Category: Blog

Knife crime is in sharp focus, as it were, with 279 people stabbed to death last year.

Applying the standard wartime ratio of three wounded to one KIA, the total number of stabbings must have been at least a thousand.

Hence the pile of newspaper pages devoted to the problem, with words like ‘crisis’ and ‘pandemic’ bandied about, complete with superlative adjectives. Most commentators regard the problem as difficult, if not impossible to solve.

So it is – within the confines of the ‘liberal’ bilge that now functions as a surrogate theocratic religion. (I often put the word liberal in quotes because its most common usage actually means ‘illiberal’.) Dropping those shackles, however, would put an end to routine knife crime in short order.

Much of the problem is due to Mrs May’s tenure as incompetent home secretary, from which she naturally graduated to her present position of incompetent prime minister. Acting in her previous capacity, she practically withdrew the power of stop and search from the police.

This was done in the name of multi-culti ‘fairness’ (this word too means its opposite the way it’s commonly used). For, supposedly driven by their febrile racial hatred, policemen were stopping and searching mostly non-whites.

How unfair was that? If they stopped a black youth sporting a hoodie and a feral scowl, they were duty-bound to search, say, my wife who looks, speaks and dresses like a prettier version of Princess Anne.

Since we can’t afford many cops on the beat, the conclusion made itself: if it was impossible to stop and search everyone, the police should stop and search no one. Even putative racism is a crime much worse than slitting someone’s throat.

Those dissenters against the ‘liberal’ ethos point out that the police have to act on the balance of probability. This isn’t hard to calculate, considering that two thirds of knife-possession offenders under 25 in London are non-white (38 per cent nationally).

But statistics shouldn’t affect principles, and Mrs May stuck to her guns and, evidently, knives. As a result, we’re regaled every day with gruesome stories about this or that 17-year-old A-pupil stabbed to death, for no apparent reason.

Have you noticed how the victim of every murder receiving national attention is an upstanding pillar of society boasting high academic achievement, sunny disposition and universal love?

One is almost compelled to infer that cutting the throat of a ne’er-do-well would somehow be less objectionable. Now I don’t care about the personality of the victim – every human life is equally valuable, and the wanton taking of it equally reprehensible.

It’s the personalities of the murderers that interest me, or especially how they are described. For example, in his sensible, if slightly self-serving, article, Boris Johnson refers to his success as mayor of London in promoting stop and search powers of the police.

As a result, he writes, knife crime went down, and I have no reason to doubt his claim. What I find actively irritating is his non-stop referring to knife-wielders as ‘kids’.

I’ve always been under the impression that, to produce a kid on this side of the Atlantic, one has to have sex with a goat. Though experimental attempts are doubtless made all over the countryside, none of these unions has so far been blessed with offspring – unless of course Jeremy Corbyn is lying about his ancestry.

Mr Johnson, educated at Eton and Oxford, knows this as well as I do, and I bet he never refers to his own children as ‘kids’ in private. He does so in public because he wants to come across as ‘cool’, probably to offset that Eton and Oxford bit.

But he must realise that the same desire to appear ‘cool’ takes ghetto youngsters into less innocuous areas, those in which consuming and selling drugs is as cool as carrying and using a knife.

Youth gangs are overrunning vast tracts of urban real estate, and many use random killings as initiation rites. But even those that don’t still attract countless youths who are evil by nature and have no social, cultural or religious counterweight to their evil.

However, the whole ‘liberal’ ethos, and the justice system as its subset, is based on the a priori assumption that no one is innately evil.

This goes back to Rousseau, with his arrant nonsense about every person being by nature a noble sauvage impeccable in his primordial virtue. And if some people demonstrably act in a less than impeccable manner, they are victims of correctable social conditions.

What I describe as arrant nonsense is to our powers-that-be a sort of secular scripture, with no heresy or apostasy permitted or tolerated. Hence the derisory sentences for criminals caught with knives in their possession – or for criminals in general.

The prevailing article of faith is that all of them can be rehabilitated by having their heads pumped full of New Age inanities. Ideally, this should be done not in prison but ‘in the community’, whose safety is thereby sacrificed at the altar of the new cult.

That’s why the death penalty has become unthinkable everywhere in Europe: it’s seen as what it isn’t, the denial of the sanctity of human life, rather than what it is, the assertion of that very sanctity.

By imposing the death penalty a society communicates with resolute finality that each human life is so sacred that no length of prison sentence can redeem its arbitrary taking. The secondary message is that some people are so evil that they can’t be redeemed, in this world at any rate.

You understand, of course, that I have in mind not our society, but one that has still retained the last vestiges of sanity and common sense. In such a society, the solution to the knife crime pandemic would offer itself.

First, the numerical strength of our police forces should be increased to a level necessary to combat crime. This being one of the few legitimate functions of the state, no expense should be spared.

Second, policemen should be authorised to do their job properly, with no regard for multi-culti perversions. If most people who are stopped and searched are off-white, then so be it – and so it should remain until such people no longer commit most knife crimes.

Third, our courts should pass much stiffer sentences. I’d suggest a mandatory, no-tariff sentence of 10 years for any crime whose perpetrator had a knife on him, even if the weapon wasn’t used; 20 years if it was used; and the death penalty if it was used fatally.

Again, we shouldn’t penny-pinch when it comes to building as many prisons as necessary and filling them to the gunwales.

I’d confidently suggest that only such measures could ever stop knife crime. However, I predict with even greater confidence that no such measures will ever be adopted. Instead we’ll be treated to more stories of ‘kids’ who are out to murder just for the hell of it.

A friend of mine once interviewed in a remand prison a chap who had fatally stabbed a man in the stomach. When asked how he felt about that act, the murderer admitted aptronymically to being ‘gutted’.

I don’t know what happened to him next, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, had he repeated that claim with sufficiently lachrymose passion at his trial, the evil creature got off with a light sentence.

By now he’s roaming the streets again, his trusted combat knife in his belt. The god of ‘liberal’ bilge has to be served.

An aptronym is a name particularly suited to its owner.

Thus we have Usain Bolt (sprinter), Thomas Crapper (inventor of various lavatorial fixtures), Russell Brain (neurologist), Jules Angst (psychiatrist) and so forth.

