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The question is superfluous for anyone familiar with the principles lying at the foundations of our foreign policy.

Actually, ‘lying’ is the right word for it.

For these principles presuppose a mendacious answer to the question in the title, which American and our neocons are quick to provide: Egyptians, along with the rest of the Middle East, want to be like us.

Do they really? Are they really craving all those things we’re so proud of? To wit:

– Women walking around with their secondary sex characteristics barely if at all covered

– Drunks adorning pavements in even good neighbourhoods with puke

– Men marrying each other because their women are already married, also to each other

– Gay Day parades

– Facial metal, tattoos and other body art

– Borders open to anyone wishing to get in – numbers no object

– Religion vulgarised, secularised and marginalised

– Propaganda of every known perversion to school children

– Hospitals that kill, not treat

– Schools that dumb-down, not educate

– Economy going to the dogs

– Currency rapidly becoming worthless

– People’s savings reduced to dust

– Spivs like Dave, Nick and Ed running (ruining? – amazing how much difference one letter can make) people’s lives

No, perhaps not. What the Muslims really yearn for is DEMOCRACY.

And specifically? Well, that’s a tough one. Let me think…

Why, those Egyptians and other Middle Easterners want to vote freely for politicians who are guaranteed to deliver every item on the above list.

That’s what our democracy has come to mean this side of sloganeering. And we’re told Egyptians want to be just like us.

That’s why they’re out in the streets, shooting and being shot at, killing and being killed, raping and being raped. All that because they want DEMOCRACY.

To satisfy that putative craving American and British boys have been killing and dying in huge numbers for over a decade. No sacrifice too great for the noble cause of bringing DEMOCRACY to the Middle East.

Now, it’s reasonably clear to anyone with an IQ higher than today’s scorching temperature that no such craving exists – nor can exist. So all that slaughter must satisfy a craving that’s quite different.

It does. It satisfies the bellicose instincts of the neo-Trotskyites who formulate foreign policy on either side of the Atlantic.

It also satisfies the pragmatic instincts of the neo-Machiavellians who are familiar with the time-honoured tradition of using foreign wars to distract attention from domestic problems.

The bigger the problems, the bigger the wars, so we must be grateful that we’re merely in recession. If we had a depression, like back in the 1930s, the spirit of the Blitz would have to be revived.

It’s pointless to criticise any policies put forth by the Baracks and Daves of this world – or their predecessors and followers.

It’s useless telling them it’s wrong to kill people for ideological and political reasons, especially those as ill-advised and immoral as theirs.

It’s no good suggesting to them that instead of provoking or actually perpetrating violence abroad they ought to redirect their energy to improving life at home.

That’s like telling a dog not to chase a cat around the house. Fido doesn’t do so because he thinks it’s a good idea. He does it because that’s what a dog does.

An exercise that might be useful is telling everyone we know that democracy, especially its export version, has become nothing but a neocon trick.

Any attempt to shove it down Muslim throats is bound to create the kind of reflux that can engulf the whole region, and possibly the world. Agitating for yet another Arab Spring, we can get a nuclear winter instead.

Perhaps it’s us who should be out demonstrating in the streets, not the Egyptians. Can’t you just see it?

Conservatively dressed crowds marching down Whitehall and Pennsylvania Avenue, shouting in proper accents, “Leave the world alone!”, “Mind your own business!”, “Give us our country back!”, “How about some democratic choice at home?”

Many things would have to happen for something like that to be possible. Too many for us to hold our breath.

Too many people would have to see that the choice between Dave and Ed, or Barack and whomever, is no choice at all. That our whole political class, regardless of party affiliation, is so profoundly corrupt that only surgery, not therapy, could possibly work.

So perhaps we should indeed encourage them to carry on as they are. It’s just possible that our only hope can come from the purifying effect of a major conflict. You know, of the kind our leaders are so assiduously trying to provoke.

I doubt Egyptians want that. But maybe we do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy Murray has won Wimbledon.

For those of you who don’t follow sports, that’s a tennis tournament.

For those of you who know nothing about sports, tennis is a game that involves two participants chasing fuzzy yellow balls around a court.

When one of them gets to the ball, he uses a stringed bat to wallop it over the net, making sure the ball lands within the area demarcated with white lines.

The player who doesn’t manage to do that loses the point. When this happens, he chooses any or all of the actions from this list: a) swear at himself, b) swear at the umpire, c) swear at the spectators, d) swear at the opponent, e) swear at the coach, f) issue a primal scream, g) smash the racquet (a player who’s any good gets his for free), h) kick courtside furniture.

The player who has to draw from this list less than his opponent wins the match. If he does so seven times in a row, he wins Wimbledon.

Which is what Andy has done.

This feat ranks so high on the scale of human achievement that all those Shakespeares, Newtons and Cricks (of the Watson fame) are weeping in their graves.

Their puny careers pale by comparison to what Andy has accomplished. Andy has won Wimbledon.

