Posted 9:55 AM by Paul
The Ayes Had It

It's strange to see someone who was so totally in control start to fall apart. Falling back on assertion and bombast when charm and reason have deserted them.

Blair was on TV for what seemed like the millionth time this week defending his position on the new European Constitution. It wasn't going to make any difference to our lives because he had stood up personally for Britsh interests against those nasty Europeans. Hurrah for Tony. He used the first person pronoun 6 times inside a minute.

I didn't do this...I did that..I have to make difficult choices.

It is as if he sees the whole of world as a personal struggle between him and the forces of reaction..anti-Americanism...zenophobia...Fill in the enemy of the week.

He then topped it off with an aside. " I mean (leans forward, slight smirk) It's not like I - [ that word again ] did this to give people another reason to have a go at me..I think I have enough of that already."

He was asking to feel sorry for him. Why don't we leave him alone. He's had such a hard time of it, what with Iraq and all. This really is scraping the barrel. His media advisers must have been squirming when they watched the video replay. Their star player has gone to pieces. But they are still trying to play the LEADERSHIP card. Nobody seems to have told the spin doctors that the millions of autonomous individuals that make up the electorate and who are bombarded with messages every day proclaiming the desirability of individual choice don't actually want a Henry V in a grey double breated suit.

In this sense New Labour is now an anachronism. They think they are modern when really they are old hat. A global world view straight out of the 1890s [bringing enlightenment to the natives] and a political style straight out of 1990s Australia.

Only sad and obsessional people like me will remember that the Australian Labour PM Paul Keating went to the polls in 1997 under the single word slogan LEADERSHIP. It was all about him. The Spanish Socialists went to the polls on the same weak talking about community. Running out of steam and with their charismatic leader Felipe Gonzalez mired in corruption scandals they chose a less bombstic and more collegiate style of politics. They even admitted that they had made mistakes. Lots of We and very little I.

My old friend Tom Watson - now a Labour MP but then an organiser at Labour Party HQ in Millbank rang to say that it was sad but the view was that Felipe would get thrashed but Paul Keating would squeeze back in. I agreed. Absolutely. No question.

Paul Keating suffered a landslide defeat and dissapeared from politics.
Felipe lost narrowly and can now be seen smiling on the back benches happy that his party is back in power but staying out of the limelight. He always knew that it was about more than him.

Posted 5:56 AM by Paul
Remembering Reagan

Reagan died a few a few days ago, an event that if had it happened in the mid 80s would have prompted wild street parties and days of feasting in the kind of circles I knocked around in at the time. But twenty years later it seems a bit churlish to celebrate the demise of a 93 year old who spend the last 10 years racked by Alzeimers completely unaware that he was once the most powerful man on Earth.

There was a predictable hagiography of the "man who defeated Communism". The jury is still out on that one as it may have collapsed without any help because it was so fundamentally crap. Besides, 1.1 billion Chinese live under a regime which claims Mao and Marx as it's ideological forebears. So, maybe Communism is not dead just comatose.

There were a few dissenting voices from the "wasn't he a great President" including my good friend Carol Leimroth, a peripheral American living in Paris. She forwarded me a series of satirical cartoons showing a cross section of the American public commenting on their late president. Here are a few of the captions.

- He tripled the national debt but he had such charisma

- He supported apartheid but was always personable

- He backed Saddam but made us feel good about ourselves

- He crushed workers rights but he was someone you could sit down and have a beer with

- Star Wars turned out to be an expensive fantasy but he had such infectious optimism

- He traded arms for hostages and diverted money to drug running death squads, but he never lost his sunny disposition

- He looked the other way when Salvadorean allies raped American nuns but he had the self-deprecating humour

Predictably Margaret Thatcher was at the funeral, as was Reagan's old adversary Gorbachev. This reminded me of George Orwell's observation in 1984 that the ruling elites of East Asia, Eurasia and Oceania were not at war with each other but at war with their own populations.

