There is a sliding scale of things it's best not to be if you don't want to be shot at. Firstly, being white. Then able-bodied, followed by middle or upper class, and finally being male. However, there is one heinous crime above all others: being English.
Not any old English, as regional dialects give you an oppressed edge about you. I mean, from the South-East corner, the Home Counties, the bit of England that's rarely covered in cloud. It's the way they speak. It's not cool to be clever in the UK, and it's certainly not cool to sound it, even if you're not. Even within the South East, there is a divide in the perceptions amongst various speakers. Sound like you're ready to go for auditions to EastEnders, and you're all right. Make the most basic of grammatical mistakes (we was, I would of/should of, etc.) and you're immediately accepted to the human race. But do your best to speak properly or lose your regional accent (Andrew Marr, for example) and you're mockfodder to the masses, a pull for the polemic pursuer, a target for the tormentor. When I say speak properly, I don't mean sound like a posher version of Prince Charles, but generally grammatically correct and sounding like you're from the South East.
And so everyone else in the country thinks you are an oppressor, a politically incorrect incarnation of imperial oppression in human form, a grotesque being who likes treading on hungry proles. There are several things that made me sit up and take note this week - one was an article in the Guardian about political correctness (not the article but the posts of left-wing indignity after it) and the other was the merciless right-wing press stories about Scottish independence. Is nobody reasonable any more?
The Scots who want independence, and I do not think there are as many of them as we are led to believe, don't really want independence from the Liverpudlian or the Newcastrian English, but more from the Kentish and the Oxfordian English.
Although I don't profess to being English but British, I have had to follow my geographical birthplace around with me. I remember well the various times I have been confronted with people from different parts of the English-speaking world and there has never been a problem until someone turns up with a chip on his or her shoulder about either my accent or my place of birth. Once, an Australian, a Scot and a Canadian all set upon me because I don't have the accent of a colonially oppressed individual. This was more bizarre because the fourth person was from Manchester. It's a southern English thing. And it's really just jealousy.
Scottish people want independence, do they? I'm not really so sure. I think a lot of English would be very happy to see them go, but despite all their bluster, I think they realise what a waste it would be to ditch England. Some English, though, see them as economic millstones around their necks, or creamers of the milk of social welfare and education.
SNP supporters talk about being independent, but I have a message for them: be careful what you wish for... Have you thought about how your standing in the world will be after separation? You'll be half the size of Belgium, population-wise, and the same size as the Czech Republic, size-wise. Your position now, as part of the United Kingdom, means you punch above your weight in international organisations. Scottish people have the opportunity to be candidates for the UK's seat on the UN Security Council, to be the UK's Prime Minister with all the functions that entails and to be part of a powerful national bloc of seats in the EU which is taken far more seriously due to its size than a country with the population of, say, Slovakia. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, losing 8% of the people will be no big deal.
Concerning your currency, you will need to set up your own, because I do not think a country can truly call itself independent without finding its place in the world financially. It is also terribly unfair to the country whose currency tailcoat you are hanging on to, and I do not think the Chancellor in London will permit you anyhow. The euro may beckon for you, but you would be wiser joining NAFTA or EFTA, I think, and setting up the Scottish Pound to float on its own. While we're at it, I think you should be informed about the Northern Irish question. The Protestants of the proud province of Ulster claim to be mainly of British descent. Many of them were originally Scottish crofters. So as far as the people of Northern Ireland are concerned, you will be the natural inheritors of that little debate too.
Actually, it is starting to look quite sunny for the English. I have personally always abhorred your infatuation with cheering English sporting misery and your openly discriminatory nature towards your southern naighbours, despite benefiting quite nicely from the union, so maybe as a separate country, you will mature and see England as a friendly neighbour, like the Irish, and the English will one day forgive you for being so boorish in the past. I take particular offence in anyone getting picked upon for no good reason, and the English get it from everyone. The French, Australians, Scottish, Argentinians, Spanish and Russians have all recently had a bone to pick with the English, (not the British, please note), and it's time they got a little sympathy. I touched this a while ago with this blog.
I have always called myself British. It is a proud, all-inclusive word that distinguishes us from other European nations in that you can be any colour, have any origin, and still be British. French people have had a much greater problem integrating non-French people precisely because "French" is an ethnie as well as a nationality, whereas "British" means you can be English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish and British, but also Indian, Jamaican, Ghanaian or Canadian and British. I think the UK is stronger in Europe and the world when the whole island is united but I think I am becoming less against the idea of Scottish independence, simply because I am slowly getting tired of Alex "Bravebelly" Salmond and his party wittering on about how they would love independence from the UK. Well, I do not think they really do. And deep down, I don't think the English do either, but they would be less affected by Scotland leaving than the Scottish themselves.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
When you really need a hero...