By doing so, he, according to his new best friend Dave, “lifted the spirits of the whole country.”

A cynic might suggest that said spirits couldn’t have been that far down in the first place, if all it took to lift them was Andy chasing fuzzy yellow balls rather fast.

But we must keep in mind that these days the more trivial the achievement the more it’s cherished.

So one shouldn’t be surprised that the country perked up as a result of Andy’s triumph. Never mind youth unemployment, the standard of living dropping precipitously, Britain being run out of Brussels through our local spivs, none of the public services working properly, schools turning children into little savages, hospitals killing patients.

None of it matters any longer. Andy has won Wimbledon.

How then can we reward a chap who chased fuzzy yellow balls so well that the country became happy when it had every reason to be miserable?

Andy’s new friend Dave thinks a knighthood would be a good start.  “I can’t think of anyone who deserves one more,” he said.

One has to agree. Of the 60 million people inhabiting the British Isles not one has ever achieved anything comparable to chasing fuzzy yellow balls rather fast.

Of course the aforementioned cynic might opine that, of the nine ringing words Dave uttered, only the first three are true.

But a Brit whose spirits have been lifted sky high would agree wholeheartedly. Chasing fuzzy yellow balls is the highest achievement of all.

But if that is so, then why stop at knighthood? The highest award for the highest achievement, I say.

The Victoria Cross springs to mind. Yes, I know it’s a military decoration, but Wimbledon is like a war, with every match its decisive battle. That makes Andy a hero in the same sense in which Douglas Bader was one.

And a mere knighthood? Really, Dave, how mean can you get? I mean, John Major got that and whose spirits did he ever lift? Not even Norma’s, I daresay.

No, a peerage would be the least we can do. And not the half-arsed life variety either. Hereditary peerage at least, better still a dukedom. Duke Andy of Dunblane – can’t you just see it?

At the same time, Andy must be canonised in the Church of Scotland, with a halo made of fuzzy yellow balls attached to his head.

We shouldn’t accept any lame excuses either, such as that the Church of Scotland doesn’t do that sort of thing.

About bloody time it did, if only this once. Finally, they have a Scot who deserves sainthood more than all those Smiths and Flemings.

Didn’t Dave describe Andy’s deed as a miracle? There you go then. And let’s not forget he won the US Open last year – that’s two miracles right there. Even the RC’s think it’s enough.

Arise, Sir Andy. Ascend, St Andy. You’ve made us all deliriously happy. Britain is back from the dead.

 

  

Nostra culpa, declared the Archbishop of Canterbury in a speech to Synod.

The Church of England, he said, is widely criticised for its opposition to same-sex marriage. Much of this criticism, he acknowledged ruefully, is “uncomfortably close to the bone”.

The Church, lamented the prelate, doesn’t seem to realise that “the cultural and political ground is changing.” Yet “pretending that nothing has changed is absurd and impossible.”

The C of E has only one way to go. “We must accept there is a revolution in the area of sexuality.” Only thus can the Church contain some of the pent-up hostility to it.

Let me see if I get this right. The reason people are leaving the Church in droves is that they can’t abide by its opposition (rather meek opposition, it has to be said) to an abomination that no Christian can possible countenance while remaining a Christian.

Reverse this unfortunate situation, and our predominantly atheist people will do an about-face and march towards the Church as fast as they have been marching away from it.

Essentially this means that in order to reconvert England to Christianity, the Church of England must stop being Christian. I’ve got news for the Archbishop: it’s not just the Church’s opposition to homomarriage that turns people off, and it’s not just “in the area of sexuality” that a revolution is under way.

Under attack is the whole ethos of Christianity, based as it is on the centrality of God rather than man. Modern man, his head deep up his own rectum, has been brainwashed to think that he himself is the ultimate authority: his own judge, his own priest, his own God.

Accepting an authority that’s infinitely higher than himself has become abhorrent and impossible to him. His vulgar materialist mind can’t fathom the sublime subtlety of Christianity; his greedy, acquisitive nature can’t accept the Church’s moral restrictions on his vile behaviour.

The problem is fundamental, and one can only regret that the highest prelate of the Church doesn’t realise this. Nor, and this is deeply worrying, does he seem to have the remotest idea of what the Church is for.

When it comes to its interaction with the secular world, the Church is there to pass moral judgment on the multitudes – not the other way around.

It’s the Church’s sacred duty to tell the world where it’s going wrong, not to get up and salute every time yet another subversive aberration is run up the flagpole. If the people don’t like what they hear, then so much the worse for the people.

Any sane person, never mind a Christian, must see that homomarriage is a foul obscenity. Alas, people have been largely deprived of their sanity by centuries’ worth of ever-accelerating atheist propaganda. The Church must do all it can to restore this sanity – even if it means becoming unpopular with the atheists of Notting Hill and other fashionable parts of London.

Instead the Archbishop clearly thinks in marketing terms, within which he operated for most of his adult life. Even those he both misunderstands and misapplies.

