The right to be deluded

A Sikh schoolgirl has gone to court to win the right to wear a silver bangle or kara. Doing so is against the uniform policy of her school and so they excluded her for nine weeks. The court has found this constitutes religious discrimination.

Personally, the thought that an omnipotent God gives a toss whether you wear a bracelet or not is obviously bonkers. Admittedly it is not actually offensive; such as the idea that women should be veiled. But nonetheless I support the religious loons against the school every time.

As the parent of any teenager knows – or should know - banning your kids from dyeing their hair green or getting their nose pierced is a surefire way to transform a vague inclination on the kids’ part into a burning mission.

And the same logic that applies to teenagers applies to society as a whole. Banning religious groups from expressing their various superstitions is only going to marginalize them and provoke fanaticism.

The urge to suppress sadly seems to run deep. I’ve just had the uniform list from my youngest daughters’ secondary school. Skirts must be below the knee. Trousers must be black but not jeans or in a jeans-style cut. White shirts must have a collar but not be polo shirts. Blah-fucking-blah. All guaranteed to transform a happy-go-lucky child into a pissed off teenager. Genius.

Some petty-minded tyrant who didn’t get enough attention as child must have dreamt this shit up. Seems that these kind of people are drawn disproportionately to education. And government.

This is England

On the train to Newcastle for a ‘business trip’.

Everybody is wearing the ‘smart casual’ universal corporate uniform. They’ve all got laptop cases and tap away at various gadgets. Then they read WhatCar to relax, or maybe for the racier ones; FHM. They have loud conversations about office politics. But I can’t work out from any of it what they or their businesses actually do.

I go to the dining car. I’m ignored for fifteen minutes by the waitress. When I manage eye contact she asks me if I know that this is the dining car. I mentally count to ten and tell her that I do realise, and actually I would like a menu.

Out of the city centre to a 'business park' I get to the company I’m visiting. It’s locked in the 1980’s. In reception there’s a faded photograph of Princess Di opening the place. She’s wearing a sloaney get-up with a collar like a cake doily. There are a host of faded certificates showing accreditation to various industry bodies . Many of these are time-expired. With a lot of fuss I am offered a cup of (something like) coffee from an ancient vending machine.

Waiting for my train home - in Newcastle I walk around the city centre to kill time. Something is a bit odd but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Then it dawns on me – I haven’t seen a non-white face or heard a foreign accent. And the shops are all ‘English’.

Coming home I look through the window. It comes to me that still most of the country we travel through is actually empty countryside and small towns.

I realise that this is England. 'Proper' England - not London or some other 'metro-sophisticated' city. Where you take it for granted that you can wear jeans and a t-shirt and show off your tattoos and still be taken seriously. Or where there is a whole diverse world on your doorstep. Or where coffee comes in a million different over-priced varieties. And I'm not sure how I feel about all this.

Wedding crasher.

Went to a wedding at the weekend. I usually avoid weddings - I just don’t really get them.

Having being raised a Catholic we were taught that marriage was one of the seven sacraments and a wedding was a religious ceremony. So once I’d managed to free my mind from that indoctrination I pretty much lumped weddings in with all the other mumbo-jumbo ritual.

Of course believing in marriage doesn’t require you to believe in God. But without the religious angle it seems pretty much like nothing more than a legal thing. And a legal thing rooted in our feudal past when establishing property rights and inheritance was all-important.

And I know it is possible to be secular, and not wish to establish property rights, and still believe in marriage. Something 'romantic' along the lines of proclaiming your love for the world to see. But I’m dubious about that too.

One of my favourite Shakespearean characters, Brutus, sums it up when he says that honest men don’t need to take oaths. Or as Bob Dylan puts it - to live outside the law you have to be honest.

Then there is the actual horrific spectacle that is the wedding itself. Disparate groups of people with nothing in common thrown awkwardly together for an afternoon. The elderly relatives, the obscure relatives there only because of familial lobbying, the kids sipping their parents’ booze, the people from work, the old school friends – and all their reluctant partners dragged along out of politeness.

All encapsulated perfectly this weekend as the unlikely be-suited ensemble took to the dance floor for Motorhead. I made my excuses and left…

Beneath every uniform ...

I was walking down a street near my work place in Soho when an armed motorcycle cop pulled up sharply and ordered a bloke who had parked up to make a delivery at a café to move on.

The guy was understandably a bit taken aback and looked non-plussed for a few seconds. The copper shouted at him again to move. The bloke dithered about for a few more seconds and mumbled something about finishing his delivery.

So this time the copper screamed at him - and the terrified driver who must have just registered the gun - jumped in and drove off. (Leaving his palette of deliveries behind on the pavement).

A couple of seconds later, two black Range Rovers screeched to an emergency stop and then a couple of plain-clothes heavies emerged and whisked Gordon Brown into a nearby restaurant.

At best a PR home-goal from the forces of the state. But at worst a confirmation that beneath every uniform, particularly one that carries a gun and has a bit of authority, there lies a fascist prick.

Knife crime

It’s difficult to avoid the knife-crime frenzy. It’s literally close to home – the four killings in a single day last week were within a five mile radius of where we live.