Blair was there. He never misses an opportunity to rub shoulders with the big boys. Putin and Chirac did not attend as they were otherwise engaged - running their countries I suppose. A Tory columnist reminded his readers that Blair had supported a parliamentary motion in the 80s "condemning America's evil campaign in Nicaragua" Well at least he got something right when he was young. Now Blair and many of his acolytes are desperately over-compensating for their youthful radicalism, by supporting all things Neo-Conservative coming out of the White House. It as if the whole of Central America was simply a backdrop to their personal political journey from the arrogant Left to the arrogant Right. Anyone disagreeing with them is dismissed as indulging in "fashionable anti-Americanism" . This is quite rich in so much as anti Americanism was at it's most fashionable when they were doing it.

I wonder what they would have made of the Mary Knoll nun from the Mid-West who I sat next to on the plane from Managua to Houston in 1994. A tiny woman in her late 60s she was on her way back home to celebrate her older sister's 40th wedding anniversary. They had played in a big jazz band together (she showed me some photos) just after the war. She told me that she gave up music when she "got the call". She wasn't talking about a telephone conversation with the bishop. She left for Central America to serve God and the Poor and big sister got married and raised a family. Apparently, they didn't talk much about politics and she revealed a little shamefacedly that big sister had supported "that Ronald Reagan"

She told me how ashamed she was of her Government and they way they had supported the Contras, but she remained optimistic.

" If only people back home knew about the terrible things that are done in their names maybe they would turn against Bush. The Sandinistas did some bad things but I've met Daniel Ortega and I do believe that he his heart is in the right place. Besides they brought running water and electricty to our village for the first time."

Finally she touched on the rape and murder of some of her sister nuns in El Salvador and a dark shadow seemed to cross her face. But like Reagan she never lost her sunny disposition. Her faith in God and in people was unshakeable.

I wonder if she is alive? If she is dead, my guess is that she is lying in a simple grave in northern Nicaragua, her funeral attended by her sisters and local people who had been touched by her kindness - understanding that not all Americans were like - "that Ronald Reagan"

Posted 4:22 AM by Paul
An Ex-Labour Voter Writes

An old friend, previously rock solid Labour voter, e-mailed me after the local elections. I think he has summed up what millions of people are thinking who are actually joyous that they have wiped the smug grin off Blair's face. They are ready and willing to do it again until the entire Parliamentary Labour Party gets the message.

This is what he wrote.

"Well I never thought I'd be laughing at a Labour electoral defeat but...ha ha.

What gets me until I could be sick in his face is Blair's stance that, basically, if only the people got it, they would understand and we could just go on torturing Iraqis and bum sucking Bush without all this unpleasantness"

Posted 12:40 AM by Paul
Politics Means Never to Having to Say You're Sorry

It's election time over here in sunny Europe. In Spain the Partido Popular who were thrown out following their attempts to discount Islamic terrorism as the source of the March 11 atrocities are about to get a complete hammering. The Socialists have been in power three months and in that time have repealed a stack of reactionary laws and brought their boys back from Iraq where they were being used a target practice by Islamic fundamentalists.

The reaction of the now discredited Spanish Conservatives is to claim that the Socialist victory was the result of electoral con. It was all a fraud. the voters will come to their senses. PSOE members organised a demonstration (illegal under Spanish law the night before polling) outside the Partido Popular HQ the night before elections demanding to know the truth behind the bombings. The Government were claiming that it was still probably Eta despite Korans and tapes in Arabic being found in one of the vehicles use to carry out the attacks. So the response to defeat has been to claim that millions of Spanish voters were stupid and could be swayed by a single demonstration involving a few thousand people. Not of course that their polices were unpopular. Insulting the voters is not a tactic guaranteed to persuade these same voters to support you three months later in the European elections. They are trailing by 10% in the polls.

In the UK the Labour Party is running 3rd - that's right 3rd - as votes are counted in the municipal elections. This has never happened before. Even in the early 80s when I was an active member and the reaction you got on the doorstep was somewhere between disgust and incredulity:

"Do what? You want me to vote Labour? You must be joking mate!"

Labour was always 2nd to the Tories.

The response from my local MP (a minister in the Government is revealing) to this unprecedented situation is revealing

"Errr this is a mid term protest vote ...and in local elections it is an inexpensive way for people to protest but they won't do it at the next General Election."

