Posted 5:11 AM by Paul
Dolly Games

Both our girls ( 6 and 9) have spent the last week giving the lie to the often levelled charge that today's children lack imagination and creativity. With no encouragement from us, they have spent every available hour playing long complicated games with thier collection of dolls. This has included reading to them, giving them art classes and mediating conflicts caused by the naughty Bibbo. Bibbo is a doll.

All of this creativity despite the lure of 10 cartoon channels and the Internet. The oldest girl is even writing a long story about a fictional character called Sweety Bops and her menagerie of strange relatives and friends. These include The Kissy Mama, Fat Tony (who cooks cheesy mash with peanut butter for brekfast) and the hyper active Enid and Carpenter.

Neither of the girls has any interest in Britney Spears. They think that Christina Aguilera sings like a horse but have taking a liking to The White Stripes. We live in an inner city multi-racial part of London. We are comfortably off and the kids do not want for anything but they go to a local school with its fair share of problem kids. I am sure their are similar stories out there from couples bringing up kids in Brooklyn and Queens. Outside the world is changing but inside the kids are playing millenia old games based on imagination.

If some children are losing their innocence adults are destroying it rather than children abandoning it. If I hear another pundit start a sentence with "kids today" I will scream. It seems that each successive generation of 30-50 years indulges itself in the fantasy that their youthful experience was in some way historically unique and special. This is a form of vanity and a perrenial conceit. " In my day...." .

If there are problems with young people the blame should be laid fairly and squarely at our door. After all we created the complicated and frightening world they have to make sense of.

Posted 4:09 AM by Paul
News Management

So George Bush visited Iraq to share Thanksgiving Dinner with around 200 US troops. For a moment I won't be cynical. It must have been an emotional moment for him and for the troops. Whatever, they might think of him getting a visit from your Commander- in-Chief must be a very special moment.

Bush got to hang out for two hours with the men and women who are taking the brunt of the invasion her ordered. He also gave a neat speech part of which was indentical to the one he had given in London a week earlier..." we didn't charge hundreds of miles into Iraq and liberate 25 million people to..... " You get the picture.

For the record, I have never thought that Bush was stupid, a charge frequently laid at his door by the Liberal Left. I don't think you become President by being a complete dork. Even if he is not the sharpest chisel in the tool box, it is his very ordinariness appeals to millions of voters across the USA. So - he gets tongue tied. But doesn't everybody? The message is clear. Bush is one of then them. Loves his country, loves his family and knows right from wrong. Insulting Bush's intelligence is the same as insulting a large body of the American electorate. Not a good strategy if you want to get elected. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will have to avoid coming over like a Smart Alec.

Not only is Bush smartrer than he looks but he is backed up by a brilliant team. They have carried off two major coups in terms of political presentation.

The first was to have created Compassionate Conservatism as a mask for the most reactionary economic programme since Hoover and the most militaristic plan since Goldwater.

The second was to present the multi-millionaire priviledged older son of a former President who spent much of his youth drinking at the family compound in New England as an ordinary guy.

This is pure political genius.

BUt watching Bush handing out the turkey and rallying the troops in Iraq made two impressions on me.

Unlike most political leaders Bush rarely looks like he is enjoying himself. He is rarely "in the zone" as the Americans say and often looks as though his mind is elsewhere. Once the cheering has stopped he looks arkward.

He reminds of of the kind of kid at school (like me) who was useless at sports but loved hanging around with the tougher bigger kids. He is like the class mascot. You get the impression that given the choice between being quarter back of the Dallas Cowboys and Chief Executive of the most powerful political force ever assembled in human history George would have chosen the former. But sadly for George and for the World it was not to be.

As a post script to the visit the BBC has just revaled that Hilary Clinton arrives in Baghdad tomorrow. The thought of being upstaged by her must have sent shivers down the spine of Karl Rove and his team of spinners. Above all they had to expunge the memory of two PR gaffes.

2001 - The scurrying around in Airforce One after September 11th, which gave rise to the wisecrack from New Yorkers that it took Bush longer to reach the Manhattan from Florida that it toook Bill Clinton to reach it from Australia. The Presdient was being protected from the boos of Americans not from the bombs of Al Qaida.

