SOMETHING ROTTEN

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, -- meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.

Hamlet, Shakespeare

AS I WRITE OUR GOOD LEADERS are sitting at top table in Copenhagen, smiling, or smirking, at the gathered cameras, and so I make Shakespeare’s words my own. Never has such a collective of crooks been seated together with such unscrupulous aims and devious intent. If anyone actually believes that any of the heads of state and/or government at this “climate change” meeting had any interest whatsoever other than making sure they can feather their own nests for the next few years then they need taking out and being slapped with a wet haddock.

ONLY A FEW OF THESE PEOPLE BELIEVE in climate change, and even they do not truly care. The main concern in the minds of these villains may vary, but the underlying principle is the same: to cheat others out of money, profit, work and future. Gordon Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel and the sneaky Barroso might want China, Brazil and India to reduce their industrial outputs, but this is only to keep the European economies alive, rather than being swamped by cheap goods.

THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES MIGHT AGREE to reduce their emissions, but this will only be in exchange for Western money, which will, as usual, soon find its merry little way into the pockets of the leaders of these less than democratic, corruption-ridden, often nabob-led hell-holes in which the idea of betterment or welfare for the common people would be enough to turn the stomachs of those in charge.

THE COMMITMENT OF THE UNITED STATES can be gauged by the fact that Barack Obama has only just turned up now (at 11 am on the last day), and has not yet gone to the sessions hall, having left all his negotiations to the boggle-eyed, crazy woman who possesses no clout whatsoever. The tables of the Plenary Session are a mass of confusion, with enough heated discussion going on to cause more than the dreaded global warming. Meanwhile, outside, it is the coldest winter for seventy years. And the news from England is no better.

PLUM DUFF AND SPORTS NEWS

LITTLE HAS BEEN HEARD FROM Carol Ann Duffy since her appointment as poet laureate, but the publication of her “Christmas poem” (sic) is proof that she hasn’t just been hanging around the house watching television for the last few months. However, a poet laureate attacking British society in a yuletide poem is somewhat off, to say the least. The decent thing would have been to reject the prize, and leave the job of destroying British society to those who know how to do it, such as Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.


DUFFY’S APPEARANCE LAST NIGHT on The South Bank Show, hosted by the moronic Melvyn Bragg, served once again to show that those who choose our poet laureates – in theory the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister – should get out of the house more often. And in this case the House means the House of Commons. Choosing a poet simply because she is a left-wing, woman, labour party member and reputed lesbian is madness. My own nomination for the position, although, alas, I fear it may never come to pass, has to be the great versificator John Cooper Clarke. And in homage to him I will include some words I have written in his style.


The Member of the Labour Party

She’s a member of the party and so she can be arty
She won’t be called a boring farty
Girlie-girl because she lives in the
Fairy world where what matters is the
Fact of being a socialist and totally tarty



IN THE MEANTIME, I AM INTRIGUED by the events surrounding the activities of Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods, an American golfer who is one of the highest earners in the world of sports. A gentleman would naturally imagine that if one earns in the region of fifteen or sixteen million dollars per year just for hitting a ball around the countryside, one’s wife would be more than happy to allow one to do a little sport on the side, holing a few birdies without too much fuss. But apparently not. Now that Woods has been found out, his ridiculous manner of “clearing the air” between himself and his wife is to promise to have “treatment” to stop him being “addicted to sex”. I cannot for the life of me imagine what such treatment might involve, but I wish Mr Woods well on the road to his no doubt painful recovery.

RED SOCKS AND MEYER CULPA

STRAIGHT-TALKING, HIP-SHOOTING JOHN PRESCOTT, formerly of this parish, once described Sir Christopher Meyer, our former Ambassador to the United States of America, as a “red-socked fop”. This was perhaps, as was thought at the time, due to the fact that Prescott did not understand that a gentleman should wear red socks when wearing brown shoes with blue trousers, or perhaps even brown trousers, although the possibility of a gentleman wearing brown trousers other than when wearing a brown suit – in itself difficult to contemplate other than when on a visit to the Third World or making a speech at Cambridge University – may not have occurred to the then Deputy Prime Minister.

PRESCOTT’S POINT WAS THAT MEYER was a less than acceptable chap. As seen by gung-ho, punch-first-and-eat-your-pie-later Prescott, anyone who knew the rules of etiquette was a fop. This meant, in Prescott’s tatty little world, expanded as it was to a large group of politicians who saw “duffing people over”, as Prescott himself put it after “sorting out” a protester in North Wales, as acceptable, that aristocrats were “shit-bags”.

CHRISTOPHER MEYER HAS NOW BEEN CALLED UPON, as former Ambassador to Washington during the Thatcher/Clinton/Bush/Blair years, to be forthcoming as to his knowledge of events during the dark days when “the burning Blair” and “the mighty Bush” held forth in their desires to rid the world of someone – anyone – just to get their names into the record books.

AND NOW WE KNOW WHY DULLARDS LIKE PRESCOTT were against Meyer. As he has come forth with all the beans against the boy Blair, clearing the boy Bush of most of the blame, as the policy had been set out, he tells us, by the adulterer Clinton. The whole war business – “kicking the shit out of Iraq”, as Meyer described it on national TV on Tuesday – had been planned “yonks” ago. (“Yonks” is mine, but I just thought I would bring a little lumpen-speak into this text. Because, after all, the whole lot of these people are bastards, whether they wear red socks or not. And, fops or not, they do in fact deserve a little duffing over.)

THERE THERE MY DEAR

FURTHER TO MY SUMMERTIME DREAM involving my meeting with David Cameron, no doubt inspired by the sounds I heard from outside as I dozed early one morning, I have this last night had a dream in which I met Gordon Brown. Judging by the time of the morning when I experienced this nightmare, it must have been provoked by the sound of the rubbish being collected and emptied.

ONE MAY SEE SUNDAY MORNINGS PASSIM to have a fair idea of my opinion of Mr Brown and his wishy-washy approach to politics in general and running Britain in particular, but in this dream I was remarkably understanding and friendly to our Prime Minister. The situation was a lunch encounter in an upstairs room over a pub in what felt like Fleet Street. Brown and I had to walk up a narrow, spiral staircase in order to come to our table. Mr Brown made the ascent in tears, “greeting like a bairn”, I seem to recall my stating to him, as he knew he was not going to win the next election.

THE UPHOLSTERY WAS THAT SICKLY GREEN VELVETEEN that pub decorators seem to enjoy, there was hardly any room to sit down comfortably anywhere in this tiny room, and David Cameron was sitting reading The Telegraph right in front of our eyes as we came into the room, looking like something out of a Magritte painting that I imagined, in the dream, to be entitled “Man waiting for Soup”. Gordon burst into tears, rushed to a corner table and hid his face in the white tablecloth. Cameron seemed not to have noticed our ascent.

TWO LADIES, HOWEVER, HAD. They came back from the bar (I presume) carrying fully-adorned Chicago prohibition speakeasy cocktails, complete with parasols, feathers, sparklers, and cherries. They looked at the crumpled, blubbering figure of Mr Brown in horror. I explained to them that he was going through a bad period. One of the lasses, a slutty-looking, tatty-haired Mancunian chewing gum, said, “These seats are ours. So shift.” I woke up convinced it had all really happened.

THE WORLD OF $OCCER

ONCE AGAIN, THE HIDEOUS HEAD of the football “World Cup” is occupying the sports news and other TV shows throughout the world. Several years ago I remember I had occasion to write about the unusual case of seeing South Korea reaching the “semi-finals” of this competition, in an obvious case of cheating, or bribing referees. At the time it was claimed that the Koreans achieved this feat through taking ginseng supplements in order to give them greater vitality. Although it is no doubt true that ginseng does increase one’s ability to perform, I suspect that a few hundred thousand dollars has an influence on referees’ performances as well.