A successful marketing campaign aims at both breadth (expanding its market) and depth (keeping hold of the core customers). Any marketer worth his salt is loath to achieve the former at the expense of the latter. Yet this is what in effect the Archbishop is trying to do.

His forlorn hope seems to be that homosexuals marrying at the altar will suddenly make the Incarnation and the Resurrection universally attractive. It won’t. What is absolutely and totally guaranteed is that true Christians will leave the Church as a result – to Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, or else variously heretical fundamentalist sects. Many will part ways with any church Christianity altogether.

Turning the Church into a fancy-dress extension of The Guardian, which seems to be the Archbishop’s intention, shouldn’t stop at sanctifying same-sex marriage.

The next step should be for the Church to abandon its sacraments, rituals and dogma, as it has already largely abandoned its formative Scripture. Why stop halfway, Your Grace?

You’d achieve a much broader appeal by declaring ex cathedra that, though Jesus was basically a decent bloke and a bit of a prophet, he was in no way divine. That no one can be conceived without some hanky-panky. That no one can come back from the dead. That one’s enemy should be eviscerated, not loved.

This is the direction in which “the cultural and political ground is changing.” Rather than fighting this change, surely our Church must trail in its wake to avoid criticism that’s “uncomfortably close to the bone”.

I don’t know how many more speeches like this it will take for any orthodox Christian to realise that the Church of England can no longer remain his home. Not very many, would be my guess.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The odyssey of Edward Snowden is nothing short of fascinating.

The chap is desperate to relocate from his native USA to any place where they won’t clap him in prison for a rather long time.

His options, never endless to begin with, are narrowing faster than you can say ‘the Yanks are angry.’ Potential havens have been told in no uncertain terms that harbouring Snowden would mean getting on America’s bad side.

For the time being he’s cooped up in a hotel at Moscow’s Shermetievo Airport, waiting for 21 countries to act on his application for political asylum.

His first choice was Russia itself, which shows just how desperate the poor man is getting. Putin was magnanimous enough to offer refuge, but only on condition that Snowden stop blowing his whistle.

If you aren’t fluent in Russian, allow me to translate: this means Snowden isn’t supposed to reveal American secrets to anyone other than the Russians. As if they haven’t pumped him dry already – if they hadn’t he wouldn’t be allowed to breathe the fume-stinking Sheremetievo air.

Anyway, Snowden has refused to play along, and quite right too. If he clammed up at this stage, he’d lose whatever celebrity status he has gained. And surely becoming a celebrity was the whole purpose of the exercise – what else would anyone else wish to become these days?

Apparently, however, Venezuela, Nicaragua and possibly Bolivia have begun to nibble on Snowden’s line.

Now I don’t know if living in Danny Ortega’s Sandinista paradise is better or worse than spending a few years in an American minimum-security prison. Suffice it to say that the choice isn’t necessarily straightforward.

Of course a maximum-security jail would be a different matter. The advantage there is that a weedy white chap is guaranteed a vigorous sex life. The disadvantage is that this may not be the kind of sex life he’d normally choose.

It’s fairly clear that Snowden’s motives are far from noble, closer to those of Herostratus than of St Francis. But it does happen at times that bad impulses motivate good deeds, and in this sense my sympathy is with Snowden, sorry excuse for a human being that he may be.

For I regard all modern, post-Christendom governments as profoundly corrupt by definition. They have become nothing but giant bureaucracies, meaning nothing but self-serving.

All such bureaucracies, be that governments, large corporations, the NHS, you name it, have one thing in common. They serve those who run them and hardly anyone else.

Just consider this. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Marx’s dreaded capitalism was at its peak and robber barons at their most oppressive, the average ratio of income earned by US corporate directors and their employees was 1:28. Yet in 2005, with ‘democracy’ in full bloom and egalitarianism proudly reigning supreme, this ratio was 1:158.

Thus the ultimate ends of any corporation, acquisition of wealth, are now reached by management only or at least predominantly. The arrangement is at heart more USSR than USA, and the same goes for our governments.

They are no longer our servants, our friends or even our allies. They pursue ends that aren’t just different from ours but are actively hostile to them.

Even as corporate executives are single-mindedly committed to maximising their own returns at the expense of everyone else’s, modern states are just as committed to increasing their power at the expense of our liberties.

Smugly growing ever more certain of their own impunity, they’ll impose any abomination upon us, provided their own power to impose even greater abominations grows as a result.

Thus our Education Secretary Michael Gove, who’s supposed to be a good egg, comparatively, is threatening severe punishment to anyone using the word ‘gay’ as anything other than ringing praise.

He hasn’t specified the nature of the punishment, but contextually it sounds like a custodial sentence. Now what would he do to a brazen chap quipping in jest that ‘gay’ is an acronym for ‘Got Aids Yet’? Nothing short of the death penalty would be commensurate with such a crime – bring it back, I say.

In light of all that one has to welcome anything (well, practically anything) that puts the brakes on the state juggernaut. Less power for them means more power for us – it’s as simple as that.