2003 - The victory ceremony on the aircraft carrier when a smiling George dressed in a Top Gun outfit pronounced major hositlities over under a banner which proclaimed "Mission Accomplished."

Now the visit is over his team must be congratulating themselves on a brilliant piece of news management. But was the visit in Iraq at all? All we saw was the inside of a tent in a place which was obviously somewhere hot. They could have staged the whole thing in New Mexico. Probably a silly theory but a good one to spread on the Internet and see who believes it.

Posted 1:46 PM by Paul
Spam

I have just read that legislation has just been passed in California dedicated to outlawing Spam. I object. I love the stuff. Only today I have received information that will help me eradicate debt, grow a bigger penis and go on a blind date. Amazing thing the Internet.

Posted 3:17 PM by Paul
US Drugs Sport

Sports radio has just featured a piece on the scandal of Major League baseball which has brought in a new testing regime for anabolic steroids. It is is fairly liberal regime. There will be no testing in the close season and a player would have to test positive for steroids five times before being banned for one year. Now that could be a sport in itself. You would have to be involved in some heroic drug abuse to fail five tests before the end of a season. Give Americans' obsession with sports stats they could hold a special drugs league to run alongside the regular games. Steroid levels could be flashed up on the electronic scoreboard in between plays.

This got me thinking. Why don't they bring in special versions of each sport with a corresponding drug?

Coke Basketball - Play frequently interrupted whilst players harangue each other about how much gear they are taking and how great their lives are.

Ecstacy Baseball. - the Wurlitzer is mothballed as Take Me to the Ballpark is replaced by pounding techno. Players and fans wave their hands in the air for the whole 7 innings and then declare the game a draw.

Hashish Football - Everybody keeps losing the ball but can't be bothered to find it and then both teams break for donuts. SuperBowl 2004 abandoned when both teams pile into buses and head out to the Burning Man festival

Posted 11:16 AM by Paul
Invasion of the Killer Donuts


The papers over here have been full of stories about the epidemic of obesity that is sweeping the UK. The source of this scourge is of course the USA, and things are about to get worse.

We poor Brits are unable to fight back, because the Yanks have planted smart computer chips in each Crispy Creme donut, which render resistance useless. Our natural yearning for grilled trout and steamed vegetables is neutralised by the all-conquering evil empire, which is seeking full spectrum dominance of our stomachs.

Obesity is a serious issue and the jury is still out on what causes it. Too many Big Macs, Genetics or a mixtures of both? It cannot simply be excess food intake otherwise I would look like Police Chief Wiggum. I remember a calorie counting project at school when I was 14. We had to take a diary of what we ate on Saturday and Sunday and it transpired that I took on board 10,000 calories over the average weekend. The teacher informed the class that this was what a Ukrainian coal miner on 12 hour night shifts would need. Not a slightly built and exceptionally lazy British schoolboy. My point is simple. We have never needed any help from the USA in eating too much fat.

Back in the 60s the average working class household only ever saw fruit when someone was seriously ill. Greenery was restricted to cabbage with all nutrients boiled out it and the occasional limp salad complimented by processed cheese spread. In the North of England we gorged on fried fish in batter with piles of chips smothered in salt and a form of ersatz vinegar called non brewed condiment. This was a brown acidic industrial by-product and not actually a food stuff at all. Fried food was usually washed down with fizzy pop or pints of hot sweet tea. Any adult offering us sugar free drinks would have been reported to the police. Weirdo.

There were also regional variations in the English diet. In the South, working folk would eat saveloys (a kind of smoked sausage that tastes of poo) and meat pies with a stodgy crust. In Scotland the English diet was considered a bit lightweight. Mars Bars in batter, fried pizzas and battered black pudding (a form of fatty blood sausage) was and still is the traditional way to end of night of heavy drinking North of the Border. I am told in rural Lincolnshire that families used to sit down to Sunday lunch starting with sponge pudding in a thick sweet custard and then move on to the meat and roast potatoes main course. I don't know if this is true. But I desperately want to believe it.

There were high protein low fat meals. My mother occasionally cooked steamed mussels which I loved. She also cooked braised rabbit for my dad, which I refused in a show of solidarity with Sidney, my pet bunny. Things changed in the 70s with the advent of more frozen food, which was produced at a huge factory just outside town. My favorite was pancakes stuffed with cheese sauce. You fried them in lard of course. Was there any other method of preparing hot food?