THE “WORLD CUP”, FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, is a football or “soccer “ tournament which starts off involving all of the countries in the world and which, after a “knock-out” system, is reduced to Germany, Brazil, Italy or Argentina, from whom the winner is chosen, except when it is played in France or England, when the host nations are also allowed to win. Unimportant nations such as Ireland, Costa Rica, the Maldives, Nigeria and Japan are allowed to compete in the early stages in order to give the competition its “world” flavour, unlike the Baseball “World Series”, in which only teams from New York, Boston, St Louis and Chicago are allowed to compete.

THIS TOURNAMENT OBVIOUSLY INVOLVES large amounts of money for televising the football “matches”, and for sponsorship, but the real cash to be made goes to prostitutes and bar-owners. Thus the logical situation is to make sure that the “fans” who attend these events are those who will spend large amounts of money drinking alcohol and in whorehouses. This left FIFA, the governing body of the sport, and its head Sepp “Slapper” Blatter, with a difficult decision in the play-off match between the Republic of Ireland and France last night -- a straight decision between Guinness sales and Viagra. But no doubt the enormous amount of money that French men spend in brothels because their wives are more interested in fashion accessories than having sex with their garlic-smelling husbands swung it in France’s favour.

FLY THE FLAG, GRINGO, OR I SHOOT YOUR SISTER

FOR MANY PEOPLE BRITISH AIRWAYS has always been the sign of Britishness throughout the world. It was a place where one knew that even when bullets were dashing against whatever material they made the fuselage of, one would be safe after boarding, and be snug, comfy and looked after with biscuits and given Earl Grey tea and packets of those little things wrapped in cellophane that are supposed to keep us busy while we try to understand what they are.

THE RECENT “DEAL”, in which Iberia – Spanish Airways, and British Airways have in some manner come together for a “merger” or “fusion” is, to put it bluntly, a licking of the spittle left in the barrel after it has been dealt a fore-handed scraping. Now and, I am told, again, this takes place. As it did when the British Overseas Airways Corporation, British Airways Limited, Cambrian Airways Cardiff, British Caledonian, and, later on Dan Air, came together as one with the Flag. But those days, it may seem, are over.

AS WE ARE GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND, the chaps who run and ruin one of the few symbols of national pride for any country around the world will now, with this fusion, accept that British Airways and Iberia should be called “Topco”. The new company, I am told, is on the market for new “kick-start names” and “market-lead tongue-holders” to be taught as obligatory for anyone who joins the company. Here are my suggestions for First Class slogans, to replace the now old-fashioned “I’m Mandy, fly me” and “You are on the world’s favourite airline, sir”:
“Welcome to British Airways / Breeteechea awayas, hombre”
“Can I have a window seat? / Es un hijo de puta”
“Excuse me, Stewardess… / Holá, Guapa”
“Thank you. You are most kind / De nada, coño, hombre.”

QUID SCRIPSIT SCRIPSIT

WHEN SOMEONE LIKE MYSELF is able to feel sorry for Gordon Brown it means that evil forces are combining to bring him grief. While there is no doubt that there are many things that our Prime Minister, Her Majesty’s Government and the leaders of our armed forces could and should do to avoid more suffering and death in Afghanistan and elsewhere, one should not accuse Brown of being heartless, and certainly not false or cynical.

THE RECENT ROW INVOLVING his handwriting takes political criticism to new lows in the manner it has been exploited by The Sun newspaper. Everyone is deeply sad when a soldier dies on duty, even though it is clear that members of the armed forces know what they are doing. But no one should complain about the attitude taken by our Prime Minister.

IF WE ARE TO CRUCIFY someone based on the quality of their handwriting, then I for one would have been nailed to a particularly large cross years ago, as hardly anyone can understand all of what I write, often including myself. I have often written myself a shopping list for “bread” and "water” and mistaken this for “beer” and “whisky” when I got to the shop.

GORDON BROWN MUST BE one of the very few political leaders who sends a personal, hand-written letter to the families of the bereaved, and those who know him personally tell me that he is very sincere about this. So no one should shake a finger at him. Instead, if we have to accuse him of anything, we should restrict ourselves to the facts: he is incompetent at running the country and inept at leading the government. His writing on paper is a problem for the press, but Gordon should worry about the writing on the wall.

TO REMEMBER IN YOUR PRAYERS

ONE OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE aspects about London is the almost total lack of security and policing one encounters on the streets. It is difficult to imagine, as one flits from buying lingerie in Primark to olives in Selfridge’s, from socks in Gap to stockings in Zara, that one is permanently being stalked by a horde of terrorist-type people who wish us ill, as the present government of the United Kingdom would have us believe is the case. This was last week in London.

YET TODAY, ON THIS SUNDAY OF REMEMBERING, now back in Lisbon, we should not just remember those who have died in the conflicts great and small that have involved sacrifices made by my ancestors and yours – people who had no idea when they gave their lives that sometime in the future there would be “e-mail” and “blogs”, but who nevertheless died for this – but we should also remember another kind of “warrior leader” who also had these people believe they were being persecuted by a threat that did not exist.

WE SHOULD STAND UP as one to recall General Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, worse than Stalin in sacrificing the lives of millions of young men who had no idea of what was in for them in 1914. His absurd view of how to win World War One will no doubt see him rotting in Hell today.

WE SHOULD TAKE OFF OUR HATS to Winston Churchill, who knew perfectly well that he could draw up an easy agreement with Hitler in 1940 and avoid at least 5 million deaths on either side, but his political ambition was so great that he knew – and was right – that he would only be Prime Minister as long as the war lasted.

WE MIGHT ALSO REMEMBER in our prayers our present great leader, who lives up to the demands and requirements of all the above: sending young men and women to do nothing in Afghanistan other than get shot at and occasionally to shoot – when they have bullets – at others, so that he can warm his arse against the home fires of the rubbish burning on the streets of poppyfields back home.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-DEAD SCOT

MY RECENT CULTURAL TRIP TO LONDON, in the company of my good wife, in order to study the depiction of the reclining nude at several different galleries, was a surprise. Great love for art and literature has always, at least to my mind, meant a sense of intelligence: the desire to understand others always being seen as one involving generosity, goodness, humanity and that spirit that can really only be expressed in ancient languages but which today is often called being “expansive and emotional”.

YET BRITISH PEOPLE ARE SO AFRAID of looking other people in the eyes that they would rather hold a copy of a Brontë, or something by the dreaded Dan Brown, in front of their faces on any mode of transport just to avoid embarrassing eye-contact. Whether they are actually reading or not is anyone’s bet. But seeing a young gentleman totally absorbed in reading a “Harry Potter”, sitting opposite Manet’s intriguing, obscene Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which shows us one prostitute who has been had for lunch and another one who is next on the menu, takes the biscuit.

THIS IS NOT BECAUSE OF POTTER himself, however, a literary figure who should inspire young people, and has done so admirably until now. But a time comes when one should perhaps leave the teenage books alone and get down to the nitty-gritty of practice of being a pre-post-teenager. In real terms this means that most young gentlemen should have a “good few years” when they are not remotely interested in reading.

THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO BE THE CASE with the latest generation of upper middle class chaps. As Potter grows up, and we see his adventures become more in keeping with his readership – as one can see in recent titles, such as Harry Potter and the Stick of Marijuana, Harry Potter and the Glass of Whisky and Harry Potter and the Inside of a Police Car – we see his readership remaining faithful; when they should be getting on with having a life.