I’ve personally known a tennis player named Service, two unrelated financiers named Banks and, alas, a haemorrhoidectomy surgeon named Butts (his hospital was in Houston’s Drexler Street, which is a slightly more obscure aptronym, but one nonetheless).

According to one theory, those blessed with occupational surnames feel their gravitational pull and are subconsciously yet irresistibly drawn to those occupations.

The unexplored power of aptronyms may explain, at least partly, why the 39-year-old teacher, mother of three Brigitte Trogneux fancied her 15-year-old pupil Manu Macron. You see, Brigitte’s family owns Chocolaterie Trogneux, an Amiens company celebrated for its macaroons.

The French for that delicacy is macaron, just one letter apart from the name of that sweet schoolboy instantly smitten by Brigitte’s tight leather trousers. The aptronym and nature simply had to take their course, eventually steering Brigitte to her present honorary title of France’s First Foster Mother .

However, one would think that those who come up with company names would avoid aptronyms that make people laugh at the brand. Well, one would think wrong.

The other day, waiting for my train at Earl’s Court, I indulged my old habit of looking at all the ads. One poster showed the picture of a smiling young man next to the headline BYE BYE ED.

His beaming grin dispelled my first impression that the eponymous Ed was dead, and the poster advertised an undertaker’s service. Perhaps such ambiguity was intentional, designed to draw the reader in.

Well, this reader was indeed drawn in.

Turned out ED wasn’t the young man’s name. It stood for Erectile Dysfunction, a pandemic of biblical proportions, if the copy was to be believed. The advertised service promised to solve that embarrassing problem in short order.

Now I don’t know to what extent their promise stands up to scrutiny, as it were. Nor am I sure that such intimate issues ought to be discussed on 24-sheet posters, but then we do live in the twenty-first century.

Still, one has to accept that, if millions of young chaps like the one depicted in the visual suffer from this problem, it’s no laughing matter. However, the advertiser’s name is.

The email address for the company promising deliverance was given as Manual.co/ed/treatment.

The decision to be made here is whether or not this is an intentional aptronym. If so, then the company’s name hints at the treatment it advertises, making one wonder if it’s going to be merely recommended or actually administered.

Another possibility is that the ad is just a spoof, but this possibility is remote, what with hoarding spaces as pricey as they are.

Most likely is that this is just an unintentional aptronym producing an undesirable effect: making people like me laugh.

Now wouldn’t it be fun if Corbyn were named Jewson? And please don’t tell me that my name compels me to put the boot in every chance I get.

Our churches are alive with the beautiful, moving sounds of such hymns as Abide with me, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, Lord of All Hopefulness and hundreds of others.

Yet as a life-long champion of diversity, I’m happy to report that in Russian churches one can be regaled with slightly different songs – also beautiful and moving, but in a somewhat different way.

The other day, St Isaak’s Cathedral in Petersburg housed a most spiritual and elevating choral concert.

St Isaak’s, in case you’re wondering, was designed by the French architect Montferrand and completed, at a cost of thousands of lives, in 1858.

Under the Bolsheviks, it was deconsecrated and used as a museum of atheism. Its centre piece, as I recall, was a Foucault pendulum, proving that the Earth rotates, rather than resting, as all Christians are known to believe, on the backs of three elephants or perhaps whales.

After the Bolsheviks restyled themselves as democrats, masses got to be celebrated in St Isaak’s again, but only on major feasts. The rest of the time, it still functions as a museum (though probably not of atheism) and an occasional concert hall.

The cathedral’s hideous neoclassical architecture is a more ornate answer to the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., which establishes an umbilical link between the two cities. This bond was further reinforced a few days ago.

A mellifluously polyphonic Petersburg choir delivered a rousing rendition of a song that, some purists may insist, was out of place even in a mostly deconsecrated cathedral, even though it does sound like a liturgical piece.

My feeble poetic ability isn’t up to the task of conveying the subtle nuances of the lyrics, so I shan’t even try to translate them in verse.

But this is what the first stanza says: “Our sub with a nuclear engine and some ten missiles each a hundred megaton, crossed the Atlantic and I tell the gunner, “Aim,” I say, “Petrov, at the city of Washington.”

And so forth, all in the same vein. (The Russophones among you can admire this work of art in the original: http://classic.newsru.com/russia/26feb2019/lodochka.html).

Someone must have forgotten to tell the Russians that Church Militant doesn’t necessarily mean Church Militaristic, but you must admit the lyrics do resonate, although perhaps not as much as the actual missiles would.

This is a clear case of art imitating life. For, in his message to the Federal Assembly the other day, Vlad ‘Botox Boy’ Putin expressed the same idea, though eschewing art:

“So that no one will blame me in the future, I’ll say it straight, to make it clear in advance what we’re talking about. Russia will be obliged to develop and deploy weapon systems that could be used not only against the territories from where a direct threat to us emanates, but also against the territories housing the centres where decisions are made to install missiles threatening us.”

Vlad then outlined the said weapon systems in some detail, but he didn’t feel compelled to spell out which objectionable centres he had in mind. Since he was responding to America’s decision to pull out of the INF Treaty, it went without saying.

Threats to nuke Washington and New York are common currency in Russia, and have been since Khrushchev, admittedly in his cups, boasted that Soviet scientists had created a nuclear device capable of wiping out the whole of the US in one blast.

But hysterical shrieks along those lines are now in a crescendo, making one wonder what kind of finale will follow. This may be nothing but empty bluster, but Western leaders would be ill-advised to treat it only as such.

One of the most hysterical shriekers is Dmitry Kisilev, the daily presence on Russian TV who’s known to his admirers as ‘Putin’s Goebbels’. In fact, he may be credited with striking the first chords some five years ago, when he explained that “Russia could turn America into radioactive dust”.

Then again, Mr Kisilev does sometimes talk too much, which loquacity has brewed some trouble in his family.

A few months ago, he proudly announced that his nephew Sergei had undergone some military training and then fought in the Ukraine. That bit of avuncular pride created a bit of a problem for the younger man.

You see, in common with many fire-eating Russian patriots he prefers to live elsewhere, perhaps because real beauty is best appreciated from afar. In that spirit, he became a German citizen, though evidently without breaking all ties with his motherland.

Now the German authorities were as impressed with Kisilev’s boast as his Russian audience was, although in a different way.