The world is in a mess. The banks and the politicians have made life utterly unbearable for everyone. There will be no cream on the milk of life for a decade or two. And bears go to the toilet in forests. We know. We damn well know. But all that is of no consequence, or need not be, if only someone, somewhere, would have a plan. A decent plan with rules, that we could all agree to and adhere to. A statesman or woman. Or two or three. But unfortunately, there is nobody. Well there is, but it is not in the interests of the plutarchs running our economies to allow them too much space to grow and gain a following. There are brilliant minds with excellent tongues attached that just need to be given a platform. People are truly ready for change, but the current group of scoundrels, leaches and parasites seem not too interested in allowing that to happen, or rather, too scared. Dig under the surface and I think there would be enough evidence to scandalise or even incriminate over half of the world's leaders and their cabinets. Considering the indifference amongst many people (the silent majority, more interested in TV talent shows and the latest gossip from the magazines), these politicians have a huge chance of getting away with it, and that would be not only a crying shame, but would taint the general public in the blood of the victims of this silent takeover.
We are witnessing a new ideological battle, opening across many fronts. On one hand, we have the Euro-ideologists, sleepwalking to their own doom by believing that regulation, protectionism, stifling of the markets and assurance of the French and Polish (but mainly the French) agricultural sector and the German manufacturing sector, will get them out of trouble. This is not going to help anyone in the end. The French-style grand projet to establish the euro, as a glorious symbol of European Unity and (my most hated word) Solidarity will undoubtedly be seen by history as the most ludicrous, expensive, embarrassing and pointless waste of valuable time, resources and wealth any politician anywhere could ever have thought would work, remembering there were (and still are) no safeguards in place, the very ones every City economist worth his/her salt could have told you, even back in 1989, when this idea was originally raised by the French President, who used it as a bargaining tool for German reunification: you reunify, but you must give up your Mark in favour of a unified European currency. This was the first enormous, screamingly stupid step towards our demise as a world power.
On the other hand, we have the plutarchs and economists, capitalists and investment bankers: those shameless abusers of the lobbyist fringes of the political greasing machine. For every shamelessly corrupt politician, there are five shamelessly corrupt economists. And the two groups overlap heavily. The plutarchs are the politicians and the politicians are the plutarchs, but their smoke-and-mirror tactics mean you never see it this way. It is evident that there is a great deal of neoliberal unease about bringing some justice into the world. It would mean their enormous salaries would have to be cut, prompting them to threaten to leave for the Far East. Let them go, I say. If they care more for their salaries than their country and the people in it, then they are the first group of people we need to encourage to leave. Let them make some other part of the world a less safe place to live in.
But what bothers me the most, is still that gut feeling that we could be doing more: politicians meet at summits, conferences and visits all the time. The greatest problem with the EU is that there is no room for a visionary. 27 countries, soon 28, need to sit round a table and debate the immediate future. No one politician really wants to seem like he/she is occupying too much of the sunlight, and so they all stick to their mundane, inglorious, uninspired agenda interrupted by the odd coffee break, to beat out new directives for all the 27 countries to implement. They have forgotten three very important things:
The European Union will not die if we now say "OK, we're obviously not ready for a unified currency quite yet, so let's go back to the old system for a while." Many will applaud this decision. Once this is done, we can get on with doing the things Europe is good at: the sharing, pooling and improvement of cooperation in intelligence, policing, education, manufacturing, food production, military, tourism, agriculture and food, justice and many other areas of life where we can build a common purpose. While all this is going on, we need to listen to the people. It is the people who vote for the politicians, and the people who will deselect them when the time is right. If one politician oversteps his/her jurisdiction, it is only right that they are evicted. Europe needs some old-style visionaries of the likes of William Beverage or Willi Brandt; realists and ideologists at the same time. People who can see a good idea and run with it, not afraid to stand up to lobbyists and big business.
And we do have people like this around us, but those greasy politicians will not let them get anywhere near them. They obviously have a lot to hide...
People like Deborah Meaden, entrepreneur and straight-talker, an upstanding citizen with business sense and an eye for justice. And this is the cunning naïvety of politicians (yes, an oxymoron) - on BBC Question Time last week, The government minister on the show was impressed by what he heard, as was the audience, and tried to curry favour by saying that he had often tried to recruit her. This was an utter lie. She said the minister had never even picked up the telephone. What do politicians have against people with ideas?
Finally, I leave you with this thought: David Cameron, the darling of the banking world, did what I would have done last Friday in telling Merkozy where to get off, but he did it for thr wrong reasons. He did it not "in the national interest", but in the banking interest. People think the UK's action shows a country not going at the speed of the others, at a much slower rate. In fact, I beg to differ. The UK is in fact going faster than all the others, but the rest of Europe has just not caught up with the idea yet, that soon they'll all be wanting to go their separate ways. In the coming year, there are elections in Greece, France, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Lithuania. These elections will mark the beginning of the end for the European dream (if there ever really was one). I, for one, believe that the UK was wrong to ditch the Anglosphere in favour of its geographically close neighbours. British people have more in common with Australians, Indians, Canadians, South Africans and West Indians than they ever did with Belgians or Italians. They would be considered as not really foreign by a large percentage of the population. It is time for the UK to seek them out and ask them to forgive them for the naïve assumption that any continental European had the answers to the UK's need to find a place in the world.