YET GOODLY GORDON BROWN thinks otherwise. His government’s latest report suggesting, when one gets down to the basics of it, that traditional middle- and upper-class pleasures such as opium, morphine and violent sex are somehow wrong, while drinking Carlsberg or Heineken until one vomits and passes out on the pavement is acceptable, shows an utter lack of decency on the part of our elected representatives. If we grant him a third term he will end up putting the slimy Potter on the syllabus at universities, or have passages from Harry Potter and the Chalice of Socialism read out at religious ceremonies.

HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW

STEVEN PATRICK MORRISSEY, the aristocratic, aloof, Mancunian singing star and lookalike for a Gerry Anderson marionette, has apparently survived his embarrassing collapse on stage in Wiltshire, and will now not be joining the ranks of the recently fallen popular entertainers, much to the irritation of the vultures in the media, who have been circling the story for a short time. The irritation for Morrissey, however, is that those of us who had happily forgotten about him and judged him dead now realise that he is playing concerts in such venues as “The Oasis”, Swindon, wearing, according to the local newspaper, a dark open-necked shirt, and looking “relaxed”.

STARK, IMPECCABLY-DRESSED Morrissey may soon be wishing he had stayed onstage with a spleen splint and a minute-by-minute morphine splish up his bloodstream rather than be carried off to let the local yokel photographic press slip into the cottage hospital and snap him in his smalls; but, with his lifestyle, I imagine that Morrissey understands he has it coming to him, if he pardons me the pun.

IN THE MEANTIME we have had the release of the new Michael Joseph Jackson movie “This is it”, shown simultaneously in all the major cities in our world, and no doubt on several of the planets from which Jackson’s fans come. On the tail of this story, as they now seem to say on the television, The Times has published the list of the most successful “dead franchise brands”, as a large number of famous people are called today. I was expecting Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders to be included in this list, but was disappointed to see that the only names I recognised in the “top five” besides all-singing, all-dancing Jackson, were Elvis Presley, the famous Dixieland jazz singer, and Yves Saint Laurent, the well-known dead African tailor.

WHATEVER THEIR HUMBLE BACKGROUNDS, death has been good to their bank accounts, certainly showing, as Morrissey appears to have always known, that misery is an earthly quality, and that Warhol could have said about Pop culture that “if you want to get ahead, get dead.”

STRICTLY COME HUSTING

WHEN ADOLF HITLER, the world famous landscape painter, and later politician, was fortunate enough to appear, in 1933, on Zeit für Fragen, a German version of the BBC programme Question Time, it is said that his popularity increased by over forty percent, thus convincing him that his future was in politics and he could concentrate on decimating the population of Europe and forget all about kunst.

NICHOLAS JOHN “SPITFIRE NICK” GRIFFIN may have been similarly persuaded; not that he will cut with the kunst, as I believe he has never been interested in anything artistic, but he will certainly be encouraged by The Times informing us that one in five “Britons” are now considering voting for the British National Party. Indeed, similar polls suggest that up to two thirds of people in Britain believe the two main parties are out of the zeitgeist in relation to immigration.

EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE watched Mr Griffin on Question Time, a programme usually condemned to an audience of about six or seven thousand people, most of whom are bearded university students studying politics, history or law, and thus not representative of the lumpenproletariat by any stretch; the figure made this the most watched BBC programme of the week, outstripping the absurdly popular Strictly Come Dancing.

THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR: when the average person is as equally willing to watch an utterly non verligte politician spout curious opinions as they are ready to watch young long-legged ladies twirling about the dance floor shaking their derrière and with their mammaries hanging out of their tight-fitting sequined tops then the big hitters in Westminster ought to look over their shoulders. So at a time when Gordon Brown and David “Dave” Cameron are arguing about whether they should appear on TV for debates, the answer should be clear to them: do it gentlemen, do it in leotards and show us your Ding an sich.

PLAN B FROM OUTER SPACE

THOSE OF US WHO LOVE CINEMA will never be able to forget Ed Wood’s magnificent 1959 movie, showing how one can make an apparently harmless piece of uninspired idiocy have a lasting legacy, talked about even today in bars throughout the world and discussed on the Internet every minute of the day by people who have grown tired of looking at pornography and tweeting to fellow “twits” about the weather, what they had for lunch and Demi Moore’s figure.

IT MIGHT BE A SLIGHT EXAGGERATION to suggest that Wood is still a talking point, but it is true among an underclass of adults who still live in a bedroom in their parents’ houses and have posters on their walls, and in many ways they are similar to the people who enjoyed Gordon Brown’s now famous “No Plan B” speech yesterday at the London “pre-Copenhagen” meeting to prepare the summit on climate change in a few weeks’ time.

DESPERATE BROWN seems to have swallowed Prince Charles’ absurd beliefs, even quoting him almost verbatim (see Sunday Mornings passim) in an attempt to gather the support of the greenies and win the next general election. “We have fifty days to save the planet,” he informed us, “and if we fail, there is no plan B.”

UNFORTUNATELY FOR GORDON, there appears to be no plan A for the government at the moment, just a bunch of people who are confused, have no idea what they are supposed to do next, are wondering who is really in charge of proceedings, occasionally try to look serious when the camera is on them, and are clearly only hanging around for the money. Rather like Ed Wood’s original cast.

FORTUNATELY, IN A RELATED STORY, I was informed today that 32 “new” planets have been discovered. This, according to a friendly scientist speaking on the BBC news this evening, “means we can now go to outer space with more confidence.” I am not quite sure what this means, but if this can provide a Plan B for our politicians I can guarantee I will be there to wave them off.

WILDERS IS THE WIND

MUCH AMUSEMENT HAS BEEN forthcoming this week involving the media feeding frenzy over the fleeting visit of bouffant-haired, “freedom fighter” Geert Wilders (above, static), responsible for a little light cinema entertainment called “Fitna”, which details his personal view of the end of the world as we know it; in Wilders’ tanned Dutch head, the Koran is “directly responsible for terrorism”, in the sense that the book itself is going around blowing up buildings and hijacking airplanes.

DOUBLE DUTCH HAS LONG BEEN a common expression in the English language to suggest that something makes very little sense, or sounds like gibberish, and thus Mr Wilders will no doubt find a warm reception when he returns with a copy of his film, co-written and co-directed, I note, with one “Scarlet Pimpernel”, and presents it in the House of Lords, where they have been listening to gibberish and drivel for centuries. My Lords may find Dutch comfort in knowing that the work is only seventeen minutes long.

WHILE THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT THAT THE KORAN moves the faithful to hatred, fear, loathing and even murder, one finds it rather difficult to believe that the effect of its clumsily written verses is still present in the minds of well-fed, happy, young, sparkly-toothed Muslims we see on our streets nowadays – they would no more take it literally as would most Christians pull out their eyes if they distract them from God, or cut off their hands, or cut out their tongues. One imagines.

BUT A GREAT DEAL SHOULD BE SAID for banning books (and even films), particularly if they lead otherwise decent chaps into the sad realms of religious hatred. Perhaps we could start out with Dan Brown.

VENI VIDI SOLVI

THERE WILL NO DOUBT BE THOSE who are upset at recent revelations about the policy paid for by the Italian Government to protect its army in Afghanistan and avoid bloodshed all round, involving paying money to Taleban commanders so they would “not shoot at the Italian troops”. The Italians, according to Taleban Commander Mohammed Ishmayel and two Afghan government officials, also promised not to attack any local forces, although I myself could have told them there would be precious little chance of that happening. All of this has been fiercely denied by Italian defence minister Ignazio Benito Maria La Russa (above), who helpfully tells us “When our secret services bribe other people’s troops I know about it.”