Knives scare me. I’ve been doing martial arts for just over 20 years and I can say in all honesty that I have very little to help me deal with a skinny fifteen year old armed with a kitchen knife. Some self-defence experts will demonstrate swift and neat disarms when faced with an armed attacker. This is pure bullshit – try it with an unco-operative opponent with the added bonus of surprise and concealment on their side. I’ve talked about this before - we did it once - in controlled circumstances. It was pretty sobering and it demonstrated to me that you don’t tackle a knife unless your life depends on it, and then be prepared to be hurt.

So what is to be done ? Stiffer sentencing ?

Maybe deterrents can work with pre-meditated street robberies. But these much publicised killings aren’t muggings gone wrong. They’re about a fucked-up culture of ‘respect’ and machismo. I doubt deterrents come into it much – in fact they might even add to the kudos of being a bad boy .

You don’t have to be a sociologist or psychologist to see that the less you have going for you – materially or educationally – the more important things like ‘face’ and status are. I doubt anyone has been stabbed because they ‘dissed’ a homeboy in Henley Upon Thames. Gangsta culture doesn’t help when the Ali G factor spreads it from the inner city to the suburbs but to hold hip-hop or dodgy computer games responsible is to mistake the effect for the cause. Nobody can seriously argue that the root cause isn't poverty or lack of opportunity.

I don’t have any simple answers to knife crime, but there is one thought which might seem a bit old-fashioned: Young males will always fight – it’s a side effect of testosterone – so why not teach martial arts, including boxing in every school? I’ve always found that the more you study the mechanics of violence the less likely you are to resort to it.

Roadtrip

Words of wisdom from an unlikely source (actually National Lampoon’s Animal House): sometimes the only solution is A ROADTRIP. So I headed off on my bike for a long weekend to the nearest we have in this country to the Great Plains – the Fenlands of East Anglia.

I’ve been meaning to visit Flag Fen for a long time – the Bronze Age site that’s really as big a mystery as Stonehenge: A half-mile long causeway of wooden stakes with a large platform. It goes from nowhere in particular to ... nowhere in particular. There don't seem to be any settlements there so the conclusion is that it must have been of ‘ritual’ significance. Of course we don’t really know what that means - but our ancestors did have something about the gods living in water and offered up their treasures by throwing them into the water. (Ever thrown coins in a fountain ? - the collective memory must run deep).

The site is the work of archaeologist Francis Pryor * – I’m a big fan of his books - they destroy much of our misconceptions about our early history. A lot of which comes from the Victorians and their views on the role of empire and ‘superior’ races as the forces of progress.

* His view is that the Bronze and Iron Age inhabitants of this country were doing quite nicely before the Romans came along and didn’t need civillising. These ‘Ancient Britons’ weren’t a distinct race of ‘Celts’ – that’s just new-age mumbo-jumbo and/or romantic nationalist wishful thinking. Once the Romans went, Britain didn’t descend into a Dark Age – life just carried on much as before, only with Christianity, wine and a few more villas. And when the Anglo-Saxons eventually came along they didn’t drive out and replace the Britons - they just emerged as the dominant group in a multi-cultural society.

I needed somewhere to camp so I’d put a message out on the Harley Riders' Club website to see if any locals could recommend a bike-friendly campsite. I didn’t fancy turning up in the middle of nowhere only to be turned away by the respectable caravan-types. That really does a happen; I think they’re afraid us bikers are going to bring our own version of the dark ages to their Middle-England on wheels. Not only was I put in touch with a pub with a campsite but I was told that the local branch of the club would be having their monthly meeting there that night and I was welcome to come along. So I did, and was greeted like an honoured guest. I don’t think there are many other sub-cultures where people are so unfailingly open and generous. And who would have thought that out of a dozen or so people there I would find two others who shared my slightly geeky interests and wanted to know about Flag Fen ?

The next day took me to the heart of the Fens where some friends of mine have moved from London. It’s a brave move – they’ve not only re-located their bike building business, they’re on their way to becoming self-sufficient and have turned their place into part workshop, part small-holding. Some of it might seem a bit eccentric to a townie like me – bartering with the locals for food and cooking up road-kill. But they’re pretty much debt-free and it looks like they’re not dependent upon anyone. They also know their neighbours much better than I do mine in London - despite theirs’ being a quarter of a mile away. And they can’t remember the last time they heard a police siren. Seems like they've got something right.

I took a long ride home on the B-Roads and got only slightly soaked. But happy. It’s true - sometimes the answer is a Roadtrip.

Max Mosley's privacy

The News Of The World is a disgusting reactionary rag. It manages in a peculiarly English way to mix puritanism alongside the sensational reporting of sexual scandal. Small-minded and self-righteous editorials - alongside ‘saucy’ images of glamour girls.

So having now got that out of the way:

In most circumstances I would side with anyone who fell victim to a NOW’s puerile exposé. I have the predictably liberal view that behind closed doors and consenting adults - who gives a fuck ? But when it comes to F1 boss Max Mosley I’m afraid all my usual tolerant views are suspended.

Here’s why my attitude to the current scandle is in the category of hilarious - you just couldn’t make it up.

• He’s part of the country’s leading aristocratic Fascist dynasty. Dad was founder of the British Union of Fascists, Mum was some sort of Hitler groupie in the 30’s.

• It’s not just his inheritance – he’s a Fascist in his own right too. He was an election agent for them, he stood as a Fascist candidate, he was charged with threatening behaviour after a clash with anti-fascists, and he tried to go mainstream and stand for the Tories and got rejected.