You’ll notice that modern governments have become past masters at using any conflicts, such as wars or threats of terrorism, to increase their power exponentially – this regardless of whether or not they achieve their ostensible objective.

Their ability to put paid to the privacy of our personal communications may or may not reduce our safety vis-à-vis terrorism. What it is absolutely guaranteed to do is reduce our liberty vis-à-vis the state, and this constitutes a far deadlier threat to our society than the odd bomb going off on a bus.

In any case, why does the state need free access to the e-mails I exchange with my friends Peter, Tony, James, Stephen and Sally? The chances of any of us ever flying a jumbo jet into a building are considerably less than zero, although the idea of doing it to 10 Downing Street isn’t without a certain attraction.

I hope you won’t think me unfashionably biased if I suggest that by far likelier culprits are to be found in a group whose members are typically named Ahmed, Mohammed or Tariq. This observation, I hasten to add, is based exclusively on historical evidence, not any ethnic or racial prejudice.

So why not monitor mostly e-mail exchanges between Tazeem and Abdul rather than those between Peter and Alex? Surely this would be logistically easier, cheaper and more productive?

It would also be impossible – just as it’s impossible for our police to favour tall black strangers for stopping and searching, or for our airport security to focus on the usual suspects.

To do so would be discriminatory – and discrimination of any kind, except in favour of state power, is a crime possibly worse than murder and certainly worse than burglary. So if airport security guards want to pat down a young Rasta wearing a psychedelic T-shirt, they must also pat down a middle-aged gentleman wearing a tweed suit.

So first the state introduces asinine, counterproductive, politically motivated regulations and then it uses them to justify infringing upon the most fundamental liberty of the individual.

That’s why I say more power to Snowden’s elbow. Any action that slows down the despotic growth of our spivocracy ought to be welcomed – whatever the perpetrator’s motives, personality traits or moral fibre.

 

 

 

 

Spring is normally followed by summer. Yet, defying this proven meteorological wisdom, the Arab Spring went back to winter, though not yet of the nuclear variety.

Of course as American neocon ventriloquists and their British dummy Dave told us at the time, flowers of democracy would blossom in Egypt.

Its people couldn’t wait to queue outside voting booths, and of course the country had a rich tradition of electoral politics.

However, before the Arab Spring of 2011 it was usually the military who had done the electing. All four Egyptian presidents since the ‘republican’ revolution of 1952 had been army officers and stooges.

For convenience’s sake, each president also acted as the supreme commander of the armed forces – just like in the USA. Unlike in the USA, this arrangement meant not that the civilian authority controlled the military but rather the other way around.

Mercifully the Arab Spring changed all that. As both American and British neocons explained, the events of 2011 reflected the inexorable march of democracy throughout the world. It may have taken the Arabs a bit longer than others to fall in step, but fall in step they finally did.

Naysayers like yours truly were screaming off the rooftops that Egyptians had neither any history of democracy nor any taste for it, but no one listened.

So they voted for their government – only to find that it wasn’t quite to their liking. Muslim fundamentalism is perfectly acceptable provided that there’s much wealth pumping out of the ground.

In countries where this isn’t the case, such as Egypt, Allah needs help from an industrious populace and an economy organised along the lines that postdate the eleventh century.

In the absence of such conditions, excessive piety equals abject poverty. This is something the Egyptians, spoilt rotten by decades of despotic but secular government, weren’t quite ready to accept.

Never mind democracy, feel the dollars, they screamed (or the Arabic words to that effect).

Rioting on an epic scale ensued, with yesterday’s democratic voters instantly turning into looters, vandals and rapists.

Actually, since the 101 women raped in Cairo’s Tahir Square were assaulted in full view of cheering multitudes, democracy was served. A landslide majority clearly supported the acts, which should make them perfectly acceptable to our democracy mongers.

Anyway, out goes the democratically elected president, in comes another military junta. But the military have done their reconnaissance, so they know the trick.

Put the word democracy into the Yanks’ shell-like, and subsidies will rain on your head faster than you can say post-colonialism. Use any other word, and what will rain down on your head won’t be dollars but drones.

The choice is straightforward: democracy and dollars or no democracy and drones. I know which one I’d choose and the Egyptians are no different (in this respect at any rate).

So Adly Mansour, the puppet of the military, reassures the West that elections, this time free and democratic (that is, guaranteeing the right result) will be held soon. Very soon. Very soon indeed. We’ll let you know.

You see, because the last elections brought to power those who “failed to meet the demands of the people”, they were flawed. Fraudulent, actually.

“This [a military coup d’état],” explained the in-coming leader, “is the only way for a brighter future, a freer future, a more democratic one.” Fair enough – anyone observing Dave in action must feel nostalgic about the Colonel Pride concept of parliamentarism.

Perhaps fearing that the Egyptians are setting a bad example, Dave demanded that a ‘democratic transition’ take place soon. You know, of the kind you chaps had back in 2011, during the Arab Spring.

Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s Foreign Minister, also bemoaned the “serious setback for democracy.” This shows that Guido can rise above his narrow personal concerns. After all, the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood would have joyously stoned him and his male wife/husband to death.

Barack Obama also said he was “deeply concerned” by the events in Egypt. The Arab Spring was just fine by him, but then the president may have a soft spot for Islam.

One can already see the scenario in the making. The military will hold their elections along the traditional Egyptian lines: how the votes will be cast will matter less than how they’ll be counted.

Dave, Barack and Guido will be mollified. Until the next rioting season when Egyptians will feel that their expectations aren’t being met. They will spill out into the streets, expressing their longing for true democracy by raping a few more women.

Press the reset button. Or else, depending on the prevalent sentiments in the USA, the button on the drone-controlling console. One way or the other democracy will be served.

 

 

Brazilians are supposed to be so football-crazy they’d do anything to host a World Cup. Sure enough, the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.

So are the people rejoicing? Not exactly. They are, millions of them, out in the streets protesting against the billions their government is spending on the extravaganza. By the looks of it, the government isn’t long for this world.

So where does this leave our stereotype?

Or take another sport, tennis. A country is supposed to spend a lot of money to produce champions, right? So Britain spends £61 million a year and we have exactly one man in the world’s top 200.

Poland, on the other hand, spends £900,000 a year, and they have two players in Wimbledon’s last eight.

There goes another stereotype, tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.

And now for something less trivial: the Middle East is craving for democracy, isn’t it?

To satisfy that craving, the West, led by the Americans with their usual panache, has been fomenting trouble in the Middle East for over a decade.

Millions have died, stable regimes have been destabilised, armies of refugees have been set adrift, billions have been spent, a few nasty leaders have been killed and others ousted, civil wars have become either a reality or a distinct possibility.

Yet if you listen to the neocons of both American and British vintage, it has all been in a good cause: bringing democracy to the region.

You see, the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence has to lead people to the voting booth every few years.

That’s where happiness awaits, in the booth. Once they get there they’ll be deliriously ecstatic. Perhaps not quite so happy as the Americans are, but as near as damn.

This is a stereotypical idea sold to those who either can’t or won’t think for themselves. The binary notion is beautiful in its simplicity: democracy is good, anything else is bad.

Surely everyone understands that? The whole world wants to be just like the US of A, doesn’t it? Well then, the whole world wants to be democratic.

Take Egyptians, for example. They got their democracy a year ago, and they’re all happy as a sandboy. Of course, their free elections brought to power the kind of chaps who think all infidels must die, but that’s the way the couscous crumbles.

We may not like our democratically elected leaders, but as long as they are indeed democratically elected, we must all be happy. Consent of the governed, right? When a quarter of the population votes a government in, they’ve given consent on the part of the other three quarters as well.

That’s democracy, isn’t it? That’s what the whole world wants. Can’t be happy without it.

Egyptians are like that too. That is to say they’re just like us. Now they have their democracy, they’re happy. They… hold on a moment…

What’s that on the news? Is that millions of them demonstrating in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and every other place with a population greater than the Man City squad? Is that protesters getting killed? Is that civil war about to break out?

Is that the army saying such non-democratic things as “We swear to God that we will sacrifice even our blood for Egypt and its people, to defend them against any terrorist, radical or fool”?

Now when army spokesmen in those parts say they’re ready to sacrifice ‘even their blood’ fighting their own people, what they really mean is that they’re ready to shoot said people like rabbits.

Of course terrorists, one can understand. Even radicals, if they’re too radical. But going to war against fools, that’s a bit much. Perhaps those chaps don’t quite grasp the principal idea of democracy: a fool’s vote weighs as much as yours or mine.

And since there are more fools than people like you or me, they are much more important. A democracy doesn’t shoot fools; it puts them on a pedestal, so democratic politicians don’t have to bend to kiss fools’ backsides.

Nor do the broad masses of Egyptians seem to realise that in a democracy it’s not street riots but elections that are supposed to bring governments down. You know, you make your choice, you live with it. Until the next election all you can do is grin and bear it – not take on the country’s armed forces.

Perhaps, just perhaps – and I hope the skies won’t open and the God of Democracy won’t smite me with lightning for saying this – people in the Middle East aren’t really democrats at heart.

No, perish the thought. Of course they are. The whole world is – the neocons have told us so. The Middle Easterners are desperate to become just like the Midwesterners. All it takes is a few laser-guided bombs for them to see the light (and presumably hear the bang). Flash, bang, and Bashir is your uncle, Fatima is your aunt.

If you think there’s anything wrong with this scenario, you’re rejecting one of the most cherished stereotypes of modernity. Shame on you – and shame on me for feeling the same way.

Note 1: Eric Blair meets Tony Blair

Eric Blair, otherwise known as George Orwell, had much fun writing about totalitarians enforcing different, often diametrically opposite, meanings of words.

