The tail needs to start wagging the dog

"Social mobility is the key to a successful future job market."

"We need to have social mobility to make sure people from lower-class backgrounds can gain promotion and rise through society's ranks more easily."

These are the types of phrases repeated each week by politicians throughout the EU. I wish they would back their words with deeds. The problem, as I see it, is not one to do with class, but more to do with qualification and talent, and that has just as much to do with the kind of values we pass to the younger generation. What do we consider to be more important: the ousting of an incompetent government, or the continuation of a favourite contestant on a TV talent show?

We live in a society that has unprecedented access to education. But we have also allowed a whole generation to become fascinated in the stardom of sports personalities, singers and actors. When I was younger, if I had said to my father I wanted to be a singer, he would have told me to run along and think about getting a *real* job. Nowadays, this seems to be the bar we set, rather than the exception to the career-rule. So many parents seem to try and push their children into modelling, singing or sports, with the goal of becoming famous, and more importantly, rich. When their children fail, the disappointment is so great for the parents that their child has been "rejected". And the children themselves are so utterly traumatised, nothing will be the same again for them.

What an awful thing for any child to suffer. Pushy parents.

Pushy parents are not always required in the age of social mobility. Offspring of famous people are making their own way up the greasy pole without having to do much. Just look at anyone whose name contains Geldof.

Who is to blame here? The media, for allowing TV shows like X-Factor and The Only Way Is Essex to proliferate, but also parents for succumbing to the pressures of their children who want to be accepted by their peers. How many parents take their kids to Paris to view the contents of the Louvre? And how many go to Paris to trace the Da Vinci Code? Or to Disneyland Paris? How many parents take their children to London to view the Cabinet War Rooms, compared to the O2 to see a concert? Giving in to children's mealtime demands (chips instead of broccoli, burger instead of lamb cutlets), has extended itself to education.

Social mobility is a good idea in theory, but in practice, this is no longer viable in the 21st century. In the 1940s and 1950s, my father - who left school very young - was able to negotiate four or five jobs of varying requirements and skills very easily. Admittedly, the Second World War helped in this, as there was a severe shortage of staff, but still, the moral of the story back then was "if you have the talent, we'll hire you", whereas today, it is hard for anyone to come out of school, college or university and walk into the job they trained for. I know some recent Cambridge graduates who, not even finding work in call centres, have turned to gaining further qualifications in a bid to out-qualify their competition. That is fine for those with the money, but the vast majority of people simply cannot afford this luxury.

The problem is now that employers have the world at their feet: they can choose the most highly-qualified candidate, or they can choose a less qualified, but more enthusiastic candidate for the position. They can hire and fire at will, because the market has moved away from hiring permanent members of staff to taking on contractual agents who stay in the job for anything from a week to a couple of years before they are thrown back onto the pile of bodies mounting up outside the Job Centres of the Western world.

All you need to do to get a job these days is:

A. Be the cheapest (less qualified, more enthusiastic)

B. Accept that you might be living with your parents way into your thirties

C. Keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself

D. Accept that very, very few people really do enjoy social mobility, and you are not one of them.

Social mobility is a myth. And it will remain a myth until employers are made to be more ethical. And the chances of that happening are quite remote at the present time, whilst there are such rich pickings, and employees are competing with one another to keep their positions.

Another astonishingly blatant lie dressed up as truth is the ability to change career direction. The days are long past where the system is flexible enough to sustain a change of career path. It is of course not impossible, especially in countries like the UK or the USA, but in Europe, I cannot see a person who trained to be a translator, who has a fascination with plants and flowers, being permitted to go into the horticultural business without three or four years' course first, rather than on-the-spot guidance or apprenticeship like used to happen. And there are very important reasons for this. In my father's day, the proportion of take-home pay was far higher to the amount of household bills and acquisitions. This meant a drop in pay in any subsequent job did not make so much of a difference, so people could go off and do something else without fearing too deep a cut in pay. Nowadays, a weekly food bill alone may cancel out any savings. We need to get back to this basic state, but whilst most people's minds have been fixed on "Panem et Circenses", there is is no way this silent majority will change anything. Especially if people consider owning one or more cars per household as a given and not a luxury.

While the dog is definitely in control of its tail, not many with a wish for self-improvement will have enough support to change the mentality of hundreds of thousands of people who are indifferent to the type of information they pass onto their own children, and the kind of food they feed them.

What an extraordinary week for journalism

Two very different events, almost polar opposites of each other, took place at each end of last weekend. The outstanding scenes of cheering people, flag-waving and joyous celebrations were beamed all around the world. At both of these happenings. Although one of them has left a nasty taste in the mouth.