Sergei was arrested, charged with breaking arms laws and committing a crime threatening the security of the Federal Republic, convicted and sentenced to a long prison term.

This shows that ships aren’t the only things that loose lips can sink, which useful lesson I’m sure will go unheeded by Russian powers-that-be.

I’m not going to issue apocalyptic predictions, nor suggest how they may be prevented from coming true. My aim is more modest: outlining a background to the febrile bellicose hysteria gripping Russia.

This is being expertly whipped up by the Kremlin and its propagandists. Are they preparing the long-suffering population for war? Sorry, I did say I wasn’t going to broach apocalyptic themes.

That’s how André Previn, pianist, composer and conductor who died yesterday, is remembered in Britain, if the obituaries are to be believed.

The man might have composed scores for 50 films, winning five Oscars for his pains, and led or conducted just about every major orchestra in the world, but the first two lines of every British obituary invariably mention his marriage to Mia Farrow and especially his 1971 appearance in a hilarious Morecambe & Wise sketch.

In that sketch Eric Morecambe plays a hapless pianist who makes a mockery of the Grieg Piano Concerto, driving the conductor Previn (to whom Ernie Wise refers as ‘Preview’) to distraction.

When Previn finally points out that Morecambe is playing all the wrong notes, Morecambe grabs the diminutive conductor by the lapels and says: “I play all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. Get that, sunshine?”

The sketch was indeed funny, but putting it in the lead paragraph of just about every obituary strikes me as a bit parochial. I would have put it somewhere towards the end, along with the reference to Previn’s five marriages, one of them to Mia Farrow, another to the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Farrow was at the time a successful actress, while Mutter an even more successful performer. A good-looking woman, she pioneered playing in dresses that are best described as wardrobe malfunctions waiting to happen.

She had a particular taste in men, largely circumscribed by powerful conductors, otherwise known as stepping stones.

Karajan, Rostropovich, Abbado and of course Previn acted in that capacity, making Anne-Sophie the highest-paid classical soloist in the world, a position to which her rather modest talent alone wouldn’t have entitled her (although one never knows these days).

At the time of her affair with Rostropovich, irreverent Russian musicians indulged their propensity for risqué puns by calling him ‘mutterf***er’. No such pun was uttered about Previn, but then he wasn’t Russian.

It would be easy to mock the reviewers’ lowbrow treatment of the eminent musician (although none of them stooped as low as I just did), but one wonders if perhaps Previn himself encouraged such levity.

This immensely gifted musical polymath was a jack of all trades and, atypically, master of all. In addition to playing and conducting classical music, he was a virtuoso jazz pianist, and his film scores were rivalled by few composers.

Yet perhaps such versatility put some dampeners on his classical musicianship, stopping him just short of the greatness his lavish talent might otherwise have merited. Real music demands real, undivided commitment and punishes its lack.

It’s testimony to Previn’s talent that he wasn’t punished too severely, for his classical performances always were of a high, if not the highest, calibre.

Anyway, it’s thanks to his versatility that I had the pleasure of meeting this charming and witty man once. That happened in Houston, in the early 80s.

A friend of mine, Paul, was a jazz pianist whose trio was a fixture on the Houston club circuit. I went to their gigs often, partly because I liked Paul and partly because I fancied the singer who sometimes sang with his trio.

Previn was in town, with, if memory serves, the Pittsburg Symphony whose artistic director he then was. As was his habit, he liked to relax after a performance by listening to jazz and perhaps doing a turn himself.

When he approached Paul’s trio, they were having a break and chatting with me. “Do you mind if I have a go?” asked the conductor. Paul was never prissy about such things and, though he didn’t have a clue who Previn was, nodded agreement.

Previn sat down, exchanged a couple of words with the drummer and bass player, and went into a dazzling number way above anything ever heard at that club.

When he finished, the bass player said: “Gee, man, that was fantastic! Where d’you play, bro?”

“I got my own band,” said Previn, instantly becoming my friend for life – even though I’ve never spoken to him again.

RIP.

As the House Oversight Committee listens to Michael Cohen’s testimony, I’m getting more and more puzzled.

Trump’s former attorney is about to start a three-year stint in prison for perjury. That, according to the ranking Republican Jim Jordan disqualifies his testimony.

“It’s the first time a convicted perjurer has been brought back to be a star witness in a hearing,” he said. “How can Congress even consider listening to the testimony of a man who has been convicted of, among other things, lying to Congress?”

One might think Mr Jordan can’t follow elementary logic.

First, no liar lies all the time – even the worst of them tell the truth sometimes. I’m sure that Mr Jordan, like George Washington, has never told a lie, but if such probity were an ironclad requirement for witnesses, we’d never have anyone testifying at trials.

Yes, when it’s a witness’s word against a defendant’s, the defence would be derelict in its duty if it didn’t draw attention to the witness’s person.

But Mr Jordan and his fellow Republicans seem to think that Cohen’s understated reputation for veracity makes this an open and shut case for the president’s innocence. It doesn’t, not by itself.

Cases should be decided not by mud slinging, but by hard evidence and credible witness testimony. I’d suggest that the evidence presented so far is rather soft, and some parts of Mr Cohen’s testimony are less credible than others.

Most of what he says proves that the president can’t readily be confused with a choir boy. Crikey. I’m sure this earth-shattering revelation will come as news to the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump.

You mean a big property developer building and operating Atlantic City casinos isn’t always above board? Who coulda thunk.

You mean an aggressive, high-powered billionaire running a travelling brothel called Miss Universe Contest has at some times acted less married than at some others? How out of character.

You mean he paid hush money to a few ladies of easy virtue threatening to blow the whistle on him? Incredible.

You mean he tried to appear wealthier to potential lenders than to the tax service? Unbelievable.

I’d venture a guess that not one of those voters would have changed his ballot even had he known all this in advance. And if the Democrats think that any of this constitutes an impeachable offence, I wonder about their frame of moral reference.

From what one hears, neither, say, John F. Kennedy nor Bill Clinton was exactly a eunuch. Moreover, the first came from a family widely believed to have organised crime links; the second was involved in questionable dealings while still governor of Arkansas.

Do let’s be fair. Either monasticism is expected from all presidents or it’s expected from none.

Incidentally, liar or not, Mr Cohen rings true on this issue. However, on the available evidence, this is a problem strictly for Mrs Trump.

