Yelstin's legacy.

The state funeral today of Boris Yeltsin. Inevitably, several myths are being propagated:

• He was the liberator of his people from Communism. Actually he was not some persecuted dissident under the Soviet regime, but an unquestioning career bureaucrat with an eye for the main chance when the regime started to fall apart under Gorbachev.

• He was the father of modern democratic Russia. Really he was an expert in political brinkmanship who used any means necessary to ensure popular support. When it suited his own purposes he was quite prepared in 1993 to (literally) turn the tanks on his own parliament.

• He was a strong charismatic leader in times of crisis. But his only consistent ideology was nationalism, he is on record as saying that democracry is alien to Russia. This is the same nationalism that took his country into a brutal war of repression in Chechnya.

• He saved the faltering economy. The Soviet system was falling apart under the crushing weight of bureaucracy, what has replaced it though is a bizarre quasi-medieval mess throughout Eastern Europe. Coca-Cola and McDonalds might now be in the shops but corruption is institutionalised and forms a new kind of bureaucracy, organised crime is ingrained into the economy and in some parts of the region warlords make up a de-facto alternative government.

• He was a lovable rogue with a human side . A euphimism. He was a chronic alcoholic given to buffonery unfit to have his finger on the button of one of the world's superpowers.

Why are these myths being propagated in the West?

Modern Russia by most standards would be considered a 'pariah state' - imagine if an Islamic country had assassinated one of their dissidents in London, had the same record on human rights as Russia does in Chechnya, or so brazenly displayed weapons of mass destruction.

The fact is the new order in the East gives the promise of a new lease of life for the older Western economies. Markets and resources denied to the West by the cold war are now open more or less for exploitation and development. There is a clear parallel with the scramble for empire at the end of the nineteenth century.

On the road again.

Thanks to the help of my local indie-Harley shop, my bike is back on the road again.

I don't think I could have taken much more of travelling on the tube. Maybe it's the weather getting warmer, or maybe I have an overly-heightened sense of personal space, but I am stunned at the sheer bloody rudeness of people on public transport. The last straw was being shoulder barged at the doors by some stuck-up, middle-aged secretarial bitch who appeared outraged when I asked '...what the fuck ? '. Amazing how 'office dress' bestows a misplaced air of superiority.

The nice people at the bike shop were embarrassed at the price for my repair. They had kept their own costs down, but it came down to the ridiculous cost of Harley parts. I am just stunned how Harley prices in Europe can be justified that are over double their equivalent in the US.

This is not just because of exchange rates. I'm convinced that this is a deliberate marketing ploy on the MoCo's part to position themselves as a luxury plaything over here, whilst they are 'blue collar transportation' in the US. Even worse, the huge industry in aftermarket parts frequently provides alternatives that are not just cheaper but actually often better.

Still, before anybody tells me that there are more practical forms of transport, motorcycling haven't been about practical transport since the 1960's. If I wanted practical I'd be riding a Honda C90 or a scooter. God forbid.

St George's Day.

St George's day - and the campaign to have a patron saint's day to match St Patrick's, David's and Andrew's. Because let's face it, if there is one thing that the world needs right now, it's a bit more nationalism.

The campaign ignores the difference between the nationalism of the 'celtic-fringe' nations, denied nationhood and that of one of the largest empires the world has seen. Which is why the flag of St George is associated with the Far Right in this country, whilst on the other hand, the daffodil is not an emblem of Welsh fascists.

Like most aspects of patriotism, the whole St George thing is based pretty much on ignorance. What little that is known of St George is that he was an officer in the army of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD who was martyred for his Christianity. He came from Cappadocia; and so depending on your point of view he was either Turkish or Greek. The whole dragon-slaying thing it goes without saying, is undocumented. Unsurprisingly he is big in Eastern Orthodox countries like Serbia, Georgia and Armenia.

As to why the cult of St George came to England at all - you have to look at the crusades. The idea of a warrior saint was particularly appropriate for that blood thirsty period, and was brought west by returning crusaders who got it from the Byzantines. Before then the patron saint of England had been either Edmund, martyred by the Vikings or Edward the Confessor, the saint-king. The trouble with both of these was that they were unmistakably Anglo-Saxon, and this was politically inconvenient for the new Anglo-Norman monarchs and aristocracy.

Since the reformation the Anglican church, oscillating between Anglo-Catholicism and Protestantism, has been a bit shaky on the status of saints. On the other hand the Catholic church is a bit more vigorous in its dealings. Which is why in 1893 Pope Leo ruled that George fell into the category of saints about whom we didn't have enough evidence and could simply be myths. He was demoted to the second division, and as far as Roman Catholics were concerned, St Peter was made the official patron saint of England.

So what are we left with ? - A Turkish bloke who isn't a proper saint and whose flag has become a rallying point for racists and fascists.

If we want a bank holiday in April, and I'm all for as many public holidays as possible, why not keep April 23rd as Shakespeare's birthday? The date is questionable and he may turn out to really have been Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon, but at least he represents something positive and lasting that England has contributed to the world. And I'd love to see all those red-faced chavs running around in Shakespeare t-shirts getting pissed up and quoting sonnets.

Looking mean doesn't really help.

News saturation about the Virgina Tech shootings.

Notice how in every report there appear to be dozens and dozens of cops lounging about in the background, supposedly 'securing the area' ? Just about every law enforcement agency is represented. Chewing gum, and wearing mirror shades they look well hard. But hasn't anyone pointed out to the SWAT teams that they are over 24hours too late ?

