Is Jehovah happy now ?

Twenty two year old Emma Gough died last weekend at a hospital in Shrewsbury giving birth to twins. In any other circumstances a human tragedy, but actually it's a fucking scandal - Emma was a Jehova's Witness who refused a blood transfusion that would have saved her life.

If ever proof was needed that religion is a form of mental instability the Jehovah's Witness must take the credit for removing any doubt.

They base the ban on blood transfusions on some part of the bible that prescribes ingesting blood (presumably vampirism and eating black pudding are also out), but obviously not on the bit that prohibits suicide.

Quite why God should require a young woman to die and leave two children without a mother escapes me. But if it's part of some mysterious divine plan then I'm afraid Jehovah can fuck right off with it.

Legally doctors are powerless to intervene in these bizarre circumstances unless the patient is a child. But surely two doctors should be able to determine that, adult or not, the patient is not of sound mind and go ahead and give them the transfusion anyway ?

This isn't an infringement if human rights; doctors will regularly ignore patients' wishes when they try to revive suicides. (And ironically doctors who assist terminally ill people in making a dignified death of their own choosing can face prosecution for 'assisting a suicide').

Yet again beliefs that are not simply bonkers, but actually dangerous and evil, are beyond question because they are 'sacredly held'. But let's take two steps back and see the Jehovah Witnesses for what they really are - an abusive cult.

Apparently they believe that at the last judgement only 144,000 elect souls will be saved. If this is really the case why do the keep knocking on my door trying to sell me The Watchtower - surely if I sign up I'm only lengthening the odds of them not frying ?

De Menezes shooting verdict.

I have noticed at work that some of the first aid boxes we have on each landing are missing; items like sticking-plasters have been used and not replaced. And every Wednesday the cleaners pile up the recycling bags against the fire doors where they remain for a few hours before they are collected. Sometimes spills of tea and coffee are not immediately wiped up.

These things are breaches of health & safety.

But pumping seven shots into someone’s head at point blank range isn’t. It's murder - or to be legally precise - Corporate Manslaughter.

But 'endangering public health & safety' is what the Met were charged with over the De Menezes shooting. Still Ian Blair has not offered to resign despite the guilty verdict. Although he has offered these insightful words to give reassurance to the public: "Sometimes, that's what happens."

And as helpful advice to travelers on public transport, the aptly named Commander Cressida Dick who oversaw the police operation has explained that: “Nervousness, agitation, sending text messages, using the telephone, getting on and off the bus, all added to the picture of someone potentially intent on causing an explosion."

So now you’ve been warned. Don't appear agitated on your way to work - you're just asking for a bullet in the head.

Samhain

Tonight’s the night we teach kids the valuable lesson of the power of extortion or as it’s now known ‘trick or treating’. With this in mind it’s easy to appreciate that Halloween is a quintessentially American festival.

And it is indeed an American import – twenty years ago Halloween was pretty much confined to Scotland and Ireland – but the numerous retail opportunities for selling cheap and tacky scary shit were too irresistible.

And so another ‘tradition’ was invented much like Father’s Day (a totally synthetic event manufactured by the greetings card industry). In fact Halloween does have a bit more of a solid origin than that. It came to the USA from Scotland – the first written reference to it is in Robbie Burns – and it derives from All Hallows or All Saints Day – a festival in the Christian calendar.

But that’s not the whole story.

The Christians, as so often is the case, nicked the idea from a Celtic pagan festival – Samhain. There was an original Christian festival of the dead in May but somewhere in the Eighth Century, when the Christians were recruiting amongst the pagans, they swapped over the date to November so that they could capitalize on the existing celebrations.

For the pagans Samhain marked the end of the ‘light’ half of the year and the start of the ‘dark’ – it was marked with what was essentially a piss up around a camp fire. A time of celebration after the harvest and before the cold of winter set in.There’s no evidence that I’m aware of that confectionary was given to kids in exchange for not getting your windows egged - presumably that’s a later development.

So ironically all those Christian-mentalists who get hot under the collar about kids celebrating Halloween might actually have a point.

Still, bollocks to ‘em – lets celebrate the dark side tonight.

'Shared values'

In London this week we are treated to the obscene spectacle of a state visit by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

Kim Howells at the FO has told us not to focus on what divides us but on ‘our shared values’. Obviously I can’t speak for Mr Howells but I’m pretty sure that I don’t share any values with the bigoted tyrannical murderous arsehole that’s being feted at Buckingham palace today.

Let’s get it right about Saudi Arabia – its record on human rights clearly sets it apart as a pariah state:

• A record of capital punishment that puts it in the premier division of state killers.

• A legal system that is theocratic – using medieval Shari’a law as the basis for corporal punishments such as flogging and amputation.

• An absolute monarchy that bans political parties and extends political rights to a minority of the population.

• Systematic denial of women’s rights – an elaborate machinery of repression that tells them how to dress, limits their freedom to travel, and denies them access to education and many other aspects of civil society.

• An economy that rests on 9 million migrant workers largely from SE Asia who live lives of virtual slavery and are denied the most basic rights.

• Institutionalised corruption (remember the BAE scandal and the SFO investigation?)

And to add insult to injury, the cheeky fucker wants to lecture us about stepping up the war on terror! It was fifteen of his countrymen who participated in the 9/11 attacks and Bin Laden himself is a follower of the Saudi’s homegrown version of funda-mentalism – the Wahhabi sect.

The hypocrisy of the whole episode is appalling: Mugabe is (rightly) treated as a tyrant with whom the government will have no dealings, whilst Abdullah is given the red carpet treatment. And people seeking asylum from repressive regimes are turned away at our airports whilst Abdullah is given an official welcome when he flies in with his ridiculous entourage.

Shared values?

The only things I can see in common are a profound respect for OIL and everything else that flows from it – like £4.4 billion of exports.

Whaddafuck ?

Last night the final Sopranos aired on British TV.

What has been hailed as the greatest ever TV series finished in the same vein as it operated all along - breaking our balls.