THE ITALIAN NOTION OF AVOIDING BATTLE at all costs has been shown in other events involving possible personal danger, such as World War I and World War II, when Italy made deals before both wars with both sides, and then joined the war after having decided which side was going to win, although always allowing the possibility of changing sides later on. During the latter conflict, except for in Stanley Kramer’s movie The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which Anthony Quinn’s village actually stands up to the occupiers, Italian villagers generally clubbed together to pay the Germans not to shoot at them.

ITALIANS SHOULD NOT BE EMBARRASSED about this behaviour, as the only obviously disastrous result of this policy has been hyper-inflation, bound to happen when word gets about. Yet while protection money seems to be one of the particularly successful approaches used by Italians over the years to deal with bella detesta matribus, one does have to wonder whether this is the true way to avoid deaths in the future, or to waste public money. Otherwise Gordon Brown would be using it to pay would-be terrorists on the streets of Leeds, Oldham and Luton to stop them joining “radical mosques” and fighting against our country.

THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD

I AM STARTLED BY THE RECENT spate of unexpected deaths of famous people. First and most famously we had the death of the popular comedian Michael Jackson, and only today we have heard of the death of the hardly any less notorious Irishman Stephen P. Gately, formerly of the “boys’ band” Boyzone. Most startling to me is the way that the tragic death of the singer was announced today on television: it is the first time I have heard the expression “in the house he shared with his husband” used in relation to a homosexual couple. I suppose the next startling event will be when a “boys’” band sings songs to boys rather than hypocritically pretending to like girls and thus morally stealing their money.

ON THE SUBJECT OF MORALS, MONEY AND DEATH, tomorrow will see one of the final movements in the exciting events surrounding politicians and their ludicrous expenses fiddling. While politicians had quite sensibly kept quiet and hoped that the public would forget about the whole matter, they are about to be surprised tomorrow, when they “come back to work” and get letters from Sir Thomas Legg telling at least half of them that they will have to pay back money, justify their expenses or walk the plank and die a political death.

ONE OF THE MOST RIDICULOUS CASES is that of Lord Paul of Marylebone (pictured above), a personal friend of Gordon Brown's, who is financially worth £500 million, and who claimed £38,000 for a flat in London in which, as he admits himself, he “never slept”, but states “it was my home.” Applying the same leap of logic to one's wife or mistress would be an interesting spin on how one sees the world and words. Or one’s wife and/or mistress. Or even husband, nowadays.

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME?

AMONG SOME OF THE MORE SNOBBISH of my friends are those who think that the Conservative Party ought not to be elected into power at the coming elections because they do not “deserve it”. I am not totally clear as to what “it” might be, or as to whether my friends wish to save the Conservatives from upset or to prevent them from glory. Either way, of course, my position is that one gets what one deserves, and if this means having to run the country then so be it.

GENERALLY THERE ARE FEW ADVANTAGES to having a Conservative government, other than the fact that they are utter amateurs at politics and thus leave us all alone to get on with our business, but, somewhat selfishly, I have to confess that I am looking forward to the opportunities for writing provided by the mish-mash of muddle-headed, silver spoon-sucking slimeys lined up for cabinet under our future leader David “Dave” Cameron.

FOREMOST AMONG THESE CLOTS is Baronet Gideon “Boy George” Osborne (depicted above), for some absurd reason forwarded by “Dave” as the man who will do the sums under a future Conservative government. One suspects that Cameron is having a laugh; he is not such an intellectual lightweight to believe that anyone will be happy leaving their finances in Boy George’s hands, unless they need advice about how to escape prosecution after being caught “red-handedly telling lies” (as Gordon Brown states it) over fiddling expenses. At the moment “Boy” Gideon is being investigated by the police over his stealing of public money. I sincerely hope that proceedings are still under way late next year, allowing Gideon to be elected and given the position as Chancellor of the Exchequer; if for no better reason, so we critics will have something to write about.

DON’T FEAR THE REAPER

PETER BENJAMIN MANDELSON (pictured left) otherwise known, among other designations, as Baron the Lord Mandelson, or sometimes the Prince of Darkness, has apparently put the journalistic cat among the political pigeons by using “the C-word” when referring to the decent chaps who work at The Sun newspaper. When I heard this reported on the more giggly TV channels I was at a loss to discover what possible word beginning with the letter C might be offensive to British journalists, as no doubt they have been called everything under the sun (no pun intended) before reaching the dizzy heights of working for the scruffiest, most uncouth bunch of foul-mouthed press “barons” one could ever imagine.

THUS, IN THIS BARON VS BARON contest, we the outsiders had to stretch our vocabulary imagination to come up with an explanation for such mutual ill-feeling. The Princeps Tenebrarum himself was not of a great deal of help when he told us that he called them “chumps”. “I said, ‘You silly chumps’”, he claimed yesterday to Adam Boulton, who had himself survived a bit of an insulting from Gordon Brown, who is also feeling like he is standing in the valley of the shadow of death at the moment.

BUT ARISTOCRATIC MANDELSON SHOULD NOT be involved in, or at least not be caught being involved in, using the language of the gutter and of the lower classes. Although he was obviously upset by the fact that The Sun newspaper had just called time on the Labour government and had announced his political death as certainly as if it were hoisting the scythe above his delicate head, he should not bring into play language he must surely have picked up from his boyfriend Reinaldo or the Italian ruffians with whom he consorts in the summer vacation.

TOYS FOR THE BOYS

“DECEIVE BOYS WITH TOYS,” stated the great Spartan General Lysander Lysander, “but men with oaths.” He was presumably speaking before he went into battle and soundly whipped the Athenian democrats in 406 B.C. en route to taking control over a considerable amount of Asia Minor. Today’s brave political leaders, in keeping with what we expect of them as intellectuals, show total ignorance of what happened yesterday, and seem to be utterly aghast when events that were totally predictable take place.

GORDON BROWN TODAY STATED THAT THE SCALE and depth of the “serial” deception carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will “shock and anger the international community”. Worrying indeed, is Gordon Brown’s allegation that Iran has been “caught red-handed not telling the truth”, despite promises that it would not produce nuclear weapons. I had not been intending to make a comparison study out of my feelings, but I imagine I may spend a least a small part of my weekend weighing up whether I am more “shocked and angry” about our Iranian friends than I am about Gordon Brown’s own deception.

EQUALLY PERTINENT TO TOYS AND BOYS is the startling revelation that the gentlemen responsible for “outing” our “deceitful” politicians over their expenses scandal were driven to such drastic measures by seeing that our politicians were lining their pockets while “our boys in Afghanistan”, as they were today described in The Sun, did not have the right equipment to defend themselves, as the “armour” and “heavy machinery” sent over to them would be useless against roadside bombs. Do they know what Lysander was talking about now?

BORIS OPEN

“CHAGRIN” MAY NOT BE THE SUITED TERM for describing how much I feel upset, or, perhaps, disappointed, that the good leader of Russia, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, was not afforded greater power than his meted amount, given that he may have been able to almost single-handedly return relations among our nations to the days when decent chaps smuggled sparkling eggs back and forth and giggled about it in our underground dug-outs while wearing our extra-thick pyjamas.

SO MUCH WAS BORIS INTO this retro view of life experienced between the two great powers that when socially en pantoufles as a guest in the USA he got so drunk during a 1995 visit to Washington that his own Secret Service agents found him late at night a few hundred feet from the White House wearing only Soviet briefs and trying to call a taxi in search of a “pizza”, which, for those of my readers unfamiliar with the term, is an American foodstuff that involves eating with one’s hands without offending waiters.

