:29:00.003+01:00

Much is in the media regarding the Don's centenary, including this challenging correspondence in the Times:

Although scoring rates were not recorded until more recently, it is possible to calculate the strike rate of players of different eras. And it is essential to consider the strike rate to recognise the extraordinary batting skills of contemporaries such as Adam Gilchrist, as well as 19th-century players such as Albert Trott.

The comparison is stark: Gilchrist scores at a rate of 82 runs per 100 balls. Bradman at a mere 49.

Because of the limitations of scoring methods, calculating strike rates for players of the Victorian era is more tricky. But they seem incidental when legacies are considered. Bradman seldom lofted the ball, preferring the accountant-like surety of balls played along the grass.

Trott, on the other hand, is recorded as being the only player in the history of the game to strike a six that cleared the pavilion at Lord’s. It was this reckless and cavalier style that Bradman’s accumulative method replaced, a style that must have been thrilling to witness.

This deserves a greater response later. For now I will just refer to my earlier post on the Don.

Holiday posting: three wine books

2008-09-04T14:56:00.008+01:00

My days continue to be filled with rather more interesting pursuits than bashing away at computer keyboards. In addition to more museum/gallery visiting (today was the Horniman Museum in South London, with a fine collection of natural history, eclectic pieces from around
the world varying from musical instruments to instruments of torture, and possibly the world's largest collection of Dulwich Mums and assorted offspring), I have found some more time for drinking wine. There isn't much point in blogging about particular bottles since most I might particularly recommend are not widely available (the above picture needs no introduction, however, nor indeed any recommendation). But I thought I would say a word or two about three of the wine guides I own which would be of general interest.

Clive Coates is a well known British author who, quite unlike me, is a Master of Wine. In those circumstances it would seem slightly churlish even for me to review his book The Great Wines of France (Mitchell Beazley, 2005). The title indicates it probably isn't for the rank amateur in any event. The subject matter confirms as much. Whilst there is much of interest in terms of general wine knowledge and history, and it is not true that all his tasting notes relate to unattainable vintages, I doubt many of us will be able to afford or find vintage Krug and Lafite Rothschild should we anxiously wish to follow in Coates' footsteps.

I will, however, venture one criticism of Mr Coates MW: it is too sweeping to claim that that the greatest of all wines come from France. The French themselves learned that (or rather, refused to learn it) thirty years ago.

Even better known than Coates in the wine world is of course the most famous critic of all, the American Robert Parker. I have a copy of his two volume The Wine Buyer's Guide (6th Edition, DK 2002). Parker too specialises in French wine. He made his name as a fierce consumer advocate, determined not to be swayed by 150 year old classifications of vineyards or associated snobbery. His byword has always been - correctly in my view - personal choice, not money or labels.

Yet Parker has long since become a victim of his own success: if he scores a wine above 90 points, it can't be bought at any (reasonable) price; if he scores it below 80 it can't be sold. And as much as he stresses individual choice, the result of his influence has been vineyards straining to produce the style of wine which he himself likes.

There is a further problem with Parker's guide. He claims to be an advocate of world wines, whilst majoring in French. Accordingly the first volume of his guide is devoted exclusively to France and the second to the rest of the world. The problem is that French wine is Parker's passion: this is fine, but he really needs to do more work on the rest of the world before having the temerity to offer a guide on it. For the whole of South Africa he manages two paragraphs! New Zealand fares little better: a single page which begins with the line 'An enormous amount of hype is associated with New Zealand's wines'. That gives a clue as to what follows:
Parker rubbishing most other than the few famous labels he has heard of, whilst offering some faint praise for future offerings. Even Australian wines - a significant success in Britain and I am sure not unnoticed by Parker - receive unsatisfactory coverage. He mentions one of my favourite producers, Jim Barry, without mentioning its most successful and best known offering (The Amagh, one of the country's super-reds, on a par with Penfold's Grange). Parker may be the last word on Bordeaux, but he is the last choice on the rest of the world.

Which leaves my third book, Phillip Williamson and David Moore's Wine behind the label (Williamson Moore 2006). Well set out, easy to use, well written and a good balance between France and the rest of the world. What's more, many of the offerings are available at unexotic British stores and I haven't found glaring omissions as with the above-mentioned Parker howlers. It might not have the provenance of the other two books, but it is the highest recommended in my view without question.

Netiquette again

2008-09-03T23:45:00.004+01:00

This post from Stephen is my vote for post of the week, concerning as it does the intellectual honesty of one of our employees, one Paul Flynn MP. As you will discover, Flynn goes beyond a breach of netiquette and into the realms of deceit. I resent paying the wages of a weasel like Flynn.

Postscript: I put a short comment below Stephen's post and Flynn's original. Flynn replied on his. It was not a very convincing reply, so I've asked for some clarification. It is rather in the nature of a very bad excuse.

In Wisden 2000 a team photograph appeared for Leicestershire with one of the players, in cricketing terms, exposing his middle stump. None of the subeditors had spotted it in time (which, if you think about it, might be construed as rather embarrassing for the player concerned). Said player got into hot water with his employer for this. Somewhat abashed, he pleaded 'it was just a misunderstanding'. Matthew Engel, then editor of Wisden, asked in reply: "what was the misunderstanding?"

I see something of a parallel with Mr Flynn MP's squirming. Still, he may reply again, and I will let you know if he does.

The Russian military action in South Ossetia

2008-08-31T20:43:00.001+01:00

Holiday mode has prevented me from reading as much as I would have liked on Russia's recent military adventure in South Ossetia. An interesting conversation today with a friend rather confirmed my initial impressions, however, and I set these out here with the hope or expectation of someone proving me wrong.

More than a decade ago, NATO undertook military action in Kosovo against Serbia, without UN authorisation. Kosovo was not then an independent state.

Much more recently Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence, which the West promptly recognised, again without much debate (and somewhat in contrast to the Northern States' crushing response to the Confederacy in America, and indeed the more impotent but still testy response of Britain to Rhodesia in the 1960s).

In addition of course the USA with British support invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the former with some justification but the latter with very little indeed, and such justification as was proffered was proven erroneous (WMD for any Rip Van Winkles who missed it).

With that background, I wonder about the grounds the West found to object to Russia recognising South Osettia's attempted independence. If the Kosovars had the right to self determination then so too should the South Ossetians.

From a military historian's perspective, I find one point illuminating. Russia's attempts to quash Chechenyan independence has met with ferocious resistance, with terrible casualties on both sides, over many years now. Yet the pretty clapped-out looking Russian 58th army suffered apparently few casualties in tricky terrain in South Ossetia. That suggests to me that the locals by and large welcomed the Russian intervention, though they may not welcome a long term presence. And that suggests that the claims for South Ossetian independence may have a strong moral case.

Titian and public funds for art

2008-08-28T21:57:00.003+01:00

According to the Times:

Two of the most important paintings in Britain could be lost to the nation unless £100 million is found to keep them. The paintings, by the Renaissance master Titian, are believed to be worth £300 million on the open market, but are offered at a discount to the nation by the Duke of Sutherland.

He has set a deadline of New Year’s Eve to agree the £50 million purchase of Diana & Actaeon, with a second £50 million asked for Diana & Callisto in four years’ time.

As the Times goes on to say, however, "Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, already under pressure to help home-owners, drivers, poorer families and athletes, was being urged last night to find enough money for the paintings."

In other words, £100m would go a long way towards one or more of schools, hospitals, equipment for the armed forces, wages for the armed forces, rehabilitation of injured soldiers and accommodation for the armed forces for a start. That this is one of the timeless issues of British society - funding of the arts versus funding of more apparently worthy causes - is nicely illustrated by the fact that it forms the plot of an episode of Yes Minister; a sure sign that it is an issue that will never be resolved.

Jamie Whyte argues that since there is no limit on the apparently worthy causes demanding state funds, the state should fund none of them, principally because the state isn't any good at spending money anyway:

No one has the knowledge required to assess everything's importance. To suppose that you do, and that the world would be improved if money were spent only according to your rating, shows hubris of biblical proportions.

Our political leaders decide how 42 per cent of our money should be spent, dividing it between battleships, schools, roads. But they cannot explain how they know which deserves more and which less.

Politicians don't spend our money wrongly because they fail to identify the correct “importance ranking”. There is no such thing, only how important things are to individuals. Any centralised spending plan is sure to be wrong for everyone on the receiving end.

When it comes to spending on behalf of other people, no one can get it right. So no one should try.

I don't suppose that many in Britain will agree with such sentiments, not least because so many in Britain fancy their chances (or at least rate their tax-recipient worthiness) of getting a slice of the public funds pie.

But back to the Titians. I have a neat solution for this particular problem. A few years ago the government upped the grant to national galleries on the condition that they dropped their entry fees. This, one surmises, was in order to encourage more people from the lower socio-economic group to go and enjoy the great art we in Britain are privileged to enjoy. I hate to say it, but I don't think it worked. I have been to many such galleries (most recently, and very enjoyably, the Wallace Collection) and I really doubt that anyone I've ever seen at any of them would have been short of at least a fiver that they would or should have been willing to pay by way of entry fee. Whether there is any correlation between interest and understanding of art on the one hand, and education and/or income on the other, I leave to others to research. (Whyte's problem exists here too of course: as far as I'm concerned, of course, the highest form of art is test cricket, and far from being state-sponsoredly free to enjoy, the present entry fee at Lord's begins at about sixty quid per day, damn the oily hides of the fools who run the game.)

Accordingly, the answer is simple: bring back entry fees to art galleries, and leave the present subsidy as it is. A tenner for the ultimate national gallery that is the National Gallery, and something less for the lesser galleries, should go a long way towards the hundred million in four years.

EDW - the Laughing Cavalier

2008-08-27T20:34:00.004+01:00

World famous painting the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals hangs in the Wallace Collection in London. Making use of being on holiday, I visited Hertford House recently and was astonished at the magnificence of what was originally a private collection.

The above picture may be the most famous of the collection, despite neither laughing nor being a Cavalier (facetiously I refer to it as the Surly Roundhead, and it wouldn't be much less accurate), but there are many other magnificent pictures, as well as interesting arms and armour, and much else besides.

The official site is here. A final EDW word on the Cavalier: whatever his true identity, he was certainly a snappy dresser, even if the ruff reminds me of a scene in Blackadder II.

EDW - Kevin Pietersen

2008-08-27T00:51:00.000+01:00

The boy can do no wrong, can he?

Myra Hindley and the Olympics

2008-08-25T17:10:00.003+01:00

From the BBC:

Downing Street and the mayor of London have condemned the use of a portrait of murderer Myra Hindley in a video shown at a London 2012 event in Beijing.

The painting was shown in promotional footage produced by Visit London, not the Olympic 2012 organisers.

A spokesman for Boris Johnson said the mayor was "deeply disturbed" the image had been shown. A Downing Street spokesman said it was in "poor taste".

Visit London said the image appeared fleetingly and had been shown before.

The tourism body's video was shown at a party attended by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mr Johnson at the Chinese capital's London House to promote London's culture ahead of the 2012 Games.

The mayor is deeply concerned by the realisation that a shot of Myra Hindley was shown in a short video... and asked that it not be shown again

Spokesman for Boris Johnson

Marcus Harvey's portrait of Hindley was one of a number of pieces of art seen in the footage filmed in a gallery.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The use of this image is in extremely poor taste and it should not have been used to promote London."

A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: "The mayor is deeply concerned by the realisation that a shot of Myra Hindley was shown in a short video at London House and asked that it not be shown again."

I have no idea what diabolical fool thought that making a portrait of Hindley was appropriate; I have even less idea what demented individual used it to promote London internationally. Perhaps those responsible might apologise to the victims' families and spend some of their spare time on Saddleworth Moor looking for the body of Keith Bennett, who has never been found and whose mother, Mrs Winnie Johnson, has endured 44 years of misery as a result. Or do the likes of Mrs Johnson not feature in 'challenging artists' and other trendy morons' considerations these days?

Sandham Memorial Chapel

2008-08-24T22:00:00.012+01:00

During my debate with Stephen over the retrospective pardoning of executed Great War soldiers, he mentioned as an aside that I should visit the National Trust's Sandham Memorial Chapel. I am pleased to report that I have now done so, and although we are unlikely ever to reach agreement on the issue of the Great War pardons, we can certainly agree on the virtues of visiting the Chapel.

It is a small building in the Hampshire countryside, with views of Watership Down (the very same). The reason for the Chapel's fame is the series of murals by the artist Stanley Spencer, inspired by his experiences as a medical orderly in the Great War. It was a truly moving experience on which I simply don't have time to blog adequately - and time may not be the only obstacle; I fear my powers of language would be insufficient.

Nevertheless as readers will have seen I have attached some photos above; these are from the trust's own site (linked above) as appropriately no photography is permitted within the building itself (it might damage the pigment and would in any event disrupt the ambiance the setting deserves).

The first picture, poignant to my debate with Stephen, shows a hospital floor (it is the Beaufort Hospital in Bristol) being cleaned by a man who is suffering shellshock.

The second picture is entitled 'ablutions' and shows a hospital at work.

The third is of a pause during a route march, and contains the only depiction of an officer in any of the 19 murals. The guide in attendance thought this showed his general disdain for authority; one of my party of three countered that it is not simply officers properly so-called who reflect authority in the army but NCOs as well. We suspect it reflects his particular dislikes of officers in his experience.

More pictures can be found on the NT's site here. Spencer's Wikipedia entry is here. His Gallery site is here.

Incidentally we also visited another National Trust property, the stately home The Vyne, which is nearby and was also certainly worth the effort.

EDW - Bush volleyball

2008-08-20T18:14:00.003+01:00

Women's beach volleyball is the one Olympic event chosen specifically for the clothing, although whether it counts as elegant dress or not depends, I suppose, on your point of view. From the point of view of President Bush in this photograph, I suspect he would probably agree that it is pretty elegant indeed - though, famously inarticulate as he is, he might have difficulty putting it into words.

I am sure that Misty May-Treanor on the left and Kerri Walsh on the right are nevertheless fine athletes as well. And, for all his faults - and they are many - a word of praise could be said for President Bush's casual-chic attire here, effortless looking summer gear (he has avoided the sartorial excesses of some other world leaders of poor repute).

Matthew Syed on the Olympics

2008-08-18T11:21:00.005+01:00

Two excellent articles by Matthew Syed in the Times recently make the following trenchant observations:

First, that far too many medals are offered in minority sports. Michael Phelps is undoubtedly the greatest swimmer in the world; perhaps ever. Of that there can be no doubt. But at the same time, if Phelps were a country he'd be in the top ten on the medals board; does that make sense? The reason is that so many medals are offered in swimming to events not sufficiently distinct - butterfly and breaststroke, for example, and the differences between some of the distances are too small. Is Phelps in 2008 twice the athlete Carl Lewis was in 2004? Somehow I doubt it; the only difference is that Lewis could only run the 100m and 200m twice; there was no medal for running it in different styles.