Were Tony and family going to be hit by the rival NY crew ? Were the FBI finally going to swoop ? Or was he going to cut a deal with the Feds ? The tensions of the last ten minutes as the family arrived one by one at the dinner was unbearable.

And in the end all we saw was Tony, typically tucking into some comfort food, then a blank screen.

Maybe it was the last seconds before his death - but I like to think that it was another of David Chase's genius pieces of anti-climax, and that for T it was just a case of 'business as usual'.

Whatever. Monster or tortured soul - we all got caught up in 'this thing of ours'. Is there anyone out there who wasn't rooting for him - or more to the point is there any man who doesn't in some way want to be Tony Soprano ?

The current lot make Carter seem a collusus ...

It says something for the current desperate political climate that I can be inspired by reading an interview with Jimmy Carter.. .

I’m just about old enough to remember him as president.

My only memories from that time was that he was ridiculed as a hick buffoon and that the fiasco of the bungled attempt to free US hostages in Iran was the final nail in his coffin before Reagan’s Republican landslide in 1980.

I'm fully aware that the born-again Christian peanut farmer from the Deep South is sure as hell no socialist or working-class hero.

But his record both as president and as ‘former president’ do put him head and shoulders above those that have since followed him. You could say that this just shows quite how far to the right the political consensus has shifted since the Reagan / Thatcher new order.

Just a few random things that put him in my good books:

• Early opposition to segregation in Georgia led to his family business being boycotted by local whites.

• Outspoken opposition to the death penalty

• Opposition to the war in Iraq

• Calls to shut down the Guantanamo Bay facility

• A description of Israel’s policies in Palestine as ‘apartheid’

And less conspicuous but equally endearing:

• Legalising home brewing in the US – thereby pissing off big business and sparking a movement for real ales and micro breweries

• Reporting his personal sighting of a UFO to the FBI (before the X Files hit the screens)

Why so miserable Gordon ?

I'm not going to comment on the Rugby World Cup Final - a triumph in the end of skill over passion, and in spite of the disputed try probably a fair result. It was the presentation of the silverware at the end that got me going.

There was Sakozy as the host who, despite being a Tory still managed to look cool (well he is French after all) and then there was Gordon Brown, in contrast looking every inch the disgruntled Presbyterian bank manager.

Putting both to shame was the South African President Thabo Mloeki; the only one who actually looked like he wanted to be there. He was wearing a Springboks anorak and jumping up and down with excitement, laughing and joking , slapping the players on the back as they collected their medals. In fact I ignorantly assumed at first that he must be a member of the South African coaching entourage who had somehow got onto the platform. So obviously did some of the England players who appeared to ignore him when they collected their medals.

But why must politicians look so miserable in public - do they think it gives them some sort of gravitas ? Maybe Mloeki is a bit more self confident - after a lifetime in exile working for the ANC and with family members shot by the apartheid regime he possibly doesn't feel the need to prove anything.

Statesman who appear as human beings are surely worthy of more respect than stuffed shirts.

Remember the images at the previous South African victory in 1995 with Mandela in a Springboks shirt and cap embracing Francois Pineaar ? This was not simply a well-spun photo opportunity - Mandela actually does have a genuine passion for the game - as incidentally did Che Guerva, who was apparently a useful scrum half.

A world of knowledge

When I was a student I can’t honestly say that I often found myself enthralled by my studies. However, apart from playing pool in the student bar, some of my best moments were spent on dark winter afternoons in the University Library or UL.

In its labyrinthine corridors it was possible to convince yourself that there was the entire world of learning captured under one roof and that you could actually stumble upon some previously undiscovered gem of knowledge. If you’ve seen library the ‘Name Of The Rose’ you’ve probably got the rough idea.

And the best bit of all was that the knowledge gained was usually completely random and irrelevant to anything that I was supposed to be studying. The perfect education for a renaissance man or a trivia bore – whichever you prefer.

I know it sounds a bit trite, and I’m probably showing my age here, but it never fails to blow my mind that sat at my desk bored shitless at work (a not infrequent condition) I can now wander around the virtual library that is this inter-web thingy and experience the same kind of wonder.

So I’ve just followed a trail of links that took me from articles about Ta Moko (a sacred Maori tattoo practice), to the liberation struggles of indigenous peoples, to the commoditisation and commercialisation of their cultures, to questions of racial identity and heritage in the west, to racism and the far-right.

There’s obviously a risk here that we’re all going to evolve into sad uber-geeks. But I’m basically an optimist and I find all this easy access to knowledge pretty inspiring for the future of the planet.

What are the Lib Dems for ?

So 'Ming' is off. I have to say my initial reaction is that it doesn't really seem to matter and I don't really care.

I have never been really clear what the Liberals were for. In fact almost since the First World War, I'm not sure that they are 'for' anything at all.

At national level they are, depending on the circumstances, the Tories without the small mindedness, or New Labour without the 'embarrassing' links to a socialist past. I know they like proportional representation and civil liberties. And at local level they are very good at community relations - campaigning against dog shit on the pavement etc, when they run councils they are pretty much indistinguishable from wet Tories. Er that's about it ...

In most of the recent post-war period they were almost a regional party of the rural 'celtic fringe' - for some pretty quirky historic reasons. Very long memories of the Monmouth rebellion in the West Country, of the Highland Clearances in Scotland, and in Wales of non-conformist battles against the Church Of England - all made the Tories beyond the pail. Increasingly their place has been taken by proper nationalist parties like the SNP and Plaid Cmyru.

For a short time, when there was the flirtation with the SDP that gave birth to the modern 'Liberal Democrats', there appeared to be something like a coherent ideology of euro-style social democracy. But then New Labour came along and nicked those clothes leaving the Lib-Dems to play catch up.

So do the Lib Dems matter and should we care ?

Well ever since mainstream politics meant the abandonment of principle and hinged on the pursuit of a small layer of middle class voters in Middle England marginals, then sadly it just might.

I would advise them to choose another Blair/Cameron photogenic, unprincipled, opportunist charmer from the same cloning stable (somewhere in Oxbridge I think) that churns them out these days...