WHENEVER ONE GOES ON INTERNATIONAL encounters and congresses without the company of one’s loved ones and personal cooking staff, as I sometimes have to do, it is easy to slip into less than sensible behaviour, and I will not stand up here and state that I am without transgression; but discipline, however difficult, must surely stand paramount: never have I felt like a “pizza”, and I will not eat with my hands unless someone is pointing a gun at my temple.

YELTSIN, ON THE OTHER HAND, apparently felt like one, and then managed to “give the slip” to the Russian agents looking after him in Blair House, which is where foreign guests of the US President stay when in Washington. Our own Gordon Brown, on his next trip to Blair House, might be fair advised to “do a Yeltsin” late at night, slipping off into the back alleys of Pennsylvania Avenue, never again to be seen (because our Secret Service agents will surely not look for him for long). Whether he goes in search of pizza, of peace or is just doing his countrymen a favour, a nation will gratefully mourn.

BACK TO BLACK

GOOD-NATURED TOM-FOOLERY INVOLVING insulting politicians, something which has been the lifeblood of independent news writing even in the days when this was done with charred embers on the walls of caves, as it is still done today in some parts of the world, is starting to attract the attention of some oversensitive members of our communities who think that any criticism of a member of a minority is a criticism of the minority as a whole rather than the member as an individual. This approach has seen its most recent outings in absurd claims that calling President Barack Obama a “liar” is racist.

OBAMA, OF COURSE, TAKES THIS in his stride. Ably performing on the Letterman show, he quite honestly stated, “We must remember that I was black before I was elected.” This was met with hearty applause and laughter from an American middle-class that still hasn’t come to terms with using the word “black”; a class that hypocritically wishes to think that “equality” is achieved by pretending we are all equal, but the members of which get really, really, oh-my-gosh irritated when they have to wait behind “black” people in the supermarkets.

THEY MAY GET OVER THIS. But it will be a lot harder to get over than when the same class of Americans found out that Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon was shafting them and cheating on them, or that Bill “Trousersnake” Clinton was shafting interns and cheating on his good lady wife Hillary. For some reason, perhaps the poet in me, I am reminded of the words to a song by Amy Winehouse, one of our greatest musical exponents of these difficult times.

THAT PETROL EMOTION

EXTREMELY LITTLE HAS BEEN MADE OF LATE as to the history around the issue of the so-called “Lockerbie” bombing, and one needs to look into the back copies of Private Eye magazine to see “proof” and “photocopies of documents” (the inverted commas are mine and are used for legal reasons) about the British, United States, Australian and German governments being aware that Pan Am flight 103 was about to be destroyed in mid-air and warning all embassy staff not to board it. No newspaper took the story up at the time.


NOW WITH THE RELEASE AND APPARENT COMING DEMISE of the terrorist-bomb-detonator-buyer Abdelbaset-al-Megrahi we will never know why our Western governments wanted this plane destroyed, but it is surely something far more sinister than issues of selling oil and favours over the counter or under it.

AT THE TIME OF THE EVENT, in 1988, the issue of Libyan terrorism or of any Muslim threat to our way of life was small beer compared to a mopping-up job that had been started yet not finished over questions relating to which governments would end up looking after the little children of Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall came down, shortly after the Lockerbie disaster, in 1989.

THE IDEA THEN THAT THERE would, twenty years later, be 1,350 mosques in Britain, or that there would have been a third oil crisis, just as bad as the first one, started in the sixties by Colonel Khaddafi, was not on the list of conceivables. But now this is handy. As handy as it was to blame Libya for a bombing that obviously had nothing to do with them, it is now handy to let al-Megrahi go and cause an uproar about a “deal” having been done between Gordon “Gormless” Brown, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and any one of a series of Khaddafis to “hush up” the affair.

THE AFFAIR WAS HUSHED UP a long time ago, and the smokescreen of “feeling compassionate” about al-Megrahi, or dealing in oil futures, is stuff and nonsense.

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR

AS WE ARE APPARENTLY ABOUT to enter yet another of these turgid, pointless and expensive “G-something” meetings with our friends, colleagues and enemies throughout the world, this time in Pittsburgh, in the USA, the “people of Britain”, according to The Sun and Sky News, are itching to see whether our own leaders will agree to participating in the spectacle of a debate “live” on TV during which time they will, these organs suggest, outline their policies and “bare themselves” (sic) to the British public.

AS HAS BEEN MADE PATENTLY CLEAR in occasional statements I have produced in the past, I am all in favour of our politicians making utter fools of themselves in public, and think that every opportunity should be presented to them, even if this might mean being upstaged by David Frost, the eternal horror of interviewees.

ALBEIT TRUE THAT IN THE LAND OF THE HAMBURGER these debates are common, and result in much whooping and a-whomping in the hinterlands, and although they seem to take place with some regularity on the continent of Europe – certainly in Portugal, where I live – they can surely not be part of our process, unless we are to accept total corruption of our good, homely and wise traditions by the beast Europe, as we do not elect our prime minister in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Any schoolboy should know this, and should know that it is one of the things, like conkers, that make us different from our amusing European friends.

BUT A DEBATE ON TELEVISION WOULD WITHOUT DOUBT generate much-needed product-placement income for the BBC, or advertising revenue for the other channels, so I suggest that a decent option would be to see the future leader of our nation on TV debating with the person he thinks could be the future leader of our nation. In the manner of Dorian Gray, we could just have “Prince of Darkness” Peter Mandelson looking at himself in a mirror for 45 minutes.

TAKE ME TO YOUR READER

I WOULD NOT ARGUE WITH THOSE among my acquaintances who rather enviously think that my eight weeks’ holiday is far too long for the average gentleman to spend jollying about and cutting himself off from regular society, although I should point out that I often feel that the holiday period involves more stress and “work” – in both the physical and mental sense – than my own professions ever demand of me. It is reassuring, however, to return to my analyses of politicians and find that they are as interesting and colourful as ever.

IT IS NOT OFTEN THAT I FIND A NEED to praise one of our leaders for their honesty and decency even when they know that the truth may result in them losing votes, and thus I am thrilled to see that the next first lady of Japan, Mrs Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, has decided to come forward and reveal the truth about her visit to the planet Venus on a triangle-shaped UFO piloted by what she has termed “space aliens”, telling us that “It was a very beautiful place, and it was really green."

SCOFFING AS USUAL, NEVERTHELESS are the “intellectual” classes who seem to enjoy keeping the rest of us in the dark and pooh-poohing obvious facts. Such is the case of the astronomer Seth Shostack, a Caltech graduate who works at the SETI Institute, a world-renowned research group that seeks to explain "the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe." Shostack normally maintains an open mind, but has his doubts about Hatoyama’s claim, suggesting that it is “hard to have a pleasant trip to Venus” and saying he “seriously doubts” it is green.

SHOSTACK OBVIOUSLY HAS MISSED the point about what Mrs Hatoyama is stating. The events she has now shared with us happened 20 years ago, and she has revealed them on the same day that the Japanese government has announced its plans to reduce carbon emissions by 25%. Surely the message must be that if we are not careful we too will ruin our planet just like Venusians seem to have done – from pleasant rolling green countryside to 900º Centigrade in a mere twenty years.

IN DREAMS

SLEEPING WITH THE WINDOW OPEN during the summer brings in dream-inspiring sounds from the outside, and it is a sad reflection on the state of the world that the most innocent noises provoke in me the most hideous of nightmares. If I hear the sound of a bicycle on the gravel path I dream of someone being raped and beaten; if I hear the sound of the lapping water in the stream I dream of someone falling into a canal; and the sound of an airplane overhead sends me into the nightmare of being in a ladies’ hairdressing salon.