Tony Blair, otherwise known as Anthony, was one of those aspiring totalitarians who made Orwellian satire redundant by enforcing his own version of PC vocabulary.

Now Dave has outdone both Eric’s fantasy and Tony’s reality. His government has drawn up official legal guidance ‘clarifying’ the meaning of such highly controversial words as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.

Actually these words were regarded as fairly straightforward for the first millennium of the English language, but they no longer are. You see, the previous 50 generations assumed, wrongly as it happens, that marriage united in holy matrimony a man and a woman.

Now that backwardness has been expunged, the use of such words has to acquire a new flexibility. 

Hence the guidance: “This means that ‘husband’ here will include a man or a woman in a same sex marriage, as well as a man married to a woman. In a similar way, ‘wife’ will include a woman married to another woman or a man married to a man.”

The lifelong champion of progress in me rejoices – that is until he, the champion of progress, is slapped in the face by a piece of blatant discrimination creeping into the guidance:

“The term ‘husband’ will in future legislation include a man who is married to another man (but not a woman in a marriage with another woman).” Two people living together as each other’s wives is rather odd, wouldn’t you say? Clearly more work is needed – Dr Johnson, ring your office.

One can only suggest that this semantic revolution ought to gather speed. The word ‘Dave’ should now also stand for ‘spiv’, but the word ‘spiv’ can have a broader meaning than just ‘Dave’, also to include ‘George’, ‘Nick’, ‘Vince’ and – for old times’ sake – ‘Tony’.

Note 2: The burgers of Westminster

Being prolier than thou is de rigueur for our leaders, especially those who were born with silver utensils in their various orifices.

Thus George Osborne, now also known as ‘spiv’, has to spend as much time on downplaying his poshness as he devotes to his day job.

Yet he must also convey the impression that his day job receives his undivided attention.

The day before he unveiled his spivocratic budget George decided to kill two birds with one meal.

To that end he tweeted a picture of himself at his desk late at night putting the finishing touches on the budget (day job) and scoffing a burger out of a polystyrene box, with a packet of greasy chips and a diet cola close at hand (man of the people).

Alas, George was to find out the hard way that those who live by spin will die by it. The papers quickly cottoned on to the fact that George’s repast came from a faux prole Waterloo burger place called Byron – not from any of the three McDonald’s shops that are closer to 11 Downing Street.

And, shock horror!, George didn’t get much change out of a tenner for his dinner – that, even though a Mickey D burger costs an impeccably populist 99p.

Now any sensible man would have responded to accusations of burger poshness by saying that, as someone on a salary of £134,565 a year, he can afford to spend £10 for dinner. And anyway, it’s none of anyone’s business what he eats.

But a man capable of such a response wouldn’t tweet a photo of himself playing prole. So George put his foot deeper in it by saying that the only reason he preferred Byron to McDonald’s (which he would otherwise dearly love, this being his favourite food) is that the latter doesn’t deliver and the former does.

Turns out George dug a hole for himself and sank into it by lying: as the tabloids have pointed out, Byron doesn’t deliver either.

In fact, George sent an aide to get his meal from Waterloo, and I bet the aide neither walked there nor went by public transport. So add another £15 for a round-trip taxi ride or even more for a limo – the hole is getting deeper and deeper.

Note 3: Dave’s marriage tax

Having done his best to destroy the institution of marriage with one hand, Dave is now going to throw a bone to married people with the other.

Soon – very soon! – married couples of any of the three or four known sexes will receive a whopping tax break equalling about £120 a year on average.

That means the husband/wife or wife/husband can treat him/her/itself to a Byron burger once a month – presumably provided they promise not to tweet pictures of themselves devouring the treat.

The move, which Dave resisted for years, is being hailed as yet another blow struck for the institution of holy matrimony that Dave holds in such high esteem that he wants to extend it to the entire animal kingdom.

Job done. Dave can now hide the bottle of Roederer Cristal, or whatever he drinks at home when no one’s looking, and take a convoy of armoured cars down the pub.

Nothing Dave likes more than a Goode Auld pint consumed in an intimate setting shared with George, their bodyguards, 100 paparazzi and half a dozen TV crews.

Oh well, I’d better stop before I do end up in a madhouse. Anyway, my husband Penelope tells me lunch is ready.

Quite a few years ago I found myself talking at a party to a young Dutch woman who worked for the UN.

Since both of us had lived in the USA for many years, the conversation veered towards that country, specifically its legal system.

“America’sh legal shyshtem is rayshisht,” said the young lady in fluent but accented English. “Mosht people in prisonsh aren’t white.”

“Well,” I said meekly, and I should have known better, “racism is certainly one possible explanation.”

“What other ekshplanation can there be?” demanded the UN employee in a tone that was rather the opposite of meek.

In for a penny in for a pound, I thought. “It may be that they commit more crimes,” I said, which made the young lady glower and move away from me diagonally across the room. We never spoke again at the party and haven’t since, even though her brother is a friend of mine.