London, Friday 29th April, 2011, will be forever known as the day the British Monarchy gained a whole set of new admirers for the 21st century and kept the republicans at bay. I would go so far as to say that even in some wavering republican hearts in Australia, there has been a warming to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who come across as a couple who have a deep respect for one another, and seem very comfortable in each other's company.

I, along with two billion other people worldwide, watched in awe of the occasion, unable to take my eyes off the screen to even run to the fridge for a drink, and found much of it hilarious, like when Prince Harry took a peek at the bride coming up the aisle and turned to his brother to say "wait till you see what she's got on!" I loved Boris Johnson's pre-wedding interview with the BBC, I thought the tone of the broadcast spot on, and the reaction from the world's press and media utterly dumbstriking.

What other group of people on this planet could even command such attention? None. And for that reason alone, the British Royal Family is, worth so much more than any president or prime minister. Having a constitutional monarchy is the ultimate symbol of stability for a country. It adds extra power and meaning to state visits and trade missions. The fact that so many foreign people came for the wedding is a sign of the enduring love we have for true majesty. The BBC interviewed many people who had come from Spain, which has its own monarchy, and yet. And yet. They came to see Prince William and his wife Catherine. It means, in a roundabout way, that London can truly call itself the capital of the world. If it was like that for just one day, imagine what it will be like come the Olympic Games next year. I cannot wait.

And then there was the flipside of this weekend:
On Monday morning, 2nd May, the world awoke to discover that the West's most notorious criminal, Osama Bin Laden, had been killed by US Seals. My immediate reaction was "good", but I had not yet known the full story. However, when I did, I could not feel much vindication any more. The way it was dealt with smacked of the typical American gung-ho shoot-before-asking-questions attitude most civilised people deplore and I would have preferred That Man to have been put on trial, his right to forego a trial due to ill health waived, and imprisoned for life, a far more demeaning and embarrassing end to his days, which would have probably had a far greater impact on the extremist Muslims' demise than shooting him at point blank range like some safari hunters in the jungle blasting the head off the last harmless dodo on the island.

By imprisoning him, allowing him to live, you avoid the martyrdom which is sure to come now.

But what angered me the most was the kneejerk reaction of the crowds who gathered outside the White House and in Times Square to celebrate the death of Bin Laden. I understood, when people celebrated the end of World War 2. It was not the death of Hitler the throngs were cheering; it was the fact that no more bombs were going to drop on us. Nobody jumped for joy on hearing of Hiroshima. Nobody hung up bunting to fête the sinking of the warship Belgrano in the Falklands War. Civilised people do not do that. I could also understand the euphoria of the crowds who sang and danced as the years of communism evaporated. Romanians killed their communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, but they celebrated the end of communism, not the deaths of their hated rulers.

So I see the crowds who hooted their horns or painted US flags on their faces, or waved placards with gloating messages on them upon hearing of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 as nothing more than a band of witchhunters, a baying, bloodthirsty mob of leftovers from the puritans, either undereducated or underinformed about civilised behaviour in Western society. Gloaters are fine at football matches or at pub quizzes, but not on the front of international newspapers or top of the TV news hour.

I think Osama Bin Laden was a truly evil man, a man who corrupted, even poisoned the minds of those around him to do his bidding and hit a Western nation hard, to put freedom as we knew it to the sword and change the very meaning of our civilisation. He made intelligence services around the Western world the most important military wing of any government, he changed the way we travel, he gave governments a very, very good excuse to roll in our civil liberties and invest in powerful spying technology in the name of national security, and as a spin-off, he made rail travel in Europe much more appealing as it avoids having to sacrifice everything liquid and runny at the airline check-in desk. He has also inadvertently contributed to the current parlous situation of the Western economy, as less money and fewer resources would have been spent on the US military during Bush Jr's term in office and on invading Iraq and Afghanistan and the banks may have caused a blip in the economy rather than its demise and China's rise.

I also think Osama Bin Laden died far too easily, far too quickly and far too painlessly. I am not advocating torture here, but I think his soul could have done with a large dose of his own guilt being pricked. I think the families of the victims of 9/11 should have had the right to confront this man (from behind reinforced glass) and I think he should have been used more skilfully as a way of bringing to an end this sorry, sorry period in our history.

OK, he has no tomb where extremists can go to worship at his grave, that's a plus point, and killing him immediately means if there were a trial, there would be no rioting in the streets, but a dead Osama may prove to be as dangerous, if not more, than an alive one.

But what can I say? They got their man. And there's a guy sitting at home in Crawford, Texas, saying "damn, that should have been my finest hour." As it happens, it may turn out to be Obama's turning point. He may gain a huge wave of support from US voters taking him back to the White House next year as the Man Who Got Osama, or it may backfire on him as the truth of Bin Laden's demise becomes known.