I AM NOT SURE WHAT SOUND provoked me to dream of David Cameron, but in the tap-room of a dingy bar in what seemed to be Liverpool, Cameron was getting the locals to stand as candidates for the Conservative Party in the next general election. Having managed to get the entire bar to sign up, he showed how confident he was about victory when he finally turned to me and said, “David. What about you? Are you going to pitch up?”

THIS WAS ALL IN BLACK AND WHITE, and there were large, fifties-style prams in the pub (not in fact surreal in Liverpool), and free-standing bathtubs with plants growing in them (ditto), and in the middle of this scenario I explained to Cameron that I thought his party was going nowhere.

I EXPLAINED HOW KEITH JOSEPH had got the facts wrong in the eighties, and how the Tories still hadn’t come up with any sensible economic approach since then; how foreign policy today could not be based on simply protecting the English Channel and moaning about the Suez Crisis; and how people, both candidates and voters, would like to know what Cameron really wanted to do. Throughout this process, although Cameron appeared to be listening to me, I was being pushed aside by an increasingly threatening bunch of “party workers”, so that by the end of my explanation there were six or seven burly men between myself and our future prime minister.

THE SURREAL NATURE OF THE DREAM did not exactly end with a weeping clown and a shot of a broken violin on the floor, or even a penguin alone in a huge, empty shopping arcade, but rather with me telling Cameron that the Conservatives should abandon their foolish posture about the idiocy of global warming and carbon footprints etc., after which the dream seemed to fade away and went, no doubt, back into a more usual episode of people being beaten senseless on cinder towpaths and being thrown into canals, or other dreams I sometimes have, into the details of which we will not be going here.

THUS, IT WAS WITH SOME amusement that I read this morning about Cameron and his latest “guru”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. According to the powers that be, Mr Taleb, an American author whom Cameron has greatly admired of late, has been saying similar things to that which I produced in my dream, claiming he “enjoys” financial crashes and thinks global warming is “rubbish”. Otherwise sensible politicians, in a sort of McCarthyist “guilt by association” clamour, have called for Cameron’s head for “mixing with global-warming deniers”.

I FIND THIS AS SURREAL as any dream, and while mainstream politicians behave in this manner they will understand why I don’t “pitch up”, but always put my faith in the Monster Raving Loonies and the candy-coloured clowns they call the sandmen.

CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR

HOLIDAY TIME DOES HAVE ITS ADVANTAGES, but one of them is definitely not the fact that I am often forced to spend time away from my wife, a torture worse than anything that any devil or daemon might set in store for me after death; thus, as it were, I can safely state that the time I spend in her company guarantees me eternal happiness.

THIS SUFFERING NOTWITHSTANDING, I am occasionally diverted to pay attention to what our leaders are up to, and the football match yesterday evening was one of those occasions. It appears to me that the English, despite what has been stated in popular fiction in the XIX century, have basically no ability at sport. We may be good at inventing games, but as soon as we tell foreigners the rules we will be thrashed into oblivion at our own game. This is not exactly being hoisted by our own petards, but a close simile.

THE DUFFEST ASPECT of the issue nowadays is that we no longer rely on drab Englishmen to drag Englishness through the mud, but bring Europeans into the mix. After having Sven-Goran “Shagger” Erikson as manager of the England football team, we might have learned that Europeans should not be trusted because they have never understood our values, as hardly any of them went to Eton.

ALAS, THIS IS NOT THE CASE. The present foreign manager of the English team speaks about the recent dismal depression in form as if he were a minor character in a Marx Brothers film, or at an audition for a Neapolitan comic opera. Of course, none of this is really serious at the moment, but after the recess, we will have to get down to the proper business of setting things to rights. One wonders whether Gordon is actually paying attention to all this in his spa clinic in Switzerland, where he is presumably having his brain washed.

MORE EVIL FROM EUROPE

THE RECENT ATTACK ON OUR HEALTH coming from the so-called European Union, also known as the Franco-German Empire, should surprise no one. The “European Law” that tells our work-loving trainee doctors that they are no longer allowed to work or train for more than 48 hours per week will do little more than turn decent, middle-class chaps into bare-faced liars when they fiddle their time sheets in order to do a good day’s work.

FEARS ABOUND FOR OUR NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE when in the future we have doctors lazing around in garden chairs while we suffer from the diseases imported by the increasing Europeanisation of our dietary habits. While many people believe that the hamburger was invented by Genghis Khan in 1180, so he would not have to dismount from his little pony while conquering Europe, and others believe that it comes from our cousins in the USA, it is clear that the origin of today’s hamburger is in XVIII century Germany.

WE HAVE RECORDS OF IT as early as 1802 in New York City, eaten mainly by the large German population and then called “steak cooked in the Hamburg style”, or sometimes known as the “Frikadelle”. Descendents of these same Teutons must have taken it to California, where it began unleashing its poison gas in a lethal attack on the western world.

HAMBURGER GAS IS RESPONSIBLE for more deaths than any other known illness in history; and is without any doubt the cause of global warming and the hole in the ozone layer. Phenomena such as the hamburger gas cloud hanging over Los Angeles (above), one of the most afflicted areas on the planet, the fog on the River Tyne, the blackening of public buildings in London, and acid rain are all due to it. Indeed, one of the only benefits of this foul chemical swarm is the latter case: the prevailing winds over the British Isles send large amounts of its noxious poison over to the north coast of Germany.

A LOT OF BOTTLE

TO LIVERPOOL AGAIN THIS WEEKEND, hopefully to witness at close quarters the end of the trial for affray of Steven “Stevie G” Gerrard, MBE, professional footballer extraordinaire for Liverpool FC, wannabe Disc Jockey and famous nightclub brawler. Much ado is being made about the trial in Liverpool, centring, in the main, on the horror expressed by so many fans of Liverpool Football Club (and indeed others) that such a “decent lad” as Steven can be even imagined to be a thug.

IT IS NEVER FAIR TO PREJUDGE individuals, as being from Liverpool myself I know how injurious this can be; the mere noting of a heavy fricative in one’s voice can get one barred from the more exclusive dining rooms, clubs, bars and (so I am told) brothels. Thus, at trial, jury members were asked whether they “had an interest” in the outcome of the hearing. This is presumably to discover whether any of them were Everton fans, like Gerrard himself.

GERRARD HAS CLAIMED HE HAD “no intention of having a fight”, but that he believed his accuser, Marcus McGee, “was about to smack him” and so “I punched him on the side of his head (…) and then hit out at him maybe three times, but (…) got him only once.” This is clearly self-defence in Liverpool, although juridical concordance with it may lead to a healthy number of defendants opting for this plea. “I thought he had a knife, so I stabbed him in self defence”, “a machine gun…”, “weapons of mass-destruction…”, “a nuclear bomb…” and so on.

CCTV FOOTAGE, HOWEVER GERRARD pleads, will have the last word. I am not sure that Gerrard understood the question asked of him yesterday: whether he was “sickened” by what he saw when the CCTV footage of him drinking in the bar was shown. Gerrard thought it referred to the affray, of which Gerrard will no doubt be acquitted, but I believed it referred to seeing a decent, supposedly civilised man drinking beer out of a bottle. Sickening indeed.

THE NORWICH DISUNION

CURIOSITY IS RIFE, ONE IMAGINES, about what will happen at today’s by-election in Norwich North, brought about by the resignation of Ian Gibson ex-MP, caught up in the ridiculous smearing of MPs for minor offences involving legitimately fiddled expenses. Gibson was found guilty of nothing more than using government tax exemption and parliamentary privilege in order to pay for a house and then “sell” it on to his daughter at what the Daily Telegraph called a “knock-down price”.