Sadly a small percentage of the cops now assembled could have been more fruitfully deployed on the day of the shootings, after the first wave and before the second two hours later. (As opposed to issuing an email warning to the students at 7:30 am to be cautious).

Trouble is this kind of misplaced machismo is at the root of the whole gun culture problem. (And dare I say militaristic foreign policy as well). Not that anyone is going to make themselves popular by raising any questions about this. In fact to date no US politician has even mentioned the words 'gun control'.

And lest we in the UK get too smug, we're not immune from such posturing here - remember the tanks patrolling the perimeter at Heathrow after 9/11 ? Presumably they were poised to pursue any terrorists boarding a plane with a box-cutter.

The trouble with posturing is that it leads you into situations that you can't back away from and that spiral out of control. And I speak from personal experience here; if we had the ready access here to guns that they have in the US, road rage could well have landed me dead or serving time.

Guns don't kill people, they just make it (too) easy

33 dead at Virginia Tech. The 19th killing spree at a US educational establishment in 19 years.Gun control in the US is back on the agenda.

I used to find something appealing about the notion of the right to bear arms. Like many aspects of the US constitution it implies a nation formed by the consent of free individuals. But this is not 1776 and we are not talking about a government of free-thinking frontier settlers but a complex modern society with all the issues that go with it.

As Michael More showed in 'Bowling For Columbine', it isn't just about access to the guns; look at Canada and Switzerland. But access to guns doesn't half help. And so does a deeply fucked up society in a continual state of paranoia. Paranoia of islamo-terrorists or of the dark skinned youths that live in the projects.

Guns of themselves don't kill people, but there is something peculiar about how they make killing possible. The Greeks despised the Persians because they fought with bows and arrows rather than hand-to-hand. They felt that this was unmanly as it required no courage to kill a an enemy who you ran no risk from yourself. Similarly, it's just too easy to kill someone with a device that can magically transform the bullied class nerd looking for payback into a killing machine.

Guns don't of themselves kill people, but they do provide one hell of a fatal outlet for otherwise suppressed anger.

Nazi chic.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I feel that rock music should represent some kind of counter-culture. That's probably what keeps me loyal to much ridiculed trance-metal pyschic-guerillas Hawkwind.

By now I should have become used to rock musicians espousing the views of Middle England, moaning about high taxation, rising immigration, doing benefits for the Tories and accepting knighthoods. But I do draw the line when they start singing the praises of Nazi Germany: this from Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music:

"My god, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves. "Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."

I know Roxy Music, the grandaddies of the New Romantics, were always about image as much as music, but for fuck's sake !

Ferry's agent had defended him saying some of his critics are unable to separate the aesthetic from the politics. So, what are we saying, the Holocaust was a bit out of order, but those Nazis did have some really fabulous uniforms ?

Ferry's son Ottis (?!?) also made a name for himself a few years ago when he stormed parliament to protest in defence of hunting. Maybe I'm missing some aesthetic nuance here, but I can't help feeling that the Ferry family are just a bunch of over-privileged arseholes.

Blair says it's a black thing.

Blair has been lecturing black community leaders on how they need to sort out a youth culture of violence that has led to some tragic and highly publicised fatal stabbings in London this month.

What the fuck ? Does he really think that the black community hasn't noticed these deaths ? Did he miss the demonstrations in London after the killings ?

Blair may like to think that he knows all about multi-cultural North London because he has a home in Islington. Truth is he is one postcode but a million miles away from the inner city part of North London where I live. In my area the large black community can hardly miss the yellow police incident borders that are a permanent fixture on our streets. Not so I imagine in Tony's Cannonbury Square.

Blair speaks as if gangsta-culture is the only voice heard in the the black community. If he took a bit more time to get to know what was happening on his door step, he would know that there is a very conservative part of Caribbean culture that promotes church and family values that would not be out of place in the US religious Right.

The fundamental problem is not race or culture, it is POVERTY.

ALL kids now experience a video-game culture of instant violence without consequences. White kids in Ali-G fashion aspire to the gangsta style. But none of this addresses the real question - a map of the most violent areas of Britain coincides with that of the poorest areas.

Perhaps the best example is (overwhelmingly white but poor) Glasgow - murder capital of Europe with what police have called an epidemic of youth stabbings.

Joys & woes of biking.

A bank holiday for me dominated by bikes.

Briefly interupted by some bible-bashers who knocked on my door to ask about Jesus's message for Easter. I told them that I was a pagan and my mesage was that we had it first and that the bloody Christians (with the help of those bastard Romans) had nicked OUR festival of Aeosta. (It's easier than telling them you're an atheist and then trying to reason with them).

Anyway, Good Friday to the Ace Cafe - there is a hog roast and some sort of promotional nonsense going on for the new 'Wild Hogs' film coming out this week. There is a large attendance from the weekend-badass mid-life crisis brigade that seem to be missing the point that the film is primarily taking the piss out of them. Still, its a sunny day with plenty of nice bikes to look at.(Just as footnote to this, I find it hilarious that the Hells Angels MC are suing Walt Disney for infringement of copyright in the authorised use of their logo in the film).

Saturday I turn up for an Easter Egg Run to a kids centre from the local indie Harley shop. I find that it was last week. Feeling a bit of a prat I sit around the shop for an hour drinking tea and bullshitting before riding round to the Ace again and doing the same there.

Easter Monday is the annual ride out to Southend. A glorious day of sunshine and thousands of bikes make the run, for a brief moment you think that the A127 is route 66 and the flatlands of Essex the plains of the Mid-West. Southend never fails to disappoint though - the British seaside at its very worst, a shrine to the god of Chav. I catch a couple of numbers from a rock-a-billy band , soak up some sun and then beat a hasty retreat home.