As to the issue of hush money, I don’t quite get it.

On the one hand, Cohen has produced Trump’s personal $35,000 cheque made out to Cohen himself, who allegedly had been asked to pay off Trump’s porn star mistress out of his own accounts to divert suspicion from his client. This, he claims, was an instalment on the agreed sum of $130,000 supposed to make the blackmail go away.

On the other hand, he testified that: “I am giving the Committee today a copy of a $130,000 wire transfer from me to Ms Clifford’s attorney, [which sum] was demanded by Ms Clifford to maintain her silence about the affair with Mr Trump.”

So if the whole lump sum was paid by wire transfer, where does that $35,000 cheque come in? Until this confusion has been clarified, I’ll believe the president who says it was merely a retainer for Cohen’s services.

The whole thing is sleazy, but that’s not the same as illegal. However, Trump would get into hot water if the hush money had come out of his campaign, rather than personal, funds. That would have been illegal but, like all illegal things, it requires proof. So far we haven’t seen any.

What else? Cohen submitted documents showing that Mr Trump inflated his assets when trying to secure a loan from Deutsche Bank and deflated them to pay less tax.

That’s naughty, but the loan in question was secured in 2008, long before Trump’s presidential campaign. However, Deutsche Bank leads us to accusations that, if proved, could get Trump not only impeached but also convicted.

For that venerable institution boasts such heavy investments from the Russian mafia as to have no option but to do its bidding. (I use the term ‘mafia’ loosely, to describe history’s unique confluence of government, secret police and organised crime that’s otherwise known as the Russian state).

As widely suspected, in 2008, when Trump found himself bankrupt, the Russians transferred vast amounts into his coffers, using Deutsche Bank as the conduit. The books I’ve read on the subject, Russian Roulette by Isikoff and Corn and House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger, claim this suspicion is amply documented.

One way or the other, Trump’s business dealings with Russian gangsters, such as Aras Agalarov, are indeed known through numerous documents complete with photographs. That’s where impeachable offences, if any, can be found.

I for one don’t believe it’s possible to lie with such dogs without catching fleas, but, I’m sad to admit, my belief doesn’t add up to proof.

Cohen claims that Trump was pursuing his megalomaniac project of building Europe’s tallest tower in Moscow well into his presidential campaign and possibly presidency. If proved, this claim would hurt the president for obvious reasons, with conflict of interests being the mildest possible charge.

Cohen also insists that Trump knew in advance, and was enthusiastic, about the imminent release of Hilary Clinton’s emails by Stone and Assange.

Now show me a politician who’d act differently on finding out that his rival’s campaign is about to be damaged, and I’ll show you someone who wouldn’t be elected proverbial dog catcher.

Judging such foreknowledge merely on moral grounds, I see nothing, or almost nothing, wrong with it.

However, if Trump had colluded with the Russians to procure and release such information, that would be not just wrong but criminal. Watergate would look like an innocent caper by comparison.

Cohen has offered no corroborative proof because the Committee told him to steer clear of the subject, at least within the media’s earshot. Then it’s also possible that no such proof exists.

Another allegation is that Trump is lying when he denies knowing about the meeting held by his son, son-in-law and another jailbird, Manafort, with a Putin emissary who had promised some dirt on Hilary.

Now I find it hard to believe that Trump’s closest confidants could have taken such a meeting without telling the boss first. However, such cases shouldn’t be decided on the balance of probability.

The reason the Committee chose not to explore the Russian theme with Cohen is that Special Counsel Mueller is due to submit his report in a few days. If it contains hard proof of Trump’s illegal links with Putin, that would be sufficient grounds for a charge of treason.

If not, Trump’s detractors should get off his back and let him get on with the job he was elected to do. For the dirt dished out by Cohen has so far soiled Trump only slightly.

Much of it is simply name-calling. “I know what Mr Trump is,” says Cohen. “He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”

The last two epithets could have been replaced with one: international property developer. Few of Mr Trump’s colleagues couldn’t be tarred with the same brush.

The charge of racism is based on Trump supposedly having said: “Name one country run by a black man that isn’t a shithole”. The description is robust, but then the conversation, if it indeed happened, was private.

Cohen hasn’t divulged if he took the challenge on and actually named one such country that’s a lovely place to live. Instead he feigns indignation over the fact that Obama was president at the time. Surely he doesn’t expect anyone to believe the risible suggestion that Trump regarded the US as one such country?

As to Cohen’s insane suggestion that, if Trump loses in 2020, he may not allow “a peaceful transition of power”, it’s beneath a comment. How would he do that, out of interest? Declare the US Constitution null and void? Have Washington occupied by 82nd Airborne?

There’s little wheat in Cohen’s testimony, and much chaff. Perhaps Mueller’s report will have a higher content of the cereal. Let’s wait and see – something we’ve been saying for two years.

Every major political development, good, bad or indifferent, serves an educational end even if it serves no other.

People blessed with good political judgement can have it confirmed. People cursed with bad political judgement can have it dispelled. Those who predicted the development all along can have a smug smile on their faces.

The ungodly mess into which the political class has plunged Britain over the people’s desire to leave the EU works admirably in such didactic capacity – and not only for the British.

It was Edmund Burke who spelled out the proper role of an MP:

“To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience, – these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.”

To put this into more up-to-date shorthand, an MP is his constituents’ representative but not their delegate. Once elected, he must act not according to the constituents’ wishes, but according to their interests – as he sees them.

These are vital distinctions, going to the heart of the constitution. Burke pointed out, and warned against, a potential dichotomy between delegates and representatives.

No such problems for today’s parliamentarians. They solve the dichotomy between delegates and representatives by being neither.

Most of them serve not bono publico, but their own bono – and that of their whole political class. This is made up of politicians, civil servants and journalists, and it’s entirely self-serving and self-contained.

By torpedoing Brexit this class has proved yet again that their own will trumps the will of the people with room to spare. If any divergence between the two exists, the people will simply be ignored.

Yes, but what about Burke’s prescription that MPs should act according to their own “judgement and conscience”? On the surface of it, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

The people expressed their desire to leave the EU; the political class consulted its own collective conscience and decided that wouldn’t be in the people’s interests. So it closed bipartisan ranks and came up with a whole raft of underhanded tricks to bypass the popular vote.

One can almost see the great Whig cheering from his grave, right? Eh, not quite.