Syed's article making the point is here.

It rather reminds me of the Zimbabwesque inflation in professional boxing, due to incessant increases in the number of 'governing bodies' and the weight divisions therein. A few years ago I read that there were a total of 70 possible boxing world champions; if anything the number now would be greater. Does that make the holder of five different titles five times a previous champion? Of course not.

The second point concerns the expense of certain Olympic sports, which gain much attention and involve a great deal of medals, many of which have been won by Great Britain and Australia and very few by any of the poorer nations. Syed writes:

Take the Yngling sailing event for women - at which Great Britain won gold in 2004. Only about four crews at present compete in the UK, with fewer than 100 competitive crews on the planet. Why? Because it costs more than £20,000 to buy a decent boat. You may as well include Formula One in the Olympics. In rowing, sailing and equestrianism there were 186 medals on offer at the last Olympics. Not one was won by an athlete from a low-income nation.

... Get ready for the smugness if we achieve more success in track cycling, with commentators proclaiming that we Brits are endowed with pedalling genius. The reality is that British cycling has been given millions to spend on bike technology, something that is not considered a sensible target for public expenditure by many other rich nations (although not dictatorships such as China, which tend to spend like crazy on elite sport) and is beyond the public finances of the rest.

How does the Government get away with this raid on the public purse? By claiming that Olympic success inspires grassroots participation, which, in turn, has a benign long-term impact on the public finances. It is an argument with everything on its side except evidence. The reality is that elite success has no sustained impact on participation, and, even if it did, the fiscal effects would be ambiguous.

The whole article is here. Essentially the point is that the Olympics is supposed to be one of the world's greatest sporting events, but so many of the sports involved are supremely irrelevant to so much of the world. It is, I might add, a great pity that a sport loved by over a billion can't put on a decent world championship to save its life ... 20/20 for 2012, anyone?

Coda: two interesting views on determinants of Olympic success can be found here and here.

Man on Wire

2008-08-13T15:41:00.008+01:00

I am on holiday until the end of the month, and therefore posting will be limited until then. In the meantime, I implore everyone to see the extraordinary film from which the above image was taken. It is a docu-drama following a similar format to the excellent 2003 film Touching the Void.

Man on Wire tells the story of Philippe Petit's amazing high wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974, which has two remarkable aspects: first, and most astonishing, is the walk itself - with no safety equipment whatsoever, Petit spent 45 minutes walking back and forth between the towers, more than a thousand feet high. Not just walking: he danced, lay down, perched on one leg and looked straight down at the ground. The police sent to arrest him watched in astonishment, figuring, as they said, that they'd never see anything like it again.

They went to arrest him because of the second remarkable aspect of the story: Petit was doing it all illegally. This entailed smuggling a ton of equipment to the top of the towers (having posed as construction workers and obtained some inside help), avoiding all security (at one stage they hid for three hours under a taupaulin) and then rigging up the wire. After abandoning a number of crazy ideas they hit on the apparently sane one of using a bow and arrow to shoot a thin wire across, then pull progressively stronger ones until they had the tightrope wire. Petit couldn't find the arrow in the darkness on the other tower, so stripped off naked so he could feel the wire. The rest of the story is similarly mind-bending.

It was a crime, but in the grand scheme of things the sort of thing to uplift society rather than damage it. The New York public concurred: all charges were dropped on condition Petit perform in public for children, which he did.

It is a compelling story, which appropriately makes no mention of 9/11: it is a film about amazing human achievement, not revolting mass murder. Recommended without hesitation (the film, that is, not Petit's stunt!)

Tyler Yarema: musical interlude

2008-08-11T17:21:00.000+01:00

Just over a decade ago, I saw this chap playing at this venue, the Reservoir in Toronto. Best live music I've ever heard, before or since. Appropos of not much, I found this video apparently taken live. Sadly the picture quality isn't up to much, but you get the general idea. It was a good evening, to say the least. An obliging patron offered me some "genuine Canadian weed" though I declined.

As with all the best live music, you had to be there, but it brings back good memories for me.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v Gallagher (Valuation Officer): The new religion, or the same old story

2008-08-09T16:57:00.002+01:00

Last week the House of Lords delivered judgment in the case of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v Gallagher (Valuation Officer). The case concerned the rates payable by a group of Mormons on a 15-acre site which contained a number of buildings. The issue which was appealed to the highest court in the land concerned whether any of the buildings should be exempt from inclusion in the ratings list. Regular readers can probably guess what happened next.

Under the Local Government Finance Act 1988, buildings can be exempt if they are "a place of public religious worship". The Mormons missed out with respect to their temple, because that was accessible only to 'patrons', who were members of the church of particular standing (apparently those who have had 'a recommend' by the bishop). It was therefore not a place of "public" worship because the public weren't welcome. It wasn't even open to all Mormons.

Undeterred, the Mormons still asked for the rating exemption. They argued that the received definition should be changed. Alternatively, they argued that the exclusion of all but patrons to the temple was a manifestation by the Mormons of their religion, so that to deny them exemption on that ground would be to discriminate against them on the ground of religion contrary to arts 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Balderdash from first to last. Happily the House of Lords thought so too. Why should religious buildings be exempt from rates like the rest of us? It wasn't as though the Mormons couldn't pay (quite the opposite: part of becoming a 'patron' involved giving an 'appropriate' financial contribution). It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Many people struggle to make ends meet without getting indulgences from the taxman.

Then we have to define a religion. I just made one up, the Worshipful Company of the Umpire, and have dedicated my office accordingly. Hopefully the local authority will oblige, though something tells me it won't.

I find it surprising, to say the least, that the old chestnut of discrimination is always wheeled out on these occasions. Equality demands equal treatment for all irrespective of religion, not different treatment of all according to religion. It would be discriminatory against me (and every non-Mormon and non-patron-Mormon) to allow this distinction.

Of course, it also follows that the exemption on which they relied should never exist in the first place. That way, the Mormons (and the Umpire-worshipers) won't feel left out. Since the relevant statutory exemption has existed in one form or another for many many moons I am not holding my breath.

General Haig in the Times

2008-08-09T12:49:00.003+01:00

There is an excellent article in the Times this week on General Haig, making a very similar argument to that which I advanced in my Great War series last year. I particularly agree with its closing paragraph:

Essentially, however, the Allied victory was won by the courage of the soldiers from Britain, France, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa and the United States. The greatest disservice we can do to their memory, 90 years on, is to allow their final victory to be submerged by recriminations; to forget that in 1918 they achieved what they had been fighting for; and to fail to acknowledge the part that not only their endurance but also the foresight and perseverance of Haig and his senior commanders had played in that victory.

As one of the commentators below the article infers, in these days of 'workplace stress' it would be interesting to see what occupational health and safety mandarins would make of the task facing Haig and his men and how they dealt with it ...

Captain KP

2008-08-09T12:28:00.006+01:00

Two days do not a captaincy make, but KP has certainly started in some style. Naturally the pressure will not begin to tell until KP is leading an England side two down in the Ashes, but he has started as well as could possibly have been imagined.

Although I am still uneasy about risking England's greatest asset with the burden of captaincy - which was too much for the batting of Vaughan or the all-round abilities of Flintoff and Stewart - I accept that there was no realistic alternative. And I remain heartened by the fact that KP is in a different league even from those luminaries. To KP, it would seem, pressure is simply another challenge, for him to meet head-on.

Whether he has the subtle skills of man management and motivation (which totally eluded another batting natural, David Gower) to deal with the myriad of problems captains will face away from the field I do not know.

In the meantime, however, to adopt the words of Margaret Thatcher in a different context, just rejoice. Rejoice, that is, in the finest English batsman since .... anyone dare guess? (Hammond, for my money, though it may end up being Grace.) And the sight of Flintoff and Harmison forming a menacing partnership. KP may yet get to emulate Vaughn's greatest achievement ...

Netiquette

2008-08-04T09:43:00.003+01:00

Netiquette is a portmanteau word meaning "manners on the internet". A google search of the word produces many hits but not much help. I have had some interesting discussions with others about what should constitute good manners on the net, but even amongst friends we haven't able to come up with significant common ground.

Some decry bad language. Some disagree about what constitutes bad language. Others say there is no such thing as bad language, only language used badly. I rather like the view of the Periodic Englishman, that a blog is akin to someone's house, so when visiting that house, one abides by their rules, no-one else's. In other words, if the blog owner cannot abide bad language one should respect that, or go somewhere else. It is not as though there aren't many options; I once read there were 57 million blogs rising at the level of several hundred thousand a day. I have no idea what the number is now.

I haven't the time to expand upon my own house rules, save to say that there is one I always try to follow, and which I expect of others when I visit their's. The rule is that one should always acknowledge a substantive comment that someone else leaves on one's blog. Even - indeed, especially - if one disagrees with it. Even if one hasn't the time for a detailed response, it surely must be possible to leave a short note expressing gratitude for someone taking the time and trouble.

Needless to say, I am writing this because of someone breaking the above rule. One soi-dissant left wing blogger by the name of Recess Monkey (the latter word is certainly appropriate) has put up a succession of anti-Boris Johnson posts, which is of course his right. But he has made a lot of extremely misleading and inaccurate comments amongst them. I have shown where at length in his comments sections. He hasn't replied to a word I have written or even acknowledged that I have made a comment in the first place.

It goes without saying that I take exception to dismal manners like this and it further goes without saying that I won't be bothering with his blog in the future. In fact I can't even be bothered linking to the offending pieces - that would be giving his blog publicity it doesn't deserve.

Cricketing notes

2008-08-02T21:21:00.002+01:00

Well done to the greatest county batsman of his generation, Mark Ramprakash, on finally reaching 100 hundreds.

Not so well done England.

A declaration of war: the Corner House Research case and the Saudis

2008-08-02T10:15:00.004+01:00

Last week I read the decision of the House of Lords in the case of R(on the application of Corner House Research and others) v Director of the Serious Fraud Office. The case concerned the investigation by the SFO into allegations of corruption against BAE systems.

It was suspected that Britain had sent some bribes the way of the Saudis to obtain an export contract for Tornado and later Typhoon jets. (If that sounds like a plot from Yes Minister, that's because it is.)

In November 2005, BAE sought to persuade the Attorney General and the SFO to stop the investigation on the ground that its continued investigation would be contrary to the public interest, in that it would adversely affect relations between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia and prevent the United Kingdom securing a very large export contract.

The SFO ignored that plea, and continued its investigations. It was about to obtain access to Swiss bank accounts, when a Saudi representative made a specific threat to the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff that if the investigation was not stopped, there would be no contract for the export of the aircraft and the previous close intelligence and diplomatic relationship would cease.

In other words, we were told the Saudis would stop buying our expensive jets and would stop co-operating in the 'war on terror'.

Ministers advised the Attorney General and the Director of the SFO that if the investigation continued those threats would be carried out; the consequences would be grave, both for the arms trade and for the safety of British citizens and service personnel. Mr Blair, then PM, said it was the clearest case for intervention in the public interest he had seen.

To no great surprise, in the light of what he regarded as the grave risk to life if the threat was carried out, the Director decided to stop the investigation. He explained that it had been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest.

The Divisional Court was appalled, and handed down a thunderous judgment full of pious statements about the need to maintain the integrity of the justice system. Quite right in a moral sense, but the House of Lords has just poured cold water over all that. It said that the director of the SFO had had no choice. Realpolitik triumphed.

Funnily enough that is precisely what I said when blogging about the original decision of the SFO, but having just read the House of Lords decision, I am greatly troubled. In particular, I am alarmed at the emphasis on the threat to British life implicit in the withdrawal of intelligence co-operation by the Saudis. "Another 7/7" was one phrase bandied about.

In other words, a foreign state has declared that unless Britain bends to its will, by not investigating its corrupt antics (and the accompanying corrupt antics of British citizens), it will take action which will result in the murder of British citizens.

Does that not amount to a declaration of war? In Palmerstonian times it certainly would have done. Except in those days Britannia ruled the waves, didn't need to bribe others to sell weapons, and was able to put upstart states in their place.

Nowadays, we are a large trading economy dependent on Middle Eastern oil, of which the Saudis have a decent chunk. We rely on them to buy our pointless and outmoded jets to prop up our arms and aviation industry. Those factors trump the fact that much Islamic extremism (and most of the 9/11 hijackers, for example) derives from and is funded by the Saudis. Ironically the Saudi ruling family is also a target of Islamic extremism and therefore has a mutual interest in suppressing it, though apparently not to the extent that they won't use it as a rather lethal (in two senses) bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations.

It's a sad state of affairs, and I'm not the only one to think so. Lady Hale in the House of Lords said:

"I would wish that the world were a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this"

Which is putting it mildly.

Religious symbols and school uniforms yet again

2008-07-29T12:11:00.005+01:00

Oh no, not again ....

Another teenager claims victory for 'human rights' by being allowed to wear a religious item in contravention of a school uniform policy.

Yes, we still won't learn. And I repeat what I said before:

the ring, the hijab, the turban and anything else are expressions of belief which have no place in school uniforms. No-one would entertain an argument for 'expressions' not of a religious nature, such as t-shirts proclaiming the wearer's favourite heavy metal band, and there is no reason why religious beliefs should be different

We don't allow children to choose their own political allegiance: they can't vote. That being so, why are they presumed competent to make up their own mind about religion? I say this because what is being discussed as often as not is not the religious beliefs of the child, but of the parents.

Minnette Marrin in the Sunday Times was more confrontational, contending that:

religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public representation. This is hard for those of us who used to love the muddled Anglican compromise; it means the disestablishment of our national church – if it doesn’t self-destruct first.

The challenge of other, fiercer and more divisive convictions has forced the issue; multiculturalism has been subversive. There must be no more religious schools – personally I would leave those that exist alone. There must be no public recognition of religious associations as representatives of anything or anybody: not on campuses, not in student unions, not in government consultations or in parliament.

Two points: (i) why leave in place existing religious schools when all her arguments require otherwise; and (ii) I don't think one needs to be this aggressive, simply have a policy of separation of church and state (for the sake of both) and leave it at that.

The recall of Steve Harmison

2008-07-29T11:29:00.003+01:00

The selectors seem to have one of three possible things in mind:

1. To strengthen the batting, so will be Vaughan's replacement

2. With a view to developing the future, so will be Broad's replacement

3. Because of his outstanding record under pressure, in a must-win game for England.

Answers on a postcard. Mike Atherton isn't happy either. As ever with Harmison, it depends on which Harmison turns up: the sulking crybaby or the menace who took 7-12 against the Windies in early 2004, which sparked the first Ashes hopes in print if I recall rightly (CMJ in the Times).

Trouble is, of course, the crybaby tends to turn up a lot more often. Which is why he was dropped in the first place. I am not holding my breath.