I’m reminded of that incident every time there is a highly publicised case of a black person either executed or imprisoned in America. For most commentators, both there and here, proceed from the Dutch girl’s assumptions.

An article in today’s Times is a case in point. Its title is Texas Accused of Racism as Black Woman Dies, and implicitly the author feels the accusation isn’t unfounded.

All he says about the crime punished in such a racist way is that “McCarthy, who was black, was convicted in 2002 of stabbing to death a 71-year-old white neighbour five years earlier.”

That’s the truth, but it’s not the whole truth. For in this instance, as in so many others, the devil is in the detail.

Since we aren’t in a courtroom here, Miss McCarthy’s criminal record is admissible, and it does suggest she led a rather uninhibited life. Specifically, she was addicted to crack, which could be an expensive habit. McCarthy’s attempts to finance it resulted in a string of convictions for forgery, theft and prostitution.

On July 21, 1997, McCarthy asked a neighbour, a retired academic Dorothy Booth, if she could borrow some sugar.

Once inside the house McCarthy stabbed Booth five times with a butcher knife, beat her with a candelabrum and cut off her finger to steal her diamond wedding ring.

She then stole Booth’s purse and her Mercedes, and pawned the diamond ring in order to buy some crack.

It took the police all of one day to solve the crime. Evidence showed that McCarthy used Booth’s credit cards at a liquor store. A search of her house produced Booth’s driving license and the murder weapon, still glistening with Booth’s blood.

During the trial the prosecution also presented evidence linking McCarthy to the murders of two other old women, but she wasn’t charged with those crimes. There was no need: the prosecution already had enough for a guilty verdict.

McCarthy was sentenced to death in 1998, successfully appealed, was retried and re-sentenced in 2002. Since then she languished on death row until two days ago, when she was finally executed.

However one feels about the death penalty, and opinions are divided even among those on the side of the angels, Texas law has allowed it since 1976. In this case the evidence was incontrovertible and the sentence just.

So how does The Times comment on it? The author didn’t have enough column inches to give the details of the crime, but he managed to quote every one of McCarthy’s 31 last words about going home to Jesus.

He then offered some interesting but utterly irrelevant statistical information: “Thirty-nine per cent of the inmates on Texas death row are black, though only 12 per cent of the state’s population is black. In the past five years nearly 75 per cent of all death sentences in Texas were imposed on black and Hispanic people.”

I can almost hear the Dutch accent in that paragraph. Is the author implying that any deviation from proportionate representation among convicted criminals betokens racial hatred? Has he considered and rejected the possibility so indignantly discounted by the Dutch girl that the reason for this misbalance is that “black and Hispanic people” commit more crimes?

Then followed another irrelevant titbit, this time on the composition of the jury that had only one black member.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that jurors are supposed to judge the case on the evidence presented. The nature of the evidence, such as Booth’s DNA on McCarthy’s knife, doesn’t change depending on the race of the defendant, the victim or indeed the juror.

Is the author suggesting that an all-black jury would have disregarded the evidence? Or that the white jurors accepted it even though it was unsafe?

If that was the case, then by all means it should be made. Yet the author doesn’t say there was anything fishy about the evidence. He merely seems to regret that the defence didn’t manage to turn the trial into an interracial battlefield.

In fact there have been quite a few trials, on either side of the Atlantic, where this happened. Alas, the kind of education potential jurors receive these days makes many of them ill-qualified even to understand the concept of guilt and innocence, never mind distinguishing one from the other.

This brings into question the continuing validity of the jury system, and this point would not be superfluous in a piece like that.

Instead the author cites, without explicit comment but with implicit approval, a long list of statements coming from the defence and also from several fulltime (and paid) opponents of the death penalty.

That’s it, in a nutshell – yet another sample of factually accurate but in fact deceptive reporting. It’s such journalism that joins forces with education to undermine trial by jury. The system has served us so well for so long that I for one would be sad to see it go.

 

Exactly what is it? It can’t be Osborne’s cosmetic cuts in the welfare budget – everybody knows these have to do with politics, not economics. Cosmetics won’t improve an ugly face, George, which is the one our economy presents.

Nor is it the ruling of the US Supreme Court on same-sex marriage, which is now deemed to be in full accord with what the framers of the US Constitutions had in mind. Nothing controversial about that, unless you hoped American spivs were any different from ours.

It’s not even Boris Johnson yet again approving of homomarriage and also referring, in rather uninhibited language, to ways in which it can be consummated. There would be some controversy there if say the Pope said the same thing, but with Boris one just considers the source.

Well, I shouldn’t keep you guessing for much longer. This week’s biggest controversy has been caused by Serena Williams’s knickers. Or, to be more precise, their colour.

In common with most leading manufacturers of tennis clothes, Nike pushes a new style every year. That includes a new colour, and in this year’s Wimbledon it’s puce.

In keeping with their sponsorship deals all Nike players wear something puce, if only the logo which this year is that very colour.