Then this morning I got the bike out to go to work and the drive belt snapped. Bollocks. And double-bollocks.

Hostages freed & hypocrisy

So the hostage crisis has been resolved and the sailors and marines are on their way back to Britain.

On a human basis the only appropriate response is a sigh of relief for the families of the young service people involved. And on a political basis, a sigh of relief that an escalation of the war in the Middle East has been averted. Or at least postponed for the moment. Looking at the papers today, nobody seems sure if this is a triumph of British softly-softly diplomacy or a triumph of Iranian PR. I don't really care, either way it is a retreat from a dangerous game of brinkmanship by two regimes that don't speak for me.

Curiously, much has been made by The Sun of the fact that the hostages were released not in their service uniforms but in ill-fitting suits. This hardly seems like inhumane and humiliating treatment. After all the Iranians could have used orange jump-suits and shackled and hooded the prisoners. Or kept them in lock-down for twenty-two hours a day. Or imprisoned them for five years without trial or charge. All these points are made (with rather more humour) by Terry Jones in The Guardian.

To get all biblical on this one: Before the West can get sanctimonious about the capture and treatment of the hostages it needs to take the splinter out of its own eye - the splinter labelled Guantanamo.

Iranian conspiracies.

• The second gunman on the grassy knoll
• The Apollo moon landings in a television studio
• Diana's car crash
• The planes and the twin towers
• Alien autopsies at Roswell
• The Illumentanti / Freemasons / Opus Dei
etc etc etc

The internet abounds with plots concocted by paranoid geeks who haven't seen natural daylight for years, but I' m not a fan of conspiracy theories.

I'm pretty sure that the powers-that-be often do sinister things that they would rather keep quiet. Our so called leaders and representatives are often corrupt. They also fuck up and do very stupid things that they then want to cover up. But I don't think that behind every news story there is a Dr Evil stroking a cat on a swivel chair chuckling at his devilish cunning.

The trouble with all this is that conspiracy theories actually make governments and rulers appear more powerful than they really are, and the rest of us mere pawns left to marvel at their abilities of deception. In fact the truth is at the same time both more simple and more complex.

Governments blunder around from incompetence to incompetence and then lie or 're-spin' the truth to make it look like it was planned all along. Of course they are capable of well thought out and sinister agendas, but they are usually able to carry these out quite openly by cleverly manipulating consensus.

Look at the road to the Gulf War. Through some deft sleight of hand we were 'persuaded' in increments that there was a link and logical causality between the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban, Sadam's regime and now Iran. And so some sort of consensus, certainly in the USA, was created that gave political legitimacy to what any sober analyst could see was a war for western control of the world's oil producing zone. No ninjas were required to assassinate anyone and no evidence was planted to 'prove' that Sadam had weapons of mass destruction. In fact when Hans Blix's UN inspection showed that he didn't, the concenus for war still survived.

I don't believe that the Royal Navy deliberately trespassed into Iranian territorial waters as part of a conspiracy to provoke war. Almost as strongly as I believe that the US and UK have no business being in the Middle East in the first place. In fact I believe that Blair (and Bush if he cares) probably don't have a clue what to do about the 15 hapless sailors and marines that have the misfortune to be caught up in this. The allies have created a political momentum that makes it difficult for them to back track on the road to war with Iran. But the fact remains that they have so underestimated the problems of occupying Iraq that militarily another war is now a venture too far.

Who are these people ?

The Advertising Standards Authority have ruled that the Australian Tourist Board's posters with the slogan; "Where the bloody hell are you ?" are offensive and must be taken down. Apparently there have been a large number of complaints.

What a load of bollocks.

Swearing can be a sign of a lack of eloquence or education. In fact in everyday speech it often is, I have worked with people who swear so much that it is actually impossible to follow their meaning. But swearing can also be funny, dramatic and add colour to the language. That's probably why it is used so much in comedy.

And it is as old as the hills. There seem to be two sorts of swearing - religious and sexual. In the west the religious kind obviously comes out of the Christian tradition hence 'bloody hell' or even the now universally accepted 'damn'. The sexual kind such as the ubiquitous 'fuck' and 'bollocks' represent some of the oldest words in the English language and have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English.

Have a look at Chaucer or Shakespeare - there is plenty of swearing, and it forms a vital part of the language of these texts. Unless of course you read the versions of the nineteenth century puritanical prig Thomas Bowdler who made it his mission to publish versions of Shakespeare with all the dirty bits taken out for the benefit of schoolchildren. Nowadays he is regarded as a sanctimonious idiot, and rightly so, but I'm sure he would have been one of the many who have apparently complained to the ASA about the Aussie ad.

Why this obsession with language ? The argument is used that it is to protect children. I don't see this - context is everything and so kids work out very early on that how they behave in the playground is not necessarily how they behave when they have tea with granny. Just as adults work out that language appropriate in the pub may not go down so well at a business meeting.

There are wars going on in this world, people being tortured, children dying in poverty - what small-minded, up-tight morons feel moved to put pen to paper and complain to the ASA about an ad that says 'bloody hell'?

You can't rebrand a biggoted wanker.

Plenty of photo ops yesterday - 'Dr' Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting side-by-side, to symbolise the power sharing agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP.

Only the most blinded sectarian would not breathe a sigh of relief that this will give some respite for the long suffering people of Northern Ireland. However fragile peace may be it is preferable to the spiral of sectarian killings.