Coda: The answer is apparently none of the above. Harmison is not in the final XI. Collingwood is. Even though he hasn't played a first class innings since being dropped.

Privacy and the law: A few more words on Max Mosley

2008-07-27T21:34:00.008+01:00

The press were not happy about Eady J's judgment in Max Mosley's recent privacy case. I had a look at the judgment over the weekend.

In their profile of Eady J some of the press were suggesting he was a quiet sort; rather dull and lacking a sense of humour. In fact Eady J is one of the funniest judges on the bench today. He is the master of the delicate judicial phrasing of sordid fleshboillery. Here he is on top form at para 53 of the Mosley judgment:

Mr Thurlbeck also relied upon the fact that the Claimant was “shaved”. Concentration camp inmates were also shaved. Yet, as Mr Price pointed out, they had their heads shaved. The Claimant, for reasons best known to himself, enjoyed having his bottom shaved – apparently for its own sake rather than because of any supposed Nazi connotation. He explained to me that while this service was being performed he was (no doubt unwisely) “shaking with laughter”. I naturally could not check from the DVD, as it was not his face that was on display.*

Superb, and I could go on. But back to the main business of the case. The press seem to think that it will have a devastating, or at least detrimental, effect on their attempts to ply their trade. I don't think so.

The case has two points. First, it holds that the clandestine recording of sexual activity on private property engages the right to privacy under art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore may constitute an actionable breach of privacy. In other words, one can sue a person who publishes pictures clandestinely taken of one's consensual sexual antics behind apparently closed doors.

The second point is that exemplary damages are not admissible in a claim for infringement of privacy.

Obviously the second point is not what the press were complaining about; it is in their favour. It limits the amounts recoverable in such cases. In this case, for instance, Mosley recovered just £60,000. In no way would an award of that order have deterred the News of the Screws; they must have made many times that amount through extra revenue generated by the publicity.

What they are annoyed about is the first point, namely the fact that Mosley could sue at all.** They think that this infringes their right to freedom of expression (guaranteed by art 10 of the Convention), and that there is no reason why their art 10 right should be trumped by Mosley's art 8 right.

No-one should be very surprised by this. I suspect most people would agree that activities between consenting adults in private should be exactly that - private. Freedom of speech is not absolute - never has been, never could be. The line between what a newspaper should be able to print and what it should not is always a fertile ground for intellectual debate. But is there any real argument that a newspaper should be able to take pictures or videos in a clandestine fashion of someone's sexual acts in their own home, and publish those on its website? I think not.

If so, then there is nothing remarkable about Mosley winning his court case and certainly it does not amount to the end of freedom of expression in this country. In fact I would go further than Eady J, who thought that there might have been a public interest in the publication had there in fact been a Nazi theme to the occasion. Lots of sexual acts would disgust lots of people; if however they are done in private by consenting adults then we are on very shaky grounds indeed if we try and say that some become public and others not. The foundation of the gay rights movement had that idea at its core: that what people did in their own bedrooms (or dungeons) was their own business, no-one else's.

* This calls to mind the 'Mayor Quinby defence' in the Simpsons: "That could have been anyone's arse"; or perhaps that of Krusty the Clown "It wasn't me; I used a stunt butt".

** Note that Mosley did not sue in defamation; there might be many reasons for this, but two obstacles would have been in his way from the start: first, that if what the paper said was true it would not have been defamatory, and second, that one has to have a reputation to be defamed in the first place. Mosley in the light of what was admitted (that he regularly participated in these spanking sessions) did not.

Anne Darwin and the Me generation

2008-07-23T17:25:00.002+01:00

I wonder how much thought John Darwin, the canoeist who faked his own death, or his wife gave to the victims of their plot. Presumably, since those victims included their own sons, the answer is: not very much.

Had they done so they probably would have dismissed them out of hand as rich insurance companies. For those of a slightly less greedy and more compassionate nature, however, spare a thought for those involved in the substantial search and rescue attempt that was launched after Darwin's disappearance. I have met people who work in that area; a harder working, more conscientious group I have not met. They would have worked themselves to the bone trying to find Mr Darwin and then, with all realistic hope lost, would have had to steel themselves to returning to shore and telling his (presumably) distraught family that they had lost a husband and father. Though it is part of their job to deliver such news, it can hardly be anything other than grueling no matter how many times they have done so.

Mrs Darwin wouldn't have cared then, and I doubt she cares now. The only thing weighing on her conscience would be the fact she got caught. Instead of living high on the hog from ill-gotten gains, she will have to pay back the lot, with interest, and rightly so. I hope on top of the pilfered insurance payout, she has to fork out with whatever's left to the rescue services.

Nationality in sport again

2008-07-23T10:19:00.003+01:00

Today's Times reports a conversation with Graham Gooch. What he says about 20/20 and the threat to test cricket makes complete sense, but then Gooch adds this:

“I’m not in favour of any policy that says we pick anyone who is qualified if it makes us look a better side. There’s got to be a heartbeat, a sense of values.

What if there were suddenly eight Pattinsons around, all with Kevin Pietersen’s ability? Do we put them all in the side and forget they’d only been in England five minutes?

“It’s only English cricket that offers this flag of convenience. To me, the heart of it is how you’re brought up. I watched all the England players of the past and was proud to feel English. That’s how you build up loyalty and passion - you can’t recreate it artificially.”

Even now, 11 years since he retired, the Union Flag runs indelibly through Gooch and his every thought. Those administering the game would do well to listen.

I am not sure how that burst of patriotism squares with Gooch being part of a team with Allan Lamb and Robin Smith, never mind the host of lesser overseas-born players whose England careers coincided with his.

I wrote about the issue of nationality in international sport here, and won't repeat the post other than the interesting statistic that the last time England fielded a cricket team where 100% of the team were born in England was in 1989, and that was only because Smith and Lamb were unavailable. I would add, however, in respect of Gooch, that no-one doubted his professionalism as a player, but his claims to be so committed to England ring slightly hollow given: his decision to tour South Africa in 1982, his refusal to undertake a tour of the Windies unless he was given the captaincy, his refusal to undertake certain winter tours in any event, or at least for their full duration, and his decision to put personality clashes ahead of the national interest by lobbying for David Gower's* exclusion from the team whilst choosing fellow rand-seekers like Emburey and Gatting instead.

* If we're looking for genuine English patriots, a word might be said in favour of the occasionally maligned Mr Gower, whose commitment was questioned on occasion. Gower asked to be excluded but once (after nine consecutive winter tours) in a career spanning 17 years. After that sole exception he was willing to play for England anywhere under any circumstances, even under Gooch. He never even contemplated, let alone undertook, any tour of South Africa.

No face, or half a tree, but still all human.

2008-07-22T16:36:00.004+01:00

Apropos of something entirely different, I stumbled across this set of reports by Ofcom, the television regulator. I was in fact looking for the report into Channel 4's Global Warming conspiracy programme, but aside from that and various chastisements meted out to pornography channels, were two reports into trailers for Channel 5's series about unusual medical conditions. I take the following summary from one of the reports:

Five broadcast a number of trailers for its documentary series Extraordinary People which looked at the experiences of people with a range of unusual medical conditions which have resulted, in some cases, in severe physical disfigurement.

Two versions of a trailer for the programme The Man With No Face were broadcast . This was about Mr Jose Mestre, a Portuguese man who has haemangioma (a condition caused by abnormalities in blood capillaries and veins). His condition has resulted in the growth of a large tumour that covered most of his face. The shorter version of the two trailers included images of Mr Mestre sitting in a shop doorway and the reactions of on-lookers to his disfigurement, which was clearly shown. The longer version of the trailer also included a series of old photographs of Mr Mestre as the tumour, which started as a growth on his lip, developed to eventually cover most of his face.

Two versions of a trailer for the programme Half Man Half Tree were also broadcast. The programme was about Dede, an Indonesian man who has a rare and unusual skin condition that causes root-like structures to grow from his hands and feet and welts that cover his whole body. Both versions of the trailer included images of Dede in his village with close up footage of the growths on his face, arms and hands. The longer version of the trailer also included images of Dede with his family and of him laughing with his daughters.

A total of eleven viewers complained to Ofcom that the images of Mr Mestre and Dede in the trailers might distress children and so were inappropriate for the time of broadcast.

I find this very sad on at least two counts. First, the fact that some people have to endure crippling conditions in the first place is obviously a sad fact of life. So much that is taken for granted by the rest of us is denied them. Aside from the physical discomfort, there is the excruciating prejudice or judgement of the average person who cannot pass them by without staring at or shunning them.

That leads to the second matter of regret. Part of the programme followed the attempts of the two sufferers to gain the confidence to appear in public. And yet eleven people thought they looked so shocking that children needed to be shielded from even a glance at them. Irony is not the word.

All the more reason for more trailers, and more programmes, so that perhaps the next generation won't assume that freaks have to be hidden least they frighten the children. At least Ofcom managed to come to the right decision.

Positives for England

2008-07-22T10:15:00.003+01:00

There are none. There rarely are if one loses by an innings.

Actually, there may be one. According to Sir Geoffrey on 5 Live last night, no player since Sobers has played the back foot drive as well as Broad. So the chap may be a rare talent.

I jest. And one can discount most of what Sir Geoffrey bangs on about nowadays. I can, however, quite imagine that SB has the genes to be a decent batsman but went down the bowling route precisely because his Dad had been an England opener. Rather like Liam Botham, who was a very promising cricketer but deliberately chose a rugby career.

As the Times said this morning: after 11 test innings, Chris Broad had made 324 averaging 32.4 with two fifties; SB has made 371 at 41.2 with three fifties. Should he continue his development, he could end up closer in batting to Imran or Hadlee than say Wasim or Marshall (though, let's face it, nothing close to any of those in bowling).

I shall watch with interest to see if Pattinson's career continues. Either his selection was going to be a masterstroke or it was going to leave everyone wondering what the selectors were smoking. It was the latter.

Cricketing headaches

2008-07-21T11:23:00.001+01:00

I have a headache this morning. I imagine I'm not the only one. Aside from England's batsmen, the minds of the selectors too must be a muddled and strange place to be. They remind me of racehorse trainers, who have a standard list of excuses which are deployed to gullable owners to ensure training fees keep coming in despite knowing full well the nag in question is a goat with a mane: doesn't like hard/soft tracks; doesn't like left-right/right-left tracks; doesn't like starting outside/inside ... and finally, needs blinkers.

England selectors have a similar list of tactics: bring back the veteran; choose a youngster; choose a complete outsider; play four bowlers; play five bowlers; choose the keeper on the basis of which one can bat the best/choose the keeper on the basis of which one is the best keeper ... and on it goes. About now they seem to have strategised themselves (as the Americans might say) into a corner.

If Flintoff can't bat at six because he's not considered good enough then he adds nothing in terms of balance to the attack. He still has to be chosen, as he is England's most dangerous bowler and the one the opposition will fear the most. Ambrose is not a test match no. 6 either on form or past performances. But Flintoff can't bowl as part of a four man attack (a five man attack has just suffered miserably against South Africa; imagine if they'd played only four bowlers in this test). Therefore a five man attack is necessary almost by default.

It is true that Australia over the past ten years and the Windies in their pomp had only four men attacks but: (i) the Australian no. 7 was as good a batsman as any specialist, averaging more than 50 most of his career; (ii) the Australians really had a two man attack with the others just making up the numbers; and (iii) the Windies had usually three and sometimes four of the best fast bowlers in history.

Lacking those riches, England should look to their most successful team in decades: four fast bowlers plus Giles in 2004/5. With Ambrose's keeping not being clearly better than any of the legion of recent predecessors, the answer presents itself in the form of Matt Prior, who genuinely did show test match batting ability in the ten tests he played and who is currently in formidable batting form in the domestic game.

With a better spinner now than 2005, there is hope for an even better attack. But while I can understand Harmison not being considered on the ground of his mental fragility, the selectors really need to think about whether each of Broad, Anderson and Pattinson is a better selection than Hoggard or Simon Jones.

Perhaps Broad is needed because of his solidity at no. 8. But to choose fast bowlers on the basis of batting ability is the equivalent of choosing a new car on the basis of which one has the best radio. And in the case of Pattinson, he is aged 29 with nothing behind him; can he really be chosen ahead of Hoggard who is aged 31 with an excellent test record? To choose Pattinson citing county form and ignore Prior despite county form smacks of inconsistency at best and desperation at worst.

Still, they will have plenty of time to think, given that I expect today's proceedings to be all over by tea.

The Flintoff issue and some chap called Pattinson

2008-07-18T11:11:00.003+01:00

I had sketched out a piece on the train this morning. First, however, these extracts from Cricinfo's live scorecard:

"This is the biggest rabbit-out-of-the-hat for 99 years," says Christopher Martin-Jenkins on TMS.

Geoff Miller on Test Match Special is doing his utmost to justify the call-up. "He's outbowled everyone," is his succinct explanation. 10.50am Ten minutes to go, and you suspect that England will be quite happy to bat first, given all the fuss that is sure to follow their attack.

David Lloyd, in the Sky Sports studio, says: "I've just rung his coach Mick Newell. He tells me he's an aggressive, Australian-style bowler." Why could that be? David Gower, his sidekick, points out on air that we at Cricinfo had him down as an Australian until ... err ... a few seconds ago.

Michael Vaughan is the man we all want to hear from, however, and he seems utterly gobsmacked by the man who's been thrust into his Test team. So Michael, what do you know of DP? "Not a great deal. He's had a really good start this season for Notts. I hope he goes well."

Andrew McGlashan. "There's a mild state of shock," he reports. "It revives memories of some Headingley selections of the past...Mallender, Kabir Ali, Saggers, Mike Smith. The link...none of them had very long Test careers!"10.15am

Well, knock me down with a feather. What an incredible selection - Pattinson may be averaging 20.86 for the season, but he has never bowled at Headingley in his life, and it is only three months and two days since he bowled his first ball in first-class cricket in England! He'll clearly go and take a five-for now.

Not sure I can add anything. Except to say that one presumes that now Hoggard and Harmison must be not so much down the list as not on it at all.

It does rather make my speculation redundant. I don't believe Flintoff presently has the form to justify no. 6, nor does anyone else, which means Tim Ambrose will have to do it. Except he's struggling at no. 7 at the moment. Whether anyone else could do the job is what one might call the Prior question. Yet the Sussex man is almost as out of favour as the two aforementioned Northern fast bowlers, despite having a very solid start to his test batting career (an easy hundred against weak Windies on debut, but some dogged efforts against better bowlers later, averaging in all more than forty after ten tests).

Experience suggests four fast bowlers are essential to England. So I suggest Prior be chosen and 'made' into a keeper much like Alec Stewart. In fact I would suggest he is a better keeper after ten tests than Stewart after many more. Still, given this morning's selection they will probably find an ex-Australian in the club league somewhere ...