• He has a taste for S&M and Nazi uniforms. And speaking German in moments of passion.

• One of the dominatrix’s he was filmed with is is the wife of an MI5 officer (who has now resigned).

So yes I’m guilty of double standards – a right to privacy for the rest of us, but as far as wealthy Fascist ex- public schoolboys are concerned - fair game. Bring it on.

Bonekickers

Probably not surprising to hear that I watched the BBC’s new archaeology drama series Bonekickers last night.

It’s definitely more Indianna Jones that Time Team: Photogenic female archaeologist action-babes rather than fat blokes with beards and jumpers who like real ale.

The plot - ludicrous – fragments of the ‘true cross’ found and a post-Dan Brown bit of neo-Templar conspiracy, with an all-action dénoument and their secret underground lair going up in flames.

The characters - clumsy – the gutsy female leader haunted by a past which we will no doubt discover in due course and a unsympathetic and demanding boss. Any minute I expected her to say ‘just give me another 24 hours to close this case’. Then there’s the innocent newbie who unwittingly saves the day. And the grouchy old misogynist who will doubtless turn out to have a heart of pure gold.

I’ve never been a field archaeologist but I’m pretty sure that, rather than scrapping about in the mud for hours, you don’t usually get to dig for an afternoon, take the finds back to the CSI-style forensic lab, solve the case and then spend the rest of the week chasing the villains.

Bonekickers is complete tosh. I’m sure I’ll be back for more next week.

Waste not - err want not.

Every child who has ever been told to finish the food on their plate and think of the starving children in Africa knows that the reasoning behind that argument is essentially bollocks.

Gordon Brown’s response at the G8 to the food crisis that faces much of the developing world is pretty much on the same level: We in the UK should stop wasting food at home - we’ll save the planet, and apparently save £400 a year at home as well.

Odd that the supposed former chancellor and supposed economic genius has adopted the macro-economic policies of the kindagarten.

But hey - it’s easier to lecture us like naughty children than talk about cancelling the debt of developing countries, or adopting fair-trade practices or stopping the environmental pillage of arable land to produce exported meat for fast food.

Another PR home goal if he was trying to shake off the gloomy Presbyterian bank manager persona. And by the way a look in the mirror should tell him that he could probably afford to lay off the pies a bit himself.

Born on the 4th of July

There's all sorts of irresponsible scary subversive shit out there on the internet. Some of it could easily fall into the wrong hands - the kind of people who might use it to justify revolutionary activities. Some of these people might not even be White. Or Christian.

Here's one example I stumbled across this morning (sorry it's a bit old-fashioned and it does go on a bit) but I think you'll get the message:

When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the Present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid World. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People; unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only. He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People. He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and Amount and Payment of their Salaries. He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance. He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislature. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World: For imposing taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended Offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule in these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Powers to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People. Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

(Approved by the assembled continental congress of the 13 states of the united states of America - 4th July 1776).

'I can't belive it's not torture'

Christopher Hitchens gives me problems.

I really want to like the man who gave us “God Is Not Great’. And the man whose heroes include Oliver Cromwell and Tom Paine. Who has exposed Zionist atrocities in Palestine and Serb atrocities in the Balkans.

But I’m stuck with the guy who thinks that George Dubya was the lesser of two evils and that invading Iraq was somehow progressive. The ex-Marxist who articulated the idea of ‘Islamo-fascism’. The guy who dismissed the idea that atrocities were being committed by the allies in Iraq in the name of ‘regime change’. And who down-played water-boarding* as ‘aggressive interrogation’ and emphatically not torture.

I now want to like the man who had the balls to allow himself to be water-boarded. And who has the good grace to admit he was wrong and that the practice is in fact torture.

But instead I am stuck with the fact that he is supposedly number 5 in the world’s ranking of intellectuals (whatever that means) and yet apparently needed to personally experience torture in order to recognise it. Or more importantly, still can’t extrapolate from the experience that possibly the rest of the allies claims to be the good guys in the Middle East are also bullshit.

• Note: this is not a sport allied to snow-boarding it is, and always has been, a newspeak term to describe the horrific practice of TORTURE by controlled drowning.

Progress ?

Back from a few days looking after my parents. They’re in their 80’s now and recently old age seems to have suddenly caught up with them. Mum is pretty much confined to a wheel chair and Dad, who looks after her, had to have a cataract operation which took him out of commission for a few days - so I had to step in to the role of carer.

On the upside I got to spend more time with them than I had for years and we got on well. On the downside there’s no getting away from the fact that it is humiliating for them and embarrassing for me to have reached the stage when a parent is being looked after by their offspring.

Whilst I’m with them the TV is full of the 60th birthday of the National Health Service. My Dad in particular regards the '45 Labour Government as this country’s finest hour and the NHS as the jewel in the crown with Nye Bevan as the hero of his generation.

He’s guilty and ashamed to have gone private to have his cataract operation - but he just can’t afford to wait the time required by the health service. And meanwhile my Mum is still waiting to get an appointment for the pain management clinic…

This is where the Old / New Labour divide really makes itself felt:

My parents are long standing Labour members, ex-local councillors – their idea of 'socialism' means trying to make things fairer and better. For most of their lifetimes this seemed to be pretty much the direction that things were moving. They grew up in wartime and the achievements of the 45 Labour government seemed like the logical conclusion to the ‘People’s War’ - you could call it progress.