We are witnessing a new ideological battle, opening across many fronts. On one hand, we have the Euro-ideologists, sleepwalking to their own doom by believing that regulation, protectionism, stifling of the markets and assurance of the French and Polish (but mainly the French) agricultural sector and the German manufacturing sector, will get them out of trouble. This is not going to help anyone in the end. The French-style grand projet to establish the euro, as a glorious symbol of European Unity and (my most hated word) Solidarity will undoubtedly be seen by history as the most ludicrous, expensive, embarrassing and pointless waste of valuable time, resources and wealth any politician anywhere could ever have thought would work, remembering there were (and still are) no safeguards in place, the very ones every City economist worth his/her salt could have told you, even back in 1989, when this idea was originally raised by the French President, who used it as a bargaining tool for German reunification: you reunify, but you must give up your Mark in favour of a unified European currency. This was the first enormous, screamingly stupid step towards our demise as a world power.
On the other hand, we have the plutarchs and economists, capitalists and investment bankers: those shameless abusers of the lobbyist fringes of the political greasing machine. For every shamelessly corrupt politician, there are five shamelessly corrupt economists. And the two groups overlap heavily. The plutarchs are the politicians and the politicians are the plutarchs, but their smoke-and-mirror tactics mean you never see it this way. It is evident that there is a great deal of neoliberal unease about bringing some justice into the world. It would mean their enormous salaries would have to be cut, prompting them to threaten to leave for the Far East. Let them go, I say. If they care more for their salaries than their country and the people in it, then they are the first group of people we need to encourage to leave. Let them make some other part of the world a less safe place to live in.
But what bothers me the most, is still that gut feeling that we could be doing more: politicians meet at summits, conferences and visits all the time. The greatest problem with the EU is that there is no room for a visionary. 27 countries, soon 28, need to sit round a table and debate the immediate future. No one politician really wants to seem like he/she is occupying too much of the sunlight, and so they all stick to their mundane, inglorious, uninspired agenda interrupted by the odd coffee break, to beat out new directives for all the 27 countries to implement. They have forgotten three very important things:
- The EU dream is sucking the life out of democracy by putting power in the hands of the European Council of Ministers, which basically means it matters not one iota who is in national parliaments, who was elected as national and local representatives, because all the main decisions will be taken at this intergovernmental level, so whoever is elected, will soon find out that there is a "process" that needs to be adhered to, and there is little room for fresh ideas, and even less room to have fresh policies at national level.
- While they are navel-gazing in Brussels and Strasbourg, the rest of the world is getting on with the serious business of trade, industry and business. India, China, Singapore, Brazil, Australia and the like are the places to be. This is where we find the action. Whilst the Europeans are slowly receding from the world stage, others are making headway. Europe needs a guide.
- And finally, one size does most definitely not fit all. Buy a T-shirt in a shop, size M. It will fit mediums, but it will be too big on smalls and maybe the most corpulent won't even get it over their arms. The euro is a far bigger burden than necessary.
The European Union will not die if we now say "OK, we're obviously not ready for a unified currency quite yet, so let's go back to the old system for a while." Many will applaud this decision. Once this is done, we can get on with doing the things Europe is good at: the sharing, pooling and improvement of cooperation in intelligence, policing, education, manufacturing, food production, military, tourism, agriculture and food, justice and many other areas of life where we can build a common purpose. While all this is going on, we need to listen to the people. It is the people who vote for the politicians, and the people who will deselect them when the time is right. If one politician oversteps his/her jurisdiction, it is only right that they are evicted. Europe needs some old-style visionaries of the likes of William Beverage or Willi Brandt; realists and ideologists at the same time. People who can see a good idea and run with it, not afraid to stand up to lobbyists and big business.
And we do have people like this around us, but those greasy politicians will not let them get anywhere near them. They obviously have a lot to hide...
People like Deborah Meaden, entrepreneur and straight-talker, an upstanding citizen with business sense and an eye for justice. And this is the cunning naïvety of politicians (yes, an oxymoron) - on BBC Question Time last week, The government minister on the show was impressed by what he heard, as was the audience, and tried to curry favour by saying that he had often tried to recruit her. This was an utter lie. She said the minister had never even picked up the telephone. What do politicians have against people with ideas?
Finally, I leave you with this thought: David Cameron, the darling of the banking world, did what I would have done last Friday in telling Merkozy where to get off, but he did it for thr wrong reasons. He did it not "in the national interest", but in the banking interest. People think the UK's action shows a country not going at the speed of the others, at a much slower rate. In fact, I beg to differ. The UK is in fact going faster than all the others, but the rest of Europe has just not caught up with the idea yet, that soon they'll all be wanting to go their separate ways. In the coming year, there are elections in Greece, France, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Lithuania. These elections will mark the beginning of the end for the European dream (if there ever really was one). I, for one, believe that the UK was wrong to ditch the Anglosphere in favour of its geographically close neighbours. British people have more in common with Australians, Indians, Canadians, South Africans and West Indians than they ever did with Belgians or Italians. They would be considered as not really foreign by a large percentage of the population. It is time for the UK to seek them out and ask them to forgive them for the naïve assumption that any continental European had the answers to the UK's need to find a place in the world.