When I was a boy the British did not need any help from Uncle Sam in the field of saturated fats. I remember my first Big Mac. I was impressed by the sophisticated idea of placing a gherkin and salad next to a beefburger. It was the salad, not the meat that was the gastro-cultural imperialism.

But now the papers are alarmed at the forthcoming invasion of the Crispy Crème, a delicacy that is at the moment only available in the UK at Harrods Food Hall. A concerned dietician pointed out that the standard model clocked in at 300 calories but the super double chocolate malt reached a staggering 500 calories. But then she admitted, " but they are delicious. They just kind of melt in your mouth." But the Crispy Crème still doesn’t match the glucose and at firepower of the Mars Bar. There are still some things that make you proud to be British.

We should relax, because this cultural invasion is a two way street. McDonalds are posting losses in the UK for the first time even as we await the arrival of the Crispy Creme with bated breath. Upwardly mobile African Americans are drinking French Cognac, wearing Burberry and driving BMWs. If we don't like what America has to offer we can JUST SAY NO, or offer them something better and tax US imports if they try to block our products with tariff barriers.

Got to go. I am just off to get my supper at the local Fish and Chip shop. It's run by a Chinese bloke.

Posted 6:52 AM by Paul
Five Weeks to Five Months

That's what they gave him. Five weeks to five months.

We last saw Chris in Pamplona this year, confined to a wheel chair and stricken with cancer but still in pretty good spirits. At first, I couldn't make up my mind if this was a good idea at all. Going to a fiesta in the last weeks of your life. Perhaps, I was inwardly objecting to being confronted with my own mortality. But after talking to Chris and doing my share of wheeling him around town and fetching his coffee I changed my mind. It was good to see him smiling as the bands marched past and looking animated as talk turned to that afternoon's bullfight. Good to see the smile on old friends' faces as they saw that he had made it for one last fiesta.

As Heather said, " In the same position, with your kids grown up and enough money you would do exactly the same".

Too true. All of the above and good contacts in the airline industry. I am sure that normally someone in his condition would not be allowed to fly.

So, we said our very last goodbyes to Chris when we took him back to his room at a nice city centre hotel. My close friend Mark, who I have been going down to fiesta with since 1976, [ Historical note; Madonna was still at high school in Detroit in this epoch) was particularly upset. He had been close to Chris for years and had spend many happy days with him at fiesta in Logrono and out on the town in San Sebastian. Mark helped when Chris was incoherent with alcohol* and sat with him drinking coffee when he went on the wagon, took the 12 steps and admitted he was an alcoholic. That night we went out until dawn raising a glass or two to Chris and dancing to banal Mexican pop music. We had said our last good bye to Chris as we knew he would not make it beyond late summer.

In September some of Chris's old friends held a "roast" in his honour and there were doubts that he would make it. Five days to five weeks seemed to be the prognosis.

Last night I heard the news from Noel in Madrid.

" Oh Chris? Well, he is just preparing to fly out to the fiesta in Quito next week. His girlfriend is going with him and they are hoping to pay a student to help wheel him to the bullfight."

Chris is an American.

* Chris would not mind this fact being known on a public website as he has been dry for over 10 years and totally aware of his alcoholism. So, much so that he often chairs meetings of AA in the middle of the fiesta in Pamplona. You couldn't make that kind of thing up

Posted 11:42 AM by Paul
I am the Law

Recovering from a hangover caused by a big eating ( did I really eat a dozen oysters?) and drinking session with friends I found a summons on the doormat. No, I wasn't being sued for internet libel. I was being summonsed to appear as a juror. 18th January 2004 at Southwark Town Hall. I don't know what the system is in the Sates but in the UK if you are called for jury service you have to attend. Failing being an ex-con, registered insane or a member of the clergy (same thing?) you have to show up. It is your democratic duty and there are few exceptions.

I am hoping that I will not have a case involving rape, child abuse or wife beating. I may crack and start shouting " You're going down punk!!!".