I have a mind of my own, thank you.

Sorry for not having posted much between Christmas and this weekend. I was in Prague for the entire month of February, making up for lost time... I've never really been one for smalltalk. Indeed, I don't do it very well. In Prague I needed to be a master at it. Everywhere I turned, new people to be introduced to, but invariably the same conversation and Q&A pattern: Where are you from? What do you do? How long are you here for? Where are you living? Blablabla... Which was OK, as this is standard when you're meeting new people. But when talking about nothing in particular is a common theme amongst people you see more often, it becomes a little irritating... After a while, it makes no sense to spend longer than you should around them. Another group that irritates me is (for want of a better word) sheeple. Sheeple are those who don't really do anything alone because they need approval for their actions, and that can be manifested through others wanting to join in. But then, sheeple attract other sheeple until the entire place is full of baa-ing humans. There was one place, for me a living hell, which was full of nothing except latte-swilling expats and oversized t-shirts containing the sort of person who needs a map to find the bathroom in the morning. Its main selling point was its bagels, and boy if that was its selling point, you can guess what type of place it was. Tourist guides stopped there with huge groups of sheeple who were force-fed muffins, cheesecake or brownies. Just 50 metres away, there is a glorious café selling Viennese and Parisian-style cakes and proffering proper coffee out of a Gaggia without pretentious names like "flat white" and "frappuccino" and in sizes so disproportionate to the coffee content, a microphysicist would find it hard to find many atoms of the said bean. The establishment in question also had its own ticket booth selling nights out to some "authentic" Prague shows. The same authentic ones you can find in the West End or on Broadway. You came all the way to Prague to take in a show you could see in any other city. Groovy. Prague has innumerable amounts of interesting places to go to in the evening, and caters for all ages. Why sequester yourself in a place meeting other people you could see in any other city, talking about the same stuff, asking the same questions, and going to the same shows? Could you imagine a conversation between two of these people? "I saw Cats in Munich last week, but it wasn't as good as the Cats they put on in Budapest." "It was the opposite for me. I found the ornate theatre setting in Budapest too disturbing for the eyes. If they want to put on musicals, they need somewhere without gold-leaf around the edge of the stage and those awful cherubs in the frescoes." Begone, foul sheeple! But then there's the most irritating group of all: the bubble. These are people who, no matter where they are, no matter what huge range of options lie before them, will go out in their group, the same group, night after night after night. Prague is full of them, as is every other city. These über-sheeple seem to think there's nothing else outside their group. They walk around large cities talking to each other and fail to notice little details that make the place they are in special. They take photos of themselves eating in a restaurant, mainly when the plates are already empty, and they must be caught smiling in a photo hugging a statue or with the fingers and faces contorted in front of a monument or building. They rarely speak to locals (usually only shop assistants who speak their language) and eat at famous burger joints because they don't really understand local food and have a slight distrust. And there may be someone in the group with dietary requirements (doesn't like cheese, can't stand the smell of beer, gets bouts of Tourette's after eating spicy food) who makes it almost impossible to find an alternative place to eat, so they end up in the same place all the time. I think the worst case of sheeple syndrome I encountered whilst in Prague was on the final Thursday of the month. About six of us had got tickets to a concert in the glorious setting of the newly-renovated Malostranská Beseda, a palace built solely for public entertainment. One gave up his ticket for someone who when the tickets were booked didn't want to go and now did. Just under two hours before the concert, we agreed to meet at the metro station. Ten minutes later, I got a text saying they all wanted to grab something to eat first and would meet me there. I went to the station, one person there so we went together. My flatmate who was not in Prague when we bought the tickets but was interested also came along in case there were spare tickets. We got into the concert hall about ten minutes before the band started - no sign of the others. My flatmate could not get in, so he waited in the bar upstairs until he could. Forty minutes into the concert, I received a text message from the others saying they had only just sat down to order some food. In a pizzeria. In Prague. On the night they had concert tickets. Halfway through the act. They arrived, no joke, in time for the final two songs of the encore. I wouldn't have minded so much, if one of the group hadn't sacrificed his ticket and hadn't come, which could have gone to my flatmate, who was on time, and was getting bored on his own upstairs. See? Sheeple. One is hungry, so the others follow. Satellites around the one currently having the issue. And to think, my flatmate could have bargained a ticket off one of the others. So it came as a huge relief that I was able to hang around with a few people who wanted more than swapping clichés, hanging round in tourist trap cafés, eating in pizzerias and missing concerts. We had so much fun night after night that we almost flunked the course we were on. But that was by-the-by. We would never have done anything to jeopardise our prospects of passing it, especially a whole month-long course. That would have been reckless. Nevertheless, there was too much to do than just sit in a restaurant as a group and just... chat. Despite them, I have a huge set of new memories I never thought I would have, after what can only be described as the best time of my life. I thought the days of fun were over when I left London in 2000, but I was given a month reprise in February in my favourite city, Prague, the place I like to call my second home town. She is still as alluring and enticing as she was twenty years ago when I first fell in love with her. But if I were only going to be there for the one month of my life, why on earth would I want to ignore her by hanging around the same people in my little bubble? That is an insult to the host city. I see it as a badge of honour that I only squeaked a pass but had enormous fun and didn't spend day after day working on projects in the hope of getting a higher grade (which made no difference to how you would be seen) with little or no contact with the real Prague.