Which is of course exactly what they've done with Clegg and Huhne.

Reunited and evolving ..

After struggling for two weeks with the joys of public transport I got my bike back at the weekend. It was in the workshop for a re-bore to take the engine up to 1200cc (or more correctly 74 cubic inches). Totally unjustifiable on any practical or logical basis except for the fact that ‘I can’.

This is the whole point of riding a bike like a Harley - to make it your own and not anyone else’s. Of course the fact that Harleys are primitive machines and need stuff doing to them to take up their specification actively encourages this. It's a deliberate ploy on the MoCo's part.

The process should also be ‘organic’ – so simply spec-ing it from a shop and buying it like that in the first place defeats the purpose – modification should be an evolution acquired in digestible chunks that you grow with over time. A bit like getting tattooed.

Ummm now what’s next ?

'Theology - what's that ?'

BBC Radio 4 hosts a quintessentially British institution – ‘Thought For The Day’.

It’s a sort of daily audio blog that’s been around for years. A 'worthy' guest speaker gets five minutes to mull over an ethical or philosophical subject, usually connected in some way with the news. In the past it was always done from a Christian point of view. Now, in a nod to multiculturalism, the view can come from any religion. But the worthy individual always represents some sort of religious connection, and invariably delivers his ramblings with smug piety and assumed gravitas.

And every time I hear it - it makes me fume.

I just can’t accept the premise that a religious conviction should be the basis for profound insight. In fact given the historical evidence of how religions have behaved through the ages, and the role of religion in most of the world’s current problems, I would rather seek the opinion of just about anyone else than a clergyman or theologian.

And I take offence at the idea that the study of religion should be synonymous with learning and wisdom or even just morality. As a relic from the Middle Ages when universities first sprang into existence we have Theology departments and even ‘Doctors of Divinity’. Imagine the scene of an ethical dilemma - 'make way I'm a doctor...'

Let's face it, in institutions dedicated to the pursuit of reason, theology departments should have been shut down at about the same time as departments of alchemy. (Or if we must study religion, in order to understand its cultural effects, let's stick it in the Anthropology and History departments).

On the subject of theology I love this quote from the God Delusion. Think of it as an epilogue to the story of the emperor’s new clothes:

'I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk...

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.'

Gordon Brown & The Levellers

Election or no election? In a sense it’s a storm in a teacup:

Brown never said there would be an autumn election and I can’t really imagine that anyone thought he would call one – so when Cameron challenged him to come off the fence – it was always going to be a non-event. Tactically you could say that Brown blundered by even appearing to contemplate it.

But media circus and parliamentary chicanery aside, there is a fundamental issue of democracy at stake, and it shouldn’t need take the Lib Dems to point it out. Under our archaic ‘non-constitution’ a government can manipulate the timing of an election for their own political advantage.

Marx had a name for this – he called it Bonapartism based on Napoleon III’s use of plebiscites to get a popular mandate for essentially anti-democratic purposes. A more recent example would be Thatcher’s timing with the ‘Falklands election’ – massively unpopular at home but using a heady wave of popular nationalism to get an endorsement.

The only solution to this is fixed term parliaments and a written constitution.

Of course this idea is nothing new. The idea was first forward as early as 1647 in the Levellers “Agreement of the People’. Some, but not much, of it would need updating from the seventeenth century – so keeping within the spirit of it I have added my own twenty first century comments in italics:

• Power to be vested in the people: We still need to abolish the monarchy and the use of crown prerogative.

• One year Parliaments, elected by equal numbers of voters per seat. The right to vote for all men who worked independently for their living and all those who had fought for the Parliamentary cause: OK we have universal suffrage now – but the one year parliament would really shake things up.

• Recall of any or all of their MPs by their electors at any time: Not as outrageous as it sounds – think of all those sleaze inquiries …

• Abolition of the House of Lords: Overdue and we don’t need a nominated second chamber of Blair’s mates either.

• Democratic election of army officers: So we aren’t in the middle of a civil war and maybe this one isn’t so high on the agenda – but how about trade union rights for the armed forces ?

• Complete religious toleration and the abolition of tithes and tolls: We don’t have tithes but we do still have an official Church Of England, religious education in schools and blasphemy laws – all long passed their sell by date.

• Justices to be elected; law courts to be local and proceedings to be in English: Trials might be in English but they’re still hardly accessible to ordinary people with silly wigs and archaic proceedings. The judiciary are still a self-perpetuating old boys club. And amazingly we now find ourselves defending the right to trail by jury and habeas corpus – things that weren’t in the Leveller’s Agreement because they thought they had already secured them by winning the first civil war.

• Redistribution of seized land to the common people: Dare we say re-nationalization of privatised companies ?

Depressing that it's all still radical stuff 350 years on.

It ain't all 'Belle de Jour'...

My bike’s in the workshop at the moment, which means that I am reduced to public transport for my daily commute.

Walking from my house to the tube takes me through a semi-derelict industrial area that by night is a mini red light district. As I’m going to work this morning at 7.30am, I walk past a couple of girls obviously going off-shift. They have the painfully thin look of the teenage junkie – the emaciated body of a Kate Moss stuck onto the head of someone twenty years older. They are wearing filthy micro dresses and high heels, covered with enormous parkas, many sizes too big, presumably borrowed from a pimp, and clutching tins of Tennant's Extra.

Walking to work at the other end of my journey takes me through Soho. Most of the adult bookshops have gone these days but the anonymous doorways that are still there. The ones that are always open to show just a staircase and usually a handwritten notice. They used to say things like ‘beautiful young oriental girl’ now these days they are more likely to say ‘new eastern European model’. Ironically just down the road in Trafalgar Square this week there has been an art installation following the life of a trafficked sex worker from Lithuania.

And even more ironically there was a story in the news yesterday highlighting operation “Pentameter” to target human trafficking. The police were asking for help and information, whilst the Immigration and Border Agency said at the same time that it could not be guaranteed that victims of trafficking would not be returned to their home countries. Go figure that one.