The meal was in a restaurant above an Irish pub just off Oxford Street (88 Marylebone Lane W1 020 7935 9311) called the O'Connor Don. In the bar with a pint of Guiness and half a dozen oysters in front of me I had one of those transcendental moments of well being. Life really was sweet. For the duration of the oysters and smooth dark stout anyway. We went upstairs to the dinng room which feels like somone's front room and had a swab (a kind of pidgeon) salad starter and a great roast of beef between 6 of us. Cigars and champagne. The whole 9 yards. Good food, great wine and conversation are really one of the greatest joys of life.

Posted 10:16 AM by Paul
Bush is Sauron

Another day another demonstration against the Bush Blair project. It's very handy living in London. You can do 7 hours work at your PC, hop on a train to Waterloo, participate in a major demonstration and be home in time for tea.

Despite the terrible events of this morning the the macrh was upbeat and upmarket. Upbeat because people feel that the message is getting across. We are not going away. Upmarket because a large section of the marchers were what the marketeers would call ABC1 and 2. Swing voters with cash to spare. There was one middle aged bloke with a chin beard flecked with grey in a nice tweed suit. That's me by the way. A TV crew roamed through the crowd and interviewed a man who for all the world looked like the chairman of a suburban Amateur Opera Society. Another film crew questioned a preppy looking dude in wire rimmed glasses carrying a placard emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes and the slogan "Give Me Back My Country". He had a strong American accent and looked like an investment banker on his day off.

But the radical eco-left were there in force. A man with bright green hair provided the march's best slogan.

Bush is Sauron. Free the Shire.

I didn't stay for the rally but had a glass of wine at Gordons Wine Bar, a subterranean dive which dates from the time of Hogarth, and then made my way home. I don't like political rallies. Same all boring speeches, finger wagging and hectoring rhetoric.

Why don't they end major demonstrations with a party and an art installation? much more 21st Century.

Posted 4:12 AM by Paul
Istanbul

Today suicide bombers attacked the HQ of HSBC and the British Consulate in Istanbul. British insitutional targets and Moslem Turkish victims. Scores of people have been killed and hundreds injured. It's a nightmare.

On both sides of this grotesque argument people will be saying "I told you so". Jack Straw has already been on the radio offering these atrocities as evidence that we have to re-double our efforts in the War on Terror. On the other side people will undoubtedly say that this is a predictable response to the bombing and occupation of Iraq.

For my part I feel that Bush and Blair responded to a forest fire by dowsing it with petrol and then asking the rest of us to put it out. I fear for my kids in a world that is getting more unsafe by the day.

But few will consider the ordinary victims of Istanbul. They have already become debating points. I wonder if there is any way I can give blood?

Posted 2:43 AM by Paul
Whisper it Quietly - the French Were Right


I am an Englishman and therefore genetically programmed to distrust the French. Most English people are suspicious of them despite the fact that, according to a recent survey, 43% of us dream of retiring to a country house in the Dordogne. Newspapers which howl with indignation at every perceived slight by our neighbours across the English Channel run promotions where the 1st prize is a Breton gite.

When Chirac did not accept Blair's lawyer's logic that an invasion of Iraq was urgently needed due to the fact that Saddam and co. must be hiding something because the UN could not find anything - we smelled a rat. The smooth talking Gaul must be up to something. Even if he isn't then he is just plain wrong. After all what does he know? He doesn't even speak English properly.

Seven months down the line and it turns out that Johnny Foreigner was right all along. Lets go back to the tragi-comedy at the UN before last Christmas. The French analysis [I paraphrase] was simple.

- Bomb Iraq into submission and you will inflict indefensible civilian casualties.

- An unprovoked attack will ensure that the neighbouring countries will stay out of the war and the subsequent peace keeping efforts.

- An occupation of Iraq by exclusively Western Christian forces will create a magnet for terrorists, Islamisists and all sorts of assorted loony tunes desperate to die for the cause. It will inflame the Arab world. A war would be an excellent recruiting platform for Al Quaida.

- Main and kill children and their dads will come looking for revenge.

- You may get bogged down in a long guerilla warfare

The view from Paris was dismissed as a load of pessimistic existentialist whining by most UK observers. The altogether more sunny prognosis (crowds of Iraqis cheering their liberators, stocks of WOMDs found within days, Britney Spears at the Baghdad AstroDome) of Blair and Bush was the accepted wisdom. One US general quipped that when the war was over in a few days they might allow the French in to collect the weapons of the Iraqi army. Not thinking for a moment that they would simply take off their uniforms and take their rocket launchers home with them.