Putting aside the blindingly obvious fact that most of our MPs are bereft in the area of “judgement and conscience”, Burke was talking specifically about the democracy he knew – the kind operating through institutions.

Referendum, plebiscite, opinion poll and other devices of direct democracy were alien to him. That’s why, much as we may venerate Burke’s political wisdom, this bit of it doesn’t apply to the issue of Brexit.

For, by calling a referendum, the political class abrogated its responsibility to make a decision of vast constitutional import. It asked the people to leapfrog the institutions of the state and decide the issue by a simple show of hands.

Though technically speaking the referendum wasn’t legally binding, the political class made it so by pledging to abide by the result. In other words, in this one instance, MPs agreed to act as people’s delegates, not just their representatives.

Their subsequent dishonest, perfidious chicanery aimed at subverting the will of the people should make any sensible person nauseated – and, paradoxically, grateful.

One should always thank teachers for a useful lesson, and few lessons are ever taught better than this one.

We’ve learned that there’s no bridge spanning the gulf between the political class and the people it’s supposed to represent. Neither people’s wishes nor their interests come into the political process at all.

On the contrary, the political class works tirelessly to widen and deepen the gulf, which explains its affection for the EU in the first place. Meek submission to that awful contrivance means that the people won’t be able to hold the political class to account.

If most of our laws are passed down from abroad, with the people’s representative acting at best only in a rubberstamping capacity, they represent no one but themselves. QED.

The term ‘political class’, as distinct from simply politicians, is useful. For, in addition to timeservers in various departments, this class is made up not only of politicians but also of journalists.

Witness how, in reshufflings reminiscent of the Soviet nomenklatura of my childhood, politicians effortlessly become journalists, and vice versa. The line of demarcation is very fluid indeed, with such dynasties as the Rees-Moggs, Mounts, Johnsons, Lawsons and Rifkinds, along with singletons like Gove, adorning both parts of the ruling class.

As a strong believer in hierarchies, I see nothing wrong with the principle of a ruling class – provided it coalesces and operates by constitutional means, and always acts in the public interest.

Today such a ruling class falls into the category of either an archaism or a pipe dream. Our lot are prepared to destroy the country’s constitution, social order and any chance for prosperity in pursuit of their own nefarious ends – for ends that can only be pursued by perfidious means are nefarious by definition.

Those who hadn’t realised this before the Brexit fiasco, surely must realise it now. That’s something to be thankful for, at least.

Poor Andrew Moffat is in trouble – this, though he has been shortlisted for a $1,000,000 prize as one of the world’s 10 best teachers.

Mr Moffat is assistant head master at a Birmingham primary school, where 99 per cent of the pupils are Muslim. From this it logically follows that their parents are Muslim too.

Another logical inference from such demographics is that the parents demand that the school stop teaching their offspring “how to be gay”. One would think it’s better than teaching them how to be morose, but that’s not the kind of gaiety at issue.

You see, Mr Moffat, who is himself homosexual, is the creator, champion and, more to the point, practitioner of the No Outsiders programme that uses a whole library of books to teach children as young as four that there’s nothing perverse about perversion.

One of the compulsory textbooks, creatively entitled Mommy, Mama and Me, is devoted to a loving lesbian family. The spelling of ‘Mommy’, as opposed to ‘Mummy’, points at the American origin of this volume, but then true love knows no geographic bounds.

The sex of ‘Me’ isn’t clear from the title, but it’s relevant. For, if the Me is female, she can use her parents as a visual aid in her preparation for real life. Perhaps in due course some on the job training may also come in handy – and don’t you just hate unintended puns.

Other books in the programme include King and King (a Cinderella boy meeting his fair prince), And Tango Makes Three (about male penguins forming a family) and My Princess Boy (about a transvestite).

These are the only titles mentioned in the article I’ve read on the subject, but I hope there are others, expanding the boundaries of diversity.

How about Dad, Daddy and Dickey? Mummy, Mastiff and Me? Mummy Who Used to Be Daddy, Daddy Who Used to Be Mummy, and a Slightly Confused Me? Possibilities are endless, and it would be a shame for any of them to remain unrealised.

Actually, the educational standards at Mr Moffat’s school must be unusually high if four-year-olds are capable of perusing such material. Let’s hear it for universal literacy: if children can read, it doesn’t matter what they read.

Of course it’s also possible that Mr Moffat reads selected passages to them out loud, perhaps also drawing diagrams on the backboard. One has to be resourceful to be recognised as one of the world’s best teachers.

Obviously it’s not just Muslim schools that have such progressive curricula. But it appears that only Muslim parents have the guts to protest forcefully enough.

Others go no further than signing petitions – in fact, one objecting to the new D of E’s sex education guidelines boasts 100,000 signatories.

And in a rare show of unity with Muslims, dozens of rabbis have signed a letter protesting against this kind of mandatory indoctrination even in faith schools.

But Muslims don’t just protest: “I have had death threats and very nasty emails and phone calls,” complains Mr Moffat. Poor dear, I feel his pain.

Now I regard myself as a reasonably peaceful man, and I’m certainly not a Muslim, but if my child were exposed to that kind of subversive smut, I’d probably go beyond threats. It’s entirely possible that my trusted baseball bat would see the light of day.

(Incidentally, have you noticed that sports shops are doing brisk trade in baseball bats even though no one plays baseball?)

And, even if I chickened out at the last moment, I’d certainly take my child out of such a school, and I wouldn’t care what the consequences might be.

One can only wonder how people managed to sort out their amorous lives during the millennia that had passed before we were blessed with sex education, homo- or heterosexual.

I don’t think mankind had done too badly in that department, even when left to its own vices and devices. Still, there’s always room for improvement.

If persuasive evidence existed, showing that there’s a genuine problem with children learning about such matters not at primary school but as they go through life, and that sex education solved that problem, I’d be all for it.

Yet no such evidence exists, and neither is anyone out to gather it. For teaching little tots graphic facts about every perversion known to man isn’t pedagogic. It’s political and cultural.

Our governing elite feels a fanatical urge to drive the remaining few nails into the coffin of every certitude that has sustained our civilisation for millennia. Nothing is sinful or perverse any longer – other than saying that sin and perversion exist.