Just little glimpses into a horrific world that operates right under my nose but which most of the time I am blissfully unaware of. Which makes all the fuss about the televised blog of ‘high-class escort Belle de Jour’ seem even sillier.

I’m not morally outraged that prostitution is being used as the background for what seems to be a comic farce – I imagine that back in the day puritans were equally pissed off about Moll Flanders. Possibly the current outrage is because the series features the nation’s favourite girl-next-door, Billie Piper. I’m not bothered that its shows prostitution as valid and rational career choice. Maybe for a tiny minority such as “Belle’ it is.

And as for the argument that it shows empowerment in a post-feminist world – I take it about as seriously as I take Carry On Up the Khyber’s analysis of British imperialism and the strategic role of the North West Frontier. But not as funny.

My real problem with 'Diary Of A Call Girl' is that the subject deserves better.

Listen to this ...

Today, I am mostly listening to Steve Earle's latest album.

I've raved here before about my favourite REDneck, so I won't labour the point again.

The new album is not up to 2002's Jerusalem - and doubtless won't cause so much of a stir as that did; getting him banned from US radio station because of the anti-war John Walker's Blues.

This time around he's ranting less and it's more about him trying to stay sane in an increasing fucked up world. This mirrors his move to New York after many years of living at the heart of country in Nashville. I love his explanation of the move:

"If you feel like you don't know what America is all about right now, and you want to reorient yourself to what America should be about, it's a really good time to come to New York City. I needed really badly at this point in my life to see a mixed-race, same-sex couple holding hands in my own neighborhood. It makes me feel safer."

I hate Tories.

I fucking hate Tories.

Sometimes nowadays, when all parties vie to out 'Thatcher' each other, it is easy to lose track of this. But one look at Tory conference is enough to remind me.

No amount of cool spin and Cameron wearing a suit without a tie, can hide what they really are. For all their talk of being the party for the environment, the party of the NHS, and how the internet is the best example of how free enterprise naturally develops society, they are still the party of over-privileged, bigoted and reactionary old farts.

Just look around the faces at conference to reveal the bizarre coalition that forms their social base. The blue-rinse ladies from the shires, the chinless toffs in their barbours, the smug double-breasted suits from the chambers of commerce, the mean spirited little men who fly the union jack from their bungalows, and the occasional essex-man, self-made and as awkward amongst the middle classes he aspires to as he amongst the relations he left behind.

And as for the Young Conservatives - hooray young-fogeys and cringe making geeks all of whom would have been remorselessly bullied if they had attended a state school.

I first started hating Tories when I was about thirteen. Studying history O-Level it was apparent that there was always someone you could rely on to oppose the extension of the right to vote or to object to reforms that prevented young children being stuffed up chimneys - the Tories.

And as an adult this historical prejudice was only confirmed when I witnessed Thatcher systematically destroy everything that my parents' generation had fought for.

And the new cool Tories are no different. What has come out of the conference ? What does it all amount to? Tax cuts that in reality can only be paid for by cutting public spending and a 'tough love' proposal to deny benefits to claimants who won't work.

I despise the betrayal of New Labour - but I still fucking hate the Tories.

'Self-defence'

I’m pleased to see that unlikely 'have-a-go hero' Jack Straw has said that the laws on self-defence will be reviewed. Should I be involved in an incident that required the use of force, as a martial artist training two or three nights a week for many years, I could well be subject to a closer scrutiny than the average punter of what constitutes 'reasonable force’. Prosecutors have made such arguments in the past.

But also as a martial artist I’m afraid that kind of thinking perpetuates some basic misconceptions about self-defence: It is based on images in cheesy king-fu movies and preposterous teach-yourself books that show the restraint of multiple armed attackers and where the defender always escapes without so much as a scratch. Unfortunately such images are complete bollocks.

Martial arts training is great for many things, but it doesn’t give you magic powers. In fact the more you train the more you appreciate how vulnerable you are to being hurt by an attacker regardless of their skill level. I have heard it said that you can no more fight without getting hurt than you can swim without getting wet.

Boxers know this from day one, but many martial artists will insist on teaching differently. So in every community centre we have ‘self -defence’ classes that create a false sense of security. If the instructors were to be more honest they would call them ‘fighting lessons’ but then there would probably be rather less uptake.

Some of what these lessons teach is downright dangerous:

Elegant disarms from a knife attack: As an exercise we once practiced some of these with dummy knives smeared with soot. By the end of the session our arms and torso were literally covered in the stuff – each mark indicating a potentially lethal cut or thrust. In a real situation, if you fight someone with a knife you will get cut. Most serious practitioners will say, don't take them on unless your life depends on it.

Restraint techniques: All those locks and throws that prevent you getting hurt without actual hurting the other guy. The police, who quite rightly are subject to restrictions on the force they use, are taught them. But the police also usually outnumber the attacker and have back-up available. I am sure some frail and ancient Aikido mater after a lifetime of practice can restrain an 18 stone drunk prop-forward with an arm lock. But this takes a degree of precision in a stressful situation that you won’t achieve after a course of one-hour lessons at your local community centre.

Even for a trained person, when in a stress-charged situation, the only realistic way to remove a threat is to neutralise it by battering your opponent into such a state that they can either offer no resistance or you can run away.

But I still wouldn't fancy explaining that one in court...

Nazis can be charming too

Two stories this week coincide to confirm that horror is always more sinister when it wears a smiling face.

Iran’s populist / Islamo-fascist president Ahmadinejad tried to charm Columbia University at a public meeting. From the footage I saw he seemed witty and plausible; spin-doctoring is obviously not just a western phenomenon.

He boasted that there are no homosexuals in Iran –not true of course – but then to be fair he is working on it having publicly executed quite a few. And backtracked on his denial of the Holocaust, saying just that he thought more research should be done to confirm the numbers.

Appropriately also this week the New York Holocaust Museum is hosting an unusual online photographic exhibition. It doesn’t have any of the often seen horrific evidence of the genocide to which we can become desensitised.