Instead as they are getting older it now seems that these achievements are being unpicked and that the clock is being turned back. We spoke about this - they felt that they should apologise to future generations for ever allowing themselves to be hood-winked into going along with the Blair project. And letting New Labour un-do everything that their generation had built. At this point I should have had something reassuring to say to them - but I came up empty.

Sloane-central

F.Scott Fitzgerald was in awe of the rich. When he told his friend Earnest Hemmingway ‘the rich are not like you and I’ Hemmingway's response was a bit less deferential; ‘no – they have more money’.

I took a bus ride down the Kings Road this afternoon, primarily to visit Warrs Harley Davidson, but it was also an opportunity to observe the rich in their natural habitat.

At Sloane Square a couple of bright young things got on and surrounded me as I sat in the rear corner seat. Very blonde, ridiculously tall, painfully thin and wearing strappy dresses and huge sunglasses on their heads. They were models on their way to a casting. One of them had eaten a Cornish Pasty yesterday and was worried that it would give her spots. The other one had moved to London without any clothes because she had previously lived on a farm and so had nothing suitable to wear. Her boyfriend had brought all her current clothes. He loved doing so. He was on his gap year. I know all this, along with the rest of the bus, because they spoke, to each other and on their mobile phones. Loudly. They spoke with the accents of the very posh - clipped and slurred at the same time. Almost South African.

They got off and were replaced with an older woman. Elegantly dressed but also wearing huge sunglasses, and clutching a small dog. I think it was a dog but it could have been a ferret although that seems unlikely. She was not talkative but looked at me with an undisguised distaste that couldn’t have been greater if my space had been occupied by a steaming shit from her dog-like creature.

Then she got off and was replaced with a yummy-mummy and her infant brood. She was a ten years older version of the models. Wearing Birkenstocks and pushing some sort of all terrain pushchair. Her tossled haired brats also spoke loudly and with a lack of inhibition. They were asking which house they were going to at the weekend. They thought they spotted their previous au-pair walking along the pavement. Mummy pointed out that she had had to go back to Italy. Mummy explained about Italy – it was were they had gone all skiing last year.

At this point I had to get off and can’t report any more. But I’d heard enough. Fitzgerald was right. The rich are not like you and I.

And vice-versa. Thank fuck for that.

Christianity & gay rights

I’m watching with relish as the angst-ridden Church Of England ties itself into knots over the latest gay marriage of clergy-crisis, possibly as a prelude to imploding altogether.

Instinctively I feel some sort of empathy with the liberals: Equal rights for women, tolerance for homosexuality etc – surely these things are only fair and rational ? Well yes of course they are – the only problem is that Christianity isn’t.

So actually the conservative bigots who are getting so worked up over Rowan Williams toleration of gay clergy are, sadly, in the right. At least on the basis of scripture it’s pretty clear that the Christian God regards homosexuality as an abomination - as He also does eating shell-fish, cutting your beard, tattoos, disabled people, mixing linen and woollens, menstruation - and that’s just for starters. But it’s not all negative and judgmental though – He's pretty tolerant of incest, slavery, genocide.

(Admittedly my evidence is based on nothing more than some random googling of bible quotes but then again that methodology is at least as scientific as most courses in theology).

Which means that if you a liberal Protestant who believes that scripture is divine revelation (including all the obviously mental and/or evil bits) - you have a problem. Likewise if you are a liberal Muslim or liberal Jew.

You just can’t have your cake and eat it: You’re either a well adjusted and rational being with compassion and tolerance for your fellow humans. Or you’re a follower of a primitive and barbaric belief system(s) adopted in specific historical circumstances two thousand years ago by a particular group of desert dwellers.

Good news for liberal Catholics though. Your not encumbered by a belief system that relies only divine scripture – you’ve got the teachings of the One Holy Apostolic Church to reveal the truth as well. (Of course this may stand on their head things that have been held to be immutable for centuries - but hey God’s only just decided that lowly mortals can now be trusted with the real truth. And it turns out quite a lot of priests were gay all along - whoops don't even go there).

I’m sure that a lot of decent tolerant believers will be offended by all this. Tough – you can’t have it both ways.

Solstice time

Forget Christmas and Easter and all that new fangled Christian bollocks. Take a moment to reflect on that most universal and fundamental of all festivals – the Summer Solstice.

There’s a reason that we now talk about Seasonally Affected Disorder – take a walk around any modern city and see how it’s always a better place to be in the Summer. The feel of the sun on your skin is life affirming - no wonder it’s the basis of just about every religion (whether they acknowledge it or not)– why else talk about ‘the light of the world’ ?

Just for a short interlude it seems appropriate to put aside our modern rationalist-atheist selves and respect the ancient rites of our ancestors. Maybe sacrifice at dawn isn’t acceptable these days - so we’ll just settle for the more recent traditions of Hawkwind, cider and skunk.

The unacceptable face of 'value'

Purveyors of ultra-cheap fashion-tat to the masses - Primark - have sacked three suppliers in India after they were exposed as employing child labour.

Given that one of the companies has been working for Primark for over twelve years you’ve got to question how much of a surprise this really was.