BUT Paisley as First Minister of the new devolved government ? Let's get real - the man is a hate-filled bigotted arsehole not fit for public office.

There's a lot of talk about 'Islamo-phobia' being the equivalent of racism, how then is his 'Catholic-phobia' not the same ? Here's some choice quotes from the man who purchased his quack-doctorate of divinity by post from an evangelical 'college' in the Deep South:

• On why Catholics in Northern Ireland face worse social problems then their Protestant counterparts in terms of employment and housing:"they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin".

• On the Pope's visit to Ireland: "I denounce you. Anti-Christ"

• On justifying sectarian attacks on Catholics by Protestant paramilitaries: "Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners".

• On a Jewish member of the Official Ulster Unionist Party (Harold Smith): "The Unionist party are boasting he is a Jew. As a Jew, he rejects our Lord Jesus Christ, the New Testament, Protestant principles, the Glorious Reformation and the sanctity of the Lord's day. The Protestant throne and the Protestant constitution are nothing to him."

• And finally my personal favourite, on why Paisley is a certifiable lunatic, comic if he were not so dangerous: "Line dancing is as sinful as any other type of dancing, with its sexual gestures and touching. It is an incitement to lust".

Bunking off in the name of art.

One of the nicer things about working in the West End is being able to sneak out at lunchtime and go to museums and galleries.

I did this yesterday and spent half an hour in the National Gallery - just about the ideal time I think for someone like me who makes no claim to any particular artistic inclinations. (But as the cliche runs I think I know what I like).

There was an exhibition of Leon Kossoff - an artist and printmaker who makes drawings and prints of pictures hanging in the National Gallery.

He's been going there since he was a kid in the thirties - walking there from his home in the East End. He literally sits down in front of the pictures and either draws or engraves a plate on the spot.

His style has evolved over the years, but to my untutored eyes it looks like a kind of impressionism. In several cases I prefer the result to that of the original.

But that's not really the point - I really like the idea of the process - it seems to be a great illustration of what public galleries are for, and how art can be accessible.

Dawkins v God (Dawkins wins)

I've ranted enough about religion on this blog, so I am not going to add any comments to these links from YouTube:

• Richard Dawkins' lecture in the USA on 'The God Delusion'

• The question and answer session afterwards.
Just bear in mind that Liberty University is an evangelical Christian institution that will not teach evolution.

Enjoy...

PS: By way of balance I feel it only fair to include a view from the other side; this well-reasoned quote is taken from the comments section of the YouTube site:

"This man is so dumb, I wonder how he got to be that old. If he took the time to read the bible it would be obvious to him that it's all true. Science hasn't taught us anything, yet God teaches us everything. At least I take comfort in the fact that this guy will burn eternally in hell."
* I have corrected the spelling and grammar in this quote - it seems unfair to ridicule the hard-of-thinking more than necessary.

McBollocks

Every year the Oxford English Dictionary adds a few colloquialisms that have become common currency. In recent years they have added 'McJob' , defined as:

an "unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector".

In response McDonalds is now lobbying to have the word removed. Apparently it finds it inappropriate and offensive.

This from just about the most litigious company in the world. The same company that started a libel action against two unemployed anarchists from North London who produced a home-made leaflet about the company.

Trouble is their PR advice was not too good, the trial lasted for a record two and a half years and a string of expert witnesses confirmed that the anarchists' claims about McDonalds' damage to the environment, the ill-treatment of their staff and the general crappiness of their products were all well founded.

This time McDonalds are hitting back with a campaign about the joys of working under the golden arches. They speak of (and you couldn't really make this up) "McOpportunities" and "McFlexi-time".

And they say that the USA is a land without irony.

The Independent isn't inhaling anymore.

Ten years ago in a surprising and brave move for a national newspaper, The Independent called for the legalisation of cannabis. The then-editor Rosie Boycott was prominent in a campaign that led to it's legal re-classification from a class B to a class C drug. This Sunday the front page of The Independent (now under another editor) has renounced its former position.

The reason ? Apparently because new strains of (sometimes GM modified) skunk are much more powerful and there is evidence linking them with paranoia and depression.

This shows some typically confused thinking in the 'drugs' debate.

There is a range of quality in the varieties of cannabis and the subtleties of their effects. But then again there are alco-pops and there are fine wines. The fact that WKD is drunk by anti-social binge drinkers whose only agenda is to get pissed as quickly and cheaply as possible, has not led to demands that Chateauneuf de Pape should be banned. Maybe we'll see an angst-ridden middle class campaigning for GM-free weed or Prince Charles setting up a Duchy Original brand.

More seriously though - the Independent's argument makes the classic mistake or confusing the consequences of drug abuse with issues of legality.

There is no doubt in my own mind that people who abuse drugs are a pain in the arse to be around. Likely lads whose every Friday night is given over to necking pint after pint of Stella. Obnoxious city-boys and media-types snorting coke in the illusion that they need any artificial help to be more confident, extrovert and self-obsessed than they already are. Comatose stoners whose idea of a good evening is staring at the teletubbies, collapsing into uncontrollable giggles and eating all your biscuits.

But why the desire to make the use of what we don't like, or don't approve of, illegal ?

By all means let's control, and possibly in rare circumstances prohibit the import and sale of these substances that we believe to be socially harmful (as we do tobacco and alcohol). But to have laws against their possession is something altogether different.

On a theoretical level it is a form of puritanism that uses the state as moral arbiter. On a practical level it has the consequence of criminalising sections of society that are then led into a spiral of petty and not so-petty crime with consequences for all of us.