Forum on lions and donkeys

2008-07-17T10:36:00.003+01:00

An entertaining internet forum on WWI revision, something I have spent a fair bit of time on in this blog, may be found here. One chap eloquently sums up the problem with popular myths:

American Civil War - The South were baddies and wanted slavery, the North were the goodies and didn't and so they won.

English Civil War - The Cavaliers were all upper class who wore hats with big feathers, rode horses and liked the king. The roundheads were working-class fellows led by oliver Cromwell, who wore pots on their heads and carried pikes and invented parliament.

World War 2 - Hitler wanted to take over the world because he was mad and we stopped him (with a bit of help from the Americans who were late). And the Japanese and Russians were in there somewhere as well.

Wars of the Roses - A bunch of Yorkshiremen didn't get on with their neighbours from Lancashire and they fought each other but not really sure who won. Oh, and they wore different coloured roses.

World War One - After some Austrian prince got shot in Sarajevo the Germans tried to conquor poor little Belgium and we stopped them although everyone there died in their millions because they were sent over the top by generals sitting in a chateau who didn't care.

Well quite. I haven't the time to add anything myself, but may do at some point.

Discrimination once more

2008-07-14T16:06:00.004+01:00

According to the Daily Mail:

A Christian registrar who refused to carry out gay 'weddings' won a landmark legal battle yesterday.

Lillian Ladele, 47, was threatened with the sack, bullied and 'thrown before the lions' after asking to be excused from conducting civil partnerships for same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs.

But yesterday a tribunal agreed that her faith had been ridden roughshod over by equalities-obsessed Islington Council, which had sought to 'trump one set of rights with another'.

It is a source of some frustration that the problem with the ruling needs to be spelt out, but needs must.

If Ms Ladele did not wish to undertake the ceremonies in question, she should not have taken on the job.

Christians are quite entitled not to wish to equate gay relationships with marriage. That is why the Christian Churches by and large do not do so. But that was not Ms Ladele's job; her job was to give secular legal recognition to such partnerships. Her job had to be carried out according to law, not her own conscience or anything else. The law did not permit her to refuse to do her job. Nor should it. Her job was not related to the Christian religion.

Of course she should not have been bullied or abused, but nor should she have been able to get away with imposing her private bigotry on her public job.

Can one really imagine a fireman with similar beliefs refusing to save same-sex couples from burning buildings, or policemen refusing to assist them? Slightly less dramatically, what if a different registrar was a former member of the Dutch Reform Church and, citing conscience grounds, refused to recognise interracial marriages? Or a Muslim registrar refusing to recognise the marriage of two apostates?

Then I suspect we would have had a different response from the tribunal, and indeed the Daily Mail.

Afterword on the Congestion Charge

2008-07-14T12:35:00.002+01:00

I had a word with a senior administrative lawyer over the weekend, who observed two things about Porsche's judicial review challenge to Ken Livingstone's planned increases to the congestion charge:

(a) once the report by King's College London came to light, showing that the proposed new charges would in fact increase CO2 emissions, the challenge was almost certain to have succeeded. Therefore Boris would have had no choice but to decline to introduce the charges; in fact he had promised not to do so anyway. It was shameful of Ken to have tried to suppress the report because it didn't coincide with his ideology.

(b) In those circumstances the mayor would have had to pay Porsche's legal fees; that is the standard consequence. But how on earth did those costs equal £400,000? Most completed judicial review challenges end up with costs below £10,000; this particular challenge did not even proceed to a court hearing. The issues were not particularly complex and neither of us could see any other reasons why the costs should have been as high as they were.

Needless to say the mainstream media, even the anti-Ken variety, has failed in its duty and has hardly mentioned either point.

Ken's congestion charge

2008-07-11T14:56:00.003+01:00

Recently there have been some expressions of disapproval about Boris Johnson scrapping Ken Livingstone's planned increased congestion charges. I'm with Boris actually, even though it meant costs of Porsche's legal challenge being met by taxpayers (though they've promised to give it to charity). Let me explain why.

I hope we all agree that London is supposed to be a first world city. I hope we also agree that one of the hallmarks of a democratic society under law (as opposed to, say, a tin pot dictatorship) is the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law requires, among other things, laws to be consistent and known in advance.

Constitutional lecture over. Let us look at Ken's handling of the congestion charge to see if it measures up to that ideal.

When introduced, the charge was five pounds a day, the official explanation being that it was intended to reduce traffic to the most congested part of London, namely the centre. All well and good, although not, one might note, particularly socialist of Ken because it amounted to a regressive tax. Poor people spend a greater percentage of their income and therefore the flat rate of five pounds would hit them harder. Cleaners in Elephant and Castle might struggle to make ends meet paying another £5 a day while merchant bankers in the City wouldn't have blinked.

The charge was then increased to eight pounds - far in excess of inflation - without evidence that the increase was necessary for the purpose of reducing congestion. First breach of the rule of law, and another one in the eye of the struggling delivery drivers, cleaners and so on.

As ever in British life 'exemptions' were made where it was thought the Mayor might gain a political advantage, in this case minicabs. Exemptions are always a breach of the rule of law because they create uncertainty about who falls within the exempted class. Lawyers benefit because they can advise on and litigate the issue. The rich occasionally benefit because they can purchase such advice. And so it was here: it transpired that many expensive cars had been registered as minicabs with no intention of their being used as such, because the owners found it was cheaper than paying the charge. (One smiles at the thought of Ken trying to flag down an armoured Maybach for a ride after being told it was a licensed minicab ...)

Other exemptions were made for 'green' vehicles such as hybrid cars. This meant that a Lexus L600h was exempt but a 1.2 litre VW Polo not, despite the former being conspicuously less green by any measure.

Further exemptions were for residents of the zone, which was later pulled out from under their feet. One more breach of the rule of law.

Then Ken changed his mind and decided that a whole new set of charges would be introduced - massively greater for many owners - based on the entirely separate issue of C02 emissions. Yet another breach of the rule of law: we were told the charge was one thing (congestion reduction) and then another (C02 reduction.).

Then the 'green vehicle' exemption was removed. Still another failure to keep rules consistent. Pity the people who had purchased hybrid cars in the interim.

One might also note that by offering CO2 reduction as the new justification Ken was really acting outside the purview of municipal government. The issue of carbon emissions is quintessentially something that should be addressed if at all by central government, not local. Central London emissions don't amount to a hill of beans in Britain's total greenhouse gas emissions.

What ought to be the concern of local government is local air quality. Lower CO2 emitting engines might not actually be better in that respect - diesel engines being a case in point.

Ken, therefore, increased the charge enormously over his tenure with no justification linked to the original basis of the charge whatsoever. Indeed, Ken virtually abandoned the original justification.

He also planned to include in the new charges old cars with engines greater than 3 litres, without bothering about the fact that larger engines are not always less economical or greater emitters. He also ignored the fact that keeping older cars would lower overall greenhouse emissions since they would mean less manufacturing and consumption of non-renewable resources.

All of this was borne out by a report Ken commissioned from Kings College which told him what he didn't want to know - that his increased charges would raise, not lower CO2. As it didn't suit him he ignored it.

So having told us it was all about congestion, and then said it was really all about emissions, he never once said the truth - that it was simply a tax all along, or perhaps an outlet for his previously declared class war and car hatred.

Boris, by contrast, promised in his manifesto to reduce the charge and did so once he was elected.

"Sporting Greatness" and great sport

2008-07-11T11:21:00.002+01:00

Michael Atherton in today's Times writes:

Greatness in sport comes in many guises, but great players rarely fail to deliver when it matters.

Actually I would suggest that the most important factor in being called 'great' is the fact of delivering when it matters. For a batsman this means scoring runs in important matches, and also in difficult conditions against good bowling when the rest of the team does not.

Kevin Pietersen has done so on a number of occasions in his short career todate. He has also shown many of the other requisite features to merit the description 'great': extraordinary timing, placement and power, and (usually though not always) good shot selection. If he continues for several years more, then he will rightly be recorded as a genuinely great player.

As I write this Pietersen is playing a great innings on the greatest ground in the greatest sort of contest - a five day test match. Enjoy it while it lasts. Elsewhere the Times carries this dismal news:

Indian Premier League (IPL) money scored a significant victory over Test-match tradition last night when Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) agreed to let their players compete in the lucrative tournament next year instead of meeting a new commitment to tour England. Duleep Mendis, the SLC chief executive, will tell the ECB today that his country will send a second-string team for the two Test matches in May, unless dates agreed last week can be rearranged.

Players such as Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena would join for the one-day leg of the tour.

Leading England players, including Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, the highest-profile targets of IPL franchises, may consider an opportunity to extend their stays in India beyond the ten days being mooted if the Sri Lanka Tests become devalued by the absence of the star names.

I was, to be frank, quite pleased at the prospect of 20/20 matches doing away with the tedious anomaly that is 50 over cricket. 20/20 matches would be over quickly and not detract from the proper business that is test matches. Now, however, we find that the ICC and its constituent boards do not regard test matches as the pinnacle of the game, its ultimate integrity to be protected and nurtured, but rather as a nuisance in the way of the cash cow that is 20 over cricket. A pox on the lot of them.

England v South Africa

2008-07-09T16:22:00.005+01:00

I have to say that, given that they made extremely heavy weather of beating a not very vintage Kiwi side, England are about to get a lesson or two. It is ironic that they are about to become the first team in history to play six consecutive tests with an unchanged XI, when consistency and team performances haven't exactly been Peter Moores' hallmarks ...

Returning to the South African challenge, all form leading into this series suggests that England will lose comfortably. The South African batsmen and fast bowling in particular seem formidable and I'd far rather have Boucher behind the stumps than any recent England candidate (recent = post Alan Knott, apologies to the Stewart fan club).

Three factors give some small hope, however: (i) the weather may well play a part; (ii) South Africa will be in trouble if the pitches turn; and (iii) they still have a tendency to lose when they shouldn’t.

Shame England are lacking middle order batsmen of the calibre of Allan Lamb or Robin Smith. They are also missing a genuine allrounder of the likes of Tony Greig.

Why don't they make 'em like that anymore? Only Kevin Pietersen has any claim to greatness amongst England's present line-up. Mind you, Dawid Malan is a youngster with promise.

Elegantly Dressed Dog

2008-07-09T09:55:00.000+01:00

I do not like small dogs. They aren't really deserving of the name; rodent would be more like it. I shouldn't be mean, I'm sure there are nice small dogs, but real dogs are large and, well, dog-like. Such as this fine specimen here. His features remind me of a staffordshire bull terrier, a breed which comprised the majority of my family's dogs over the years. Just a shade bigger, however.

Incidentally I know not the identity of the young lass in the picture, but she has fine tastes in trainers and dogs.

The NHS: It is supposed to be about healing the sick first and foremost, isn't it?

2008-07-07T14:40:00.005+01:00

A while ago I considered the issue of whether NHS patients should be refused care if they dared 'top-up' their treatment with private measures. That the question even has to be asked is something I find disturbing: surely it would breach the hippocratic oath of any NHS doctor to heave someone out the door because they dared spend a fiver on a private drug. Why only money? What if they have a friend who happens to be a doctor and who gives them some private assistance for nothing? What if they have more family support than the average patient?

I won't repeat the arguments I made in the earlier post, save to wonder how anyone could disagree. Still, the Guardian has found someone who does, namely Yvonne Roberts. She thinks the public are with her, based on an FT/Harris opinion poll. There is a pithy comment below the article by one Peitha, who writes:

I regret to say I find this article simply mendacious in its (ab)use of statistics, particularly from the FT/Harris poll.

The question asked in the FT/Harris pooll was whether people thought that allowing patients to top-up would imply that there would no longer be equal access to healthcare for all. Frankly, that is such a statement of the blindingly obvious the surprising thing is that 10% of the population thought otherwise.

However, those 90% were never asked the question, "If you had a serious illness such as cancer, do you think you should be allowed to buy drugs not available from the NHS, on prescription from your doctor, without losing your entitlement to basic NHS care?"

To try to claim that people would say No to the latter question on the basis of their answer to the former is mendacious.

Alternatively, one might have asked, "Assuming a basic level of healthcare remains available to all free, do you think people should be allowed to purchase additional treatment not provided on the NHS, such as drugs or physiotherapy, if their doctor believes it likely to be beneficial to them?"

The model that originally applied to the NHS was not only that everyone should have equal access but that everyone would receive full treatment. That principle was dropped when prescription charges were introduced and finally put down when NICE came into the picture (...) Interestingly, those who suffer are not the wealthy, but those less well-off who could afford top-ups but not the full cost of treatment.

Stephen Pollard in the Times adds:

Hamish Meldrum, the BMA's chairman ... said the NHS should not treat patients who have paid for drugs themselves: “My gut instinct is that this goes against the sort of NHS I believe in, which is free at the point of use, fair and equitable to all.” And which, he didn't add, would let patients die rather than use a drug their health authority will not supply. Equity it may be; but it can be the equity of death.

And so say all of us. This is not so much ideology as idiocy. And deathly idiocy at that.

Global Warming: another tilt at the windmill

2008-07-06T21:31:00.003+01:00

Stray has published more extracts from what promises to be an original and erudite work on climate change. We had an interesting discussion about the issue a short while ago. I must admit that, forceful though her arguments are, I remain something of a sceptic.

My scepticism arose originally because I have lived through a fair few great scares and have come to be rather cynical as a result. When I was at primary school, we were told that the world would run out of oil before the year 2000 and in any event there wouldn’t be enough food for the predicted population by that time anyway. Quite why everyone placed so much significance on the happenstance that one year of our arbitrary calendar was to begin with a 2 instead of a 1 I do not know. But each year of the 20th Century another scare would be along that was to do for us all: Aids, Ebola, the millennium bug, MRSA, Bird Flu, Islamic terrorism, Mad Cow disease, Foot and Mouth and so on and so forth. My parents’ generation had the Russians and my ancestors had the Catholics (save for my Catholic ancestors, who presumably had the Anglicans). Both my Catholic and Protestant ancestors had the stick of Hell and the carrot of Heaven to control their behaviour.

In short, one can’t help but conclude that long ago people worked out that the best way to manipulate public behaviour was through fear. I have had more than a mild suspicion that global warming has been whipped up into hysteria for precisely that reason: to impose an ideology on the rest of us.

Stray has an elegant counterpoint: that if it really was the case that fossil fuels were no environmental threat, we would have the best funded research in history to prove it.

I am still not convinced, however: I am quite happy to accept that over-reliance on oil for our transport, food and general way of life has been a great mistake. But the mistake is not necessarily global warming; rather, such things as general air pollution, the inevitable point where demand so exceeds supply that conflict arises, and of course the need to involve ourselves in the Middle East which has led to so many problems.