Instead it is an album of one of the SS guards - a former bank clerk, and family man. The snap shots show them relaxing and socialising off-duty. If you didn’t know the context you’d think them a jolly bunch; drinking, doing various sports, flirting with the women’s auxiliary and playing with their pets.

Maybe there’s a few lessons there.

The man who saved the world

That you are in a position to read this – or anything else for that matter – is down to the bloke in this picture. You probably don’t recognise him. Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet officer in a nuclear early warning bunker in the 1980’s.

On this day in 1983 he made the courageous decision not to respond to an indicated incoming pre-emptive US nuclear missile attack. He was not confident in the unreliable Soviet warning systems and knowing the consequences to be unthinkable, he ignored all the protocols and procedures, and so recorded it as a false alarm.

Had he not done so, we would all very probably either not be here at all or living in some kind of post- apocalyptic wasteland.

And if that sounds melodramatic, in the 80’s mutually assured destruction seemed to be pretty much a given. In these late stages of the Cold War, ‘accidental escalation’ was a much talked-about scenario. Only a few weeks earlier a ‘misunderstanding’ had led to the Soviets shotting down a Korean airliner, killing all on board, and tensions were running very high with all systems in a state of highest alert.

The Soviets were embarrassed: The inquiry into Petrov’s decision exposed fundamental flaws in their early warning systems and he ended up being reprimanded for disobeying orders; early retirement and a nervous breakdown followed.

It took another ten years for his actions to become known to the outside world – when they did he was honoured by the United Nations. But to this day the Russian Federation try to downplay the significance of his actions, saying that the systems were sufficiently robust that a retaliatory strike could not have been launched.

It goes to show the effect that just one person trying to do the right thing can have, even in the most fucked-up situation. I find that pretty inspiring.

Watch this..

I used to ride to work through the run-down back streets behind Kings Cross station. Every morning I witnessed crowds of largely East European building workers gathered, waiting to be chosen to go out in fleets of beat up old vans dispatched to various sites around London. The area had been redeveloped and smartened up now but the same early morning ritual is doubtless happening somewhere else.

Ken Loach's new film 'It's A Free World', shown on Channel 4 last night, showed exactly the same scene, with work-gangs picked out from a hopeful crowd like teams in a kid's playground.

It's a grim tale about migrant workers in London, but it's also more than that. As the title suggests, it's about how the pursuit of free market economics has fucked up all aspects of society. Everyone has now become a unit of cheap labour to be brought and sold. In particular the female gang-master is trying so desperately to escape her own poverty and secure a better future for her son, that she is unaware of her spiraling descent in her inhumane treatment of the workers.

Alan Bennett wrote something about the impact that television had in the sixties, before the age of multi-channel cable. He recalled how at work, the whole nation would be talking about what they had seen the night before. In particular the enormous impact of 'Cathy Come Home' is always cited as highlighing the issue of homelessness.

If we can get past the inane shit of Ant&Dec's - I'm A Celebrity Chef Get Me Out Of - Hell's Kitchen - Come Dancing - X Factor Idol, it's maybe just possible that thirty years later the same director's latest offering could do the same for a new generation. It certainly should.

'Crisis in Policing'

(NB: Since I wrote this in the morning, the news has just broken of the inquest of a 10 year old who drowned whilst a pair of "Police Community Support Officers" stood by and watched. Apparently because 'it would have been inappropriate for PCSOs, who are not trained in water rescue, to enter the pond").

This week, police blogger/whistle-blower Stuart Davidson is unmasked. He paints a picture of himself and his colleagues as misunderstood, plausible well-meaning chaps frustrated because the whole system is falling apart under a mountain of bureaucracy and political correctness.

Not really my own experience with the police.

And I’m not talking about the the numerous un-provoked and brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrations that I have witnessed over the years. Nothing as political as that. I’m thinking of the five occasions in the past ten years or so that I had dealings with them, however mundane or trivial.

• When we were burgled – living at the time on a new built estate there was a spate of break-ins. The police told us that they would mount a surveillance operation and not to be alarmed if we saw any of their plain-clothes offices in the bushes; we could easily identify them because they ‘would be white’(we live in an area with a large black community)...

• When there was a 999 call reported from our elderly neighbour’s house – two officers knocked on the door to say that a call had been made from the house but no voice could be heard – could we help ? We invited them to hop over the back fence and investigate. Not being in the best of shape they couldn’t actually make it over the fence, so , after breaking the fence and trampling the flowerbeds, they gave up. But they did tell us to get in touch if we didn’t see the neighbour for a few days or if we detected ‘any funny smells’…

• When the alarm went off at our kids’ nursery school – we got a call from the security company as we were key-holders. It was after midnight so we phoned the police station, less than a quarter of a mile away from the nursery, to ask if they would attend. They were ‘too busy’ and we were told we would have to investigate it ourselves...

* When my bike was vandalised whilst parked in the West End. A very nice bloke from the CID phoned me up to discuss it. He also had a Harley and we had a good natter about bikes ...

• When I had my Swiss army knife confiscated at our local ‘carnival’ - actually village fete would be a more accurate description but because this is a largely black area in inner London we have a massive police presence with metal detectors at the entrance. I was found to be in possession of a perfectly legal penknife that I have carried for about twenty years. I was told that whilst I hadn’t committed an offence, the police were confiscating it and got a receipt to reclaim it later. Afterwards I went to the station three times but was told; they didn’t have any record of it / it was in the safe and they didn’t have the key (!) / it had been given to CID at Area HQ and they’d get in touch. They didn’t - so I gave up ...

There you go – all absolutely true and with no embellishment.

In best New Labour fashion here are the findings from this brief survey:
20% of outcomes were positive: the police were pleasant and professional
80% of outcomes were negative; the police were at times rude, lazy, incompetent, dishonest and racist.

I would therefore suggest that the recommendations for the policing crisis are not a matter of more funding or resources, but a higher standard of police officer.

We all know that they have a difficult job to do – so why must we rely on fuckwits to do it ?

This is how it starts ...

I am deeply suspicious of the Cambridgeshire Chief Constable’s remarks about the strain that immigration is placing on policing resources.