THIS DISTRESSING SITUATION has led to belief in a public backlash against decent, bona fide politicians, and therefore the list of riff-raff hoping to steal a seat from the hands of their rightful superiors is greater than usual in these lamentable by-election affairs. Many people feel it would be much more sensible to replace an MP in the “European way”, in which the leader of the party simply nominates one of his friends, his wife or his mistress to replace the outgoing parliamentarian. Yet this would not be cricket in Britain, others think.

THUS, ALONG WITH LABOUR’S HAPLESS, swine-flu-stricken Chris Ostrowski, a graduate of the University of East Anglia, and thus destined for a dull, grey life in the back office of an insurance company, we also have pouting, fresh-faced Chloe Smith, the likely winner, and the absurdly-named April Pond (Liberal), who by the sounds of things should be standing for the Green Party, or the “Save the Ducks Party”. Pond is also a possibility.

BUT MY HEART GOES OUT to Howling Laud Hope (right, above), the leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Ever since the glory days of the party’s first candidates, Screaming Lord Sutch and Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel, the OMRLP has been my choice when called upon to make my mark on democracy (which unfortunately I never seem to get round to doing). Regrettably, the proliferation of absurd candidates at this election will no doubt damage the chances that Hope (“Don’t be a Dope, Vote for Hope”) has of sneaking into a respectable third place. But we shall see this evening.

BUSH SURVIVORS

TRADITIONALLY, SUMMER PRESENTS many and varied problems for our journalists: hardly any of them feel comfortable in swimming trunks, and even fewer are easy on the eye when semi-naked, yet this, of course, can be dealt with by staying in London, where most decent people wear clothes, if only for protection against our weather. But the silly-season difficulties arise due to the fact that the people who “make the news”, as our journalists term it, flock off to warmer shores.

THUS THE BARREL NEEDS A GOOD SCRAPING to get an interesting story, given that the Michael Jackson issue seems to have petered out long before its expected shelf-life suggested, the parliament has gone on holiday and cancelled the milk for the time being, football transfers seem to have been damaged by the new tax laws and the cricket is as dishwater dull as it is every year.

THEREFORE WE HAVE TO TURN TO ABSURD issues such as that of Jamie Neale, and his “miraculous” surviving of a “twelve day ordeal” in the Australian bush. In clear evidence that junior reporters are dealing with the odd pages in most of our standard newspapers while the big boys are away, the press have taken remarkably different tacks on the story: on the one hand there are the suspicious writers who suggest that going off into the bush with a bread roll, a bottle of water, no mobile phone and apparently no brains was either a confidence trick or the act of a dope; on the other are those who compare his survival to the achievements of Amundsen, Scott, Hilary and Aldrin.

NEALE ENDED UP BEING FOUND in the car park of the Woollaa-Woollaa Ramma-Damma-Billabong Holiday Inn in Hubble-Bubble District, I seem to remember, although perhaps someone should check these names, none the worse for wear. Twelve days surviving the bush without as much as an iPod is going some for a teenager nowadays. But he will be the better for it; so many adults had to do this for eight years, and so, in a way, we are all Bush survivors.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

TRUE TO FORM, OUR GOVERNMENT and, particularly, its opposition are showing great interest in the Afghanistan issue now that someone from the higher social strata has become a victim of this idiotic escapade. Many members of the Welsh Guards have been killed in different conflicts over the years, but one might imagine that the government would let the entire population of Wales die before it decided to spend any money on providing troops with adequate protection. Yet when Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, a personal friend of the Prince of Wales, was killed in action, our leaders were moved as one to bring about a public enquiry into how our troops are looked after, and now getting more helicopters and “boots on the ground” has become a project.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, the fact that Cherie Blair has been forced to cancel her barbecue and honoris causa engagements in Liverpool after catching swine flu will most likely lead to the absurdly-named “Tamiflu” medication flowing freely over the counters in the next few weeks as yet another “priority project”. The news that 40,000 people complained to their doctor of “flu-like-illness” last week merits a footnote in the average newspaper, but the report about Mrs Blair gets in the region of a quarter of an inside page in many of them.

I AM SURE THAT CHERIE will be perfectly safe from this swine sickness, as she has always looked extremely well when I have bumped into her. Physically at least, she often seems a picture of health, except in pictures themselves, although she sounds a bit dotty and will not be healthy forever if she insists on opening the front door in her night dress. Whether or not she becomes seriously ill is of extreme importance; government policy, and thus the fate of a goodly number of people, depends on it.

LIGHT MY FIRE

I KNOW THAT IT WOULD BE UNTRUE to suggest that all of the leaders of the soi-disant G8 nations, accompanied by their token developing-nation chums the G5, are a bunch of hypocrites, but I have a tendency to suspect that their recently-found zeal over global warming is nothing more than a smoke screen in front of the fire in which they have their own political irons white hot.

“THE TIME TO HESITATE IS OVER”, stated Gordon Brown and Barack Obama yesterday in unison, in an almost direct quotation from Robby Krieger’s The Doors song, “now we must act on reducing carbon emissions.” This, of course, is all well and good on paper, but France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the USA and particularly China and India, six of the 8 and 2 of the 5, have doubled their production of private cars over the last five years, and when one considers that the population of these eight nations is close to three-quarters of the G13 population then these words ring less than honest.

“IF THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is,” Blake tells us in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, yet, alas, they are not cleansed to the eyes and ears of the increasing majority of people who really believe that an increase in temperature of two degrees centigrade would plunge us into the fires of hell and also truly accept that our leaders believe this and are doing something about it.

THE REAL TRUTH OF THE MATTER is that talking about global warming billows smoke into the eyes of those who would otherwise see among the G13 leaders massive financial mismanagement, corruption on a scale that beggars belief, government investment in ludicrous armament plans, personal lack of decency, self-serving attitudes with our money, huge disinvestment in health and education, and political and social repression. While these issues are kept on a back burner, then it is our personal well-being and happiness that can become a funeral pyre, not the planet.

DON’T LOOK NOW

I HAPPENED TO BE READING MY SECONDARY SCHOOL REPORTS earlier today, and, to my surprise, now nearly forty years later, I discovered that, after Mathematics, which was by far my best subject at school, I consistently received marks of over 90% in Geography, this despite the teacher being unable to stimulate a prostitute’s interest in a wad of fifty-pound notes.

DESPITE SUCH EARLY PROWESS, I must say that I had never heard of the city of Urumqi before, and, frankly, neither had you. And so the news that thousands of Han Chinese have been roaming the streets of Urumqi, according to The Times, including “ men and women of all ages, girls in high heels and young men in smart white shirts”, with “billiard cues, iron bars and even machetes as they surged towards the main city bazaar” was a tad surprising.

HAVING NOW SEEN URUMQI ON A MAP, I am even further amazed to discover that they play billiards there. On the other hand, even though I trust anyone who writes for The Times implicitly, I would like to know how a journalist watching from the fourth floor balcony of a hotel can distinguish between a billiard cue, a pool cue and a snooker cue. No doubt someone will send me this information in due course.

MICHAEL JACKSON’S FUNERAL is obviously to blame for this turn of events in a province of China which seems not to have been up to anything over the last few hundred dynasties, but where a little bit of repression and aggression can go unnoticed while we all watch haggard Diana Ross, decrepit “Little” Stevie Wonder, clapped-out Lionel Richie and bloated Mariah Carey sing their tributes to the “greatest entertainer who ever lived.”

ROCK WITH ME

THE PALAVER AROUND ‘CLOSURE’ for the ‘world’ after the death of Michael Jackson is a social imperative. Many weeping, limp, insecure, halt, distraught and socially inadequate people need to know that he is at rest. Otherwise they will be blocking up much-needed psychiatric wards around the southern states of the USA for years, like Elvis fans still do.