This is where I become particularly troubled about our runaway obsession with global warming. It is all very well to be concerned about carbon emissions, but not at the expense of other environmental problems. And many proposed carbon-reduction methods carry very severe economic consequences, well beyond simply a mild lessening of Western middle-class luxuries.

So leaving aside the various doubts about carbon emissions and man made global warming, I have yet to read a satisfactory answer about what to do next. Biofuel production drives up fuel prices and we’ll never produce anywhere near enough biodfuels to satisfy demand anyway. Carbon trading is problematic, to say the least. Even identifying what products have the largest carbon footprint is by no means straightforward, even though it is a crucial question.

I shall keep reading, and keep mulling over the answers. That is, until Stray’s book is published, and that, hopefully, will have done it all for me :-)

Filleting Lord Phillips

2008-07-04T16:26:00.002+01:00

Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, has re-ignited the controversy started a while ago by the Archbishop of Canterbury about incorporating aspects of Sharia law in the United Kingdom.

According to the report linked above:

Lord Phillips said: "It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by law other than English law."

Therefore, he said, he could see no reason why sharia should not be used to settle disputes in this country.

He said: "There is no reason why principles of sharia, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution."

He added: "It must be recognised however that any sanctions for a failure to comply with the agreed terms of the mediation would be drawn from the laws of England and Wales."

Lord Phillips has confused the issue in precisely the way that Rowan Williams did. Private contracts can be on any terms the parties wish, which includes following any legal system of their own imagination (French, Sharia, psuedo-Dungeons & Dragons), and the courts will uphold those bargains, provided that they conform with English contractual requirements and to the extent that they do not conflict with English public policy (key point number one).

In doing so the foreign legal system is not being incorporated into English law; rather it is simply a manifestation of the cardinal English law principle of freedom of contract (key point number two).

It was bad enough that Rowan Williams failed to understand those two key points; it simply beggars belief that the highest judge in the land has done so.

Key point number two is particularly apt - and ironic - given that the European Court of Human Rights - whose wisdom Phillips and the rest of the English judiciary must obey - has declared that Sharia law is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Even if Lord Phillips wished, therefore, to incorporate 'aspects' of Sharia law, he will find himself overruled if he tried to do so.

As with Williams, he offered an apologia to anyone offended by certain practices ascribed to Sharia:

"Part of the misconception about sharia is the belief that sharia is only about mandating sanctions such as flogging, stoning, the cutting off of hands or death for those fail to comply with the law," he said.

"In some countries the courts interpret sharia as calling for severe physical punishment. There can be no question of such courts sitting in this country, or such sanctions being applied here."

Williams expanded on that point. His line of reasoning went: (i) those barbaric practices exist; (ii) not to worry, we will leave them out; (iii) there is controversy amongst Sharia scholars as to whether they're required anyway; (iv) it's all over my head anyway as I'm not an authority on Sharia.

Point (iv) should have encouraged him to keep his mouth shut. It also renders redundant everything else he said on the subject.

At all events, rather than try and help the Beardie Weirdie out, perhaps Phillips should have a word with the women who have fled Sharia marriages in other countries and claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, relying on our legal system to protect them from oppression. I would also repeat what I said in response to Rowan Williams here, here and here.

145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

2008-07-04T16:10:00.006+01:00

This past week has seen the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, arguably one of the most significant battles in American history and certainly one of the most famous. Unfortunately I have been engaged in something not dissimilar on a professional level (that is to say, a bloody civil war) and therefore have not found the time to compose a post that would even begin to do justice to those momentous days in Pennsylvania in July 1863. I will therefore simply offer a few fairly random thoughts based on my recent reading of the subject.

It seems to me that Gettysburg was a classic example of intelligence failure, of the type which dogged many commanders as warfare shifted from bright uniforms and open fields of the Napoleonic era to more recognisably modern forms. Large armies were difficult to control and even difficult for the other side to detect, depending on the terrain. First World War generals just over half a century after the Civil War were still suffering the same problem. In the Civil War this problem was more acute for the invading armies. Gettysburg was located upon Union soil. The locals passed so much information to the Army of the Potomac prior to the battle that Meade’s army knew to within four guns how much artillery was at Lee’s disposal. Lacking equivalent sources, Lee’s own intelligence was extremely poor by comparison. It was, moreover, even worse than it should have been: the cavalry commander Jeb Stuart, supposed to be acting as Lee’s eyes and ears, was off on a frolic of his own to try and disrupt Union supply lines. Without regular information from the trusted Stuart, Lee was left blind, and he knew it.

Absence of reliable information may have been an important factor in the Confederates spending too much blood on the first day hastily trying to secure a victory. It did not help that their attacking infantry were using muskets against the Union cavalry’s carbines. The latter had a rate of fire more than twice as fast, and blunted the Confederates’ numerical advantage accordingly (though they were not, contrary to occasional sources, using repeating rifles). At the conclusion of the first day, the Confederates thought they were in the ascendancy; arguably, however, they had simply sealed their own fate by pushing the Union onto the high ground and suffering serious casualties in the process.

Superior Union intelligence continued for the battle’s duration. By virtue of occupying a shorter line on higher ground - from Culp’s Hill to the Round Tops, the Union soldiers were able to signal accurate and up to date information across the entire line to Meade; Lee’s own flags were not so well placed and his line was far longer. Relying on sound - trying to follow the pattern of the battle by reference to the volume and apparent direction of fire - was no substitute. The heat of those July days would have resulted in sound travelling upwards quickly, away from the ears of the generals on the ground, and the confusion must have been intense in any event.

Finally, however, the Confederacy suffered due to events beyond the control of General Lee or anyone else on the battlefield that day. An explosion in an arsenal in Richmond four months earlier had removed the Confederates’ chief source of artillery shells. They were forced to obtain replacements from Charleston. But the replacement shells’ fuses burned slower - a crucial factor in aiming the guns (another manifestation of the Union‘s technological and logistical superiority. It would not have been immediately obvious that the barrage was missing its mark, because the enormous clouds of smoke would have obscured the gunners’ vision.

A week after the battle, tests were run which disclosed the nature of the fuses to Confederate gunners. But it was a week too late for Pickett’s division, and for the Army of Northern Virginia as a whole. Their aura of invincibility was already gone.

Note: the above photographs were of course virtually contemporaneous. Good internet sources of American Civil War photographs are found here, here and here.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: Emerson Lake & Palmer - prog rock and fashion

2008-07-02T07:00:00.001+01:00

The 1970s is usually disdained as the anti-style decade, especially with regard to clothes. I find this harsh. At least it was distinctive, and occasionally original. Musically, of course, it has to be said that the 1970s leaves the present for dead. Films were better then too, but that's for another post. In the meantime, with a lesson on music and fashion, here are three videos from the archetypal 70s prog-rock band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

We begin in the early 1970s with a song entitled Hoedown. It doesn't resemble an actual hoedown, of course, but fashion-wise we should note that Keith Emerson's wearing chainmail:

Next we have the anthem Karn Evil 9 (1st impression, Pt 2); classic prog rock sci fi lyrics and musical self-indulgence. Note: Emerson is now wearing a white dress, which one of the commentators on Youtube suggested might be a nurse's uniform. Judge for yourselves.

Finally, what else but Fanfare for the Common Man. Not many modern bands would even think of trying to do a cover of an extract from a decades-old American symphony. They are much the poorer for it. ELP shows what to do here. It's appropriate that the venue is a giant sports stadium, since this rendition became the anthem for countless sports shows worldwide, including, in my youth, New Zealand's Sport on One. Shame that the fancy dress has been dispensed with by Emerson, but check out those sunglasses, with bomber jacket to boot.

Wicked to give it zero

2008-07-01T11:49:00.002+01:00

The story of school examiners' new found enthusiasm for profanity is doing the rounds on the net at the moment. According to the Times:

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

(...)

The chief examiner, who is responsible for standards in exams taken by 780,000 candidates and for training for 3,000 examiners, told The Times: “It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling.

Well it would be wicked to give it zero - in the positive sense of 'wicked' as employed by youth, as I understand it. Given that the Turner Prize was won on one occasion by some fool whose oeuvre included presenting screwed-up paper as art, perhaps all those pupils who do the same should also get marks.

Or perhaps, since the chief examiner seems to enjoy the phrase, everyone should tell him to f** off for good.

Diaster in Zimbabwe

2008-07-01T09:59:00.000+01:00

From the Torygraph:

President Omar Bongo of Gabon, who has held power for 41 years and won a series of widely criticised elections, gave his public backing for Mr Mugabe as leaders met in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"He was elected, he took an oath, and he is here with us, so he is President and we cannot ask him more," said Mr Bongo. "He conducted elections and I think he won."

Mr Bongo added that African leaders would not allow Western governments to dictate their view of Zimbabwe. "We have even received Mugabe as a hero," he said. "We understand the attacks but this is not the way they should react. What they've done is, in our opinion, a little clumsy, and we think they could have consulted us first."

It's tempting to laugh, but there are millions of innocent lives that have suffered and ended under these sorts of tyrannous regimes. I could start speculating as to the reasons why, for all the good it would do. Instead I simply despair.

The Great War VII: Alleged past injustices again

2008-06-29T11:07:00.015+01:00

Regular commentator Stephen of It's a rough trade, politics and I have had a disagreement on the pardoning of WWI soldiers shot for cowardice or desertion. I have done a few posts and comments on the subject, but given the vehemence of Stephen’s disagreement (unusual, as he has already observed), I thought I would attempt to set out my position in slightly greater length. Also some of the comments I have made have been rather sloppy, and this post therefore constitutes a tidying-up effort.

Of course in principle righting historical wrongs seems a worthy cause, but matters are not that simple.

The first question which might arise is whether we should be investigating past injustices when the victims and the convicted person are long since dead and the circumstances under which the offending arose have long since vanished. None of the officers who charged, prosecuted, convicted and executed soldiers are still alive, and the events took place over ninety years ago in a Europe that has changed out of all recognition as has the British army.

Two obvious points flow from that: first, it would be an expensive use of scarce judicial and other public resources to investigate any of the more than 300 executions. It is my belief that those resources should concentrate on resolving present-day crimes; the judicial system is straining to cope as it is. It is not unusual for a person charged with murder to be remanded in custody for a year or more awaiting trial. Many people currently serving life imprisonment think they have a case to be reviewed; their cases should logically have priority.

Secondly, with no witnesses left alive and all records nearly a century old, the chances of us being able to be confident in reviewing past cases has to be correspondingly low. That has to be a factor to be taken into account when deciding how to distribute the inevitably overworked resources of the judicial system.

At this point I should counter a red herring that Stephen raised in a comment. He writes impassionately, and unarguably, that we retain a duty to find the body of Keith Bennett on Saddleworth Moor, a victim of the Moors murderers. I agree. But that is not raking over the past to satisfy our changed morals and ideas; it is solving an unsolved case. It bears no relation to reinvestigating and judging what our forefathers did when they thought they were doing the right thing by the actions of the time. Of course if a dead child of a living parent has not been found we should continue the search.

There is a further distinction of importance. Some past convictions we would now denounce as we disagree that they involved a crime at all; homosexuality between consenting adults being a quintessential example. I would have no problem for a retrospective pardon in those cases. But the Shot at Dawn campaign concerned men who were tried for cowardice in the face of the enemy or desertion or similar offences; these remain crimes to this day. The objection has to be either to the conviction of individual defendants or the imposition of the death penalty, not to the crime itself with which they were charged. I accept that the state could declare that all those executed should have had a different punishment, although by abolishing the death penalty in toto it has implicitly already done this. But the fact of the death penalty is not sufficient to conclude there was particular injustice in the shot at dawn cases, since that was the standard punishment for murder and some other civilian crimes in Britain at the time.

It is, moreover, not as if the 306 executions* were the only occasions in which the judicial and/or military system of 1910s might have produced a different result to what would obtain in comparable circumstances under today’s mores. I am sure many died in industrial accidents, for example, that would have resulted in severe punishment of their employers nowadays.** None of these potential injustices have been investigated nor is there any suggestion that they should. I remain unpersuaded about the reasons why we should choose the shot at dawn campaign and ignore the rest - particularly those found guilty of transgressions during wartime but received lesser penalties. Their reputations would have been stained just as would those executed.

In fact many of the facts suggest prima facie that there was not some brutal series of executions. Approximately 3,000 death sentences were passed but only about 10% were actually carried out. Some 80,000 were diagnosed with shell shock at the war's end. The actual number of sufferers must have been many times greater over the conflict. The fact that very few soldiers at all were executed (far fewer than the French army as well) indicates that the story is more complex than brutal officers ruthlessly and cruelly executing the innocent merely as an example to the rest. There must have been countless occasions of shell shocked soldiers losing touch with their units but being ushered back without punishment by Military Police and then not receiving punishment from their actual officers.

World War II provides examples of other potential injustices, such as those whose farms were confiscated for failing to meet production targets. Had that been wrongly done, it would have been a wrong with direct economic as well as other consequences for persons still alive today.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary who pardoned the executed, reasoned thus:

"I believe a group pardon, approved by Parliament, is the best way to deal with this. After 90 years, the evidence just doesn't exist to assess all the cases individually.

"I do not want to second guess the decisions made by commanders in the field, who were doing their best to apply the rules and standards of the time. "But the circumstances were terrible, and I believe it is better to acknowledge that injustices were clearly done in some cases, even if we cannot say which - and to acknowledge that all these men were victims of war."

But 'second guessing the decisions made by commanders in the field, who were doing their best to apply the rules and standards of the time' is indeed the very thing Mr Browne has done. And in so doing he has brushed aside one potential injustice and replaced it with another - a slur on the officers who dutifully and in good faith conducted courts martial in the way they thought best, and a pardon for some soldiers who may not have been deserving. It is not clear that all of the executed were in fact innocent; in an army of millions it would be astonishing if there were in fact no deserters or cowards whatsoever.

The report from which the above quotation is taken also includes the following, with which I agree:

Correlli Barnett, a military historian, said last night that the mass posthumous pardon was "pointless" after all these years. "These were decisions taken in the heat of a war when the commanders' primary duty was to keep the Army together and to keep it fighting. They were therefore decisions taken from a different moral perspective," he said.

"For the people of this generation to come along and second-guess decisions taken then is wrong.

"It was done in a particular historical setting and in a particular moral and social climate. It's pointless to give these pardons. What's the use of a posthumous pardon?"

Those who were shot for cowardice or desertion were by and large treated fairly, according to the standards of the time, he added.

Indeed, as I pointed out before, Gordon Corrigan's investigations show that it is not at all clear that there was a litany of injustices committed, to the extent that surviving records enable us to judge. Even if we did find procedural faults with the courts martial, that is not the same as finding that the executed were in fact innocent. This is the point which is key to the misunderstanding and misinformation put about by the press in the wake of the quashing of the conviction of Derek Bentley some time ago. He was not, contrary to the screaming headlines, declared 'innocent'. All that was found was that there were defects in the trial judge's summing up: a common enough occurrence that routinely leads to convictions being quashed and new trials ordered. If Bentley was alive today that is precisely what would have happened - a retrial.