She has been taking tips from the Spanish Conservatives

The Labour Party is really asking for it. No apologies. No attempt to understand how they have got it so wrong. No attempt to find out what people are actually protesting about. Just a smug "Oh they will come back soon. They won't be stupid enough to actually vote someone as wonderful as me out of office"

I don't care about the Spanish Conservatives and I am delighted they are about to face another electoral humiliation. Eventually they will get the message, say sorry and promise never go out on a date with George Bush again. But I don't care. The Labour party is different. I used to be a member and, if truth be known I am waiting for an excuse to vote for them as long as they get rid of Blair. Seeing them spout rubbish on on TV is like watching helplessly as an old friend destroys himself on drugs.

The disaster will just have to run it's course and many good MPs and local councillors will lose power and influence to assuage the vanity of a leadership that is hopelessly out of touch with reality.

When they lose power many Labour Party members will blame the voters.

"Now look what you've gone and done!"

But don't blame us. We did warn you. But you just weren't listening.

Posted 12:36 AM by Paul
Now That's What I Call Globalisation

Walking to the tube I noticed a flyposter in the graphic style of the blaxploiation movies of the 70s. It was advertising a Polish Hip Hop jam in East London.

Posted 3:01 AM by Paul
LESSONS OF HISTORY


Carol - another American enraged by what the US Government is doing in her name - sent me this report by Lawrence of Arabia

A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence published by The Sunday Times 1919

Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the
Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding
romances of the war, has written this article at our
request in order that the public may be fully informed of
our Mesopotamian commitments.

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a
trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and
honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady
withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are
belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse
than we have been told, our administration more bloody and
inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our
imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any
ordinary cure.

We are to-day not far from a disaster. The sins of
commission are those of the British civil authorities in
Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels')who were given
a free hand by London. They are controlled from not from
the Department of State, but from the empty space which
divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They
availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time
to carry over their dangerous independence into times of
peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-
government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about
autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted
and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more
liberal statement in preparation in London,
'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were
extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by
aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They
receive little more news than the public: they should have
insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after
draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions
became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out
as High commissioner the original author of the present
system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his
heart and policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need
changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast
between our profession and our practice. We said we went to
Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver
the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government,
and to make available for the world its resources of corn
and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a
thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are
spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of
money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They
kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and
killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining
peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes,
armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have
killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer.
We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor
country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud
his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object
of the rising was political, we are not told what the local
people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them.
A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so
many troops because the local people will not enlist. On
Friday the Government announce the death of some local
levies defending their British officers, and say that the
services of these men have not yet been sufficiently
recognized because they are too few (adding the
characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad
character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the
old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and
distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer
controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand
British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control
Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand
troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments.
Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a
memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was
forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three
brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be
further denuded, where is the balance to come from?
Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British,
under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing
an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the
wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in
Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India
for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this
case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the
request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made
every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the
Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that
town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The
Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions
to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred
British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their
punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our
other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit
of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the
ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing
of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer
hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long
will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial
troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on
behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody
but its administrators?

Posted 5:45 AM by Paul
Paetheolithic Logic

Heather. Alice and Emily spent most of Friday with friends in West London near where we used to live and just a few hundred yards from the maternity hospital where both of the kids were born. Alice took an agonising (for Heather obviously) 20 hours. Emily took an agonsing 2 hours and was home by teatime.

I had to wait in for the Polish builder but I caught up with them in the early evening and we had supper at a branch of Nandos on Chiswick High Road, which is the district where I was a Labour councillor between 1994-1998. It was quite a nostalgic trip.

On the way back on the tube Emily looked into my eyes.

"It would be good to have lived in caveman times Daddy."

" Why Emily?"

She smiled.

"Because you could paint on the walls without getting into trouble."

Posted 5:37 AM by Paul
Pamplona - An Old Soldier Replies

Mark read the blog about Pamplona.

This is his reply

Than God you did it. That leaves only 27 years to write up. Even now there are PhD students beginning excavations near the city walls to find evidence of Sheffield activity in 1976. Some scholars deny there was a presence there others will argue that it was merely a minor outpost whilst others claim it was an effect of marsh gas. A primitive tent has been found with no ground sheet - similar to the ones said to have been used by the Bow-urs. It is not certain that anyone would have been stupid enough to use such a device in a region of high rainfall since in any precipitation the tent would have filled rapidly with water.