To be fair I thought that was going to be the case when I saw the pictures of celebration when Saddam was gone. The French had got it wrong after all. Tony knew something that we didn't. That will teach me not to judge history by one televisual image. Now we are in the bloody aftermath that is not an aftermath at all. The war has only just started. Serious military analysts are saying the unthinkable. Maybe Saddam planned it like this all along.

A few months ago the French spokesman on foreign affairs Dominique de Villepain proposed a handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi Authority within 12 months. Oh how they laughed! As recently as last week this was dismissed as " a fantasy" by the Italians. This week it is official US policy.

Damn those Frenchies. They fooled us with a deadly new diplomatic technique. The Truth.

Posted 4:31 PM by Paul
Pop Music for Ugly People

"Politics? It's pop music for ugly people. Didn't you know?"

It is about 6 years since I first heard the expression but I still laugh. I was a Labour councillor at the time and it really hit home. I was as bad as the rest. Surveying the UK political scene the phrase seems more apposite than ever.

The new Tory leader is not reviewed on his politics but on his first performance at Prime Ministers Question Time as if he were a new solo artist at the Marquee Club. Dianne Abbot, a left wing fire brand MP who had condemned others for sending their kids to selective schools is caught out sending her son to private fee paying school. She wails, " It will ruin my career". Her first thought is of herself. Michael Portillo, former darling of the Thatcherites stands down as an MP, saying he has lost his passion for politics. I bet the loyal Conservatives who gave him the safe seat of Kensington and Chelsea had wished he had told them a few years ago when he assured them that he was theirs for life. In fact he has just scored a better gig as a TV pundit. Me me me. Just like a bunch of preening wannabe pop stars.

Blair is the same. He has terrible I trouble. "I truly believe" this and "I truly believe" that. "I have no reverse gear."

What about us Tony? You know? The people who voted for you. We thought we had something going for a year or two. You told us that you weren't like the other boys but it turned out you were worse.

People are worried. For weeks they have been asking themselves the same question.

" But what does Tony get out of this special relationship with Bush?"

UK prisoners are still held in Guantanamo without trial or hope of release. The steel tariffs still stand. Kyoto remains unsigned. But there is an answer. Looking back to the way that Blair grinned from ear to ear like a schoolboy at his ovation from Congress, Michael Moore said that Tony gives in so easily because he is desperate to be loved in America. I am not a fan of Moore but I think he has a point.

Tony has had a few Number 1 hits in the UK. But he is now bored of the regular appearances on Top of the Pops. Now he wants to break America like the Who and the Stones before him.

Pop music for ugly people. Rock on.

Posted 4:24 PM by Paul
Anti-American?


In a desperate attempt to brush aside the fact that millions of people distrust them, the British Government has taken to dismissing anyone who opposes Bush as anti-American. The phrase "anti Americanism" is uttered in the same tone that you would normally used for words like pederasty or bestiality.

Now, as regular readers of my blog (hello Tom, Mary, Heather and Dave) will know, I am not and have never been a card-carrying member of the Anti-American Party. Some of my best friends understand baseball and get by on 10 days holiday a year. Anti-Americanism is stupid but it is not a crime. So long as those afflicted by the psychosis do not burn down branches of Nandos or demand the repatriation of Ruby Wax and Chrissie Hines. Repeat. It is foolishness. It is not a crime.

FOGAT (Friends of George and Tony) will inevitably accuse people like me of being at worst inconsistent and at best hypocritical.

" So!!! Anti-Bush guy. Will you stop drinking Coke and watching Disney films? Huh? Huh? "

No I will not. Any more than I wouldexpect those US citizens who [rightly] condemned UK policy in Northern Ireland to stop speaking English, listening to the Beatles or watching Monty Python.

Besides - hundreds of the demonstrators are ex-pat Americans opposed to George Bush. Bloody Yanks. They get everywhere.

Posted 3:33 PM by Paul
The Pursuit of Happiness

Sipping a Diet Pepsi on the way back home on the train from Norfolk I got to thinking what it is that I like about the USA. I made a list to while away the time as the train sped towards London.