I find the Independent's back-tracking very sad. It is scarcely feasible that anyone these days under the age of 55 hasn't encountered illegal drugs (I'm ignoring the legal ones). And if they haven't, they must have led such a sheltered life that they shouldn't have a say in public policy. But still few public figures are prepared to talk honestly and sensibly about this and instead hide behind moral platitudes and knee-jerk reactions.

What did your Daddy do ?

There's some fuss today about the idea that school leavers should indicate on their application forms whether or not their parents went to university.

This is doubtless a well-intentioned attempt to enable positive discrimination for kids who don't have the advantage of coming from an 'educated' background. And as such I don't have a problem with that.

When I applied for Oxbridge (almost 20 years + ago) there were a couple of questions asking about parents' occupations and what newspapers were read at home. This was little more than a clumsy way of asking 'what class are you from?' At that time I was not at all sure that this was well-intentioned and in fact suspect that it was a mechanism for filtering out 'oiks' like me.

Trouble is that these days although it sadly remains true that working class kids are a lot less likely than middle class kids to progress into higher education, on the other hand higher education now no longer makes you middle class.

In part this is because of the decline of so many skilled working class jobs. I know this from personal experience - in the print industry craftsmen with four or even seven year apprenticeships were once considered to be the top of the pecking order; now a common route into the industry is as a graphic design / media studies graduate.

But also my own family background demonstrates that class and education do not necessarily have an automatic correlation.

My parents could both be considered as coming from lower middle / upper working class backgrounds and both came to higher education through rather indirect routes in their mid-twenties. Dad went into the print industry from school, then went to university, then back to the print industry. Mum went to teacher training college having left school at 16 and doing some fairly odd jobs including working in an admiralty laboratory. Now I too work in the print industry, having also gained a degree in an academic discipline of no relevance to my job.

The result is that my family believe very much in education for its own sake rather than as a means to 'getting on'. Although perhaps not usual, such an idea is not uncommon, particularly in the labour movement. The great socialist educationalist John Maclean spoke about wanting to 'rise with his class not above it'.

So yes by all means let's encourage more working class kids to continue education. But rather than spurious questions about family and positive discrimination, how about the simple expedient of abolishing fees and restoring the grant on the basis that education to the limit of one's abilities is a right for life and not a privilege ? Until then class and education will always be intertwined.

Marx Anniversary

Today in 1883, Karl Marx died.

His friend Engels said simply and unsentimentally 'the greatest living thinker has ceased to think'.

Marx is not always easy to read and nowadays some of his ideas need qualification and placing in historical context. But ever since I first read the Communist Manifesto aged 15, I keep returning to the simple fact that no other thinker before or since has explained so well how human society works.

In his lifetime Marx said that he didn't have much regard for those who called themselves Marxists. Unfortunately to most people today, their impression of Marx comes from the legacy of those oppressive regimes in Eastern Europe who so distorted his thinking, or from the petty and joyless types who dominate the political sects of the left.

Marx would have recoiled from both.

Kapital may not be the easiest of reads, but his writings on the way that capitalist society crushes the human spirit are entirely in the liberal tradition and even border on the poetic. As for joylessness, this was a man with a keen sense of mischief whose idea of a good night out was a pub crawl from Soho to Camden Town, getting arrested on the way for breaking street lights.

Well and not-so well read.

A depressing insight – published today are lists of books that are most widely started but not finished.

• UNFINISHED FICTION:
1 Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
2 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
3 Ulysses, James Joyce
4 Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres
5 Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6 The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
7 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
8 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
9 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
10 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

• UNFINISHED NON-FICTION:
1 The Blunkett Tapes, David Blunkett
2 My Life, Bill Clinton
3 My Side, David Beckham
4 Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
5 Wild Swans, Jung Chang
6 Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking
7 The Downing Street Years, Margaret Thatcher
8 I Can Make You Thin, Paul McKenna
9 Jade: My Autobiography, Jade Goody
10 Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?, Mick O'Hare

Are we a society of pseuds who buy books for reasons of conspicuous consumption so that we can be seen to be erudite ? This would explain the sales for just about anything by Stephen Hawking.

Or are we a society of morons ? Looking at most of the titles in the non-fiction list I wonder who actually buys them in the first place. Jade: My Autobiography - for fucks sake this is a criminal waste of good trees.

Personally I have an obsession with having to finish anything that I have started. This has driven me to finish both Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right and a Jeffrey Archer found in a hotel library.

Nothing to brag about in either case.

Our brave boys in blue.

Another great piece of police PR.

Doing the rounds at the moment- CCTV footage of the arrest of Toni Cromer. Toni is a 20 year old black woman who weighs 9 stone and is 5'6''. She tumbles downstairs with a police office and once on the floor after she appears to have gone limp she is punched repeatedly with overarm full-force punches and is then dragged away with her trousers round her knees. The footage of her arrest shows at one point 12 police officers and a police dog in attendance.

Toni has a history of epilepsy and claims that rather than resisting the arrest she was in fact having a fit - she has little recollection of the police assault other than coming round whilst she was being punched.

Her crime by the way - drunkenness in a nightclub and vandalism to a car (which she has admitted).

The police motivation - racism, machismo or injured pride that the police officer couldn't (whatever the reason) subdue a slightly built young girl. It is noticeable that the assault seems to happen after she has been subdued.

But the motivation doesn't matter, the impression of watching the tape is simply that of fascist bullies - those in authority showing naked brutality simply because they have the power and can.

Watching the footage leaves me with a primeval urge to head-butt the next person in uniform I see. It should leave anyone with a sense of justice with the same feeling.