Ed. Note. I took a tent without a groundsheet or flysheet because I didn't want to be too burdened down. I thought that it didn't rain in Spain in the summer. There was a torrential downpour that lasted the best part of two days

Posted 6:16 PM by Paul
Pamplona Again

The dreams acquire a greater intensity at this time of year with the light flooding in through the bedroom curtains at 5.30 a.m. I am dreaming about Pamplona. Fiesta of San Fermin. Running of the bulls and all that. Last night in dreamland I checked into the pension only to find out it was 1,000 Euros for 4 days in a shared room and Gordon Brown and his entourage had checked in down the corridor. Clearly my mind had worked out that it is not a Tony Blair kind of event - too noisy - too dirty - too working class. A little bit of guilt crept into my dream when I realised that I hadn't thought about ringing Heather until I got back to Heathrow airport. Years ago, I dreamt that the running of the bulls had been transferred to Sheffield. Old ladies were reduced to dodging into the back alleys between the terraced houses to avoid being gored.

The dreams are in colour. Red and white to match the white shirts and red neckerchiefs worn by tens of thousands of revelers. In the dreams I can hear the pounding drums and feel the frenetic dancing. I eat well during these nocturnal travels. I can taste the ham and fried eggs. The smell of roasting meat is mixed with sweating humanity in bars so packed you can hardly move. The delicious exuberance of the crowds dressed in white during seven days of non-stop Apollonian joy dissipating into total exhaustion when you find yourself still awake at 7.30 a.m. jigging behind the town hall band. Is it really tomorrow already? Long dead friends are resurrected and once more dance and sing. Matt is back amongst us where he belongs.

I have been going to the Sanfermines in Pamplona continuously for the last 27 years. If anything the anticipation and excitement grows with the time. It’s not a normal thing for a man of 48 to be doing every 6th of July.

I met many Americans as a result of Pamplona – as a working class Northerner where else would I meet them? For us America was a fantasy land only accessible via Saturday matinees or Marvel Comics. My first American friends were Peripherals who had decided to stay a while in Europe. Some had come in the late 40s on the GI Bill, others after a tour of duty in Vietnam. Others had dropped out of college and decided to live in a place where they could drink legally and cheaply aged 18. But my induction into the Sanfermines had nothing to do with Ernest Hemmingway or America.

It all started in 1975. I had just left Bretton Hall teacher training college after a disastrous two terms studying Drama. After a short trip to Paris where I thought I might get a job washing dishes – shades of George Orwell - I took a job at a large gentleman's outfitters in the centre of Sheffield called Jackson's the Tailors. The assistant manager was a small immaculately dressed man in his late 20s called Dave Cook. He was known to everybody as Cooky. He was fanatical about all things Spanish and in particular the Bullfight. A decade years earlier he had left his job and gone to Spain in the hopes of becoming England's next big name matador. He fought a couple of fights in small villages and even got gored. Then he limped back home to the North of England and a more secure life.

Cooky was a character. He was also a Mormon. He had converted to the Church of the Latter Day Saints when he met his wife, a life-long follower, who already had children by a previous husband. So, he converted to the faith, got married and gave up drinking - but did not give up on Spain. He had a huge bullfight poster pinned up in the tea room and berated his colleagues on the greatness of all things Spanish.

"If it's so good why don't you go and live there?" was a common sneering response.

" I fully intend too. " Dave would reply.

Most people thought Cooky was a pain in the arse. I thought he was amazing. He was so energetic in comparison with the rest of the staff who seemed to be sleep walking to retirement.

One Saturday we had opened up the shop and were stood in the early summer sunshine by the doors overlooking the pedestrian precinct. Cooky was wistful

" Beautiful day like this, they'll be hanging out the flags and bunting in villages across Spain ready for fiesta. Now I have got responsibilities but you haven't . That's where you should be. Not stuck in a shop on a sunny Saturday morning."

I loved the way that he encouraged me to just take off and leave. Normally bosses would drone on at you for hours about how 'if you played your cards right' you might have their job in 20 years. Cooky didn’t even bother to teach me how to measure up old men for their wool worsted suits. He knew that I would be on my way in a few weeks and actively helped me escape.

"So Paul. Where are you going on holiday this year?"