Monday, 7 November 2011
What is democracy?
The world over, there are different ways of viewing, for want of a better expression, "people power". In some countries, this takes the form of a revolution every ten or so years, installing another dictator. In others, it is the complete opposite, where governments cannot so much as change the VAT rate without a referendum. Extremes in the crazy systems governing this planet. What is clear though is that, with a couple of seriously wacky exceptions, in all countries of the world, the system is bigger than any individual.
What, though, is the most bizarre thing, is the sheer number of organisations, corporations, state-owned bodies and self-governing regions that bypass any form of public scrutiny. There's the Bilderberg group, the City of London Corporation, OPEC, any number of multi-billion-dollar company, media outlet or bank to name but a few. These organisations generally accept the widely-held opinion that politicians in democracies (at least those who make it) are malleable, popularity-hungry, attention-seeking, shallow petty criminals, loan sharks and dangerously crooked property owners in need of a place to legitimise, consolidate and widen their shady dealings through networking and rubbing shoulders with other like-minded individuals. A kind of LinkedIn for criminals who want to do everything officially.
These organisations also know that there are those who genuinely come into politics wishing to change the world. Visionaries, fresh-minded academics, talented individuals with imagination and a steely eye on the goals they wish to achieve. Of course, when they come up against the might of the machine, they also find their dreams dashed, their hopes halved and their ambitions annulled, either through being told that the thought is a valiant one but totally impractical, or by being ridiculed, scandalised or hounded out of office by the more sinister factions of politics, and their media buddies. This of course depends on how close to the bone the visionary entrant comes when airing his or her new ideas.
So the large firms single out the right politicians for their dirty work: they give them special deals, assure them of seats on their boards of directors and pushing their candidacies for posts where they can be of use to them after their political careers are over. This is why nothing truly pleasing to the people ever gets done; because it's not in anyone's interest. It's not in the politicians' interests, because they would be putting themselves out of use; it's not in the corporations' interests because they'd not have anyone to represent their shady interests at international level, and it's not in the people's interests because it would make us all jumpy, to think that everything was going so swimmingly well. We'd think there was a catch and start petty paranoid skirmishes with traditional foes.
Leaders in the democratic world these days are so uninspirational, so faceless, so full of themselves, that we cannot really blame the Chinese for viewing democracy with suspicion, when they see how the Greeks behaved. How can you respect a politician who, in order to secure another term in power, promises to reduce taxes, or the retirement age by a year, or unemployment by hiring another few thousand people to do meaningless tasks that could be handled by half a dozen job students? How can you respect a politician who fakes his own country's economic situation in order to join a currency union his country has no hope of keeping up with?
I'll tell you how.
Let's take each country as being a person, and the Eurozone a little like marriage. So before the Eurozone was set up, when each country was in the singles market, so to say, they put on their best outfits for summits and kept the smiles going long into the evening, a little like singles have done for decades. Once they get married, of course, the partners start noticing little niggling habits that irritate them, like too many referenda (Ireland, Denmark) or inability to save money (Ireland gain, Italy, Greece). In the end, what happens to most married people? They let themselves go. They get unfit, lazy, start putting on weight and neglecting their personal hygiene. The same has happened in the euro marriage. Now they're tied together in an eternal bond of "till death us do part" those newlyweds feel that they'll be saved by the others if things go wrong. And then the mid-life crisis sets in, where the man decides to get a Porsche convertible and go trekking in the Arctic. The woman (Germany in this case) stays at home, horrified. No wonder she (Merkel) wants to limit the manoeuvrability of the Greek economy.
Now, returning to the original question - what is democracy? For me, you can' t let the people decide everything, because we'd reintroduce hanging and expel anyone with an accent. That's unfortunately how it goes, because those with opinions, principles or views are usually a lot louder than those who just get on with their lives worry-free, and are more likely to bother to vote in any referendum, which is why David Cameron refuses to give the UK a referendum of staying in the EU. On the other hand, you can't let politicians carry on governing forever, or they get too big for their boots. They get to know the system too well. So well, in fact, they do things like rein in the national media (Italy, Hungary), reduce freedom of speech (UK, France) or change the constitution to make it harder to remove them, or to indict them for any wrogdoing during or after their terms of service (Italy again). This was not planned when democracy was conceived. It was not the main idea.
So, how has this shrinking of democratic values occurred in historically democratic countries where politicians are traditionally accept their fates every four or five years at the ballot box? In Europe, this has happened because the EU has made it necessary. On one hand, the European Council of Ministers has replaced many of the features of national government because a great deal of decisions take place at European level, and are implemented nationally under the pretext that they were actually decided by the national politicians. And on the other, because of the turbulence they knew they were about to unleash on everyone. Don't tell me that five years ago, or even ten, those politicians had no idea of the storm they were kicking up when they introduced the euro, allowing Greece, Portugal and other such ClubMed nations into the club. I cannot believe for one moment that after so many errors of judgement on the way, so many wrong moves, so many contrived agreements and forced referendum decisions in the last decade, that there is no alternative agenda. You cannot tell people "you will have democracy, but only if you vote our way". Democracy has to mean something, and it has to be binding.