Murdoch - still bad news

I'm a former Telewest cable TV customer caught in the cross-fire between Murdoch and Branson since Virgin Media took over Telewest. Murdoch has massively put up his price for the use of his channels and Branson won't pay, so we are now without Lost, Nip Tuck and the Simpsons.

As the boss said - 57 channels and nothin' on.

It's not so much that there is less good stuff on TV these days - people who wax lyrical about the golden age of TV when we had I Claudius and Play For Today forget that we also had at the same time Bless This House and The Golden Shot. But the quality is spread thinner over more channels of crap now, so unfortunately terrestrial TV simply isn't enough to capture it.

Even so I can't bring myself to pay anything to Murdoch and his evil empire.

I'm not sure if this is entirely rational, I suspect that Branson may be just better with his PR. But at least he doesn't play the role of a modern-day kingmaker by controlling so much of the media.

And I didn't spend many cold nights with the pickets outside the plant where he had sacked his entire work force so that he could break the union, as I did twenty years ago at Fortress Wapping.

Symbolically my NGA 'Murdoch Is Bad News' mug is chipped and unused these days, but I still can't bring myself to chuck it out and so it stays in my garage for cleaning paint brushes.

Education. Education. Education.

D-Day for many families who discover today if they have been successful in getting their kids into the secondary school of their choice. We were in this position last year and happily got the result we wanted - eldest daughter now goes to one of the 'least bad' comprehensives in the borough.

Earlier this week it was revealed that in Brighton school places are being allocated by lottery. Is this a capitulation of the authorities' juggling of parental choice with the engineering of social equality ? Or is it a refreshingly honest recognition of the fact that the whole process has broken down and that an unofficial life-lottery is replaced with an official one ?

Ironically for the people who make the most noise about this, (middle class parents), it actually matters least. Their kids generally seem to do ok in the end, even in the crappiest of schools.

This is certainly my personal experience. At my not-really-so-bad-at-all comprehensive, many kids were failed by the system and did not achieve their potential. Those of my friends who were middle class overcame this by doing re-takes and possibly entering higher education a couple or years late, or just by good career advice. Either way, by their late twenties they has redressed earlier set backs. Not so my working class friends, failure at school pretty much sealed their fate in terms of life chances.

For this reason I can't accept the idea of private education or anything other than a truly comprehensive system. And no faith schools or selective schools either.

Again, this is from personal experience as someone who was the first for over ten years to make it to Oxbridge from my comprehensive. I saw there at first hand the privileged arrogant mediocrities from private schools who had been groomed to consider themselves as an elite.

As a parent I am now a bit less judgemental than I used to be about individuals who do opt for the private/selective sector - it's a bit like private health, the state alternative is so bad you can't blame people who 'can' trying to get something better. But as far as governments are concerned, a flourishing comprehensive education system has to be the only way to go.

Blair was right to say Education. Education. Education. It is probably, for all of us, our first and most fundamental experience of social inequality.

Shame that New Labour has made bugger-all improvement to this .

The difference with atheists ...

In yesterday's Guardian - Stuart Jeffries has an article drawing parallels with what he calls 'secular fundamentalism' and religious fundamentalism. In particular he cites Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins is an academic with an abrasive polemical style. It's not the style I would use to challenge religious belief with any well-intentioned but basically deluded individual that I came across on a personal basis. But to put him in the same category as bible-bashers and mad-mullahs is a crazy kind of relativism.

Here are a random ten things that assertive atheists HAVEN'T done:

1. Burnt anybody at the stake and told them that their body must suffer so that their soul might be saved.

2. Proclaimed a Crusade or Jihad and then invaded a foreign country because it wasn't atheist.

3. Forbidden certain books that suggest that atheism isn't the only acceptable belief system.

4. Stoned anybody or publicly whipped anybody for offending the 'laws of atheism'.

5. Destroyed historic works of art for the same reason.

6. Specified that only certain kinds of food can be eaten, or a certain type of beard be worn by atheists .

7. Insisted that the state pays for atheist schools in which there is no teaching of any other kind of belief, and where only teachers who are atheists can be employed.

8. Demanded that one day a week is set aside when businesses and shops shut and trains and buses don't run out of respect to atheism.

9. Got on a bus with explosives strapped to them and blown up themselves and everyone else for the glory of atheism .

10. Sought the protection of the law if anybody ridicules atheism in any way.

... and so on. See the difference ?

Private enterprise and the consumer

Six hours today without mains water. This is the second time in a month. And we have only recently had a hose pipe ban lifted. Officially in this part of the South East we have been in a state of drought since last Summer. (That's South East England by the way not Africa).

OK - so the global climate is universally acknowledged as fucked as a result of environmental crisis. But we still have the highest rainfall in Western Europe - so this isn't the reason for the 'drought'.

Whilst the water companies are dispensing homespun advice about not leaving the tap running whilst we brush our teeth, London's water system leaks something like 30% of the supply every day. The water and sewerage system in London was a marvel of Victorian engineering. Unfortunately it remains so. Thames Water is owned by a German company looking to sell their interest on and major capital investment in modernising the system is not high on their agenda.

And at the end of last week, yet another fatal train crash on our privatised rail network.

Remember Thatcher's free enterprise revolution of the eighties ? Consumer services and choice were going to be transformed. But nobody thought who was going to be responsible for polishing the family silver once it had been flogged off.

Istanbul

Just back from a long weekend in Istanbul.

It was 15 years since we were last there. I wondered if globalisation and Turkey's attempts to join the EU had made many changes.