Is the West about to make itself obsolete?

People never learn. The reason why they never learn is because they don't live long enough to be able to learn from the mistakes of youth, which will be repeated over and over again everywhere forever until someone somewhere finds a three-thousand-year-old sage who will become master/mistress of the universe.

So it is of no surprise to note that there are some surprising similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the West's impending doom. But this time, at ten times the speed.

Firstly, the Roman Empire fell because of the sheer inability of those in charge to make any kind of decisions. The place had grown too big for its own good. Rome did not really fall - it declined over a period of centuries although the Eastern Roman Empire did not officially end until the invasion of Constantinople in the 15th century. So, one thing we can say is, if you want to survive, don't grow too big. Not necessarily geographically, but certainly in terms of what you can handle.

Secondly, Rome had been feeling good about itself, so good in fact that it chose to party all year long. This caused the place to split into two, with the richer Eastern Empire being more pragmatically run. So, another thing: don't allow your inhabitants to feel everything is going well, just for the whole place to fall apart.


Thirdly, and I think the thing which seals the deal, is the shrinking of the qualities and items that made Rome mighty: its political regionalisation into various administrative capitals (Ravenna, Treveris, Mediolanum, etc.) which marginalised various areas of the Empire and the slow deterioration of the once-mighty fortifications which allowed the invading Visigoths a much easier job of overtaking the Roman heartlands.

There were various related problems for the Romans:

The Barbarians had started to understand and even imitate Roman military manoeuvres, structures and disciplines to the extent that they did them better.


There was a decline in morals and public decency, which gave way to breathtaking decadence and immorality to the extent that little shocked the general public any more. There was alcoholism, public indecency and widespread sexual deviance.

The Plebeians, or the lower classes, had a lot less manual work to do, causing them great hardships and dissatisfaction, even mistrust, of their leaders.

The back-scratching and pocket-lining of politicians and the Praetorian Guard meant that as long as you kept the military happy, they would let you do what you wanted. And whilst politicians kept doing favours for each other, it became easier to "fix" the outcome of certain political questions.


The continual obsession with war (to keep the military occupied and to expand the glory of the Empire) was another prerequisite of the Roman Empire. Swaggering arrogantly over its territory and neighbouring lands, the leaders of the glorious empire tried their best to show the rest what they had and that they were better than the rest. That they may have been, in terms of technological advancement, art, people power and even governmental benevolence, but those things do not necessarily mean others will aspire to them. It means others will find it easier to destroy because there is less need for an iron fist ruler. So the dictatorships and barbarisms outside of the Roman sphere of influence found it so much easier to destroy it, simply because it was so enlightened.

Any bells ringing? Well yes, in fact, but the major difference with then and now is that we in the West are trying hard to accommodate the "Barbarians", buying and selling material from them. The threats facing us today are very similar, but far, far greater than those the Romans faced. Rising indebtedness, an overstretched military, encroaching government and commercial paranoia through the ability to keep every movement made by telephone and online on record and use it against the people, and falling educational standards. You may see Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT and the LSE at the top of the University league tables, but how much of that is a marketing fabrication? The similarities between the fall of Rome and now are startling, but this time the fall will be so much greater. There are several scenarios:


Scenario 1:
The West spends itself out of relevance

This could happen. It is a very probable scenario. Imagine all the banks, blissfully spending our cash on the markets, blowing fortunes they don't have, and spending imaginary money to get more of it. Oh, that already happened, did it? Imagine some countries who believe they are safe from economic meltdown because they hid their debts well and joined a monetary union believing they would be saved from bankruptcy by all the others. Oh that happened too, you say? Imagine a sinister, ruthless and unsentimental dictatorship worse than the Barbarians with a monthly income equivalent to that of the entire debt in the aforementioned fictionally indebted country offering to purchase all its outstanding arrears. In other words, virtually buying the country's emancipation from debt. What would happen to that newly debt-cleared country? Why sack Rome when you can buy the place?