What we’re witnessing is a rapid escalation of a global war on the last dwindling pockets of Christendom, and the likes of Mr Moffat, MBE, are in the vanguard of the shock troops.

One thing I can say for him is that he isn’t driven by pecuniary motives. Should Mr Moffat win his million, he charitably plans to use the money to spread the No Outsiders programme around the world.

On balance, I’d rather he bought a nice, tastefully decorated house and retired to it. Since the prize on offer is in dollars, may I suggest Northern California?

The other day Diego Simeone, Atletico Madrid manager, celebrated his team’s victory by grabbing his testicles, suggesting, ever so subtly, that it takes cojones to win a football match.

(Just think how embarrassed a Mr C.O. Jones would feel filling in a hotel register in Spain.)

An outcry ensued, but Mr Simeone defended himself by saying: “It came from the heart.”

Now there’s a man whose heart is in the right place, I thought and left it at that. But then I decided that my mixture of scorn and envy at the sight of any wild celebrations merits another look.

Alas, sadness and grief come to me more easily than joy and elation, but I’m capable of feeling happiness, even more so of feeling pleasure.

Yet never in my long life have I been even remotely tempted to express my emotions in the manner one observes so often these days.

Football managers jumping up in the air like demented kangaroos and running along the sidelines like cheetahs on meth when their team scores a goal.

Game show victors screaming, hopping and trying to snog everything that moves.

Mature lottery winners impersonating little children just told they’re going to Disneyland, and yes they can bring Teddy along.

All those people make me feel somehow envious and deprived. My seven decades on Earth haven’t delivered a single moment producing such a eudemonic display even in private, never mind in public.

Yet I’ve loved and been loved, I’ve understood a few things I always wanted to understand, and I’ve even had a measure of financial success, admittedly not denominated in a footballer’s millions, but as much as I’ve ever wanted.

However, my broad grin is all that the world has been treated to, not that the world ever gave a damn one way or the other. Not a yard of space was ever covered at a sprinter’s pace, not a particle of air was punched, not a single screaming decibel shattered a single glass.

There’s a distinct possibility this is another one of the things that are wrong with me. I may be emotionally repressed, congenitally dejected or even clinically depressed – this though people who know me often say I’m always upbeat (people who really know me don’t say that, to be fair).

Then again, I’m sufficiently egotistic to think that there’s something wrong not with me, but with Simeone et al. And, by extension, a lot wrong with the ethos that encourages such tasteless behaviour.

So bugger self-recriminations for a game of soldiers. Let’s revert to one of my perennial leitmotifs: the unspeakable vulgarity of modernity.

Very recent modernity, I may add. Since we’re on the subject of football, just look at the fans in old newsreels. Whenever the camera cuts to the stands, one sees well-dressed people, cheering for their team joyously and enthusiastically but with noble restraint.

There’s no soundtrack, but one gets the impression those suited and booted gentlemen (few women attended matches in those days), most of them working class, could express their happiness or chagrin in words other than those that at the time appeared only in unabridged dictionaries.

Most of them had fought in the war, others had lived through the Blitz. One would think they’d react strongly to every morsel of joy life threw their way – and so they did. But they didn’t impersonate cats on speed.

The footballers, most of whom would have travelled to the stadium on public transport, did celebrate their goals, but they neither turned cartwheels nor screamed scowling obscenities at the camera, à la Wayne Rooney.

Neither were they encouraged by senior members of the royal family to let it all hang out, as Prince William did a couple of weeks ago. (http://www.alexanderboot.com/prince-william-let-it-all-hang-out/).

Something must have happened in the intervening decades to make public hysteria an acceptable, evn desirable, response to success, to turn grown-up men and women into hyperactive children badly in need of six of the best.

One can think of only two reasons for their displays. Either they genuinely can’t contain their joy within decent limits, or they could do so, but don’t lest they might violate the unspoken etiquette of their time.

In the first case, they waste the advantage of being mature humans – and the benefit of millennia’s worth of civilisation.

The ability to control one’s emotions, neither wailing when distressed nor screaming when elated, is what separates adults from infants. Erasing this dividing line testifies to a general infantilisation of feeling and, inevitably, thought.

Moreover, a useful definition of civilisation is a process whereby people are brought up not always to do things that come naturally. If that process no longer operates, the civilisation is defunct.

The world must be run by grownups. Golding’s Lord of the Flies provides a vivid dystopic allegory of youngsters taking over: it’s children’s time, and there are no rules. People infantile of heart and mind are capable of worse things than overzealous celebrations – they’re capable of anything.

Yet the second possibility, that those frenetic celebrants simply adhere to Zeitgeist, is even worse. When perversion is the norm, when dignity becomes antiquated, and self-restraint is seen as a mental disorder, we know it’s the end of the world.

For vulgar conduct as a social sine qua non is never a single child. Its siblings are vulgar thought, vulgar emotions and – ultimately – vulgar, and therefore suicidal, society.

Anyway, well-done, Diego, for beating Juventus. Let’s make the next celebration a bit less testicular, shall we?

If the general election were held today, say the polls, the Tories would win by a landslide. However, if Labour replaced Corbyn as their leader, they’d be the party in government.

These results have made the urge to say “I told you so” irresistible. For back in September, before the current scandals over Labour anti-Semitism reached fervour pitch, I wrote a piece entitled How Labour Can Win the Next Election.

There I outlined the strategy Labour could, and now probably will, follow to be in a position to destroy the country yet again. I also mentioned things the Tories could, but definitely won’t, do to preempt that ploy.

Repetition being the mother of all learning, here’s that piece again, newly relevant, slightly abbreviated and, I pray, not prophetic:

The Tories appear to be torn down the middle, with the factions on either side bickering like drunk housewives in the communal kitchen of my Moscow childhood.

A house divided against itself will not stand, said that great political analyst of the past. Looking at those internecine squabbles, Labour bigwigs are rubbing their hands. They sense that the next election is theirs to lose.

I think they’re too smug for their own good, and the popular consensus is wrong. Labour may very well lose the next election, but unfortunately they don’t have to.

They can guarantee a win by ditching Corbyn a month before the polling date and replacing him with, well, just about anybody.

Then they can win without changing one comma in Corbyn’s Trotskyist programme. For, while our voters see nothing wrong with Corbyn’s programme, they increasingly see something wrong with Corbyn.