On the other hand, what is it like living in a country without democracy? In a country like the People's Republic of Korea, it's probably a living nightmare. I would not wish to spend 24 hours in that country. I think the same about Myanmar and Zimbabwe. But in Belarus or pre-election Azerbaijan or Bhutan, I could imagine living, despite not having much in the way of freedom of speech. It poses the questions, "is democracy over-rated?" and "is democracy something for everyone?" When you look at China or Russia, two vast countries, are either of them capable of further democratising without keeping a firm grip on the people for fear of independence movements springing up everywhere? Would the Chinese people really know what to with full voting rights? Do they really need it? I think they are doing very well with their systems as they are now.
Let us look at something simple: if a little village in, say, Nigeria applies to the EU for funding of a bridge over a dangerous river, the European Commission will firstly send it to a committee, who will then decide whether it is viable or not. Within months, they will dispatch a surveyor, an engineer and a budget analyst to the location to draw up plans and make an offer to the Nigerians. Once this has been approved, it will go back to Brussels for ratification, and within the next budgetary outlay, funds will be made available. Months later, the bridge will be built using ethically sourced materials and properly paid skilled workers, but the whole process will take about 2 to 3 years. Then there's the Chinese. They'll just turn up in the village, ask where they'd like the bridge and get to work. The material for the bridge might not be so stable or Kosher, and the builders might be less capable, but the whole thing would take 3 months, maximum. That is the difference between an ethical democratic process and a one-party state: the bridge might take a lot shorter to build, and the shorter waiting time will mean fewer will be killed whilst the Europeans are still discussing the proposal, and there will be
So, could the slow eradication of democracy in Europe be a necessity, clandestinely being introduced to be able to compete with China and Russia in the long term? Could the lack of transparency at European level be something to do with politicians' need to hide something far more worrying from us? I doubt it. But there's still a little thought cloud in my head which does not rule it out entirely. What I think is most likely, is that the current crop of politicians is grasping at any way at all to distance themselves from the mess they made of the last 10 years.
To finish, when asking what democracy is, we cannot put a finger on it because everywhere is different. In the politically disengaged countries of western Europe, democracy has been compromised. It has shifted from parliament to talent shows, from local government to online polls and customer satisfaction surveys. Panem et Circenses is the motto of our civilisation. With the coming of the Occupy movement and the sudden unpopularity of the European Union and what it stands for, I think the day is coming where people power, in whatever form is most suited to each country, will take back control. But in the end, it's the power-hungry that corrupt the system causing an endless cycle of bad governance. That makes no difference if in Asia, Africa or Europe, dictatorships or democracies: the sharpest elbows win.
What, though, is the most bizarre thing, is the sheer number of organisations, corporations, state-owned bodies and self-governing regions that bypass any form of public scrutiny. There's the Bilderberg group, the City of London Corporation, OPEC, any number of multi-billion-dollar company, media outlet or bank to name but a few. These organisations generally accept the widely-held opinion that politicians in democracies (at least those who make it) are malleable, popularity-hungry, attention-seeking, shallow petty criminals, loan sharks and dangerously crooked property owners in need of a place to legitimise, consolidate and widen their shady dealings through networking and rubbing shoulders with other like-minded individuals. A kind of LinkedIn for criminals who want to do everything officially.
These organisations also know that there are those who genuinely come into politics wishing to change the world. Visionaries, fresh-minded academics, talented individuals with imagination and a steely eye on the goals they wish to achieve. Of course, when they come up against the might of the machine, they also find their dreams dashed, their hopes halved and their ambitions annulled, either through being told that the thought is a valiant one but totally impractical, or by being ridiculed, scandalised or hounded out of office by the more sinister factions of politics, and their media buddies. This of course depends on how close to the bone the visionary entrant comes when airing his or her new ideas.
So the large firms single out the right politicians for their dirty work: they give them special deals, assure them of seats on their boards of directors and pushing their candidacies for posts where they can be of use to them after their political careers are over. This is why nothing truly pleasing to the people ever gets done; because it's not in anyone's interest. It's not in the politicians' interests, because they would be putting themselves out of use; it's not in the corporations' interests because they'd not have anyone to represent their shady interests at international level, and it's not in the people's interests because it would make us all jumpy, to think that everything was going so swimmingly well. We'd think there was a catch and start petty paranoid skirmishes with traditional foes.
Leaders in the democratic world these days are so uninspirational, so faceless, so full of themselves, that we cannot really blame the Chinese for viewing democracy with suspicion, when they see how the Greeks behaved. How can you respect a politician who, in order to secure another term in power, promises to reduce taxes, or the retirement age by a year, or unemployment by hiring another few thousand people to do meaningless tasks that could be handled by half a dozen job students? How can you respect a politician who fakes his own country's economic situation in order to join a currency union his country has no hope of keeping up with?
I'll tell you how.