Now the All England Tennis Club has a strict all-white policy throughout the year, not just during the grand slam tournament. Their charter says that the players’ clothes must be ‘predominantly white’, which I once found out the hard way by being denied access to a court there for wearing black shorts.

The conservative in me both approves of this bow towards tradition and deplores the discriminatory way in which the rule is enforced.

The reigning champion Roger Federer showed up for his first round wearing shoes with puce soles. Considering that the rest of his attire, other than the Nike logos, was snow-white, the ‘predominantly’ requirement was satisfied.

Not according to the members of the tournament committee though. They promptly expressed their outrage by demanding that Roger wear normal, predominantly white, shoes for his second round.

Federer, who pays inordinate attention to his grooming, was so upset that he promptly lost to a journeyman ranked 113 places below him. Of course other commentators came up with different reasons for his defeat, but you and I know better.

So far so good. Yet even as I write this, Serena Williams is on court, flashing her puce knickers underneath a very short white dress.

At the risk of sounding unchivalrous, the area covered by this garment is considerably larger than Federer’s shoe soles, and possibly his whole ensemble. Moreover, while Roger’s soles were only visible when he jumped, Serena’s knickers can be admired every second of the match (I did tell you her dress is very short).

Yet the tournament committee didn’t utter a single word of complaint. Discrimination or what?

I can’t for the life of me understand why women players deserve preferential treatment. Is it not enough that they get the same prize money as the men, even though they spend half the time playing their matches and, judging by their technique and conditioning, a third of the time training?

I mean, have you ever seen a fat man playing tennis professionally? I haven’t, and I watch a lot of tennis.

Yet here is Marion Bartoli of France, reproducing in her body the map shape of her native land. There’s something wrong when a professional athlete paid millions for her trade has a waist broader than her shoulders. And Marion isn’t the only one, believe me.

Now the tennis establishment has added sartorial discrimination to the fiscal kind. The egalitarian in me is aghast.

Let’s get Serena out of her knickers, I say. Let fairness rule.

 

 

 

 

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne are the sun towards which both Britain and America reach tropistically.

This close-knit family with three children shows that even in class-ridden Britain it’s possible to start from humble beginnings (Ozzy’s were humbler than Sharon’s) and end up with a fortune approaching a billion pounds.

Ozzy is a British heavy-metal singer who became a big hit in the States back in the seventies. On stage he pioneered such creative artistic techniques as loading a live goat with dynamite and blowing it up. Presumably his refined artistry made front-row seats cheaper than any other.

He’d also bite heads off various animals, mostly reptiles, and do all sorts of other things one has become accustomed to expect from modern performers searching for the ultimate artistic truth (I’ll spare you the details not to spoil your appetite for a week).

Off-stage, Ozzy once upset Texans by urinating on the wall of the Alamo, a fort in San Antonio that has some residual sentimental value for everyone who saw the eponymous film.

Ozzy was arrested but soon released, which went against the public demand for summary execution. “Folks who piss on the Alamo must be shoat,” was how the demand was enunciated.

Unlike Ozzy, whose ambitions are mostly artistic and pecuniary (these days they are one and the same), his wife also aims for social elevation. And Sharon has correctly identified obtaining a damehood as a useful step along the way.

The prospective Dame Sharon, one of the brightest stars in the firmament of reality TV, is prepared to go rather far in pursuit of her ennoblement or, depending on your vantage point, sink rather low.

Sharon has figured out that the way to the title lies through Prince Charles’s heart, or rather some other parts of his anatomy.

On Monday she divulged the details to American TV viewers: “I want a title. They call it a Dame … You just have to s**k his d**k.”

In case the respective spouses might feel left out, Sharon was prepared to be generous about sharing and caring: “He [Ozzy] can f**k Camilla while I’m with Charles.”

I don’t know exactly how the royal spouses have reacted to the implicit proposal, though I doubt that any reciprocity is on the cards.

But someone ought to tell Sharon that, though her desire to move up in life is perfectly consistent with British and especially American values, she has got the details wrong.

She should direct her attentions to our top politicians, not the heir to the throne. Nor does she really have to go all the way – just kissing their backsides would be sufficient.

Lamentably Sharon missed her best chance, for Tony Blair is no longer in office. Tony, you see, knew all about the importance of nobility, which is why he created 203 peers during his time in office.

Some of those noble gentlemen were Ozzy’s colleagues, for Tony had a weakness for pop music. Or perhaps he had a weakness for coming across as a pop-music lover, which is mandatory for any aspiring politician.

Can you imagine Osbourne fans voting for an MP (or a congressman) who prefers Bach to pop? If you can’t, then you realise that no such person can ever be elected. Professing affection for some sort of satanic perversion going by the name of music is a must for a career in public service.

For the Osbournes (or their moral and aesthetic equivalents), with their vile, unspeakable vulgarity, are the icons of our time. They cater to their public’s tastes, and they know exactly what those tastes are.

“Every nation,” said Joseph de Maistre, “gets the kind of government it deserves.” Quite. And also the kind of artists and TV personalities.