Labour has always attracted voters by claiming a high moral ground. The Tories are the nasty party in popular lore; Labour are the nice one.

Don’t they want to share wealth evenly or at least equitably? Of course, they do. So there.

And don’t they want to make life better for the working men – and also for the non-working ones, provided they have no private pensions? Definitely.

Also look at how they promote equality for all, regardless of faith, race, country of origin or the number of criminal convictions.

Any way you look at it, Labour exudes goodness out of every orifice in its body politic.

Granted, when yet another Labour government turns Britain into a basket case, voters sense that perhaps goodness isn’t enough by itself. Some modicum of cold-blooded competence may come in handy too.

So they sigh and vote for the nasty party. But after the Tories have shovelled some of the Labour manure out of the Augean stables, it’s time for goodness again.

The upshot is that preserving the image of a nice party is as vital for Labour as appearing competent is for the Tories. Lose that image, and what does Labour have to offer that hasn’t been found wanting every time and everywhere?

It’s that wholesome image that Corbyn is damaging.

Belying his avuncular looks, he regularly stars in decidedly nasty headlines about his saying hateful things about Jews, cavorting with terrorists, extolling the Venezuelan nightmare, refusing to criticise Putin and so forth.

In short, he increasingly comes across as not just nasty, but evil. That’s an election loser for Labour.

The Tory press stays on Corbyn’s case, attacking everything he has ever said or done. As the election draws nearer, such attacks will intensify because Corbyn presents an easy target.

If I were a political consultant to Labour, I’d advise them to encourage personal attacks on Corbyn – and then replace him with anyone from whom Corbyn has drawn fire.

That would crystallise their message: “Look, that nasty Corbyn usurped power and caused your just anger. But now we’re the nice party again – and look at the mess the Tories are in.”

The trouble is that the Tory media are incapable of spelling out the real problem of Labour. It’s not that the party is led by an evil man. It’s that it flogs an evil ideology.

Hence, the personality of the leader doesn’t really matter. For socialists, the choice isn’t between good and evil. It’s among various degrees of evil.

Some good conservatives tend to romanticise the Old Labour of Ramsey McDonald, Ernest Bevin and, if you will, Frank Field, all supposedly misguided but full of good intentions.

I don’t buy that because the price is too high: suspension of reason and morality.

The essence of socialism, be it national, international, democratic, soft, mild, extreme or mainstream, is the urge to destroy everything that’s good in our civilisation.

To use Harry Jaffa’s phrase, our civilisation was baptised in the Jordan, not the fiery brook (a reference to the materialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach). Hence its belief in the primacy of every single individual over a faceless collective.

That’s why the watershed issue in Western politics is the balance of power between the individual and the state.

Conservatives, who by definition think along Christian lines even if they aren’t Christians, gravitate towards subsidiarity – devolving power to the lowest sensible level, thereby empowering the individual. A conservative is never statist; a socialist always is.

Socialism is all about an omnipotent state lording it over its flock, an amorphous collectivist mass.

Only such a state has the power to rob people of most of their income, impose false moral standards, dictate not only what people do but also what they say and think, enforce materialism along with political, social, educational and cultural egalitarianism, put a yoke on peoples’ talents and enterprise.

Socialists by definition think along anti-Christian lines even if they happen to be Christians. If they are, they can’t relate their religion to the realities of life.

The Labour Party is a broad coalition of the evil and the misguided, with the former dominating the latter. If the Tories are the nasty party, Labour is the evil one – and it has got precisely the leader it deserves.

The only thing socialists are good at is propaganda – reducing their vacuous and wicked messages to catchy, appealing slogans. Their task is easy because only such messages are so reducible.

That’s how Labour has concocted its reputation for kindliness, assisted in this endeavour by the dumbing-down educational system it has created and fostered.

And that’s how Labour can win the next election, by jettisoning Corbyn who contradicts that reputation.

Now, if I were a political consultant to the Tories, I’d advise them to shift the focus of their offensive from Corbyn to everything Labour stands for, every supposition from which it proceeds – the reality behind the slogans.

But then wiser heads would probably object that by now our socialist education has become so successful that we simply don’t have an electorate capable of thinking beyond slogans and personalities.

Well, now you know why I’m not a political consultant to the Conservative Party.

First a disclaimer to reassure my French friends: when I say ‘different’, I mean just that. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

Before violating the old ‘de gustibus’ injunction, I must outline my starting point for aesthetic judgement of a work of art in general and a novel in particular.

Music illustrates it perfectly by merging form and content so thoroughly that they’re not only inseparable but indeed indistinguishable. Form is content, content is form, and this is a useful model towards which all true art strives.

The form is a like a bottle: without wine it would be just a piece of glass. The content is the wine, but without a bottle it would be just a puddle.

When a work in any genre, be it a poem, a novel or a painting, achieves the musical unity of form and content, it achieves greatness or at least touches upon it.

However, the deepest and subtlest of contents will fall short if defeated by inadequate form. Conversely, the most virtuosic of forms won’t produce great art if the content clashes with it.

By content, I don’t mean a communication of ideas or, God forbid, ideology. Other genres exist that are more suitable for that than, say, a painting, a poem or even a novel.

The content of a novel is a lantern that elucidates the human condition, whatever facet of it catches the writer’s imagination at the moment. Typically, it does so by shining a light on the human character, both within, in itself, and without, as it interacts with other characters and the physical environment.

The form of a novel is its structure, the skeleton fleshed out by language. The language, like music, has its own cadences, its own rhythm and its own tempo that may remain steady throughout or vary in a sequence of rubatos.

To produce a great novel, all those elements of both form and content must be in perfect balance. Dissonances may be useful, but disharmony will always be deadly.

Two pairs of great novelists illustrate these points well.

When Flaubert read the first French translation of War and Peace, he exclaimed with horror: “Il se répète! Il philosophise!”

The difference between Tolstoy and Flaubert was that the latter, though the lesser artist, was happy to remain what he was, a great novelist. His Madame Bovary achieves that symbiosis of form and content that characterises sublime art.

Tolstoy’s own artistry was unmatched by any other great novelist, which is exactly what he was. But, unlike Flaubert, he also wanted to be something he wasn’t qualified to be: philosopher, social reformer, teacher of mankind.