Let's take each country as being a person, and the Eurozone a little like marriage. So before the Eurozone was set up, when each country was in the singles market, so to say, they put on their best outfits for summits and kept the smiles going long into the evening, a little like singles have done for decades. Once they get married, of course, the partners start noticing little niggling habits that irritate them, like too many referenda (Ireland, Denmark) or inability to save money (Ireland gain, Italy, Greece). In the end, what happens to most married people? They let themselves go. They get unfit, lazy, start putting on weight and neglecting their personal hygiene. The same has happened in the euro marriage. Now they're tied together in an eternal bond of "till death us do part" those newlyweds feel that they'll be saved by the others if things go wrong. And then the mid-life crisis sets in, where the man decides to get a Porsche convertible and go trekking in the Arctic. The woman (Germany in this case) stays at home, horrified. No wonder she (Merkel) wants to limit the manoeuvrability of the Greek economy.
Now, returning to the original question - what is democracy? For me, you can' t let the people decide everything, because we'd reintroduce hanging and expel anyone with an accent. That's unfortunately how it goes, because those with opinions, principles or views are usually a lot louder than those who just get on with their lives worry-free, and are more likely to bother to vote in any referendum, which is why David Cameron refuses to give the UK a referendum of staying in the EU. On the other hand, you can't let politicians carry on governing forever, or they get too big for their boots. They get to know the system too well. So well, in fact, they do things like rein in the national media (Italy, Hungary), reduce freedom of speech (UK, France) or change the constitution to make it harder to remove them, or to indict them for any wrogdoing during or after their terms of service (Italy again). This was not planned when democracy was conceived. It was not the main idea.
So, how has this shrinking of democratic values occurred in historically democratic countries where politicians are traditionally accept their fates every four or five years at the ballot box? In Europe, this has happened because the EU has made it necessary. On one hand, the European Council of Ministers has replaced many of the features of national government because a great deal of decisions take place at European level, and are implemented nationally under the pretext that they were actually decided by the national politicians. And on the other, because of the turbulence they knew they were about to unleash on everyone. Don't tell me that five years ago, or even ten, those politicians had no idea of the storm they were kicking up when they introduced the euro, allowing Greece, Portugal and other such ClubMed nations into the club. I cannot believe for one moment that after so many errors of judgement on the way, so many wrong moves, so many contrived agreements and forced referendum decisions in the last decade, that there is no alternative agenda. You cannot tell people "you will have democracy, but only if you vote our way". Democracy has to mean something, and it has to be binding.
On the other hand, what is it like living in a country without democracy? In a country like the People's Republic of Korea, it's probably a living nightmare. I would not wish to spend 24 hours in that country. I think the same about Myanmar and Zimbabwe. But in Belarus or pre-election Azerbaijan or Bhutan, I could imagine living, despite not having much in the way of freedom of speech. It poses the questions, "is democracy over-rated?" and "is democracy something for everyone?" When you look at China or Russia, two vast countries, are either of them capable of further democratising without keeping a firm grip on the people for fear of independence movements springing up everywhere? Would the Chinese people really know what to with full voting rights? Do they really need it? I think they are doing very well with their systems as they are now.
Let us look at something simple: if a little village in, say, Nigeria applies to the EU for funding of a bridge over a dangerous river, the European Commission will firstly send it to a committee, who will then decide whether it is viable or not. Within months, they will dispatch a surveyor, an engineer and a budget analyst to the location to draw up plans and make an offer to the Nigerians. Once this has been approved, it will go back to Brussels for ratification, and within the next budgetary outlay, funds will be made available. Months later, the bridge will be built using ethically sourced materials and properly paid skilled workers, but the whole process will take about 2 to 3 years. Then there's the Chinese. They'll just turn up in the village, ask where they'd like the bridge and get to work. The material for the bridge might not be so stable or Kosher, and the builders might be less capable, but the whole thing would take 3 months, maximum. That is the difference between an ethical democratic process and a one-party state: the bridge might take a lot shorter to build, and the shorter waiting time will mean fewer will be killed whilst the Europeans are still discussing the proposal, and there will be
So, could the slow eradication of democracy in Europe be a necessity, clandestinely being introduced to be able to compete with China and Russia in the long term? Could the lack of transparency at European level be something to do with politicians' need to hide something far more worrying from us? I doubt it. But there's still a little thought cloud in my head which does not rule it out entirely. What I think is most likely, is that the current crop of politicians is grasping at any way at all to distance themselves from the mess they made of the last 10 years.
To finish, when asking what democracy is, we cannot put a finger on it because everywhere is different. In the politically disengaged countries of western Europe, democracy has been compromised. It has shifted from parliament to talent shows, from local government to online polls and customer satisfaction surveys. Panem et Circenses is the motto of our civilisation. With the coming of the Occupy movement and the sudden unpopularity of the European Union and what it stands for, I think the day is coming where people power, in whatever form is most suited to each country, will take back control. But in the end, it's the power-hungry that corrupt the system causing an endless cycle of bad governance. That makes no difference if in Asia, Africa or Europe, dictatorships or democracies: the sharpest elbows win.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Dictators ain't what they used to be
Naming the months of the year after your children and forcing the people to adopt them. Re-wording the Lord's Prayer so you are the one people pray to. Dressing up as Napoleon for your coronation having declared your country no longer a republic but an empire. Delivering six hour-long speeches live on national television. Reportedly eating your political opponents and keeping their heads in a freezer. These are eccentrics who managed to wheedle their way to the top seat in their country, either by subterfuge, by election or by being in the right place at the right time. There really are or were people who did those things I mentioned earlier, and they are: Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti, Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic (or Central African Empire, as he renamed it), Fidel Castro of Cuba and Idi Amin of Uganda respectively. The late Colonel Gaddafi was a complete nutter; John Simpson, the BBC correspondent, in this book "Strange People, Questionable Places", said he had terrible flatulence and his mad cackling laugh and obtuse retorts each time he asked a question made a farce out of any interviews.