Scenario 2:
The West is invaded

This is less obvious, but there is no reason why it should not happen. Too many Western powers are reducing military strength to save money. The UK, for example, is scrapping everything except essentials. It sees the need for nuclear weaponry, but not for a strong military. If an invader is going to come, it will want to have something to get, and the country being invaded doesn't want to destroy itself, so it is not going to do any good nuking the place. Keeping such a large amount of nuclear weapons is not going to save anyone. It would be so much easier to leave the large nukes to the big boys, and go in for having a huge army, navy and air force. Unfortunately, there are too many people in governments who think possession = prestige. Rubbish. I'd rather live in a modest house and have a burglar-proof property than have everything open but if an intruder comes, it all collapses into dust. For that reason, we leave ourselves open to attack at any time.


Scenario 3:

Governmental weakness, indecision and bad advice

This is almost a fait accompli in the West. Many of today's governmental figures are pretty weak, especially in the EU. I think this is due to the EU as well. National governments are becoming increasingly obsolete as decisions are made at EU level. Of course, these are made by the Council of Ministers, that is all the leaders of the EU together, but it means that if one EU leader loses the election, the EU agenda will be taken up by the next leader, and it no longer really matters who the head of state is.

What does this say about democracy in the 21st century? There really is not too much of it around, really. But meanwhile, most EU governments are just following the crowd. Coupled with national debt and an indecent reputation, politicians are an increasingly unpopular and lonely group, totally out of touch with what ordinary people want and need: stability and assuredness. Nothing else. We would give up a lot of material wealth and commercial activities just to guarantee our social welfare, health, happiness and continued employment.

Quite frankly, shallow materialism and self-indulgence is thankfully coming to an end. If it doesn't, the human character of failing to learn from past mistakes could lead to another Roman Empire falling.

The Christmas message is maybe no longer lost

Along with many people, I have been gripped by the BBC's freshly-made telling of the Nativity story, quite originally titled Nativity, on at 19.00 GMT for four days this week. It was actually quite refreshing to see the whole story through Joseph's eyes, and walk a mile in his shoes. Well, 85 miles in fact, from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

I thought Andrew Buchan, who plays the upstanding William Garrow in Garrow's Law was an outstanding piece of casting. His mild-mannered attitude and gentle demeanour made him the perfect Joseph. Tatiana Maslany, one of the most innocently beautiful women ever to grace the screen made it all the more worthwhile. They together were two inspirational main subjects who brought the whole story to its sweetest conclusion and quite frankly I would have liked it to go on and on and on in that manner, telling the whole story. I might be a Pagan, but I too find the Christmas story humbling, yet empowering. An odd juxtaposition of emotions which culminate in just a day from now.

The reason it was so gripping was because there was no exaggeration, no Ben Hur-style über-glory, no fanfare, no great announcement by archangels, just the bare bones of the story, the poorest of poor shepherds, the Magi following the astronomical signals and two caring parents worried about their daughter and future son-in-law. The other interesting aspect of this particular version was the inclusion of planetary movement, making this astronomical event seem much more relevant, as it should do.

As a Pagan, we respect and tolerate all reasonable religions, and find comfort in and gain knowledge from many of their teachings. I would never shy away from hiding the story of the Nativity from any child of mine, as it is a story of hope, as well as a lesson in the equality of all people at birth. If Jesus could be born in a stall, and become the great man he was, and for many still is, so the dustman's son could one day grow up to be a footballer, the daughter of a party pack salesman could grow up to marry the heir to the throne of the UK, but at the same time, Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia could be pulled from his haughty position to be executed, and the greatest leader of all time, Winston Churchill, could lose a general election and be a mere commoner the day after.

The Nativity story also tells us that life is a gift. The planet we live on is a beautiful spheroid perfectly climatised to allow us to evolve and gain intelligence to improve our existences. The story also teaches us that death is but a condition for our existence and comes to us all in the end, like a final bill at the end of a prodigious meal. Some of us will be lucky and drop dead without any symptoms. The most shocking for those left behind, but the way most of us would like to depart. Many of us will die of illnesses which we hope we will never get. The long, protracted suffering of my mother is one of the things which made me understand the tenuousness of our lives. Some of us, a very tiny minority in fact, will be killed by another person. This is the greatest crime in any society, and in all right-minded religions. The more brutal the death, the more horrified we are. But there is also war. That is for another day.