- Disney cartoons
- The poetry of Walt Whitman
- Real hamburgers
- A sense of optimism
- Jazz
- The Manhattan skyline
- Soul music - particularly Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin
- FDR
- My old friend Matt Carney
- Hollywood
- FDR
- The Marshall Plan
- The first Ramones album
- Martin Luther King
- Godfather I and II (Forget about III)

The list goes on, but the essence is embodied in one line of the Constitution.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

The American Constitution is a document that stands alongside Shakespeare, the speeches of Winston Churchill and the poetry of Dylan Thomas as one of the great works of the English language. The idea that happiness and not power should lie at the centre of the aims of the State is an idea of transcendental beauty. For me it is even more powerful that the notion of Justice.

Tell a British journalist that you are in Politics to make people happy and they would think you were a buffoon. Joy is not serious. The pursuit of a contented life - evidence of a feeble mind.

Years ago I was briefly one of the leading lights of Red Wedge, an organisation dedicated to promoting left wing ideas through popular culture in the hope that more young people would support the Labour Party. Now of course our successors are marching against the Labour Party and its leader Tony Blair. Good luck to them.
One evening after work, I was asked how I would define Democratic Socialism. These kind of theological considerations used to exercise my mind in the mid-1980s, whereas now I am more likely to be contemplating the new lunch menu at the Savoy Grill. I replied that I thought that Democratic Socialism might be something along the lines of collective joy and happiness. My interrogator let out an embarrassed laugh and changed the subject.

But in the pure constitutional America of our dreams, Happiness and even Fun are legitimate political goals.

And Bush? Well clearly, he was born in the Friesian Islands.

Posted 8:33 AM by Paul
Ali

A couple of weeks ago The Observer published a special supplement on Mohamed Ali and I have justed posted it down to Noel in Madrid. He did a bit of boxing in the Army and has always been an enthusiastic fight fan since he was a boy. I know he will enjoy it. Leafing one last time through the beautiful photos of the greatest heavywieght of all time brought back memories of another age. For a moment I was a boy of 7 sat on the corner of the bed listening to the first Cooper - Clay ( it was before he changed his name ) fight with Dad on the old valve radio: a plate a cheese sandwiches and a pot of tea on a tray on the floor. Dad was amazed by Ali's speed and agility and reckoned him the best boxer in history.

I know all the negative aspects of the Ali story - the segregationist view that races should never mix. The Black Moslems insane belief that the White race had been created by an evil scientist. The strange unsolved murder of Malcolm X.

But even, so there was - and is - something inspiring about the man. Something beyond and above his time. People look back at the 60s as a better age but I wonder. When Ali became champion there were still states in the US where we could not have eaten a sandwich at the same lunch counter. Or he would have been told to stand up for a white man on a bus. Ali opened the Atlanta Games in 1996 but in the 1963 he came across an ageing Jersey Joe Walcott holed up in his hotel in Baltimore eating a sandwich afraid to go out lest he was attacked by whites resentful of his desire to sit in a restaurant. A man who has fought for his country and been the champion of the world could not sit down for a meal without the threat of violence. Some things have got better.

When we look back at those times I think we should be struck not by the radicalism of black Americans but by their patience and their patriotism.

Posted 4:56 PM by Paul
Bush in London - Bring Him On



So George W Bush comes to town next week. The White House security team caused a certain amount of incredulous mirth with their initial demand that the whole of Central London be shut down for 3 days to protect the President. But from whom?

The terrorist threat is real enough and growing fast thanks to our ill advised invasion and occupation of Iraq, but if they are smart Al Quaida would fund Bush's re-election campaign rather than blow him up. After all he is their best recruiting sergeant. Even Tony Blair could not swing the shut down plan that would have cost maybe $100,000,000 in lost revenues.

Any fool can see that the White House is trying to protect Bush from the political effects of prime time TV images of tens of thousands of Brits calling for the President to get on Airforce One and head back to Lubbock. Blair is looking decidedly sheepish. He planned this entire visit as a Roman Triumph - the loyal pro-consul riding in glory with the Emperor down the Mall lined with cheering crowds. Now it has turned out to be an enormous embarrassment.