There are many others too. Kim Il-Sung of North Korea, who made his people perform daily T'ai Chi-style exercises at dawn in the name of the nation, while large speakers blared patriotic military songs and human speakers screamed mantras praising their Great Leader. The famously paranoid Enver Hoxha of Albania, who made it an offence for men to wear beards so they could be easily identified in criminal cases and built up such an enormous amount of one-man military bunkers (750,000, for 3 million people!) to surprise any invader. The abominable Pol Pot of Cambodia, who made people return to the countryside in a mass forced labour scheme, who wanted to dismantle urban settlements and who sanctioned the killing of 2.1 million people, about a fifth of the population of the country.
All these individuals are now no more, either forced into exile, put on trial and executed, committed suicide or died of old age. The fact that these dictators remained in office unchallenged for such a long period of time is testament to the fear they instilled in people as high up as their own right-hand men. Either that, or the population had obviously been suffering from a mass Stockholm Syndrome, brought about by the fear of change. Another thing that strikes me is that not all of them look the type to commit such heinous crimes against humanity. Look at Bashar al Assad of Syria - he doesn't look like the type of person to order brutal crackdowns on his own people. He doesn't even look like the type of person who'd throw a strop in a domestic. Enver Hoxha seemed more like the type of person who'd knock on your door offering a free clock with every Reader's Digest purchase above £100.
The only supreme rulers still left of any note are Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the opulent rulers of the Arabian peninsula. It can only be a matter of time before they get their comeuppance, but I think most of them will die of old age.
There are some oddballs about though: the absolute monarch of Swaziland, Mswati III, although not a brutal man, is pretty active on the marriage front, with 14 wives, although not as active as his father, Sobhuza II, who had produced 210 children from 70 marriages and had a reported 1000 grandchildren by his death.
The dictators around today though are pretty bland operators. Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus is no more than a civil servant with special powers. Hu Jintao of China is the mouthpiece of a much larger party apparatus and even Omar al Bashir keeps himself to himself, despite the Darfur humanitarian disaster.
Dictators who wish to survive in the 21st century have wised up to the notion that they need to go unnoticed or build up a huge civil, military and political staff below them to take hits when they occur so they are pretty much untouchable. That way they can remain in power for decades. Stalin realised this, and he is the undisputed pinup poster boy of the dictators. Although we all know how grisly his deeds were, how utterly intolerable a system he threw up in the twenties and thirties, he saw off all his opponents but his hands were always spotlessly clean. And look at how he died: old age. The European Council operates in a similar manner, I have noted - it lets national governments or the European Commission take the blame for utter scandals like the Lisbon Treaty or ignoring national referendums.
No article on dictatorships would be complete without mentioning the most famous one of them all, Adolf Hitler. He was quite a showboater, with his spectacular demonstrations of nationalism through symbolism and Sturm und Drang. He galvanised the people by playing on the affrontery he felt by the Versailles Treaty and building up their sense of destiny through grands projets like the construction of huge buildings of culture, the hijacking or politicising of the 1936 Olympic Games and the plan to remodel Berlin as the centre of the civilised world. He almost got away with it, except for one tiny flaw in his otherwise impenetrable Teutonic armour: he was utterly mad. He never knew when to stop. He should have consolidated what he had by 1938 before he went into other territory. But fortunately for us all, he was as mad as a bag of spiders.
So hats off to northern Africa for shedding its recent dictatorial overcoats, and stepping into the double-breasted suit of democracy. The legitimacy of their newly founded political systems will become apparent in the coming months ahead. I have high hopes for Libya, if it can quieten the tribal leaders - it stands a very good chance of being a model Islamic democracy, an example for the Islamic countries further to the east to emulate, an oil-rich beacon of stability and a new tourist destination for history lovers and sunseekers alike. The Libyans I have met in my life were all very polite, educated, civilised and well-read. The members of the NTC also seem quite serious and have a particular kind of peace about them. For that reason, I think, Libya can make it where others' attempts at democracy have failed.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
One thing the 99% needs to understand - we're all guilty
Those people all over the world protesting about the current greed and monumental corruption at the heart of the failed capitalist system have many stories to tell: the graduate from Milwaukee who, four years ago, was promised a gold-plated job when she got her degree and now has to work for tips in a downtown diner, the promises all but broken, the prospects all but dried up; the builder from Missouri, who was given a loan to take on a few new employees and broaden the business, and now has to lay them off because nobody can afford houses any more and so there is no work for them; the 57-year-old metalworker from Portland who has just discovered his company has been taken over by an Asian firm and he has been told he is no longer employable because he is too old despite his 35-year experience and the new company has changed the pension rules overnight under its own country's laws, not those of the US, and the office worker from Boston, who discovers that his house may be repossessed whilst he has been on a two-day sick leave because despite being told he was financially capable of maintaining the monthly repayments, two of the four companies he has to work for over his seven-day week to pay for his lifestyle have had to lay off staff, starting with those who have cost the companies money through social security or lost hours.