I’m pretty sure that if a senior public servant like Julie Spence simply wanted more funding then private lobbying would be a more usual and effective tactic than calling a press conference. I see a deliberate attempt to manufacture and manipulate an anti-immigration consensus.

It’s no accident that only last week Gordon Brown launched a back to work initiative ‘British Jobs For British Workers’, and that this week the government want to rubbish the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants put forward at the the Lib-Dem’s conference. Or that it won't give up on the identity card campaign

These are worrying times because I can see this consensus building and there seem to be two kinds of people who are on this ant-immigration bandwagon.

Firstly, the Little Englanders who get upset about our culture being eroded. These people live comfortable middle-class lives that are in no way threatened by the social problems posed by immigrants – they don’t compete for the same low paid jobs or the same cheap housing. With the perspective of a couple of generations these people will appear as ugly and stupid as their forebears who railed against Jewish and Irish immigration.

Secondly, the genuinely aggrieved ‘indigenous’ population who are at the bottom of the pile and are competing for low paid jobs and cheap housing. They have been abandoned by New Labour and find themselves in a classic poverty trap. As a result they are being driven into the ranks of the racists and the Xenophobes.

To stop this drift we need to point the finger not at low paid migrants but at the likes of Tescos and others in the food industry who are making obscene profits on the back of cheap casual labour in rural areas.

If we don't, to quote Basil Fawlty: ‘this is exactly how Nazi Germany started’…

(Bloody hell now we’ve even got the small time savers rushing to get their money before the bank crashes !)

I

Catholics and human rights.

Some time ago the Vatican stopped its donations to Amnesty International. And now bishops in Northern Ireland have ordered Catholic schools there to ban Amnesty groups.

The reason ? Amnesty's definition of human rights includes a woman's right to choose. This was adopted not after some abstract ethical debate but as a specific policy in particular response to the widespread use of rape as a weapon of terror in the Balkans, Congo and Darfur.

Amnesty International debated this issue long and hard as it always bends over backwards to avoid adopting any position that can be seen as 'political'. I respect this and the pragmatic need to maximize their effectiveness by not compromising their 'impartial' stance. But of course ultimately it is nonsense - human rights are always going to be a political issue, and you can't help but offend someone by adopting a stance. Particularly bigots.

The kind of bigots whose message to refugees who are driven from their homes and subjected to systematic mass rape both as a means of repression and ethnic cleansing by 'breeding', is basically that they should put up and shut up. (Possibly 'offer up their suffering to God' - I never did understand that particular piece of sado-masochistic bollocks).

I shouldn't really be surprised though; this is the organisation that brought us the Holy Inquistion and the prescribed list. The real surprise is that there are any religious Amnesty groups at all.

Every religion will throw human rights out the window when it comes into contradiction with some 'sacred' belief, be it how we choose to dress, what we choose to eat, what we teach our children or our sexuality.

'Protect the human' is Amnesty's slogan these days - I would suggest that this can only genuinely be done by humanists.

Guy Moquet

An unlikely and roundabout route to this story…

With defeat at the hands of Argentina in the rugby and Scotland in the football, national pride in France is at something of a low ebb. A rather bizarre technique to boast the teams before their games was to read them the letter of Guy Moquet . And even more bizarrely , the letter is such a favourite of Nicolas Sarkorzy, that one of his first presidential decrees was that it should be compulsory reading for every French schoolchild: A sentimental note written by a 17 year old boy to his family on the eve of his execution by the Nazis.

Guy Moquet was an active member of the Communist Youth Movement and the son of a Communist Party deputy in Paris. With the Nazi occupation of Paris he was arrested and imprisoned at the age of 16 by the Vichy authorities, along with other known activists.

When the German commandant in Bordeux was assassinated by the Resistance the Nazis ordered the Petain government to take reprisals. Vichy authorities handed over 50 Communist prisoners to the Germans “in order to avoid letting 50 good French people get shot.” And so it came about that Guy Moquet was killed by a firing squad in October 1941, refusing a blindfold and crying out ‘Vive La France’.

The legacy of the Vichy government shames and divides France, but also has lessons for all of us nowadays.

Practically every French town still has its memorial to the ‘deported and the shot’. It is a reminder that the collaborationst government did much of the Nazi’s dirty work for them; a quarter of all French Jews, and a much higher proportion of foreign-born Jewish refugees in France, were either deported to German death camps or perished in camps in France, guarded by French Gendarmes. Along of course with many other ‘undesirables’ and political opponents, such as Guy Moquet and his comrades.

There were French Nazis in the Vichy government, but the majority, like Marshal Petain, were simply ultra-conservatives who saw co-operation with the Nazis as the lesser of two evils in comparison to the pre-war Popular Front government and the threat of socialism. Their position was perhaps best summed up in their replacement of the French Republic’s slogan of ‘Liberty, Fraternity and Equality’ with ‘ Work, Family and Nation’.

And the lessons for us now?

Repression and reaction don’t have to come in the form of goose-stepping storm-troopers. The Vichy regime was the tyranny of small-town France and the petty-bureaucrat . De-facto fascism came in to power not by a coup d’etat but by a series of administrative measures.

And so the threat in Europe today doesn’t come from the boneheads of Combat 18 but from the populist nationalism to be found on the fringes of mainstream parties – the whole Daily Mail / Little England mentality is the home-grown descendant Vichy-ism. And asylum seekers are the Jews of the 21st century.

It is no accident that Le Pen’s Front National has distanced itself from its street-fighting wing and has sought rehabilitation for the ’mis-understood’ Vichy regime.

What the fucking hell is going on here ?

It's the ultimate betrayal of a generation. The so-called Labour leader has invited round for tea the arch-enemy of the Labour movement and the destroyer of its post 1945 achievements .

OK - so she's an old lady, but her mate Pinochet was also a dodery old codger - age doesn't get these bastards of the hook.

The only possible reason that Brown would invite her is to send out a clear public message (as if we didn't know) that "we're all Thatcherites now".

He praises her as a 'conviction politician ' which I suppose she is. But when these convictions amount to 'greed is good' and a contempt for ordinary people; then I'm not sure that this is really better than being an unprincipled careerist like Brown himself.