Not long ago I wrote about being fucked-over at work by one of our big corporate clients. To the extent that we are now in the process of lying people off here. When I told the terribly polite people at the big corporate client that this is what we were doing, there was a look of horror on their faces: In their world when it’s time to 'let people go', they usually just pick up the phone to get someone from HR to do the distasteful task. But in small businesses we get to look someone in the eye and say ‘I’m really sorry but you’re fucked’.

The people at the big corporate client are perfectly nice and well-meaning, they may well be liberal too for all I know. But they are in denial. This enables them to dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions. And that really pisses me off: I’m not too proud of some of the stuff I have to do these days – like making people redundant – but at least I’m honest about it to them and myself.

A lack of honesty and a cowardice in taking responsibility for your actions is the worst sort of Pontius Pilate-ism that makes possible all kinds of bigger horrors.

If you were in Germany in the 30s it might be not bothering to ask why all the Jewish shops and businesses were disappearing. Nowadays it manifests itself as not worrying where your T-Shirt for under a £1 comes from.

The natural order

For a moment I was all confused:

When David Davis resigned his seat to force a by-election on the issue of opposition to the 42-Day detention proposal I was momentarily placed in the very troubling position of having a passing feeling of respect for a swarmy Tory git taking a principled stand.

Then my other half pointed out that he was actually in one of the safest Tory seats in the country and that a chimp wearing a blue rosette would always be elected there regardless of its support for civil liberties or conversely for restoring capital punishment.

Suddenly his gesture sounded reassuringly more like simple old fashioned opportunism: A really principled stand at some risk to his career would have meant standing against Ruth Kelly at the next general election.

Then I heard that arch-arsehole, former Sun-editor and darling of bigots everywhere Kelvin McKenzie is considering standing against Davis and in defence of 42-Day detention. With the backing of his old boss Rupert Murdoch he is going to strike a blow against the perceived threat to western –values.

So the natural order has been restored - and I can go back again to hating all Tories whether they’re civil libertarians or authoritarian xenophobes.

How To Get Ahead

Ten top tips for success in Modern Britain:

It isn’t about your talent it’s about desire – you must want it 1000% (at least).

It doesn’t matter if you lie to get a job or make a deal. It shows 'desire'.

This job must be more important to you than anything else. Your family. Your happiness. Their happiness. Saving the planet. Feeding the world.

Business is about sales. Don’t worry about making stuff. Sell something. Anything

Management is about sales. Just get other people to sell.

Leadership means repeating whatever your boss tells you until everyone else stops arguing.

Education is just wank - what matters is the ‘real world’

If you believe it enough you are a winner. You truly will be.

Professionalism means wearing a suit at all times. Expresss your individuality with some hair gel and an open-necked shirt.

Aspirational is good. As long as it’s aspiring to a Lexus or a new-build home in the shires. Not aspiring to an understanding of contemporary literature.

Short memories

Last Sunday I drove with the family through Runnymede. Typically, because I am a self-confessed history bore, I took the opportunity to tell my kids about Magna Carta and its importance .

Ironic with the news this week that the judicial and security establishment is queuing up to tell the government that they don’t want the 42 day detention of terrorist suspects.

Of course it shows precious little confidence in the security services that they supposedly need six weeks before they can gather enough evidence, not to convict, but to merely bring charges against suspects.

It also shows little knowledge of recent history to forget that the single thing that did most to propel ordinary Catholics into the arms of the IRA was detention without trial.

Or from our more distant past, the lesson that freedom from arbitary detention or arbitary government was gained by long and bloody struggle. And lost not overnight but in subtle increments.

But hey - the economy’s going down the tubes, we’re bogged down in un-winnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - New Labour needs to demonstrate that they’re ‘tough’ on terrorism. So bollocks to Magna Carta.

Maybe it's time to hold Brown hostage and make him sign a Bill Of Rights. There's a precedent.

Grown Ups

Sometimes, in fact particularly at the moment when the shit I currently have to shovel at work reminds me that I am supposed to be an authority figure, I hanker after the days of being young and irresponsible.

On Friday night I got the chance. I went along for the first leg of an old friend’s marathon stag weekend. We met up in Camden where I found that the rest of the party must have had a good four hours head start in the drinking stakes. The old friend is about the same age as me but most of his mates seemed to be at least ten years younger. That should have been a sign.

They were bouncing around like a bunch of very pissed Labrador puppies and being generally fucking obnoxious. You can forgive pissed people quite a lot, but I’ve always had an overly developed sense of personal space and it was as much as I could do not to kill the mood by giving one of them a much deserved-slap.

The night deteriorated from there. We moved on to another bar with a supposed cult status and a back room which serves as a music venue. The band were a generic punk-metal effort – although they looked a bit old to be convincing in this genre. Sadly they reminded me of the bands who would sometimes played the school gym at lunchtimes, only rather less talented, and this lot didn't look like they would know Silver Machine.

Avoiding the moshing twats I saw the old friend slumped unconscious in the corner and decided that it was time to make my excuses and leave. In the company of the only other old friend present we retreated to a nearby over-priced designer curry house.

Sitting in the minimalist zen décor (whatever happened to flock wallpaper?), over the ludicrous over-sized square plates we agreed that maybe being grown up wasn’t quite so bad after all.