Hopefully we won't have any complete tossers burning the Stars and Stripes but there is always going to be at least one idiot. The Vietnam vet who wrote Born on the 4th of July will be at the main Trafalgar Square demonstration and hopefully he will be on the platform as an antidote to the usual crowd of old school lefties and " I told you so" liberals.

Uncle Tony Benn will be on the mike as usual giving us all a history lesson. His son Hilary (only posh men are called Hilary - for plebs like me this is a girl's name) is an ex-left winger who is now in the Government and an enthusiastic supporter of compulsory ID cards and invading foreign lands. I wonder how father and son will get on over Christmas dinner? Sadly the British Left still has not quite grasped that it might be time to have some younger voices leading the charge and put the old guys out to grass. There is still an enormous deference to the socialist patriarchs of old. The most articulate demolition of the case for war in Iraq I have ever heard was made by a couple of 17 year old girls who were interviewed by a smirking condescending "know it all" from the BBC. Step forward Andrew Marr.

So on the 19th demonstrators will be toppling a huge papier mache effigy of Bush in a Saddam style re-enactment of the "end" of the war and the British Government will be doing its best to keep the bad news off CNN and the BBC. Will this change anything? No. But at least everyone on the demonstration will have had the opportunity to protest at being treated like silly children who cannot be trusted with the truth.

And for my American friends I have two questions.

- Will the widespread opposition to Dubya from main stream Main Street UK get any coverage in the States?

- Is the Bush team secretly financing Howard Dean's Democratic primary campaign? Clearly they would prefer to face a New England Liberal in November 2004 rather than someone who can win.

It's a thought.

Posted 3:43 AM by Paul
Prince Charles

Weird times. Prince Charles' PR machine has issued a statement dimissing as ludicrous and risible allegations we are not allowed to hear.

Well - not allowed unless you have access to the internet or can read an Italian newspaper. Lots of blather about "the constitutional implications" but for most people the whole story is an entertainment. The tabloids are running it in exactly the same way as a story about a bi-sexual coke snorting soap star. It is a "how are the mightly fallen" tale with the added spice of Princess Dianna's influence from beyond the grave. Circulation will rise and advertising rates for a full page strategically placed in the middle of a 8 page royal splash will go through the roof.

It's a sorry tale and it seems that his people have learnt nothing.

Two tips from a republican socialist in Peckham

- If you dismiss an allegation as ludicrous and risible people will be inclined to believe you are hiding something. Righteous indignation no longer works. Remember Blair's scoffing claim that the idea that Saddam Hussien had no Weapons of Mass Destruction was palpably absurd.

- Don't pay people hush money. Greed is never satisfied.

A strange postscript of all this was the revelation that Prince Charles' valet was on a salary of £100,000 a year for squeezing his toothpaste and choosing is clothes. This is the same man who was caught selling unwanted royal gifts. So the man wasn't exactly poverty stricken as was earlier claimed in his defence.

P.S Announcing that he had a gay interlude may do wonders for the Prince's popularity

Posted 1:00 PM by Paul
True


Today Michael Howard was crowned leader of the Conservative Party in an uncontested election of MPs reminiscent of the great days of Enver Hoxtcha, Father of the People and Great Leader of the Albanian Revolutionary Socialist Party. The Conservatives are even having a vote where all party members will have the choice of voting for Michael Howard or .....Michael Howard. If the turn out is high and the Yes vote reaches 99% the Conservatives will have a leader with kind of approval rating last achieved by Saddam Hussein in the referendum of 2002.

Can you imagine the outcry if a trade union decided to apply the same logic?

"Well comrades. We tried democracy once and that process threw up a complete duffer and we just argued all the time. So we have decided to give it to Big Frank. He is 62, quite clever and has been around a long time. Meeting adjourned."

Howard prefaced his victory with a couple of speeches which included classics of the political art of cliche. Who could disagree with sentiments like?

" I will lead this party from the Centre and call on the talents of all sections and views."
and

" I have learned to promise less and deliver more."

Of course what he should have said is

" I will lead this party from the extreme Right and, in the spirit of pure spite and bitterness, I will ruthlessly exclude any SOB who has ever said a bad word about me. Oh and by the way. I intend to promise voters the Earth and stitch them up like a kipper once the suckers have voted for me.......Good night."