The point about Bentley is made in this article by Francis Bennion, with which I agree. Its conclusion is apposite for this post as well:

Our generation needs to be reminded of that pregnant saying of L P Hartley's in The Go-Between. The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. Or to put it even more succinctly: you can't change history, and you shouldn't even try.

We can - and should, indeed must - learn from history; we can in so doing debate whether things were done right or wrong in the past. But official rewriting is another matter. Niall Ferguson is a professional historian of a similar view:

Retrospectively pardoning First World War deserters, then, is as empty a gesture as retrospectively condemning Second World War conscripts. Harry Farr and Günter Grass were simply two tiny cogs in the monstrous mincing machines of total war. That is why the real question children should ask of veterans is not "What did you do in the war, daddy?" but "What did the war do to you?"

* From the Ferguson article: 266 British and colonial soldiers were shot for desertion, 18 for cowardice, seven for quitting their posts and two for casting away their arms: 293 in all. The other executions were for offences of a different nature, such as murder.

** Ferguson again: "If you are against the death penalty in principle, you may well ask why a few hundred Tommies have been singled out to be pardoned. Many of the crimes for which young men were hanged in the 18th century, for example, were mere petty thefts. Today, most such young offenders would face nothing more painful than a caution or an anti-social behaviour order. Shouldn't we pardon the hanged sheep-stealers while we are about it?"

Of course if it was purely the death penalty that was the objection, then a pardon would be inappropriate; a lesser sentence would be formally passed, for all the good it would do.

Coda: From Wikipedia: It seems I was misinformed to an extent:

The pardon was enacted in the Armed Forces Act 2006 which came into effect on 8 November 2006. However section 359(4) of the Act states that the pardon "does not affect any conviction or sentence." Since the nature of a pardon is normally to quash a conviction or to commute a sentence, Gerald Howarth MP asked during parliamentary debate: "we are entitled to ask what it does do."^[2] It would appear to be a symbolic pardon only, and some members of Parliament had called for the convictions to be quashed, although the pardon has still been welcomed by relatives of executed soldiers.^[3]

What was the point of all that then?

Harriet Harman and positive discrimination

2008-06-27T21:40:00.005+01:00

One item in the news recently has been Harriet Harman, someone who I’ve not been very kind about on this blog before, arguing for some rather extreme measures to ‘promote more women to senior roles and to close the gender pay gap.' I can’t help but suspect that Ms Harperson’s efforts amount to not much more than deliberate headline-manufacturing with the intention of drawing the public eye away from Labour’s disastrous poll ratings, recently reflected in humiliation at Henley.

She tells us:

"Most women are going out to work and they are just as committed to their jobs - the money that they earn is important to the household budget so they should be paid fairly.

Yet listen to this figure - if you are a woman working part-time you get 40 per cent less per hour on average than a man working full-time.

Now either this is because women are not up to the job or else there is discrimination against them. You can't challenge discrimination when it's kept swept under the carpet.

I think there's a lot of resentment at the unfairness against women. They are not being given the facts."

Well, Melanie McDonagh in the Times has some facts that may interest all the resentful:

"If you compare that intelligent, hard-working woman, not with a full-time male equivalent, but a part-time male worker, you know what you find? She's paid more. In the year to April 2007, according to the Office for National Statistics, weekly median gross earnings for a woman working part-time are £145.60; for a man, £137.80. Is the part-time male less committed, less intelligent, etc? Dunno.

Of course, women's pay is less than men's overall. The ONS puts the gap, as measured by median hourly pay, excluding overtime, at 12.6 per cent. Weirdly, the difference was smallest in Northern Ireland, at 2.8 per cent. You never thought of Northern Ireland as a hotbed of feminism, did you?

But the real question is why. And it's not a bit clear that entrenched discrimination is the answer. Women may see lower pay as a reasonable trade-off for having more time to themselves - or, being women, for their children. They may, contrary to government policy, prefer to rear their own children, rather than farming them out to someone else.

The psychologist Susan Pinker asked, in a book titled The Sexual Paradox, and plainly designed to tease, “why females are biologically driven to nurture their young rather than climb the corporate ladder”. Why indeed? But it's a perfectly valid choice if some decide that the rat race isn't for them.

The really interesting comparison isn't between women and men but between single, childless women and men. If you compare women who aren't married or cohabiting with men who aren't married or cohabiting, you know what? The pay gap goes the other way. Hourly pay for the women is £8.82; for men £8.72. The moral is that if women want equal pay, they should give up men and children. Any takers?"

Just not cricket: the Elliot dismissal

2008-06-27T09:41:00.002+01:00

Fallout continues from the last fraught one day international. The English were obviously in the wrong about the Elliot dismissal, and Collingwood was either ignorant or trying it on when he said he had had to make a decision in a split second: the rule is that the appeal may be withdrawn at any time up to the point when the batsman crosses the boundary rope. He did apologise afterwards; one wonders how much weight that would have carried if England had won the match.

That said, as a few have observed, the NZ'ers were having a laugh complaining about it given that their dismissal of Muralitharin when Sri Lank toured NZ last time round was much more against the 'spirit' of the game; they ran him out after he had made his ground and then, assuming the ball to be dead, left the crease to congratulate his partner on reaching a hundred. Several NZ commentators dismissed the dismissal at the time, as it were, by sneering that it was test cricket and was supposed to be 'played hard'.

My question is: Collingwood may have apologised on this occasion, but if the same thing occurs in the £1m per player winner takes all 20/20 match to be played in the Windies soon, will he be freshly invigorated with the spirit of the game and not appeal? Not that we will have an immediate opportunity to find out since Collingwood has been suspended for four matches, not because of the dismissal but because of England's slow over rate. Would the penalty have been that harsh if it were not the case that NZ, it is generally felt, was robbed in the second match by the slow over rate resulting in the match not finishing before the rain? Would it have been the same penalty if the next match was the £1m contest? It is at least arguable that the penalty in those circumstances would be excessive, but to take that into consideration would open another can of worms.

Multicultural sensitivity is not an excuse for moral blindness

2008-06-26T17:30:00.003+01:00

Rahila Gupta in the Guardian, makes various points which echo previous posts on this blog. I make no claim to originality, nor does she, but it sadly appears to be something that needs to be said often. Better still if something was done about it. She writes:

In the government's war against terror, "building cohesion" has become the new holy grail. Within this policy construct, single-group funding has fallen out of favour. Paradoxically, the funding of Muslim groups continues apace, while secular groups are being hit. Specialist organisations catering for those vulnerable groups at the centre of the NSPCC report are to have their funding cut. Southall Black Sisters' struggle to replace the core funding under threat of withdrawal by Ealing council is one of the most widely publicised examples of this. The NSPCC makes a welcome case for the continuing need for a specialist sector but fails to make the links.

It is this failure that takes the NSPCC report into dangerous territory, when it calls for the engagement of faith and community leaders in the fight against domestic violence. It is precisely these leaders - who act as gatekeepers to the community and cry racist when the state intervenes - who account for the nervousness of state agencies. The NSPCC organised a conference aimed at the Muslim community which was attended by 50 imams. It found unsurprisingly that, "for some imams, the issue of domestic abuse is not on their radar". Perhaps the most telling statement of all was that "many mosques are the premises of men only". In the teeth of such entrenched patriarchal attitudes, calling for the training of imams feels like trying to empty a lake with a teacup. When the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain reported on the extent of child abuse in madrasas in 2006, little action was taken.

In this new political climate, minority girls' rights are again being sold down the river.

Seems as though in the rush to slay the dragon of terrorism, the government is ignoring the real vermin that is domestic violence and oppression of women. Which may itself lead to extremism, and we know what else.

Mutiny

2008-06-25T21:42:00.009+01:00

An officer in my readership corps, Stephen, has taken me to task about this post, on the shooting of deserters in WWI. The post is short enough to set the material parts again in full:

We should not attempt to pass judgment on events in our distant past such as the execution of Pvte Harry Farr for cowardice during the First World War. Already the case has taken up valuable judicial resources, as indeed have other recent reviews of long ago cases such as Derek Bentley, Ruth Ellis and James Hanratty. In all of these cases judicial proceedings only came about because of the accident that each of the deceased had living relatives. We should not expend public resources on cases which turn on that happenstance.

Debating whether the likes of Pvte Farr suffered shell-shock is a matter of interest for medical historians but we should hesitate long and hard before presupposing to pass judgment on events as far removed as the Great War. It is fashionable to dismiss the generals of the day as ‘donkeys’ and to rail against the supposed brutality of shooting for deserters. But it should also be recalled that of all the armies which were involved in the war from the outset, only the British did not suffer a severe collapse of morale at any point as well, of course, as emerging victorious.

Stephen challenges several points. He writes:

The logical conclusion of what you say here is that injustices from the past should not be pursued, nor should judicial resources be wasted, even given the 'accident' of living relatives. We would live in a very sorry society indeed if injustices such as unsolved murders were simply abandoned once they were considered past their 'sell-by date'. The existence or otherwise of living relatives is in one sense irrelevant to the moral proposition you put forward; on the other hand such relatives are surely entitled to have their feelings and hurt considered.

My response: the total number of murders that have been committed is obviously very great indeed. Judicial resources in the present day, as ever, are scarce and very expensive. We cannot possibly investigate every supposed past injustice. Where the convicted person and everyone else involved in the case are dead, and all the surrounding circumstances have vanished, that has to be a very strong reason - albeit not necessarily decisive - against re-opening cases.

I appreciate that where there happen to be living descendants, they may feel strongly about the stain on their family history - but there are many present-day people behind bars and facing trial who should have first call on the resources of the state. The fact that some cases in the past involved defendants who have living relatives is the only reason that they are now being investigated; it does not seem to me compelling that that should be so. It might be that wrongly convicted men remain convicted because they lack living relatives; I am not sure that in the grand scheme of things the existence of (say) a great-grand niece should have anything to do whether the state chooses to reopen one old case as opposed to another - or rather, as opposed to not opening old cases at all.

Stephen's next point refers to my statement that "of all the armies which were involved in the war from the outset, only the British did not suffer a severe collapse of morale at any point".

He asks: "Are you suggesting that what maintained the morale of the British troops was the knowledge that they faced execution if they displayed cowardice?"

No, not at all. The point related not to the case of Pvte Farr specifically, but to the general context of popular perception of the incompetence and injustice of the First World War as a whole. You may have seen numerous posts I wrote on the Great War last year attempting to set something in the balance against the idea that the Generals were all callous butchers. One of the authors whom I drew upon, Gordon Corrigan, has investigated some of the executions in detail and concluded that it was by no means clear that any injustice had occurred (bearing in mind, among other things, that the death penalty was still in force and still used in those days for civilian murders). And of course a lot of soldiers were sentenced to death but the penalty was not in fact carried out, which goes against the idea that a load of commoners and Irish were being topped as a lesson to the rest.

Certainly I was not suggesting that the British army survived due to the threat of execution (the French army had rather more of those and did indeed collapse as an offensive force). Rather I was pointing out that it cannot have been led as badly as the likes of Oh What a Lovely War or Blackadder IV might have one believe.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday - Mystery girl # 4

2008-06-25T09:45:00.002+01:00

This, I promise, will be the last in my attempts to sneak pictures of fine musicians past the readership. This lady is a fine singer and is also skilled in elephant polo and mountain climbing. Answers below as always, and a prize of my choosing to the first correct.

Double standards

2008-06-23T16:55:00.008+01:00

Would it be offensive to describe Australia as "a country where Black people are the ‘Aboriginal’ indigenous nation who are stereotyped by the white colonisers as social security scrounging drunks"?

I believe yes, highly so. There are tens of thousands of Australians in London at any one time and to suggest that they all hold such views is a direct racial insult.

The writer who has just done so calls himself 'confident'. He must be doubly so now given the following sequence of events:

1. Darcus Howe makes a very offensive suggestion that hordes of black people will flee London for the Caribbean upon the election of Boris Johnson.

2. The aforementioned writer puts this offensive notion to one of Johnson's staff.

3. The staff member dismisses it offhand by saying that they can if they so wish. Later he uses a word common in the Australian vernacular as an inoffensive way to refer to a stranger (it certainly contains no racial connotations in the Australian context, and until now I didn't realise it had any in the English one either).

4. The writer jumps on all this as proof of the 'Tories' propensity for racial hatred. He makes the above remark about Australians without irony. (He also throws in a cryptic remark about how the staff member pronounces his own name - despite it being the conventional pronunciation, which makes me wonder what he's on about.)

5. The net result is that the staff member in question has resigned, despite having done nothing other than offer an appropriate response to a fatuous remark. The writer is no doubt congratulating himself on having damaged the life and career of an evil Tory.

The writer in question is one Marc Wadsworth, whose piece in full is here.

It is entitled Blacks should 'go back home if they don't like Mayor'. Note the use of quotation marks: in fact they enclose words that are not a quotation at all, yet more evidence of Wadsworth's trouble-stirring propensity. It is in fact a deliberate misquotation to make McGrath appear the racist he is not.

On the way home I saw in the free London papers that ex-Mayor Livingstone was quick to jump on the bandwagon and say that it was proof that Johnson's Mayoralty was unfit for London. I can't be the only one who remembers this bon mot from Ken:

"If they're not happy here, they can go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach."

This remark was made by Ken to the Reuben brothers, who were born in India to parents of Iraqi-Jewish heritage.

Or is it that Ken's not a Tory so he can say what he likes? Or that it is acceptable to insult Jewish people and Australians?

Wadsworth congratulates himself here. About the only good news is that the comments below both his efforts suggest I am not alone in thinking him a shameless troublemaker.

Post script: They really are out to get Boris, aren't they?

Is Mugabe the problem?

2008-06-22T16:11:00.004+01:00

Zimbabwe is continuing its descent into Hades, with news that the opposition is refusing to contest the election run-off, for the rather valid reason that Mugabe has made the democratic process a deadly farce. Male life expectancy in that benighted country is 36, the economy and currency have collapsed and there is nothing in the offing to suggest any foreseeable improvement.

Two particular points concern me. The first is that, murderous tyrant that he is, Mugabe possibly might be persuaded to step aside and live out his days with his stolen money. I suspect the reason that he doesn't is that he has not, of course, destroyed his country by himself; thousands of cronies have assisted and abetted him and they are not going to be in line for diplomatic immunity never mind the pilfered loot Mugabe has stashed away. I fear that it is they - the bent police, military and civil service - who are most anxious of all to ensure Zanu PF remains in power.