Just imagine the bollocks we are going to have to endure when she dies - I've seen it suggested that like Churchill she may be one of the few 'commoners' to receive a state funeral.

Personally I'll be joining the queue for those waiting to dance on her grave.

‘The point however is to change it …’

… And that other old socialist darling Tony Benn always used to say ‘its about policies not personalities’. (Of course this was in an earlier, pre-Blair age when there were actually some policies that marked a division between parties).

But his words sprang to mind in reading the obituaries of entrepreneur / philanthropist Anita Roddick. Depending on your point of view, she was either a pioneering campaigner worthy of induction into the radical pantheon, or a sell-out hypocrite.

Of course she was actually neither and both of these things. She took a stand against animal testing, campaigned for the environment and human rights, and yet at the same time, wouldn’t allow her employees to join trade unions and sold her business to a multinational that pretty much stood all her values on their head.

But the point is – it’s not about personalities: The likes of Naomi Klien and George Monbiot have done a fantastic job at exposing injustices in the world but they have a problem when it comes to a programme for change. Then, what they argue for all starts to sound a bit like caring capitalism; ‘business as usual but nicer’.

Which is exactly what Anita Roddick represented. But it really doesn’t matter if businesses are run by good well-intentioned liberal types, it’s the for-profit system that fucks us in the end. And no amount of organic dewberry lip gloss in eco-friendly packaging with a percentage of the profits donated to Amnesty is going to prevent somebody somewhere in the supply chain getting screwed over.

This doesn’t change the fact that if I’d met Anita Roddick, I’m pretty sure I’d have liked her.

In purely human terms if you’re going to be a entrepreneur how much better to be one with a conscience (albeit a fallible one) than an out-and-out cunt like those who run Walmart, Shell, McDonalds, BAE, Glaxo etc etc. I’m also pretty sure she did a damn sight more practical good than most of the armchair anarchists posting diatribes on the web.

Nowadays I find myself in a position of managerial authority. I’d like to think that I try to do the right thing most of the time. But that’s a matter of personal ethics, I’m not going to kid anyone, myself included, that this is going to change the world. Even if every single manager behaved that way.

Public trials and Madeline

In those dark days before reality TV and 24 hour cable, the hottest show in town was the public execution.

The golden age was probably the eighteenth century - just before Victorian sanctimony kicked in - but at a time when the blood-lust of a Roman arena could be married with the mass-sensationalism of easily available news-sheets and pamphlets. The ideal formula was a monstrous crime in lurid detail with either a pious confession at the scaffold or an defiant and unrepentant outlaw. Dignified exits were definitely disappointing.

Which brings us to the Madeline McCann case, where the latest developments have allowed the media, fuelled by an insatiable appetite for this sort of stuff, to revisit the entertainment value of an old time scandal-sheet.

I won't presume to venture an opinion on what the outcome of this case will prove to be, but I'm pretty sure that it will not be a happy ending. Whatever truth comes out in the end some people are going to end up looking pretty silly. If the parents are guilty; those parts of the media that championed them, or, if they are innocent; the Portuguese police and all those pop-psychologists who are now coming out of the woodwork to say 'there was always something fishy about the McCanns".

In fact, both these parties look pretty silly already.

The Mail and Express in particular are usually champions of the forces of law and order. Any time there are murmurings about civil liberties the mantra is repeated that only the guilty have anything to fear from DNA databases and increased police powers. Unless of course the suspects are white, middle-class, articulate and photogenic professionals and the authorities are some johnny-foreigner. In which case the same media becomes a crusader against mis-carriages of justice.

And of course the Portuguese police have done nothing to shake off the bumbling Clouseau-like view of them held by the xenophobic media here. From day one, when they failed to secure the crime scene, there does seem to be a litany of incompetence. More fundamentally there also seems to be a problem with the 'inquisitorial' nature of those European legal systems that are based on Roman law. Apart from anything else it appears to place the emphasis on the investigating police building a case that will produce the confession of a suspect rather than focusing on finding the missing child. As an aside, it is yet another argument for defending our peculiar Anglo-Saxon based legal system which is out of step with the rest of Europe from attempts at 'reform' by various governments.

The media circus sensationalises and scandalises on the one hand, and on the other satisfies a deep seated need for moral reassurance in mutual outrage. A sociologist would say that in this it plays an important role in social cohesion and legitimacy ( as did the scaffold at Tyburn).

But it has precious little to do with justice, or finding a missing toddler.

Rugby World Cup

The start of the Rugby World Cup this weekend.

Looking at the papers and tv is would appear that our football (soccer) obsessed nation has suddenly discovered the real 'beautiful game' which it pretty much ignores the rest of the time. This process now seems to happen every four years, but I'm not convinced that it wins significant converts - even after England's victory at the last world cup, attendance at Premiership club matches was laughable by football standards.

And I'm not sure why. Even in a fairly average game of rugby there is far more passion, excitement, drama etc than in the painfully slow defensive play in football that seems to end so often in a 0-0 draw.

And from the point of view of a live spectator there is really no comparison. Rugby fans are not herded like cattle into segregated pens - in fact as a rugby fan there is usually more danger from a surfeit of Guinness than being stabbed by a rival supporter or having your head cracked open by the riot police.

Actually, I do know why rugby will probably remain a minority sport in this country; it's socio- economic demographic...

Although my enthusiasm far outstripped any ability, I loved playing rugby at school.

The fact that I even had the opportunity to do so at a state school is unusual and probably was only because it was a comprehensive that had formerly been a grammar school. I had every intention of continuing to play when I went to university. But university rugby clubs (at least at my particular institution) were (are ?) magnets for the most obnoxious, reactionary public-school wankers imaginable.

Certainly at that time in the 'eighties membership of the rugby club and of the student Left were pretty much mutually irreconcilable, and so ended my rugby-playing days. Almost 10 years later, in a moment of madness, I ended this retirement and played in light-hearted 'social rugby' events for a couple of seasons.