Southern Chopper

Despite being a Brit, I’ve always had a bit of a fascination for the American Civil War. Without a doubt my true sympathies are will the radical abolitionists but there’s something undeniably romantic about the lost cause of the rebels. (Although I doubt very much there was any romance involved if you happened to be black and living south of the Mason-Dixon line in those days).

But the South has always had the coolest music, the best food, and I’m a sucker for pick up trucks and shotguns ….

For several years I’ve been addicted to the ‘reality’ bike shows that are repeated endlessly on cable tv. I’ve long suffered the ridiculous antics of the Teutul family in upstate New York – the formula: build a hideous over-the-top theme bike; Paul Snr and Paul Jnr exchange tantrums; Mickey goofs around; the bike gets built just in time; everyone agrees that its totally awesome and sick.

I’ve only just recently discovered its lesser known Confederate cousin – Southern Chopper. In their workshop in Lynchburg Virginia nothing seems to be a problem, everyone moves and speaks slowly and every technical hitch and delay is greeted with a barrage of cackling and chortling.

It’s seems to be true that good ‘ole boys have more fun.

Broooooce

I love the Bruce Springsteen of Nebraska and The Ghost Of Tom Joad. And I’d love to see him play a bar or club. But that’s not likely to happen. So I had to settle for seeing him at the Emirates Stadium on Friday.

Despite the best efforts of Islington council and not-in-my-backyard local residents to fuck with the sound system, the muffled sound although irritating did not diminish the gig. What’s the matter with these miserable bastards ? – If I lived next door to the Emirates I’d ask them to turn it up to 11.

I don’t think there is any other performer – let alone a 58 year old one - who could work an audience for three solid hours as Bruce does. And so obviously enjoy ever minute of it.

Of course here’s the contradiction about Bruce – in many ways he is the consummate stadium performer, but in another sense, in his lyrics and in the passion shared with the crowd, he is the anti-star, an everyman.

A fantastic evening marred only by the heavy handedness of the fuck-wit boys in blue who decided that because the gig was in a football stadium, we should be treated like a football crowd after the concert. Thanks to being corralled around North London by the police, our twenty minute journey home became an hour and a half.

Swimming with sharks

It’s only business. And bizarre though it may seem to me, I am supposed to be a business man.

But I can’t see it that way. Not when a large corporate client, that we have regularly turned ourselves inside-out for over the past twelve years, suddenly sacks us out of the blue.

Without criticising our performance in any way, but because they are ‘rationalising their supplier base’ in favour of a bigger company. And without giving us the opportunity to put in a counter proposal.

We are expected to take the news stoically and bow to the compelling argument of the client's decision. Apparently that's called 'professionalism'.

But I just can’t help but take it personally. Very personally. As a betrayal of goodwill. As will the dozen or so guys here that now face redundancy, none of who can understand how the fuck it is possible that they have sweated their bollocks off over the years only to end up like this.

Intellectually I know that capitalism is a jungle and that when you work with big business the only rules that apply are those of the markets. But emotionally I'm a simple soul - and I can't shake of the idea that if you graft and produce good work you'll have success.

Most of the time it's actually not a bad management philosophy. But when something like this happens I realise that I'm not really a business man at all and I'm out of depth with the corporate sharks.

Euro-shit

Back to work after an extended bank holiday (Whitsun ?).

Over the weekend we were subjected to the full horror of the Eurovision Song contest. Fucking Hell.

It's a celebration of a genre of music that I'm pretty sure doesn't actually even exist outside of the annual contest. And a chance to reenact the kind of national alliances that we haven't seen in real life since before the First World War.

Except, unlike in 1914, this time it's very clear that the UK doesn't have any allies in Continental Europe. Only the Republic of Ireland and sometimes Malta.

Why this appalling shit continues so long after its sell by date puzzles me.

The only explanation I can come up with is that it's secretly funded and organised by the CIA as a subliminal attempt to turn us in the UK away from any kind of pan-Europeanism and towards the Atlantic alliance.

Schools and the military

Stopping short of suggesting the return of National Service, the government is promoting cadet units in schools as the answer to the problems of Britain's youth. Unlikely though it now seems, I was once, between the ages of 13 and 15 a corporal in the Air Training Corps. This was before I before discovered Heavy Metal, long hair, teenage rebellion and CND.

I had quite a lot of fun. I learnt about aircraft, radio, field-craft and how to shoot and strip down a rifle. I also learnt how to march, polish boots and crisply iron a shirt. There just wasn't any comparison with Sea Scouts, which I had been in for about six months - we had proper (free) equipment and when it came to anything dangerous, our instructors were professionals not well intentioned amateurs.

But there was also no getting round the fact that it was all a glorified recruitment exercise for the RAF. The ATC’s origins were in the second world war when the intention was to shave some time off the basic training of school boy recruits. And it's still really all about recruitment today; unsurprisingly given the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the services face a manpower problem.

Of course it’s also argued that experience in the cadets promotes ‘self-discipline’ and ‘values’ amongst young people. To a certain extent it does. But so does being in the Scouts, being a member of a sports team, or pretty much any other activity outside school that isn’t criminal and doesn’t involve sitting in front of a TV or games console.

So why the emphasis on uniforms and the military stuff ? Significantly the government’s proposals focuses on the Combined Cadet Force, the tri-service organisation that is based on schools – and until now predominately independent schools. Not the Army Cadets, Sea Cadets or ATC which are organised in local units and who, as far as I can remember, regarded the school-based CCF as a bit crap and poncey and altogether too school-like.