The benefits we receive from the Nativity story far outweigh the man-made rules and regulations taken down by human hand afterwards. Christianity today is a shadow of itself - it is losing the battle of hearts and minds, suffering from neglect, threatened with becoming irrelevant, even obsolete. This tragedy is due to the one and only fact: human desire for power. How can those in the Vatican claim to be Jesus's and St Peter's successors when it takes residence in great halls, monasteries, castles and cathedrals worldwide? How can a commercial enterprise fill the space where charity and compassion should be? And how can self-appointed representatives of such a humble man claim to be owners of countless masterpieces of a priceless nature whilst at the same time sanctioning the donation of money at church level to pay for their upkeep?

The fact that the BBC invests money, time and effort into telling the story properly and putting it on TV during prime time tells us a lot about the world we now live in. We are finally going back to basics. The simple things in life are coming back to us. The hubris years of credit cards, big spending and partying may finally be over. This is no time for decadence and carefree living. For the greatest thing taught to us by the Nativity is, we only have the one life. Why have so many people been raised to want more? Why are so many children in the North and West not happy with their situations? If they do not have any brand labels in their pile under the tree, if they do not have the latest downloads for their iPods, if they do not have junk food awaiting them instead of proper meat and vegetables for Christmas dinner, then that is another soul lost to the great demon of consumerism, the religion of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Then there are those that would destroy everything around them for their own beliefs: the fundamentalists, the crackpot element of this world. Why would anyone sane even think that the God of Abraham would consider a hero a person who believes his miserable existence should be ended by exploding himself in a busy street, killing tens or hundreds of innocent members of the public? And why would any sane individual even consider building a nuclear bomb, let alone using it? The story of the Nativity teaches us that very point: life is worth more than any ideological hangup, and certainly more than not having the latest toy/gadget/song to hand.

So maybe, if trends continue this way, the ungratefulness shown by spoiled kids may soon be a thing of the past, and we can get back to reality once again. When you wake up on Christmas morning to open your presents, remember two things: first, the fact that countless numbers of children worldwide will have been sleeping without a roof over their heads and will have no presents this day, and secondly that you are very, very lucky to even be here on this Earth in the first place. Bombs, wars, ideology and established religion are all just rabble-rousing hype. A life lived to the full and enjoyed as often as possible is worth so much more. So make the most of it!

How much did it cost, Mr Putin?

So Russia has won the right to host the World Cup in 2018.

Take a look at the following press freedom rankings of the candidate countries:
The Netherlands (3)
Japan (12)
Belgium (14)
Australia (18)
The UK (19)
The USA (20)
Spain (39)
Portugal (40)
South Korea (42)
Qatar (120)
Russia (140)

Now, considering the alleged backhanders and oiled palms that took place in the bidding process, I regard it as a badge of honour that England was last in the votes. Australians should feel proud that their democracy came last in their own election for 2022.

I do not mind whoever won, but the way the day progressed frightened me - is this a sign of the future? I would prefer my country to have press freedom and my human rights respected than win the right to host a football competition in which even the goals scored might not be given because FIFA refuses to allow TV replay evidence.

I hope the UK press is galvanised into running a deeper-than-deep investigation into the dealings of that self-appointed, self-important, self-deifying group of stuffed suits.

There are three places the UK press needs to look:

1. Why did Blatter say China invented football? I knew the writing was on the wall then. After that, he gave a less-than-convincing speech on the need for the losing countries to accept the decision of FIFA. In other words, "we've been doing things behind everyone's backs and we're really worried about the reaction of the losing bidders."

2. Why did 5 members of FIFA tell David Cameron that they could be assured of their votes which then never materialised? Blatter's speech to FIFA delegates just before voting may have had something to do with that, where he told the voters to remember the recent criticism directed at their organisation when they cast their votes.

3. The last place the UK press should look is the pockets of every FIFA member, to make sure they're not getting too full.

I, for one, would welcome this media intrusion. I didn't mind the fact that England lost the voting. I never thought it would win. But the manner in which it happened suggests there was something not right in the voting process.

This is also a mirror of the intransigence which FIFA deploys in regard to their refusal to allow TV evidence to assist referees. It is a powerful hint that it is not in their interests to allow certain results to interfere in the smooth coronation of the world champions.

I have always had a dark brown suspicion that World Cup winners were not always the teams that played the best. Now I am wondering how much it costs a country not just to win the right to host, but to win the World Cup itself.

Well, why don't the larger countries get together and break away from FIFA, set up a rival code and then see who blinks first... Spain, Portugal and Italy would relish the chance to join a breakaway group with England. Then the Germans and Dutch might feel a bit lonely as the biggest European footballing countries still clinging to FIFA. And as the only two larger countries left, a little like the Scottish football league, the Celtic and Rangers of world football, Argentina and Brazil, would not take too long to switch suits either. Then the torrent would come led by France, the Czech Republic, Japan and Scotland. In the end, only Switzerland, Qatar and Russia will be left. They can set up a proper, fan-based democratic football union run on the basis of what is really good for the game.