The second point is the continued lack of action from South Africa. Direct action from the West is a bit far fetched, at least at the moment. But South Africa are Zimbabwe's neighbour, not tarred with the ex-colonial brush and they and the other nearby countries have suffered greatly through Zimbabwe's transformation from bread-basket to basket-case. Why are they not doing more? What does it say about their own regimes?

Another elegantly mystery girl ...

2008-06-20T14:51:00.002+01:00

Determined as I am to outfox the wily readership at some point (and yes I know it isn't Wednesday, but it probably will be next time I'm awake), here is mystery lady #3. Like the others, her's is the music trade. First correct answer wins a prize of my choosing.

Inadequate vehicles for the British Army

2008-06-20T10:11:00.003+01:00

Over a year ago I wrote:

We have a Labour government which is supposed to support the civil service and the most vulnerable in society. So it puts rank and file soldiers (starting salary less than £20k) in the most dangerous country on earth and equips them with armoured landrovers. 'Armoured', in the sense they could stop improvised bullets and petrol bombs in Northern Ireland. In terms of protection against 7.62mm small arms, RPGs and roadside bombs, they leave our troops as well protected as the overburdened Tommies marching on foot through un-cut barbed wire on the first day of the Somme. It is an absolute national disgrace.

In a conflict often new weapons or tactics emerge that were not foreseen, and perhaps were not reasonably foreseeable. That, however, simply does not apply to the threats to our forces in Iraq. It was known that insurgents would use precisely the weapons they have been using: they were the weapons of the former Iraqi army. In some cases they have been supplanted by Iranian arms, but even in that case the weapons are just variants on what the Iraqis had anyway, and in any event landrovers provide minimal protection even against the least sophisticated insurgent weapons).

The invasion was four years ago and yet it has only been in the past year that better armoured vehicles have been purchased. The Australian army - representing a country with an economy nothing like as large as that of the UK - did better from the beginning. What is the UK's excuse?

I did not support the Iraq war. But if we are going to put troops there, then we have no option but to give them some chance of survival. As it is, the squaddies pointed out that their vulnerability made them a most attractive target. It is an absolute shower. The fact that it happens in every war just makes it worse.

Whatever has been done in the subsequent year has obviously not been enough, with soldiers still dying in rubbish Landrovers that may as well have a bullseye painted on them. Many complain that the government has thrown billions at unpopular wars. Well the wars would be less unpopular if they'd thrown more - and more wisely. Then our soldiers might be making progress and at least would be properly equipped while they're trying to. Instead we have the worst of all worlds: little progress made due to underfunding and troops dying unnecessarily at the same time.

Simon Mann: an undernourished puppy of war

2008-06-19T15:48:00.000+01:00

Whilst I denounce poor prison conditions in Equatorial Guinea and indeed anywhere else, I cannot find a great deal of sympathy for Mr Simon Mann, a British citizen presently on trial there, since Mr Mann was entirely the author of his own misfortune. What he thought he was playing at was anyone's guess. His attempted coup was in a literal sense stranger than fiction: Forsyth's The Dogs of War describes a similar escapade but one which was distinctly better organised than Mann's utterly bizarre and comically inept adventure. If, therefore, Mr Mann spends the rest of his days as the guest of a place which would make the Bangkok Hilton seem like the New York Hilton, he has only himself to blame, not that that justifies the conditions which apparently obtain in the jail in which he is being held.

Some reports suggest that an effort has been made by the EG government to spruce up the jail and present at least the appearance of a fair trial, with the objective of improving the country's public image (presently not good in the eyes of Amnesty International and others). If so, that would be A Good Thing, although I can't help but feel that sprucing up the schools and hospitals and introducing democracy instead, or preferably in addition, might achieve that aim somewhat better.

There, however, a degree of irony with regard to Mr Mann's predicament. His objective was to oust an evil regime in a third world country and get rich off the oil wealth. Much like, say, Mr Bush and Mr Blair, although they had somewhat better soldiers and weapons at their disposal ...

Mystery girl revealed

2008-06-18T16:10:00.003+01:00

Here is no-longer mystery girl Alison Krauss playing live, partly for the edification of non-competition winners, but mostly so I can see if I have finally learned (thanks to the patient instruction of Manic Mum Jane Henry) to upload videos. The sound isn't presently working on my computer, so I am hazarding a guess that this is, indeed, the song I think it is and not some Youtube crank.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday - Mystery girl # 2

2008-06-18T10:53:00.001+01:00

Once again time precludes any intellectual discussion so here is another competition to name an elegant lady musician. A soprano, violin virtuoso and all round genius (her not me), I wonder if it will take longer than last week's effort for anyone to identify this blonde lass ...

Harry Patch and the unheralded victories in the Great War

2008-06-17T11:58:00.004+01:00

Today is the birthday of Harry Patch, the last Tommy. Although there are a handful of other survivors of the Great War, Mr Patch is the only one to have fought in the trenches. I wrote about Mr Patch here.

The occasion reminded me of an interesting discussion on the Great War which I had recently with two colleagues. The question we were pondering was why the only names etched into the public conscience are those of the defeats, or stalemates, or seemingly pyrrhic victories for the allies: the likes of Loos, Verdun, Gallipoli, the Somme, Passchendale and Ypres. Conversely, the defeat of Operation Michel (substantially on the moonscape of the Somme battlegrounds) and other German offensives of 1918, followed by the "100 days" in which the British surged to victory, constitute perhaps the most significant land victories in British history. Coming as they did only a couple of years after the creation of a giant new army from virtually nothing, pitched against a German army bolstered significantly by the end of the war in the East, they represent an astonishing victory by any measure. Moreover, they represent the only occasion on which the British army could be said to have been the strongest field army in the world. At no point in the 2000 years of recorded history before or the 90 years since has that been the case.

The equivalent might be Northern American states remembering the Civil War only in the battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville; with Antietam, Gettysburg and all others forgotten. Or perhaps Americans in general recalling only Pearl Harbour rather than Coral Sea and Midway; or Russians the German invasion up to (but not including) Stalingrad.

Perhaps it is simply traditional British self-flagellation; the perverse ways of the intellectual tendency known as the "bien-pensants" or "trahisons des clercs", which tiresomely denegrate their own whilst blinding themselves to the failings of others. Perhaps it is simply the numbers of British casualties in the famous battles, historically unprecedented for Britain as they were; but the numbers involved in the American Civil War were proportionately greater for the US population of the day, and the total numbers on the Russian front in WWII far outweighed those of the Western allies in either war. Perhaps it is due to the (understandable) rise of the pacifist movement after the war, which would not have focused on victories or strategic necessities.

I suspect, however, that the main reason is that the Second World War, just two decades later, began more or less as a reprise of the First, and this time the Germans were more successful. The national mood of the British must have been something like dejection and horror when the same ground was being fought over once more, and it would only have worsened once the Germans had conquered France where they had previously failed. All of the sacrifices of 1914-1918 must have seemed supremely futile by mid-1940. After the war the focus would have been on the decisive victory in 1945, with Germany occupied, rather than the armistice of 1918 which had preserved Germany and enabled her to start all over again in 1939.

That analysis may or may not be correct, but either way it remains a source of frustration to me, who believes our forefathers of 1918 deserve a great deal more credit than they ever seem to have received.

Kevin Pietersen's reverse sixes

2008-06-17T09:57:00.004+01:00

When the basketball legend Wilt 'the Stilt' Chamberlain was asked his opinion of the young pretender Michael Jordan, he replied with a smirk to the effect that they didn't change the rules for Jordan, did they? Basketball's rules were, apparently, changed specifically in response to Chamberlain's statistical dominance of the NBA.

I know too little about the sport to comment on the wisdom or otherwise of that incident, but the suits who run cricket are now, apparently, meeting to discuss changing the rules because of Kevin Pietersen. This is in response to two absolutely extraordinary shots which Pietersen played in the one day international on the weekend, when he changed stance completely whilst the bowler was running up to the crease, and swatted sixes on both occasions.

Mike Atherton, he of the dirt in the pocket incident, rather sits on the fence in the Times today. He reports that Michael Holding disapproves. The New Zealanders, on the other hand, who might have had more of an axe to grind given that they were actually on the receiving end, can't see what the fuss is about. Nor can I. According to the New Zealand Herald:

"I don't really mind because if someone plays a shot like that and it goes wrong they can look like a bit of an idiot," Mason said.

"It's just another part of the game. Good on him if he can play it well, those shots were pretty impressive."

Batsman Daniel Flynn was also impressed, and said innovation was the name of the game amid the Twenty20 revolution.

"If you're good enough to play it I think you should be allowed to go for it. I don't see why you should be restricted. Fair play to him," Flynn said.

"It's a great shot and you've got to give him credit. He's obviously worked on it and it came off for him. Another day it could go straight up in the air, but he got it in the middle both times."
New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori was surprised to be told it had reached MCC level, and reiterated his post-match comments that it was good for the game.

His only issue was the umpires needed to give bowlers leniency, and allow the wide line to be the same on both sides if a batsman switched stances."

With all of that I agree. Even to consider outlawing 'the practice' amounts to another short-sighted piece of meddling by the officious fools who run the game. Every international batsman in history has had the opportunity to play the shot; almost none ever has. The fact that Pietersen did with amazing success should not blind them to the fact that it ain't, after all, broke and therefore doesn't need to be fixed.

I rather doubt that Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis are busily practising the shot in the nets and the world's bowlers are about to suffer accordingly. Instead they - and we - should revel in a sublime piece of entertainment. Of course the umpires should interpret the wide and lbw laws according if the batsman switches to left handed, but I doubt we need a rule change for that.

The argument seems to have been raised that it is unfair on the bowler, who has to nominate which hand he intends to bowl with. But there is a safety issue with bowling - imagine if Curtly Ambrose had been ambidextrous. That is why the bowler is confined to his crease by the no ball rule, but the batsman can stand where he chooses. If he wishes to face Ambrose half-way down the pitch, it is up to him. But no-one would suggest the bowler should have the same liberty.

Coda: for once, common sense prevailed and the shot was declared legal.

13, 20, 42 and 2

2008-06-13T15:25:00.003+01:00

As it is Friday 13th, test cricket is under seige from the vulgar upstart of 20/20 cricket and the government thinks it has done us all a favour by empowering itself to lock us up for 42 days without trial, something a bit more positive should be done. Here, then, are two more pictures of the lovely Natalie Merchant, whose picture below drew an approving response to say the least. Her official website is here.

Extension of time limits for pre-charge detention again

2008-06-13T10:51:00.004+01:00

I must admit that when I first heard Gordon Brown had announced he would stand or fall on the 42 day detention issue, I thought he was doing so to get out of a job he was conspicuously not enjoying or doing particularly well.

I suppose that given he managed to get over the line with the help of the Ulster vote (as one of the Ulstermen pointed out, thereby turning a humiliating defeat into a humiliating victory) we might conclude that he actually believed in the extension.

Some time ago I blogged about the then proposal for 28 days. I said:

the key problem is that of ... barriers to the security services in obtaining evidence. If those were significantly lessened, then the justification for extended periods of pre-charge detention would fall away. Not only that, but we would surely be in a better position in terms of the fight against terrorism than if we were simply locking people up for longer without being in a position to convict them. On the other hand, if the situation deteriorated to the point where we simply could not stop suicide bombers then emergency measures would indeed be required. I'm not convinced we are there yet, not that I am in a position to know ...

I then quoted five suggestions from the human rights group Liberty as to how that might be achieved:

1 Remove the bar on the use of intercept (phone tap) evidence because its inadmissibility is a major factor in being unable to bring charges in terror cases. Liberty welcomes the Government’s proposed Privy Council review into the use of this evidence in terror trials.

2 Allow post-charge questioning in terror cases, provided that the initial charge is legitimate and there is judicial oversight. This will allow for a charge to be replaced with a more appropriate offence at a later stage.

3 Hire more interpreters: Prioritise the hiring of more foreign language interpreters to expedite pre-charge questioning and other procedures.

4 Add resources: More resources for police and intelligence services.

5 Emergency measures in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 could be triggered in a genuine emergency in which the police are overwhelmed by multiple terror plots, allowing the Government to temporarily extend pre-charge detention subject to Parliamentary and judicial oversight. Liberty believes that this is preferable to creating a permanent state of emergency.

My conclusion now is the same as it was then:

In the final analysis, we are in the realms of guesswork. The security forces are in a better position than me to know the present scale of the threat (and I hope they do know very well, though necessarily they will not know it perfectly). But [according to the] New York Times:
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, 1,228 people have been arrested under
antiterrorism laws, the government says. More than half were released without
charges; only six were held for 27 or 28 days, five of them in connection with
the reported plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic in August 2006. Three
of those men were let go without charges

That suggests that the case for 28 days wasn't compelling then, and unless I've missed something, it suggests that the case for 42 days is not compelling now. I doubt it is as severe a blow for our liberties or going to alienate the Muslim population to the extent that some fear, and perhaps it will be rarely used, but none of that is quite the point. The key question for all proposed governmental interference in our lives is whether it is necessary. 42 day detention is not, so off with its head say I.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday - Mystery girl

2008-06-11T12:08:00.000+01:00

Last week's Sean Connery abomination requires amends. Here is a young lady singer, who happens to be far easier image on the eye. Time precludes me writing anything detailed about her. So for the moment I will leave it to readers to attempt to ascertain her identity. A prize (of my choosing) to the first to do so.

Getting the snouts out of the trough

2008-06-11T09:55:00.002+01:00

What to do about MP's and MEP's expenses? There has been a bit in the press recently following the High Court decision requiring details of the expenditure of our leaders claimed over and above their salaries.

The problem of MPs dipping their hands into the public till is pretty universal for all countries and all ages, but the point I wish to make has especial resonance in the British context. This is because no-one more than the British, save perhaps the EU, likes to impose rules, sub-rules, axioms, corollaries, exemptions, sub-clauses, and all manner of needlessly complex layers of rules and regulations on society. VAT law is a fine example (British law imposed due to the EU). Nominally it is a tax of 17.5% on the sale of goods and services. (Note that means it is regressive in effect, as poor people spend a greater portion of their income.) Except the government can't leave it at that. Instead it has to provide all manner of exemptions, usually to buy votes or manipulate public behaviour. These can be as apparently straightforward as locally produced medical supplies (never straightforward in practice) and as byzantine as sea going vessels over 15 tons gross tonnage (why not 10 or 20?) not used for pleasure (howsoever defined).

MPs expenses are the same. They are allowed to claim for certain types of living expenses. What type, and how much, is the subject of endlessly complicated rules and whatever result is produced is - rightly - mocked by the press. Housing benefits were given to assist with the high cost of life in London. Since, however, the cost of living in London varies rather a lot depending on whether one shops at Harvey Nichols or Cost Cutter, someone threw a dart at a chart on the wall and came up with the price list at John Lewis as a guide. Then someone claimed for a nanny for child care, leading to a 1970s-style feminism debate in some parts of the boring Sunday Press.