The CCF actually fits very well with an independent school's ethos. Attendance can be made compulsory, misbehaviour in class can be punished with extra duties in the evening with ‘the corps’, and there are ready-made officers amongst the teachers. Stuff that just doesn't really belong or work in a modern state school.

Apart from the sly recruiting of young people to fight in questionable wars, I regard this particular linking of cadets with schools schools as very suspect. It represents a distinct militarization of education. No doubt some would see this as a good thing, but it scares the hell out of me.

Ink & 'spirituality' (really)

My latest tattoo installment on Saturday: This time the stylised head of a beast, described variously as horse, dog, lion or otter, taken from a piece of 7th century Pictish silver found at Norrie Law in Fife.

Why? Well here’s one answer.

As an atheist I have absolutely no idea what religious people mean when they talk about ‘spirituality’. Nor I suspect do they. I could take the obvious cheap shot and say that their spirituality is nothing more than a kind of narcotic-like experience induced by singing, fasting, incense, being silent etc. Or any other stimuli depending on your particular brand of mumbo-jumbo on offer. If I were being more charitable I might say that spirituality is a sense of being part of something bigger or outside of yourself. Although passionate football fans could probably make the same claim.

Some atheists manage to take a kind of pseudo-spirituality from cosmology. For them contemplating the sheer scope of the universe puts the individual in perspective. Personally, to quote the classic line from Spinal Tap, for me that’s ‘a bit too much fucking perspective’.

Instead, I’ll settle for archaeology and tattoos to get my ‘spirituality’: I find the idea of wearing something on my arm that an ancestor carved 1,400 years ago gives me the same kick that others would get staring down a telescope at the stars. A simultaneous sense of connection and my place in the scheme of things.

Oh yeah and it looks the bollocks too. (Well I think so).

1968 & all that

Went to a meeting last night to mark the anniversary of the 1968 movement in France.

I’d like to say that it re-ignited the spirit of ’68 in a new generation, but to be honest the meeting was full of the usual suspects that come to these things. Despite a rousing singing of the Internationale at the end, I have to say that whilst ’68 may have been the defining moment for a generation of the left, I fear that moment has now passed.

Certainly in this country much of the then student left have reverted to the safe middle class lives from whence they came. One particular sub-species, especially prevalent in academic circles, is the ‘New Left intellectual’ – for career enhancing purposes they had to define themselves as Marxist in the 70’s when it was fashionable. Now they can’t shake it off but having revised their revisionism so often, they have fully disappeared up their own arses. And are barely socialist any more let alone Marxist.

But bucking this trend was the main speaker – a dowdy little Frenchwoman who spoke through a translator. Still an activist today, in ’68 she had been in the thick of it. She described carrying paving stones in her shopping bags, roof top battles with the ‘flics’ and organising discussion groups at the local Renault factory. Today, if you passed her in the street she could pass as a member of the Women’s Institute (if there is such a thing in France). I found that strangely moving.

When the abused becomes the abuser ..

Sixty years ago the sinister euphemism of ‘ethnic cleansing’ wasn’t known to the world.

But today it is exactly how we would have described the bulldozing in 1948 of Palestinian villages and the displacement of 700,000 refugees to secure Israeli settlement of the region. And many more have been driven from their homes since then.

It’s a cliché that nationalism when suppressed is romantic, whilst nationalism in power is obscene. But never was it more poignantly true than when it comes to the history of Israel-Palestine

As far as Palestinians are concerned, Zionism crossed that line with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Maybe liberal Israelis could point to 1967 and the Six Day War as the defining moment when Zionism lost it’s innocence.

As a neutral observer, it didn’t come home to me until I saw on the news in 1982 the horror of Israeli forces facilitating and colluding with Lebanese Fascist militias in the massacres of Palestinians at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps.

Today Bush is visiting the Kniset to cheer-lead Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations, describing the USA and Israel as ‘the ardent defenders of liberty’ in the Middle East. Meanwhile Palestinians describe the 15th May simply as al-Naka or ‘The Catastrophe’.

To many of us who watch in safety it is perhaps the most depressing injustice of our generation; and in a sense the fate of the Palestinian people has become a symbol of all injustice. How ironic that the fate of the Jewish people was the same symbol for a previous generation.

SATs and stats.

This week my youngest daughter, in her final year at primary school, is doing her SATs. A whole week (more or less)of tests is inevitably stressful – inevitably she thinks it’s a big deal because for most of this school year they have been preparing for them and little else.

Except it isn’t - we know from experience with my eldest daughter that the secondary school will test the kids all over again. But it is a very big deal for the school because the performance of the pupils will be a major factor in how the school is rated. So we have a system which replicates the stress of the old 11+ system without even the carrot of getting a place at a grammar school.

Last week I went to parents’ evening at my eldest daughter’s secondary school. I was half way through a meeting with one of the teachers talking about ‘learning outcomes’ and projecting levels of attainment for the end of the year, before I realised that we were talking about Cookery for fucks sake !

And this is a good school – in fact it’s officially ‘outstanding’; a rare thing, an inner city comprehensive with all the usual
problems that actually out performs the national averages.

But I’m suspicious what all these rankings mean.