" Well I'm skint at the moment. Me and a mate are thinking of hitching down to Cornwall, but next year I am going to save some money and spend the whole summer in Greece."

Cooky exploded.

" Greece! Are there bullfiights in Greece? Are there fiestas in Greece? What are you going to do? Smoke dope and strum your guitar on the beach all summer! " I hadn't told him that that was exactly my idea.

“ Paul you should go to Pamplona for thje running of the bulls. Never been myself but a friend told me it was amazing. Go there with some mates and tell me what it was like."

Cooky was insistent. He picked up the theme at tea break and lunch time and I gave in. Pamplona it would be for the next summer holidays. I left the job at the tailors for a string of better paid temp jobs in factories, building sites, an iron foundry . I then moved on to a permanent job as a nursing orderly in a psychiatric hospital . Think One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest with Yorkshire accents. The experience cheered me up immensely. Hitherto I had been self-obsessed and had a bit of a victim complex. Born into a poor family. Dad died when I was 12. I saw myself as a bit of a working class hero who had had it tough. The hospital made me realize I had had it very easy. No mental illness. No family violence. No alcoholism. Loving mum, bothers and sisters. Food in the fridge. Good friends.

The hospital was populated by a cast of characters straight out of fiction.

The 1960s acid casualty staff nurse who admitted to having LSD flashbacks on the wards whilst he was handing out drugs to patients. The nursing sister who had known many of her charges since it was a locked mental asylum before World War II. Their medical notes revealed that they had been committed by 2 doctors back in the 1930s as teenagers for something they called Precox Dementia – a depressive paranoid condition we might now call teenage depression.

It was common knowledge that some of the older women had been put away when they were teenagers to keep them quiet about the sexual relations they had enjoyed with local dignitaries – vicars. masons, politicians and psychiatrists. One of the long stay schizophrenic used to obsessionally scribble the names of his favourite food on the wall next to the bed. He was a big man and tried to strangle me when I asked him to come away from the dormitory and have a cup of tea. I was very calm and told him not be silly and put me down. I only started to shake with fear a couple of minutes later when the danger had passed.

But it was a happy time. Discos and proper girlfriends as well as night’s out with my mate Mark Oldfield who was now fully back in circulation after splitting up with his girlfriend. We had played in a school rock band called Bruin and although we were dreadful, Mark was a good guitarist. He was alos a great cartoonist, had a sharp wit and a wicked sense of satire. He had published a scandalous alternative school magazine just before we both left ( OK I was kicked out) called Eric. The highlight of which was a short story “Billy Bunter of Greyfriars” in which he mixed the writing style of 1930s English Public Schoolboy novels with the explosive violence of a Sam Peckinpah movie. The sado-masochistic section is still shocking 30 years later. He was talented and just a bit dangerous but like me he lived at home. What was the point in getting a flat? Less money for beer and guitar strings, Mark came round to my house or should I say my mum’s house quite a lot and we often sat in my attic bedroom listening to Marc Bolan records and drinking whatever they had on special offer at the local shop. Ususally cider. I told him about the plan to go to Pamplona and he agreed immediately. It sounded like a good plan. 2 weeks away getting drunk in Spain with a short stopover in Paris. This would stock us up with stories for the coming year and we could brag to our friends about our adventures. We just had to find out when this amazing fiesta actually took place. The Spanish Tourist Board were not much help when we rang them. All they could say was that it was some time in the first two weeks of July.

Even though I had left the Jackson the Tailors I kept in touch with Cooky. He invited Mark and I up to his neat semi-detached in a new development on the outskirts of town to watch Super 8 films of bullfights. That was our preparation for the wild bacchanalia of Fiesta. Sitting with a Mormon drinking de-caffinated coffee and talking about the different passes the matador made with his cape. We also listened to stories about his bullfighting exploits which we started to suspect were a little over embellished even though we were sure that he had faced horned animals in a spangly suit at some point. The strange atmosphere was added to when two Mormon elders – earnest 19 year olds from Utah dressed in identical black suits came to his house whilst we were watching bullfights. They drank squash and talked to Cooky about the church and showed him a film. I got the impression that his faith in the tale of the engraved tablets and magic spectacles was starting to wane. Mark and I made it back to town just before the pubs shut and downed a couple of pints by way of De-Mormonisation .