This tiresome habit of rules, exemptions and sub-exemptions is not simply needlessly complex and open to abuse; it is, in my view at least, contrary to the very nature of good governance, namely the Rule of Law.

The great American jurist Lon Fuller famously identified eight ways in which a legal system might fail:

(1) a failure to achieve rules at all, so that every issue must be decided on an ad hoc basis;

(2) a failure to publicise, or at least to make available to the affected party, the rules he is expected to observe;

(3) the abuse of retroactive legislation, which cannot itself guide action, but undercuts the integrity of rules prospective in effect, since it puts them under the threat of retrospective change (say deciding that the speed limit should have been 20mph last month, and issuing tickets to the population accordingly);

(4) a failure to make rules understandable;

(5) the enactment of contradictory rules;

(6) rules that require conduct beyond the powers of the affected party (say requiring that everyone must work 25 hours a day);

(7) introducing such frequent changes in the rules that the subject cannot orient his action by them;

(8) a failure to achieve congruence between the rules as announced and their actual administration (say have a law requiring x and then not bothering to enforce it).

MPs expenses seem to fall short on at least three of those counts, namely (2), (4) and (7). The problem is that it is very difficult in advance to set out rules covering all possible expenses that might be deemed fair. This is because the demands of MPs vary. Some have larger homes and some smaller. Some have gardens. Some have children. And so it goes on, as bourn out by the expenses thus far disclosed. What hasn't been mentioned is other ways in which MPs enjoy advantages over the rest of us, such as subsidized restaurants. And of course the cost of administering the expenses: drawing up the rules, making endless changes to them, and approving them in practice all require expensive staff.

Jamie Whyte in today's Times has an elegant and obvious solution that would answer every objection at a stroke. Scrap all expenses and subsidies. Increase MPs salaries by a decent amount. Then leave it to each MP to decide how he or she wishes to spend his or her money. That would be far more efficient from an economist's perspective, too, since it is generally agreed that individuals are better at making choices regarding their own expenditure than governments doing it on their behalf.

The only question left would be the amount which MPs should be paid. This would have the nice side effect of making it very much in their interest to publicise, rather than hide, their present level of expenses, should they wish to justify a substantial increase over their present salaries ...

Cricket: four questions

2008-06-09T11:52:00.002+01:00

The home and away series between England and New Zealand played out rather like a sharp middleweight against an out of sorts heavyweight: the former danced around and inflicted several stinging blows, but simply lacked the firepower to prevail over 12 rounds. And sure enough it finished with NZ on the canvas yesterday. Four questions would be useful for Bill Frindall:

1. On how many occasions in Test history has a team lost after reducing the opposition to 2 for 3 on the first morning of the match?

2. On how many occasions in Test history has a team lost by 6 wkts after leading by 179 runs on the first innings?

3. On how many occasions in Test history has a team lost by an innings after reducing the opposition to 84/5 on the first of the match?

4. On how many occasions has 1 -3 above happened to the same team in the space of four matches?

Still, in a year's time who will care when the IPL and similar franchises have dispensed with test cricket altogether and turned cricketers into a pastiche of footballers?

Homo Sapiens Globalis

2008-06-07T22:51:00.002+01:00

Interesting bloggers and long time blogging friends of this site, Chasing Sheep, have been trying to save the planet. On any view it has about as much chance as NZ does of saving the present test. Still where there's life there's hope ...

I have had an interesting exchange of views with Stray on this post, which began with me repeating my concerns expressed in this post.

Contrasting cricketers

2008-06-05T16:14:00.002+01:00

There is an interesting article by Mike Atherton here on two fascinating programmes on Monday night. The programmes were on two South African cricketers with starkly contrasting backgrounds in starkly contrasting times whose lives were played out in even greater contrast.

One was Hansie Cronje: a white Afrikaaner born into plenty who attended a great sporting school and became captain of the supposedly new and free South Africa in the 1990s. The other was Basil D'Oliveira, whom I wrote about in more detail here.

Cronje was of middle-ranking but highly thought of as a leader; of course he ended up totally disgraced, a man who took money from bookmakers in return for information and promises to influence matches. He managed to go yet lower than that: dragging down the only two black players in the side with them, and for good measure went one even lower again - by taking a cut from the bribes intended for them.

D'Oliveira, by contrast, was a cricketer of the highest class who started with nothing for him and everything against him. Precluded by apartheid from playing for his own country, he moved to England where by a combination of brilliance and willpower, he made his case for inclusion in the English team to tour South Africa irresistable. Except, of course, the South Africans intended to resist all the same. MCC withdrew from the tour and South Africa's boycott began. Nowadays Cronje is dead, having been put out of his and our misery by dying aged just 32 in a plane crash. D'Oliveira, by contrast, is very much alive. His name, moreover, will live forever: England and South Africa now play test matches for the D'Oliveira trophy, a sublimely elegant and appropriate choice for once by those that run the game.

Meanwhile I see England are carrying out their now standard rope-a-dope technique of collapsing early to lull the Kiwis into a false sense of security ...

Drink to Good Health

2008-06-05T13:08:00.002+01:00

Red wine is good for you, according to scientists. Us red wine drinkers have known this for years, of course, but it's nice to hear it officially.

Talking to Al Qaeda

2008-06-04T12:42:00.002+01:00

The famous blogger Rachel from North London has a post in which she states:

"If you sit down with those who consider themselves to be Al Qa'ida sympathisers and bother to discover what it is they say they want"

we might make better progress. I have posted a comment to the effect that I am not averse to doing so, but it seems to me that the current problem is not that we are unwilling to listen to and engage with their demands, but rather that they are unwilling to listen to and engage with us.

The 7/7 bombers were British citizens who had the opportunity to write to the press and their local MPs and set up blogs. They could have organised themselves politically and stood for office. They could have undertaken street protests. They could have applied to appear on Question Time, rung talkback radio and dropped leaflets through letterboxes. They could have donated money to political parties who they supported. Or they could have left the country for one with which they identified politically. Instead they chose none of these. They made dimwitted videos and blew themselves up.

So too the failed 21/7 bombers, and Richard Reid. All of these could have issued loudly public statements that they had all kinds of concerns and were about to blow themselves up unless they got some media attention. They could have staged a demo bomb if they wanted to prove they were serious. They could have taken the IRA's mildly less abhorrent method of trying to blow up infrastructure rather than simply killing as many innocents as possible.

I'm sorry, but it really isn't 'us' who are failing to use jaw-jaw rather than war-war. As to Mr Bin Laden's aims, which Rachel's post discusses, with his money, education and connections he too could have found other ways to campaign for his objectives than mass murder. And the US occupation of Afghanistan (have a look at the UN reports on life under the Taliban written before 9/11 before concluding Bin Laden has a point there) and Iraq, they wouldn't have happened absent 9/11, as Bin Laden well knew. He hoped - and sadly he hasn't been entirely wrong - that the US would overreact in response to 9/11 and overreach itself economically and militarily, and thus become weaker.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the religious conviction of all of these types that they will be transported to the afterlife immediately upon detonation, to be feted by 72 virgins. If I held that view, it would be semtex all the way and no amount of indulgence by foreign media and governments would dissuade me (who wouldn't want paradise?) Religion is almost by definition the opposite of rational argument, and hence we don't see much rational argument from terrorists.

EDW - Sean Connery

2008-06-04T11:11:00.001+01:00

This is a sort of anti-EDW. Empire Magazine, prompted by the Sex and the City film, is running a feature on the worst dressed people in films, and here is Sean Connery shod of his Bond Saville Row suits and most of his dignity for an obscure 1970s film. I haven't seen it, and wouldn't like to guess the genre, but wonder if this is indeed the most compelling example of Mark Twain's dictum "clothes maketh the man".

You have no right to disagree

2008-06-03T11:44:00.002+01:00

It is one of the truisms of political debate that everyone is in favour of notions and slogans such as fairness, equality, human rights and universal justice until someone begins to define them. At that point agreement, let alone consensus, ends.

It is another truism that most polemicists, particularly jobbing hacks on newspapers, find it difficult to understand or accept - at least publicly - that there might, in fact, be room for debate on such things. Arguing over fairness entails saying that the other person isn't in favour of it.

No better - or worse - example is the Indy's inveterate whinger Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. She has had a desperate rant about the recent electoral success of the Conservatives. Her argument is full of unreferenced and unverified accusations and some quite disgraceful name-calling. Forgetting that it was a Conservative government that allowed her family to escape the racism and hatred of Idi Amin in the 1970s, she lumps them all in with the BNP and calls their ethnic minority supporters and members 'Uncle Toms', about the most disgraceful accusation that could be made against a black person. And all because they dare to have different views on life from her own. Meanwhile the mass murder of 9/11 is described merely as 'effrontery' ...

There have been many states in the past, including the aforementioned one run by the late Mr Amin, which didn't take kindly to anyone not on message. Yasmin ought to be glad she doesn't live in one anymore. We should be glad we don't live in one run by her (though watch out: she once demanded of an FO Mandarin to know why she wasn't made an Ambassador, despite lacking any credentials for the job ...).

If anyone can stand it (needless to say you have been warned) the article is here. Stephen Pollard gives it what it deserves here.

Another Stephen, the regular commentator here, often takes me to task (with some justification) for continuing to take the Times. I now have my riposte: it has its faults, but it doesn't have Yasmin.

The Battle of Fromelles: Honouring the fallen

2008-06-03T10:50:00.001+01:00

Researchers and archaeologists have uncovered the bodies of some fallen soldiers from the Battle of Fromelles in the Great War. The BBC has an item here. It appears as though the bodies may have been lumped together by the Germans after the battle in a mass grave, though the personal effects were removed and sometimes returned to the allies.

The question arises in these circumstances what, if anything, to do with the bodies. There would seem to be three options:

1. Leave them where they are, perhaps with a monument above the site.

2. Move them to a new site with some form of ceremony.

3. Attempt to identify individuals through DNA testing (as mentioned, it would seem unlikely that personal effects would remain such as to enable identification by other means), then deal with the bodies individually as their families (or governments, in the absence of identification) wish.

I am of the view that option (1) is the best. The circumstances of 1914-1918 have long since vanished. Understanding what happened, why and how is of the first importance to historians. The dead themselves, however, should be left alone, with an appropriate monument but otherwise undisturbed.

Generous Gooch

2008-06-01T21:18:00.004+01:00

Graham Gooch has a gig with Test Match Special these days. Among other things he writes for its blog. Recently he assessed, by way of scores out of ten, England's players in the second test against New Zealand. Given England's wildly varying fortunes in the test, one might expect the ratings to correspond. Instead, the lowest mark Gooch awards is six out of ten, for Cook, Bell, Collingwood, Ambrose and Anderson.

A moment's reflection shows that Goochie ought to be spending a bit more time on the job in return for his money. Did he even watch the test? Cook managed 47 runs for twice out; both Bell and Collingwood were dismissed once but amassed less than thirty apiece. Not enough for par even in a low scoring match, one would have thought. How badly does one have to perform before Gooch would award less than five?

His explanations are:

Ian Bell
Managed to edge England over the line, but doesn't look in the best of form. Has the talent to continue his England career. 6

Paul Collingwood
At the moment he's woefully out of touch with the bat. But a good player doesn't lose his ability, he just loses the confidence in that ability. 6

Which suggests his scores are awarded on past performances and not, contrary to the point of the article, the test itself.

Well the England selectors seem to be listening. They have named an unchanged XI for the third test, fully in keeping with my prediction for the summer (as indeed was the test as a whole):

New Zealand will out-collapse England again. The English selectors will therefore assume that there is no need to make any changes (such as sacking anyone who can't score runs not mentioning MP Vaughan or any other names) and keep the same team for the South African series. When South Africa take the lead in that series, the selectors will caution against panicking and keep the same team anyway. South Africa will win the series.

Cherie Blair and the Times

2008-05-31T10:21:00.002+01:00

I wrote to the Times expressing similar sentiments to my post on Cherie Blair's memoirs, which the paper had serialised. The point I made was that Mrs Blair has chosen to make rather tawdry revelations about her private life, and she presumably did so for no reason other than money. Personal revelations sell newspapers in today's celebrity obsessed, rather shameless Britain. Mrs Blair likes money as much as the next person. Therefore she managed to put aside any personal shame, or more importantly dignity in her public position as the spouse of an ex-Prime Minister, a leading member of the Bar and a possible future judge (though the latter possibility has by all accounts rather dissipated. In any event, the pay wouldn't be high enough for her.)

Today I received in a beautiful envelope a response from the editor. It is addressed to me personally, though it is obviously a form letter. Clearly I wasn't the only one to take a dim view of Mrs Blair's efforts. The letter sets out the Times' reasons for the serialisation. It says: "We concluded that the former Prime Minister's wife had a singular voice and a very particular story to tell at the heart of this country's recent history".

It goes on: "We are proud of the Times' tradition to tackle subjects, both political and personal, with good judgement. During the serialisation, we printed letters from our readers that were both for and against the publication of Mrs Blair's book, as well as giving space to the concerns of our esteemed columnists such as Libby Purves (sic)".

I do not doubt that Mrs Blair has much to say in her book that is of public interest. Presumably she has satisfied the relevant mandarins that she has not revealed any state secrets. If she has dished dirt on former colleagues in a manner harmful to them personally and politically that is up to her, and she would be joining a long and undistinguished list of people in political life who have done so (Mr Campbell and Mr Blunkett being two examples from her contemporaries).

What I - and others - objected to was the revelation of personal information - her contraceptive equipment, her menstrual cycle and the like - which frankly was of no public interest, was likely to lead to her youngest child being bullied at school (now the world knows he was an accident born of embarrassment (!) Mrs Blair apparently felt at some anonymous chamber maid discovering her contraceptive "equipment") and was the sort of cringeworthy tat one normally associates with other newspapers within the Murdoch empire. If there is any dignity left with public life, Mrs Blair is not concerned to uphold it.

The Times has not answered that point.

its wotz under da hood dat counts

2008-05-30T19:36:00.004+01:00

New Zealand is occasionally said to be England's closest cultural neighbour. In many ways it is. Good and bad. One parallel development has been the rise of the 'hoodie' as an item of youth clothing, which has come to symbolise the less pleasant aspects of youth - louts, muggers and occasionally murderers.

Some in New Zealand at least think this is unfair. They came up with the wheeze "National Hoodie Day" to suggest that the wearers of said attire are really just nice young men who want to be loved. Mimicking the rather tedious Ali-G slang associated with the wearers, the slogan for the day is "its wotz under da hood dat counts": judge the person, they seem to be saying, not the clothes.

Acting on this, a local councillor turned up at a meeting in a different sort of hoodie - the white attire of a member of the KKK. Many were shocked. "It's wotz under da hood dad counts" he countered.