They seem very much like the tick-box collecting that we have to do at work to win contracts these days – and I know that they have sod all to do with quality in any meaningful sense. On the contrary they make a fetish of the mediocre.

There are a small number of inspirational teachers; the ones that you remember for the rest of your life, whose lessons often spin off at all sorts of tangents as the kids' interests take them. That is genuine education. I can’t imagine that all those averages and targets leave very much room for them these days.

Double standards

The level of class deference in this country never ceases to amaze me.

When a nutter starts shooting at his neighbours through their windows and is subsequently killed in a drunken gun battle with the police just off the Kings Road in Chelsea, it is reported as a tragic end to a glittering career.

As of course it is when any 32 year old suffering from substance-abuse and other emotional problems flips and ends up dead.

But Mark Saunders wasn't just anybody: He was a barrister tipped to become a QC. A graduate of Corpus Christi College Oxford and a part-time soldier in the poshest regiment in the territorial army, the Honourable Artillery Company. He lived in one of London's most fashionable and exclusive areas. And apparently he also had a drink problem and kept a shotgun at home.

Now imagine just for a moment that the shooting had happened in Brixton or Tottenham. And that Marks Saunders was a black man on crack cocaine, and a graduate of North London Polytechnic who worked in IT.

The papers would be talking about how gun crime and drugs were a blight on a community with a growing culture of violence. No doubt social services, political correctness and rap music would be held responsible.

Maybe the Metropolitan Police will now be setting up a special squad to tackle 'toff-on-toff' crime as a counterpart to Operation Trident. But I doubt it.

Austria needs a make-over ?

Austria’s having a bit of a bad press at the moment.

Obviously the paedophile incest in the cellar horror was never going to be good for the tourist trade. The Austrian government is trying to re-establish the country’s good name – you can just imagine the PR brief ‘emphasise the Sound Of Music and Mozart thing but play down the whole Hitler and child molesters angle’.

In this country the red-tops are carrying pictures of the small town of the Amstetten at the time of the anschluss. Unsurprisingly pictures from the time have surfaced of townspeople and members of Fritzl’s family giving Nazi salutes. The implication is something along the lines of 'see they’re all Nazis really with a genetic disposition to do evil'.

Naturally any sane person regards this kind of inherited collective guilt as absolute bollocks. Otherwise we’d be blaming all the serial killers in the USA on that country’s shameful near-genocide of its indigenous peoples and an inherited predisposition to callous violence. Truth is, no nation is any more predisposed to these horrors than any other. But when small town values predominate it doesn’t half help in keeping every thing hushed up.

And here is the serious and valid point: Culturally Austria is an affluent and conservative country with a strong Catholic influence. Attitudes that Hemmingway, in a different context, called ‘wide lawns and narrow minds’.

The sort of place we are told where neighbours address each other by their surnames and respect each others’ privacy. Where the word of the ‘head of the family’ is respected when he is asked where his children have gone. Not the sort of place where liberal nosy-parker do-gooders from social services stick their noses in.

In fact it sounds suspiciously like the Conservative vision of ‘family values’. Come to think of it - a bit like our own island of Jersey.

Almost summer music

A ride on an (almost) Summer’s evening over to the Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday. Although it’ll always be the Hammersmith Odeon to me – the venue in which I saw my first every gig – Thin Lizzy in 1978 or thereabouts.

A very different night on Saturday though; to see the Buena Vista Social Club. With 14 band members on stage I would guess that the average age was well over 70. The bass player literally had to be led off at the end – he’d just about shuffled away when the rest of the band came back for the encore.

It may be a terrible cliché to say so, but the old boys visibly seemed to come to life as they played. In true Anglo-Saxon manner I tend to show my approval at concerts by sitting with my arms folded and with the odd nod of the head. After a couple of numbers even I found a few involuntary dance-like moves overtaking me.

It hadn’t been my idea to get the tickets – my other half is big on world music – and I’ve got an inkling towards jazz - so we kind of meet in the middle when it comes to Cuban music. But I have to say that this was one of the best gigs of any sort that I can remember for a long time. And it proved that cool is definitely not age-related.

Nooooo !

I love London. Dirty and impoverished though it may be (at least the bit where I live is) - I don't think anywhere else has the same diversity, history and vibrancy.

SO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

How did this city get a racist, elitist, over-privilidged Tory buffon as its mayor?

I'm still pondering it - so far I can think of three things:

Like The Sun in 1992 - it was The Evening Standard 'wot won it' - the voice of Middle England inside the capital has been running a vendetta against Ken since the 1980's and it has finally paid off.

The 10p tax fuck-up - the fiasco of a Labour government tinkering with the tax system to ease the burden on the middle classes by shifting it to the lowest paid. Whether it was a policy decision or whether someone hit the wrong button on their calculator it is unforgivable and try as he might Brown can't take it back.

Morons with short memories who didn't think of the horror of bringing the Tories back in. Make a protest vote against Ken by all means but the whole point of the transferable vote system is that in doing so, you don't have to cut your nose off to spite your face. Any Lib Dem, Green or Left List first preference voters who didn't transfer to Ken frankly need their heads examined.

Possibly there's a silver lining and people need to experience again an ascendent Tory party, particularly one run by Old Etonians, to re-discover what politics is all about and get radicalised. But I fear that it doesn't work like that and that the shameful turning point of the fascists winning their first seat in the London Assembly may be a taste of things to come ....