Last time we were there the country had not long returned to civilian rule and there were armed paramilitary police on every street corner - not this time. Starbucks and MacDonald's were in evidence. And the sellers of counterfeit perfume in the Egyptian Spice Bazaar were saying ' very good price - cheaper than Tesco - cheaper than Asda.'

But even so it is still probably the most exotic city you can visit without leaving Europe. And in times like these when the divide between the Western and Islamic worlds are deeper than they have been for centuries, probably everyone in the West should make an effort to visit.

Of course Turkey isn't actually an Islamic country, but then Britain isn't a Christian country either. And maybe this ambiguity is what makes it so interesting.

There is no better symbol of this than the Hagia Sophia. One of the oldest churches in the world, it was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in part at least to get one over the rival church based in Rome. It was looted not when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, but by the crusaders in 1205 who thought it was a safer bet to attack their Orthodox rivals than mess with the Saracens in the holy land. Actually when Constantionople did fall to the Turks and they converted it into a mosque they carefully covered up the Christian iconography, making it possible for the secular Turkish republic to uncover the original Byzantine decoration in the 1930's. The result is a museum that is probably the only place in the world where you can find an Orthodox altar piece of the Madonna and child next to Arabic calligraphy from the Koran.

It is convenient to judge Islam by what we know of the nutty fundamentalists today. But we forget that the Ottoman empire was possibly the first multicultural society with an amazing degree of toleration for Catholic, Orthodox, Jew and Muslim at a time when pogroms, crusades and inquisitions were a regular feature in the West.

Don't go looking for some sort of harmonious paradise in modern Turkey. It's recent history has walked a narrow precipice between populist fundamentalism and repressive secular nationalism. As a member of Amnesty I have a folder of letters addressed to Turkish politicians over the years.

But I can remember school trips to France - the idea was to broaden our horizons. Most of the time we were more concerned with smuggling back bangers and flick-knives. Maybe it could be more relevant now for kids to spend a weekend in Istanbul.

Blasphemer !

Why is it permissible to use religion as a trump card that effectively says: 'What I believe may be stupid, bigoted and reactionary but it is my sincerely held belief and therefore you are not allowed to argue with what I believe or even worse to take the piss out of it .' ?

But this is precisely the argument that religious people of all descriptions use all the time. It is the foundation of the blasphemy laws in this country.

By some bizarre kind of double-speak, Catholics can defend their view that homosexuality is a sinful abomination and threaten to close down their adoption agencies rather than comply with perfectly reasonable anti-discriminatory legislation. And also complain that anyone who challenges their bigotry is somehow denying them their sincerely-held convictions.

The latest such lunacy strikes even closer to home - a student journalist at my old college faces disciplinary action because of the publication of a newspaper that ridiculed all faiths and re-published the notorious Danish Mohamed cartons. Unsurprisingly there has been a back lash from all those who have vested interests - like the Student Islamic society. It appals me that an academic institution that is supposed to be based on a liberal tradition of free enquiry and expression should yield to such pressure.

And accusations of racism are being thrown in to muddy the waters. But let's be clear about this criticism of Islam is NOT racism. Nor is criticism of the state of Israel. I do both this things regularly and yet I have also (literally on some occasions) fought real racists.

Why do religious people want special protection anyway ? - Surely if they are right we atheists are all going to burn for eternity.

I'll take my chances, though and so without malice to the many sincere individuals who subscribe to these faith here goes:

• The Catholic Church has been involved in a conspiracy to cover up paedophile priests.
• Evangelical Protestants in the religious right have manoeuvred the US into an insane reactionary foreign policy.
• Islamic fundamentalism practices the most barbaric repression of women imaginable.
• Judaism acts as a moral fig-leaf for the racist state of Israel.
• Hindu separatists in India wage pogroms against their Muslim neighbours.
• Buddhists in Sri Lanka do the same against Hindus.

So there you are. Religion is stupid,bigoted and reactionary - over the centuries it has on balance caused far more harm than it ever has good. Now sue me.

" A failure of intelligence".

30 armed police officers, with another 220 in reserve, raid two family homes in Forest Gate, East London at 4am. One man is shot, two held on suspicion of terrorist offences and later released without any charge. Eight months later, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has told the Metropolitan Police to apologise. It also described the whole affair as:" A failure of intelligence".

I should say so. Hopefully this is a euphemism for "plain fucking stupid". But I suspect that they mean to imply that the information on which the raid was based was questionable. A bit like the 'intelligence" that led to the fatal shooting of Brazilian electrician Charles de Menzes. Still on the bright side maybe lessons were learnt from this and the police are getting better; at least this time they got a Muslim bloke - one with a funny beard and everything.

Let's face it the police force is not exactly full of Inspector Morse types. I suspect that very few will have read Malatesta's theoretical writings on terrorism or 'propaganda by deed'. He describes how a small group can build mass support amongst an aggrieved population by provoking state forces into over-reacting to random acts with disproportionate repression. It's a tactic that's been very successfully employed by the IRA, the Viet Cong, etc etc...

Actually though, to be a bit smarter, the police don't need to study political science - they could just try reducing their levels of testosterone a bit.

I live in a part of London still best known to most people for anti-police riots over twenty years ago. 50% of the borough's population come from ethnic minorities as opposed to 4% of the police. And every time there is an incident seemingly however minor, be it shoplifting from a newsagent's or a scuffle in a pub, there appears to be a police all-out call that results in never less than a couple of patrol cars and a riot van. It's the same operational culture that requires 250 officers to raid two family homes.