It'll never happen though. Too many threats from FIFA will see to that.

Now let's get back to playing (mainly) honest sports like cricket, golf and rugby.

The world's worst music genre

There are many styles of music that speak to the heart or quicken the soul: the bandoneon-inspired tango, the tubthumping anthems of a metal group, the simplicity of a folk ballad, the bewildering and beguiling sound emanating from an opera singer's lungs or the hair-raising wall of sound provided by a good old-fashioned big band.

But at the same time, there are some godawful melodies out there. Here are my top (or should it be bottom?) five:

5. Rap

The music with the silent "C", as the joke goes. This is comparatively much further down my list than other people might place it because there are nevertheless some redeeming features. Rap as a genre is a two-faced creature: one face is actually quite brilliant. There can be frustration in the voice, meaningful lyrics with a dark side accompanied by an angry backdrop and a desperate air of inability to change the state of the world. French rap is also particularly good. I defy anyone to tell me that it is not.

But there is also a side to this music which makes one want to leave the room and go and listen to a recorded speech by Fidel Castro. It can go one of two ways: firstly there is the semi-old geezer with his baseball cap on at a precariously adventurous angle, or even on back-to-front if they're really looking for the sales, where he sings of a moral issue and is surrounded by a backing group of real singers. He tries to look cool and in turn it just desecrates the whole act. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Daz Sampson and his now legendary Teenage Life!

The second way is simply brutal and not worth writing about.

4. X Marks the Spot

If there is one thing that distinguishes our generation from that of today it is the variety of skills and talent on offer. When I glimpse trailers of X Factor or something similar, I feel like smashing the television. Or at least shouting at it. There can be nothing worse than knowing that a glorified karaoke run by a narcissistic despot from Hertfordshire and his evil assistants is going to define your children's obsessions which they will look back upon wistfully in twenty years, bemoaning the quality of talent on their televisions and comparing it to their own youth. There is a subgenre here - the songwriters. When they go on to have a career, many of these "singers" cannot read or write music, have but a basic understanding of how timing works and can barely hold a note one octave above middle C. The songs produced for them are therefore melodically unadventurous and full of clichés.

Clichés like "baby", "beautiful", "believe", "heart" and "crazy" are just the start. "Get together", "(whatever) through the night", and many others of course started before Simon Cowell was even born. But surely songwriters and lyricists could add their own twist to the songs they write. Oh, of course, they do: the act. Fire, smoke, backing dancers to start with. But you need to have a routine per song, where you rock from side to side or look pleadingly into the spotlights, change costume at least three times per gig and hawk your new product on everything from breakfast talk shows to appearing on primetime spectacles as the interval act. These people also try to get themselves in the papers every day, either by having someone call up a journalist and tell them where they are to be found, or by doing enough stupid stuff to warrant a full-time photographer who parasitically follows the idiot around, in some cases earning as much as the "star".

If you want to know what I mean, then here is the prime example, the alpha male of all that this soulless world showers on its easily-hooked victims. Despite there being talent of sorts, I still think that the music of my youth and that before me was much more imaginative, being totally unreliant on computers and pyrotechnics, routines and clothes changes.


3. Christian Rock

If you ever want a category that sums up everything that is wrong with religion, it is Christian Rock. Trying to be cool by having a live band in your church thumping out melodies generally known as "praise" is seriously wrong and sends a very, very bad message to those you are trying to draw in. As my views on religion are well-documented, it will come as no surprise when I tell you that the paradoxical nature of mixing rock music, the 20th century's gift to the arts, with a belief as outdated and fuddy-duddy as Christianity is a shockingly underhand tactic to try and tell the world "we can keep up with the times!"

No you cannot.

Ditch the political bigotry associated with religion, allow women the right to be full clergy members, stop saying yours is the only true religion and everyone else is wrong, stop preaching doom and gloom to all sinners (usually unmarried parents or smokers) and finally ditch those silly men who preach by shouting out their beliefs as if theirs is the only voice that counts, then maybe, just maybe, you might be permitted to play rock in your church. Even then, I'm still having trouble pairing the two together. How can you sing songs with euphemistic lyrics like "arise", "lift me up", "worship", "fill my cup", and "mercy" in them and still keep a straight face? Sorry, this particular choice should have taken first place, but there are, I believe, two even more abominable genres than this.