There are hundreds of thousands of more examples like this - some you feel more sorry for than others; some you want to box their ears for being so gullible. What I find most alarming is the serene aloofness we witness from the politicians. They seem to feel that they are part of a different world. And in some ways, however falsely, they are. They come on the television and give rousing interviews that they are right and everyone else is wrong, or like in the UK, they dismiss the whole thing as being the wrong way to show their feelings (what should they do? Write a letter to their local radio station?). This week, politicians of many countries and persuasions will meet somewhere to "discuss" the "turmoil" in the markets and to flagellate Greece a little bit more than the week before. They will stay in top-notch hotels with excellent facilities and eat first-class food served by the area's best chefs. There will be little in the way to suggest that they are even remotely aware of the events in Madrid, New York, London and Rome. Or that they even care. They believe the silent majority will be there at the end to maintain the status quo. That silent majority, who so stoically say "tsk-tsk" at both the politicians and the protesters for being so (violent / unresponsive / reactionary / incompetent - delete as appropriate) and who have been too easily spoiled by wealth to concern themselves with mundane things like the world in 2020.
It is a perfectly balanced conundrum, and as it stands, there is no chance of revolution. I think, in our heart of hearts, we do not want a revolution on the scale of Robespierre's France or Lenin's Russia, just a sense that we're living within our means once again and we're not being lied to by big business and their political stooges. One thing I noticed in the recent Liam Fox scandal engulfing the Conservative Party in the UK government is that the donors to the Conservative Party are angry because he misused their money to take himself and his mate Adam Werritty off on VIP trips to visit various politicians around the world. This is shocking. Firstly, that he misused their money, but secondly, and most importantly, that we are supposed to feel sorry for the donors because Fox and Werritty spent the money they were supposed to be using to promote the clandestine agendas of those corporate enterprises, on pampering themselves in 5-star hotels.
When we start focusing purely on the politicians for being corrupt and fail to notice that in fact the donors are the ones we should be most concerned about, despite it being in the headlines in 2-inch-high letters, we know we've been had in one monumental cover-up. It's there for us to see, yet the politician takes the blame on behalf of his corporate masters. How dare the corporates think they can run roughshod over democracy by buying off politicians? And how dare the politicians allow themselves to be used as pawns by big business? We are being tricked by the men in suits. But we allow it. And they paint all the protesters as anarchists, because they are the most visible ones on television despite there being an overwhelming majority of peaceful protesters, all victims of the lies and incompetence of the money men. They are lying to all of us by re-arranging the truth into a convenient illusion through dressing the corporate kleptomania, moving to a less expensive part of the world and sinister tie-up deals as "responsible" business practice and being "responsible" to their shareholders, when in fact it is ruthless expansionism and sharp-elbowed profiteering to the detriment of the very people they rely upon for profit. Why is it, that in many Western countries, house prices going up in price is good news? We are told that. But it is just another way for big business to get a larger slice of the pie from us. And the silent majority just say "tsk-tsk".
Don't get me wrong - I'm not a conspiracy theorist, nor have I ever voted for a party with red in its logo. I am just looking through my own eyes. We allow this to happen, because we just say "tsk-tsk" at everything and expect those who got us into this mess to get us out again. Until we realise that there is much, much more to do than whistle through our teeth over our morning coffee and watch satirical shows for the latest spin on the week's events, the politicians will carry on covering their tracks and big business will carry on excreting on the rest of us.
Thinking about conspiracy theories, I remember back 15 to 20 years ago, when the fledgling Internet was a burble of vague messages between similar groups of academics and the crazed fantasies of paranoid conspiracy theorists - yet now, remembering back, many of those witterings are not far from the truth, despite the less-than-erudite manner in which they went about conveying their messages. I remember a very early one, which said the economies of Western Europe would collapse because they would converge currencies without thinking of the consequences of monetary union without political union. It was written in the style of a crazed American academic who had been fired for having a vision that nobody wanted to believe. That feeling of being vindicated will not be sweet at all, considering the gravity of the events surrounding it.
Finally, it needs to be said that the press and media need to be careful of the words they use to describe the protesters, as although there are anarchists mixed in, there are a great number of ordinary people. And although I truly admire anyone for sitting in the cold, damp squares of Western cities for weeks on end for a political and social message they truly believe in conveying to the lords and masters of this world, the reptilian coldness and stoic business-as-usual attitude of those sitting in the VIP suites of the world's most expensive hotels can only remain whilst we the silent majority do nothing about it other than say, "tsk-tsk".
Friday, 27 May 2011
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.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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.
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.
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