Visitors from out of town comment how we take no notice of the constant wailing of emergency sirens. Add to this the ethnic imbalance between police and community, and you come away with the impression that we are living in a battle zone, or more precisely a colonial occupation.

Thatcher spoke about denying terrorists the 'oxygen of publicity' by refusing to broadcast the voices of Sinn Fein spokesmen. Actually the 'oxygen' that will breed support for terrorism, amongst young British Muslims is the stupidity and insensitivity of the police. And more 'failed intelligence'.

Not 'bootiful' at all.

Hopefully the man who gave the nation the Turkey Twister now faces financial ruin: the only silver-lining in the bird-flu scare in Norfolk might be Bernard Matthew's downfall.

I have a special but not entirely irrational dislike for anyone who makes their fortune in the food industry. The profits are obscene, the conditions for animals and workers alike appalling, and the crappiest products are marketed to the poorest and most vulnerable. And generally that seems to make a very successful business model.

The same of course could be said of many industries, but the food industry in particular uses a rural connection to suggest that there is something 'natural' or 'traditional' about its products, and that in feeding people it fulfills some time-honoured function in the tradition of the yeomen of 'merrie england'. Which is why Bernard Matthews promotes a home-spun image of himself in his advertising campaigns - tucking into his own products and proclaiming them 'bootiful' in a quaint Norfolk accent.

Except of course, and we have Jamie Oliver to thank for this, we now know that processed poultry is not 'bootiful'. It's shit. (Amongst all the other things that tend to get mixed up in mechanically reclaimed meat). The Turkey Twister may have been withdrawn as a result, but similarly processed products still form a large part of many kid's diets. And perhaps it is no surprise that the poorer you are the more likely you are to end up eating this crap.

I am not going to join in the hysteria about bird flu (yet) - there seems to be a lot of mis-information about that reminds me of the AIDS/HIV scares of the 'eighties. And I am not going to jump on the animal rights bandwagon - as a humanist I am not sure from the point of view of moral philosophy that there is such a thing as animal rights, only human duties of care.

But I am pretty clear that every time we have one of these scares it highlights quite how little big business cares for the consequences of its actions.

Peerage-gate.

Whether it's peerages for sale scandals or arguing over plans to reform the House of Lords, the role of an unelected second chamber is back on the agenda.

So much utter crap is spoken about how an unelected body is somehow 'above' politics.

Regardless of it being the hereditary landed aristocracy, life peers drawn from the great and the good or even bishops from the Church of England (yes really in 2007!) - the fact that they are there at all is down to patronage of some sort.

The culture of deference runs deep in this country and one unspoken underlying aspect of defending an unelected body is that there is some special quality about these people that makes them 'know better than us'.

This is where a bit of historical perspective is essential - what looks likes an institution legitimised by ancient tradition always has been what it is today - the product of patronage, nepotism, crony-ism and out and out corruption. Blair and New Labour are just keeping the tradition going.

Contrary to common belief the House of Lords does not represent something mystical continuity going back to ancient times. There have been a number of 'spurts' of peerage creation , all of them highly dodgy and not at all noble.

• The Normans - the original English aristocracy were all but wiped out or exiled at the time of the conquest in 1066. William replaced them and gave land and titles to the French and Norman knights who came over with him - an inner circle of henchmen who could be trusted.

• The Wars of The Roses - a weak central monarchy and strong regional factions made possible a kind of fifty year gang war between the nobility. It is a story more like the Godfather than King Arthur and the round table. Alliances were made and broken, puppet kings installed and - titles created for favours done and to buy loyalty.

• The Restoration - peerages created for those who had stuck by the Stuart monarchy through the civil war years, and also for those compliant husbands who co-operated with Charles II taking their wives as his mistresses !

• The Eighteenth Century - the new merchant classes claimed their place at the table of power and more peerages were granted in return for loyalty to the solidly Whig regime.

• Victorian times and later - since the industrial revolution there has been a steady stream of peerages given to successful businessmen, and this has been mutually beneficial to them and governments alike, with influence traded in both directions.

And so on to the present scandal... So long as the second chamber is appointed in some way rather than elected, patronage and corruption go hand in hand.

If we do need a second chamber for our legislature, it must be an elected senate.

Trouble in paradise.

Well almost.

There's a strike at Harley Davidson's plant in York Pennsylvania.

Workers there voted 2,533 to 52 in favour of strike action to defeat the MoCo's (as HD is known) plans to introduce a two tier wage structure with reduced rates for new employees; to double pension contributions; and to make the previously free company health scheme contributory.

The MoCo claims that it needs to make these cuts to ensure that the company does not go the way of the US car industry.

But the truth is that it is in a very different position. Harley have posted record profits each year for the past twenty one years, and account for something like 60% of heavy-weight motorcycle sales in the US.

Strike-free for sixteen years the MoCo has encouraged the use of stickers that proudly proclaim 'made in the USA by union labor'. Of course it's partly a myth - many components are actually imported (some from Japan shock horror) - but it has established the Harley brand as a powerful part of American blue-collar culture.

This may now come back to haunt the management at the MoCo. They have a bad record of taking things for granted, including the passionate loyalty of many of their customers who are faced with over-priced products and often shoddy service from the dealer network. The 'hardcore' bikers who supported HD through the grim years of the late seventies and early eighties when the company was under the ownership of AMF are now regarded as something of an embarrassment. Instead the marketing strategy is aimed squarely at what in the US are called 'RUBs' (rich urban bikers), or yuppie born-agains over here in Britain.

So I hope all Harley riders join me in wishing the best of luck to the members of the International Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 175.