2. Café and public space music

To explain this, I need to go into a little more detail: you're sitting with a friend, some family members or a date on a café terrace, the sun is shining and there are about five nationalities of tourist sitting in a radius of ten metres from you. You're having a quiet lunch/dinner, or a decent chat about things, catching up on news, or simply having a family holiday while it's sunny. Then you hear, drifting across the muttering throngs from a café nearby, the distinct sound of an accordeon, a fiddle and sometimes a singer. The songs are well-known to you, but you just don't remember their names. That also annoys you. I'll name some so you can run a search on them: Ochi Chorniye, Cielito Lindo, Under the Bridges of Paris, That's Amore, Oh Du Lieber Augustin, My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, La Vie En Rose, Beer Barrel Polka, Kalinka and Those Were The Days.

I know people who get great pleasure from the sounds of the accordeon, but there are surely more songs to play than that. Lady Kirsten also plays the accordeon and her repertoire is a hundred times broader than that of a streetside café busker. She can play songs from Sweden, Israel, Spain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Scotland, the USA, England, Wales and a lot of other countries.

The other public space I am referring to is the loud speaker found at railway stations, some pub-restaurants and shopping centres. The kind of music I am about to talk about requires me to prepare myself even to mention the name. That's why I paired it up with naff busking. The word is... euhm... (I feel like someone shy trying to explain to head of personnel I have haemorrhoids and need a new chair) is....

I'll do some more explaining first, to build myself up to it. That might help.

You're in the lobby of a three-star hotel in Kidderminster or Krefeld or Córdoba or Kaliningrad...

You're waiting for your spouse/son/daughter/grandma/secret lover, etc...

You're getting upset for no apparent reason...

Then you realise why. It's the utter bastardisation by re-timing (so-called jazzing-up) of songs you used to love, being slowly put through various stages of torture from limb removal to crucifixion via the codling grinder, turning them into musical monsters. The worst time of year for this contemptuous type of sound to reveal its hideous countenance is December and the weeks leading up to Christmas. I once heard Troïka from Prokofiev's magical Lieutenant Kijé Suite being stabbed to death by the sharpened knives of a trumpet player, a riff drummer and a supporting jazz orchestra. That made me cry. Another time, I heard Silent Night being bludgeoned by a group of musicians who made it sound like Mack the Knife. I stood still in disbelief for at least three minutes afterwards and could only speak again when I had had a whole night's sleep.

Big band is good. But not when it has to switch genres in order to make music.

Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Glenn Miller, Joe Loss. All wonderful band leaders in their own right.

Tchaikovsky, Bach, Wagner, Mozart, Prokofiev, Händel. All great composers in their own right.

For the sake of public decency, don't mix the two.


1. Schlager

Utter drivel of the most evil kind. It defiles the entire subject of music and is not even worth the CD it has been burned on. Schlager is the rape of sound. It is the abomination of art, the whore of the radiowaves. There is no devil in Hell who could have thought up Schlager music. It must have been a human as humans are intently much, much more evil than all the demons in the Underworld.

I would define Schlager in several ways: the first, a frilly variety of saccharine sweet ballads sung by women of a certain age or girls who have never seen a male organ, but can hold a guitar whilst being driven along a mountain path on the back of a horse-drawn cart with their friends, Irmtraud, Poldi and Hannes. But it can also be sung by a group of camp, moustachioed Austrians in Mexican sombreros and billowing white shirts carrying musical instruments, pretending they're on their way to Mallorca for a holiday. Or it can be a prodigiously suntanned blond guy who looks 40 but is probably 20 years older than that and wearing a toupée, singing songs of his first love or of his departed girlfriend, gone off with someone new (or should that be young?), whilst he sits at home on a tacky, red geranium-infested Tyrolean balcony with commanding views of the Alps, but oddly featuring regular close-ups of the local village's friendly goat. Let us not forget the blurred camera lens for special watery-eyed effect.

Schlager is Be'elzebub's eardrum. It is blasphemous to even call it music. Schlager is the result of too much incestuousness in the countryside, where generations of farmers' sons have shagged their naïve, uneducated female cousins who think it's a remedy for acne, slipped away from the scene of the act and written a song about marriage, kids, and flowers to atone for their inexplicable desires, which then gets aired on German, Swiss or Austrian local radio and bought by hundreds of thousands of people who know no better.

I think it is a very good thing Schlager music is a post-war thing. Imagine if it had been around before... the events of 1939-1945 would have lasted a lot more briefly. I can see it now - instead of bombing the place to smithereens, we'd have all been terrorised by the sounds of Schlager music and come out with our hands above our heads - "you can switch it off now, we surrender!"

The bus driver who takes me to Luxembourg in the morning likes Schlager music. He is the one I spoke about in a previous article here, who can't smile for love nor money. I believe this to be because he has, for the whole of his life, thought the world was like a Schlager song, and every day that he wakes up realises it isn't. Schlager has turned him into a cantankerous, vindictive and miserable man with little to live for. I just hope he's not at the wheel of his bus when he decides to end it all.