I loved every minute and regretted that I had ever allowed the arseholes to put me off.

Our boys

There’s a phrase that I keep hearing in the news this week: The Military Covenant.

I understand what is meant – it’s basically a campaign to ensure that servicemen and women are treated right. And I’m totally behind it. However wrong the wars that this country fights are (and the current wars are very wrong), the poor sods that do the actual fighting, along with their families, should be treated with dignity, compassion and respect.

And at the moment the housing for military families, the medical provisions for wounded troops and their general working conditions are all a fucking disgrace.

But to talk about a Military Covenant mistakes the nature of the military in this country.

We don’t have a nation-in-arms or a people’s army. In fact in the 400 years of so of the British army, it has only been that kind of army for five very distinct and relatively brief episodes:

(i) The New Model Army in the 1640’s and 50’s - the most politicised army there has ever been in this country.
(ii) Kitchener’s ‘new armies’ of 1915 – the massive wave of volunteers that flooded into the army in a tide of patriotic fervour.
(iii) The conscript armies of 1916-18 – truly a nation-in-arms now united by a shared suffering in the horror of the western front rather than by patriotism.
(iv) The conscript armies of 1939-45 - with a shared vision of fighting a crusade for democratic values.
(v) Post war national service –a generation united by a shared experience of boredom and pointless authority.

At all other times, the British Army has been a professional one fighting for ‘national interests’ that in reality meant the defence of the empire abroad and in earlier times, the status quo at home.

In the course of this the army built a reputation for excellence out of all proportion to its size, and for a peculiarly British kind of understated bravery. In fact pretty much the exact opposite of the over-blown US military. And it has done this with ranks filled by the most under-privileged sections of society along with an the officer class provided by some of the most over- privileged. (Socially not very much has changed to this today).

Throughout this time the military has invariably been treated like shit by those governments whose dirty work it has done. Badly supplied, underpaid, poor medical provision are all nothing new – a posting to the West Indies in the eighteenth century was regarded as a death sentence from disease – in the nineteenth century the mismanagement of the Crimean War became a national scandal – and in the twentieth the 1914-18 war has become synonymous with military incompetence.

Whilst public sympathy for the ‘common soldier’ has come out at various times – the sentiment of ‘lions led by donkeys’ - we are on the whole, a pretty un-militaristic nation. Certainly in comparison with both the US and other European nations.

It is no accident that whilst the French have the Gendarmerie, the Spanish the Guardia Civil and the Italians the Caribinarri all paramilitary organisations partly controlled by the military we have an entirely civil police. When Robert Peel set up the police in the 1820’s he was at pains to design a uniform that was civilian (even including a top hat !) to distance the new organisation from the army in the public eye. He knew that the restless masses with memories of the yeomanry and the Peterloo massacre wouldn't stand for any anything that looked like the army.

So what’s the point of all this history?

Well the military are very strong on tradition so it is important to question how this marries up to historical truth.

But most importantly the lesson is that how soldiers are treated reflects what they are used for. And if they are cannon fodder for empire they will, sadly, be treated as such.

Possibly the French do it more honestly. Their military tradition may date back to the Revolution, Napoleon and Verdun; the nation in arms and the ‘patrie en danger’. But until recently their enormous conscript army stayed at home peeling spuds and doing parades. Meanwhile the actual fighting in various shitty campaigns is undertaken by the mercenary Foreign Legion. And when they hold out to the last man defending some far flung last outpost of empire nobody at home really gives a toss.

Cromwell Anniversary

Every year I get a kick out of watching the ridiculous fancy dress parade that is the state opening of parliament pass by in the shadow of Cromwell's statue.

He is there as a silent reminder of still unfinished business when it comes to democracy in this country. And this is despite his corpse being dug up by the monarchists, re-'executed' and publicly displayed.

Maybe a flawed hero - he was after all a man of his times - a time when political ideas were expressed in the language of religion - and of his class - his democracy extended only to free-men and that was defined by some sort of property. But a hero nonetheless.

In an age when the divine right of kings was a cornerstone of political consensus he dared to fight and bring to trial a king. He rejected the idea of monarchy in favour of representative government, even when he was in a position to take that power to himself. And in an age when the Church claimed the ultimate moral authority, he championed the rights of individual conscience.

In other words, he had the balls to 'turn the world upside down'.

All of which is why we should commemorate Sept 3rd, the anniversary of his death, as Cromwell Day.

And amazingly 350 years on, as I write this I can already feel the backlash from those gnashing their teeth at this eulogy.

Bollocks to 'em - I know what side they would have been on at Naesby - crypto-royalists the lot of them.

Summer Recess Over - Death in Texas

My own Summer Recess is over. Not of parliamentary proportions, just two weeks in France.

(I think the over-long and ill-deserved holidays of our elected representatives dates back to when MPs were country gentry who needed to return to their estates to oversee the harvest.)

My own recess was a bit more modest. And it was brought back to a bump when I saw my first newspaper for two weeks.

Texas has executed Ray Conner, the 400th person killed since the US brought back the option of capital punishment in 1976. Of all the states, Texas is the most trigger-happy, accounting for a third of the executions in the USA since that time.

Ten years on death row, new evidence ignored - it's an all too familiar story.

The European Union marked the milestone with a letter of protest to the governor Rick Perry. Here's what he had to say in his ungracious and morally-bankrupt reply:

"Two hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. While we respect our friends in Europe ... Texans are doing just fine governing Texas."

The ignorant redneck Republican fuck-wit doesn't even know his own history. 230 years ago Texans weren't fighting for democracy against King George's redcoats; they were largely speaking Spanish* and part of Mexico - or have you forgotten the Alamo Rick ?

As to governing themselves, well the US record puts it into a super-league of judicial killings with China, Iran, Iraq and Sudan. And as a good redneck like Rick should know, when people can't be trusted to govern themselves it's time for regime change.

* Remember when that previous arsehole-governor of Texas George Bush Jnr opposed hispanic schoolkids being taught in Spanish rather than English? - on the grounds that 'they should learn the bible in the language in which it was written.'