The Summer of 1976 approached and we booked our train tickets from the North of England down to the Spanish border. On the basis of a best guess we went for July 1st – 12th, figuring that we would at least get to see one bull run and do some drinking, We had about 10 words of Spanish between us. As the train slipped out of Sheffield Midland station I remember slipping back into my seat and imagining the holiday was already over and Mark and I had returned home bursting with stories to tell the lads in the pub. Then Mark came back from the buffet car with some beers and we started to plan ahead. We had a tent. There was forced to be a campsite near Pamplona, wasn’t there? Spain was cheap so we should have enough cash if we stuck to bread and wine, but we had to be careful during the 5 hour stopover in Paris. A strategically misplaced round of coffees and croissants could blow a hole in our budget. By the second can of McEwans Export it was all looking good.

We stayed the night in London in a converted coal cellar under a junk shop run by two friends from Sheffield who had decided to try their luck in the big city. It wasn’t going well and Howard had decided to spend a week at his mum’s to recuperate leaving Nick to look after us. Four months later I would be running the same shop. Nick cooked us a full English breakfast and saw us off from Victoria Station on our way south to adventure. In Paris we had a few drinks in a sunny terrace bar opposite Austerlitz station. The drinking left us dehydrated and with only a few minutes to spare before the train left. But that was OK we decided because we could always sit in the buffet car and drink lemondade. Except there was no buffet car and no seats. The entire train was full and we spend the first 5 hours of the journey standing or laying in the corridor. This was harder for Mark as he is 6’ 3 “ to my 5’5”. I managed to cadge a few gulps of water from another young backpacker just north of Bordeaux. Dawn broke over the Atlantic near Biarritz and we were both mesmerized by the sunlight on the water and brightly painted Basque chalets. It would have been a great moment but it was spoilt by my incessant moaning about how I was dying of thirst.

I was thrilled to see the kepis of the French gendarmes give way to the patent leather tri-corns of the Spanish Civil Guards at the Hendaye/Irun international bridge. As someone who had read stories of the International Brigades as a teenager I was ready to re-start the Civil War right away. Except the fighting bit that is. I fancied the speechifying more that the blood letting.

Pamplona lay before us and my absolute best hope was that we would have a good two weeks, not get the shits and come back with some great stories. I never suspected that we would both be coming back with our beards turning grey as we approached 50. I have just got an e-mail from Mark. Like me he is starting to feel the pulse race as he plays his CDs of fiesta music and hear the crowds chanting rhythmically SAN FERMIN – SAN FERMIN…SAN FERMIN in his head.

And Cooky? I am sure he is fine. I rang him in the early 80s and a voice I did not recognize answered the phone.

“Dave Cook? Sorry love they have just moved out. Emigrated. I believe they are living in Salt Lake City now.”

Posted 3:30 AM by Paul
Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word


A fascinating rationalization for the decision to go to war in Iraq has emerged over the weekend. Politicians we are assured were misled by the intelligence services and the shrill cries of the newspapers to invade and occupy a chunk of the Middle East. This is rubbish.

In general, politicians decide on a course of action and organize the collection and dissemination of evidence to support their views and assist their pre-determined plans. Stalin refused to believe the thousands of intelligence reports that Germany was about to invade because he had based his entire thought system on the belief that Britain and Churchill were his greatest enemies. The clue to this phenomenon is in the job title. Blair is a politician not a scientist. When the evidence does not concur with his view he ignores it - or better still ridicules it. He is a master of the latter approach. He derided the view that Saddam did not have WOMDs as "palpably absurd". I believed him for a few minutes. He said it with such assertive vigour that it must be true. What none of us realized at the time is that not only did Saddam not have the capacity to drop anthrax on Tel Aviv but he didn't even have an army, an airforce or a navy. One small missile hit a shopping mall in Kuwait doing some minor damage to a display of Cartier watches. That was it. Palpably absurd indeed.

Perhaps Blair and his tight knit coterie thought that they were "doing the right thing" for Britain and that the deception was in everyone's best interest. FDR played a similar high stakes game in 1940 and 1941. Insisting that the USA would not be dragged into a European war whilst planning for and encouraging that eventuality. But that is not the line that is being spun this week. Some columnists are now seriously expecting us to believe that Blair and Bush were desperate for peace and only decided on war after flicking through the tabloids and scanning the intelligence reports over the bacon and eggs.