So he put prolix and mostly silly asides into his novels, which so offended Flaubert’s (and my own) aesthetic sense. Any writer untouched by genius would have been destroyed by that, but Tolstoy managed to pull it off, just.

Another pair is made up of Dostoyevsky and Nabokov. In his Lectures on Russian Literature and elsewhere, Nabokov explains why he considers Dostoyevsky to be a mediocre writer.

Essentially, he thought, rightly, that Dostoyevsky wasn’t much of a literary craftsman. Hence, however deep his ideas and penetrating his insights, he didn’t qualify for literary greatness, although he just might have managed some other kinds.

Nabokov’s own form  was of course nothing short of virtuosic, especially in English, but in some of his novels that was more or less all there was.

This takes me back to my French friends, specifically to the humbling experience I suffered at their hands a few years ago. Two experiences actually, both involving somewhat lesser literary figures than the four gentlemen I’ve mentioned.

They once sought my view on that American novelist of genius, James Salter. I had to admit mournfully that not only had I not read Salter, but to my eternal shame I hadn’t even heard the name.

Now I did start my working life by teaching English and American literature, so in my younger years I was reasonably, if not excessively, well-read.

Admittedly, since then I’ve read mostly non-fiction, with only the odd novel here and there thrown in for variety’s sake. Still, I expected at least to have heard of any Anglophone literary genius, if not necessarily to have read him.

Suitably humbled, I got a couple of Salter’s novels and was instantly seduced by his stylistic virtuosity. Beautifully shaped sentences became stunning paragraphs, which in turn added up to brilliant pages.

Yet that seduction didn’t lead to consummation. Once, a hundred pages or so later, I got my breath back, I realised that I was looking at a gorgeous crystal decanter with no wine it.

The form was all there was. There was no content, at least none harmonised with the sumptuous style, all precisely shifted tempi and unexpected metaphors. There were, however, plenty of sex scenes erasing the line separating the graphic from the pornographic.

One got the impression that all that technical virtuosity was merely the author’s payment for the privilege of venting his sexual fantasies, or perhaps sharing his sexual experience.

My problem wasn’t with the eroticism, but with the gratuitous eroticism. No matter how beautifully written pornography is, it’s still pornography, meaning it’s not art. Put it into otherwise beautiful prose, and you’re served a glass of Meursault with a turd floating on the surface.

Suddenly Salter’s masterly prose began to look pretentious, a parody of art rather than art itself. I wish I had his artistic talent, but if the price of acquiring it is writing the way he did, I’d rather stick to my own modest devices.

Art is produced not for but by artists, and that floater made the Meursault of Salter’s prose unpalatable. I made a mental remark that French tastes must have changed dramatically since the nineteenth century, for Salter to have become the cult figure there that he never was at home.

Then my friends began to talk persistently and glowingly about Welbeck, making me wonder why they were so obsessed with Danny Welbeck, the English footballer.

My consternation betrayed my lowbrow essence. For they were in fact extolling Welbeck’s virtual homophone, the bestselling ‘serious’ novelist Michel Houellebecq.

Once burnt, I was twice shy to order the author’s books, putting it off until it was no longer possible or polite to do so. Finally, I succumbed and read two novels, written some ten years apart.

Then I made a startling discovery: James Salter came back as Michel Houellebecq. The same formal brilliance, the same perfect cadences, the same intricate yet plausible structures – and the same vacuity of content, with pornography its main constituent.

This, in spite of Houellebecq’s sharp intelligence, scathing wit and his insightful aesthetic judgement – at least when applied to other writers’ work. That same judgement not so much betrayed him in his own writing as killed it stone dead.

To illustrate both points, here are two lengthy passages, taken at random, that make it hard to believe they came from the same man. The first is a deliciously ironic, well constructed demolition of most university degrees in the humanities.

“The academic study of literature leads basically nowhere, as we all know, unless you happen to be an especially gifted student, in which case it prepares you for a career teaching the academic study of literature – it is, in other words, a rather farcical system that exists solely to replicate itself and yet manages to fail more than 95 per cent of the time. Still, it’s harmless, and even has a certain marginal value. A young woman applying for a job at Céline or Hermès should naturally attend to her appearance above all; but a degree in literature can constitute a secondary asset, since it guarantees the employer, in the absence of any useful skills, a certain intellectual agility that could lead to professional development – besides which, literature has always carried positive connotations in the world of luxury goods.”

But then comes another randomly picked passage, the likes of which densely populate Houellebecq’s narrative:

“He laid his head on her thigh and began to stroke her clitoris. Her labia menora began to swell… He fingered her clitoris faster as his tongue lapped her labia eagerly. Her belly began to redden and her breath came in short gasps… Bruno paused for a moment and then slipped a finger into her anus and another into her vagina as the tip of his tongue fluttered quickly over her clitoris. Her body shuddered and jolted as she came.”

This isn’t eroticism in the manner of Stendhal or Maupassant. In fact this sort of thing isn’t even erotic at all. It’s disgusting hardcore porn in the style of Screw magazine.

Being French, Houellebecq, unlike Salter, has to put this sort of stuff in the setting of ideas, mostly conveyed in dialogue. Many of them sound good and even conservative – unless one realises that collectively they don’t add up to much other than cold-blooded nihilism, a massacre of ideas, rather than their nurturing.

It’s all gratuitous ugliness of thought offset by the cleverness of prose. It’s that glass of Meursault again, but the French gulp it down with alacrity.

To be fair, it’s not just the French. Houellebecq has been translated into every conceivable language, and his novels become instant bestsellers everywhere. Nihilism plus pornography, gift-wrapped in pretty paper, equals sales.

Still, I can’t imagine a serious English novelist (we aren’t talking about Jilly Cooper types here) rising to fame by producing prose replete with pages upon pages along the lines of the second passage quoted above.

So what is it about the French, a nation who after all produced Stendahl, Flaubert and Baudelaire not so long ago, in historical terms?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, goes the folksy saying. Could it be that French culture led the world for so long and scaled such great heights that, when it tumbled, it cracked its skull?

Could it be that Houellebecq is a natural and inevitable product of France’s laïcité? Of her constitution that states that France is “une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale”? But then which Western country these days isn’t secular and social democratic?

Or perhaps decadence, when shown off for decades so persistently as to become associated with the country, will eventually resolve into degeneracy with the certainty of natural forces?

Then again, I may be missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time.