THE FOLK WHO FOLLOWED Michael have shown their depth of feeling in no uncertain terms unless one looks at the dialectics of their verbal issue. But we get there. One local politician, from, I believe, Gary, Indiana, licked the stamp on the matter for me: “Michael’s death is like your Kennedy being shot”, a simile reiterated by a small number of television interviewees. (The your is mine.)

I SUPPOSE THIS REFERS to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, although I have no idea where the comparison may lie in the mind of these humble speakers talking in their underwear on the lawns in front of their caravans. When presidents and/or heads of states get shot to death, other presidents and/or leaders either get worried or become presidents and/or leaders.

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA might thus have wanted to have a word upon this “so relevant” death. After all, the similarities between Obama and Jackson are so great: the first true “crossover” black/mainstream artists; an ability to “hold a crowd on a whisper”; "mesmerising presence on stage”; coming from a “lowly steel town”; ability to kill a fly at five feet; among others. But Obama has not shown his hand, preferring to send a letter to the family in private and call Jackson’s death “tragic”.

OUR OWN GORDON BROWN has done his best. Understanding that he shouldn’t get involved in this matter at least until he finds out what an iPod is, he simply stated that he felt “deeply sorry for Michael Jackson’s family upon his death.” Is it only me, or do I get the feeling that Gordon Brown probably felt sorry for Michael Jackson’s family when Jackson was alive?

ANYONE FOR TENNIS?

AFTER YEARS OF WORSHIPPING someone who spoke with a decent public school accent, had a sensible haircut and never seemed to get ruffled – indeed, three of the qualities one expects from an English gentleman – the Wimbledon public are now making an attempt to try to maintain a liking for a dour, ill-tempered and erratic Scot, all under the guise of English people doing their best to pretend that they are “British”, an epithet usually left for the hordes of unkempt Celts that occupy the West of the islands, and descendents of Europeans and other sundry immigrants to our shores.

TIM HENMAN was someone the English tennis-loving community could rely on. He would on occasion get to a semi-final of Wimbledon and threaten to do better, but one instinctively knew that he would get no further, as winning international sports events just was not English. This solid English dependability was what made him so loved.

NOW ABSENT HEROES HAVE BECOME FORGOTTEN through the fiery presence of Andy Murray, a Scot who knows he is a Scot, and behaves like a Scot. Henman, as all English gentlemen should do on retirement, has disappeared into utter oblivion. Murray however, is still clinging to the possibility that he will go “all the way”, even though so many of us know that – just as has happened so many times in the past – his success will be short-lived. Indeed, I imagine that he will be eliminated, and perhaps humiliated, before long -- if he doesn’t sensibly withdraw from the competition when things get tough, as he has done before. One wonders whether Gordon Brown will take the hint.

MICHAEL? WHO’S MICHAEL?

WHEN DON VITO CORLEONE wakes up in hospital after an attempt on his life has left him near to death, Marlon Brando manages to condense years of practising method acting, distilling his expression and reducing his mannerisms to a little as possible, all brought to its head in the phrase “Michael. Where’s Michael?” When no Michael is forthcoming, Corleone and Brando wave away the entourage with a dismissive back of the hand swat and a mumble.

IN SOME CONTRAST, “Godfather” Joe Jackson, the octogenarian head of a clan with almost as much power as the mythical and real Corleones may have had in the fifties in New York City, was also expected to pronounce his justice on his feelings about his lost son when he appeared at the gates of the family’s mansion in Encino yesterday.

THE ASSEMBLED MEDIA obviously expected Jackson to say something touching that could go down as an obituary and perhaps even be set in stone. Bafflingly, Jackson Sr. stated “I wish Michael were here to see all this”, suggesting that he was not quite sure that “this” was “there” because Michael wasn’t.

BUT THE “LOWLIGHT” (as folks say now) of his “press conference” was when he introduced some grinning half-wit with whom he told us he had formed a new company and that a DVD would be out next week, and that Blu-Ray was the format of the future. He may have later added that he was “grieving on the inside”, but this lack of sensitivity suggests that he chose the wrong profession all those years ago: if he had gone into politics he would have made it to the top anywhere.

LEST WE FORGET

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO HAVE MISSED the fact that Michael Joe Jackson, the popular singing and dancing entertainer, has recently died. There can be no doubt that he was one of the prime movers and shakers in the pop world over the last half of the XX century, and although I never witnessed him “live” on stage, have never bought any of his singles or albums and have never seen his famous Thriller video-clip from beginning to end, I have to admit that there must have been something extra special about him.

AS I HAVE BEEN BUYING RECORDS REGULARLY SINCE 1972, spending a considerable amount of my sometimes hard earned money on music, the above detail may be a little surprising to those dozens of commentators, analysts, experts and journalists who have repeatedly come out with expressions such as “We all have a Michael Jackson record somewhere at home”, and “Every one of us has bought a record of his”. This despite my record collection being as catholic as to go from Abba to The Zombies, with almost everything in between except for Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, or any gentlemen with very long hair except for the lead singer of The Human League, although that was only on one side of his head.

ANOTHER STATEMENT UP WITH WHICH I have been reluctantly putting over recent days is “Everyone has their own ‘Michael Jackson moment’.” I am not quite sure that I do, although perhaps the best I can offer is what follows.

COMMENTATORS ARE CONCERNED, it seems, about Michael Jackson’s legacy. “How will he be remembered?” they worry. Among their concerns is whether history will see Jackson as a great artiste or as a man with a troubled personal history. He may equally, I imagine, be remembered for his charity – the vast amounts of money he gave to children’s associations, in particular one case of him giving 20 million United States dollars to one boy in Massachusetts. For me, however, it must be his sense of humour: on a rare occasion when he appeared on stage alongside his beloved sister Janet in 1995, he quipped the following to the audience, “This is just for you to see that we are not the same person.”

DOABLE AND WE CAN DO IT

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus
Horace Odes xxxviii, 1

IMPISH, BEAMING, MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran and sometime bespoke outfitter to the Royal Navy, must be seething over the West’s high-, heavy- and cack-handed coverage of his country’s recent elections. In most of his heartfelt speeches against Western interference, it is at times possible to feel that he has a right to claim he is genuinely upset and is the victim of underhand activity by “Britain and its evil allies”, which apparently include the USA.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO PERSIA, although everything I have read about it, including the sublime The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron (not the Byron you are thinking of), has suggested that a trip to Persia, now strangely called Iran, is a must for anyone who enjoys beauty, ranging in its scope from landscape to fruit, from smell to taste, and from women to architecture.

BOTH THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CHAPS who have run Persia since Byron went there and the British were then encouraged to leave it to the influence of our esteemed fellow westerners the Russians, have gradually managed to make it become less appetising to both myself, with my wistful imagination and images of rich cloths, luscious drapes and carpets, scented pomegranate bushes, lemon trees and the sound of cool water softening the harshness of the afternoon’s shuddering heat hazes, and indeed to anyone else who might have found a visit interesting, profitable or fun.

GOOD OLD AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his reign of mullah terror certainly added to my worries about visiting the region, and now Ahmadinejad and the new Ayatollah, this time Khamanei, have now more or less put a lid on any ideas I had about a holiday in the sun in their country. And even if the lid were made of lead I would still be worried about the nuclear threat underneath it.

THE SAD THING ABOUT ALL OF THIS is that although I feel I have a perfect right to feel worried about visiting Persia, I would have thought that Gordon Brown and – in particular – Barack Hussein Obama might have wanted to give these people a ticking off. Alas, no. Obama seems to be as afraid of Ahmadinejad as he is of slobbering fanatic Hugo Chavez.