" George! I've just read the New York Post. Apparently Saddam has a fleet of micro-lights ready to cross the Atlantic at any moment to spray Poughkeepsie with Sarin. Quick we have to do something about it!"

"Sure thing Tony I just read your Sun and Eye-rak could drop an H-bomb on Cyprus within 45 minutes."

Frankly the whole thing is getting silly if not a little patronizing. Do they really think we are so very very stupid?

Of course it is easy to make mistakes and no one should forget that, despite their occasional claims to the contrary, politicians are human. The problem they have is that they seem to be genetically disposed to never admitting it. This is an unnatural response to real life as everyone makes huge mistakes in their life affecting themselves and others. If I had been a backbench Labour MP on that fateful day when the UK decided to play East Germany to Bush's Soviet Union, I would have definitely walked through the Government lobby. Why? Because in the end I would have thought that Tony knew something that lesser mortals like me could not be told and besides.. How could I face my constituents in the aftermath of a biological attack on South London if I had voted NO to war? And how would I be feeling now, 15 months, $100 billion, 20,00 deaths and a torture scandal later? Sick in my heart and soul. I would feel duped but I doubt if I would have responded publicly like the noble Democratic Senator from South Carolina Fritz Hollings, a man who voted for war, who recently said; "I was misled. I am embarrassed." I predict Sen. Hollings will be rewarded at the polls as erstwhile opponents flock to his standard for showing signs not just of penitence but of common humanity.

On an infinitesimally smaller scale I recanted a strongly held view about 8 years ago when I was a minor council politician in West London. We were redeveloping a small piece of land on the high street to create two more car-parking spaces and install a bust of the famous artist Hogarth who lived locally 200 years earlier. To do this we had to cut down a small tree and tear up some railings. The only problem is that this tiny patch of greenery was much loved by the locals who mounted a vociferous campaign to save the railings and the tree. I spent a month dismissing them in the local newspaper as "politically motivated" by the opposition Liberal Democrats who had their eye on my ward or " a bunch of middle class vegetarian eco warriors trying to stop progress" I then sat down and talked to the protestors and realized that they were right. At a function soon after I was approached by the famous artist Peter Blake (he did the cover of Sgt. Peppers) whose life had led the campaign. He was in a state of mild shock.

" Thank you Councillor Bower. I have never known a politician do that."

"What?"

"Admit that they were wrong"

Clearly waging war and deciding on if a country is going to unleash a biological Armageddon are not exactly analogous with tearing down some railings - but you get the picture. People like a bit of humility.

But in 2004 my ex-comrades in the Labour Party have more pressing matters. Two bye-elections are coming up in what will be the first test for Blair post Iraq and an old friend of mine who is now a Labour MP has been chosen to lead the campaign. This is a sign of how much he is trusted. In similar circumstances the Labour Leadership would have locked me in a broom cupboard for the duration. He will be responsible for unexpectedly keeping the seat for Labour in the face of falling poll ratings or putting brave face on defeat under the glare of the media spotlight. The candidate on these occasions is little more than a message delivery machine. He and his wife, who works as his office manager, are the kind of people who have built and maintained the Party over the last 100 years. Totally loyal and with the ability to understand ordinary people who do not share their tribal loyalties. They have worked tirelessly for years. Working for the defeat of the Conservatives when the rest of us were down the pub. I went out with them for dinner at a Turkish restaurant last week. They both reminded me that the often repeated maxim "Politicians are all the same" is not true. Some of them aren't like that. You couldn't help but admire them and wish them both well.

As we downed the last glasses of house wine, it occurred to me that the simple and most effective tactic was barred to him. He couldn't say

" Sorry we got it wrong. We'll try our best to make it better."

No doubt he will say " ordinary people are more interested in our record on jobs, schools and health care than whether or not WOMDs existed" and up to a point he would be right. However, when you have a leadership which is so closely identified with a failed policy, and caught out telling lies, the bond between the Leaders and the Led is broken. He could stand on the doorstep and say "Coal is black, milk is white" and some voters would look back and say.

" Yeh. Maybe. But you said that about Iraq."


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