A Goslitski family centenary of immigration

This week is the anniversary of a momentous occasion, although it will go almost unnoticed. And that is probably the most fitting way to spend it. On 22nd December 1915, my grandfather planted his tree in the British orchard, paving the way for the fledgling Goslitski family to thrive. It is the beginning of a very successful immigration story.

Above is the registration certificate of my grandfather, Eugene Alexander Goslitski, a Russian national of Polish descent, who came on his own looking for a better life. I have done some research into his background and reasons for leaving, and there is not much to go on, but we should look at the facts: Poland had not existed since 1795, and its lands had been divided up by Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My grandfather was a Russian simply because of where he was born. Poles in Russia were treated as outsiders and were not full citizens. Many of them were deported to Siberian camps for katorga, that is exile and hard labour in underpopulated areas where nobody else was available. Several people with my family name were registered in those camps, although it is still not easy to identify their connection to us.

Whoever they were, my family name is quite unique and if you have that name you can only be from that family. The internet has become a sort of calling card for me. Many times, when I don't have a business card on me, I just tell people to Google me, because I'm so easy to find. This is both a blessing and a burden. For that reason, anyone with our name mast be related to us. We are like Grimaldi, Habsburg or Rothschild, although much less illustrious. I say this because our family name is aristocratic and my grandfather spoke about it now and again. He would often tell his daughters that back in the home land they were princesses. This was an elaboration - countesses would have been closer to the mark, despite their stark diminution under occupation, where all Polish aristocrats underwent screening for Russian ancestry, and those without were removed from their titles. 

It is quite likely that my grandfather left because he had no life, no opportunities and very little to keep him there. He joined the Merchant Navy and sailed around the world before settling in London, where he arrived in the middle of the First World War. This was quite remarkable, because with the war in full operation, every man was needed on the battlefield or on the sea. But come he did, and he died in the Brook Hospital in Greenwich on 22nd November 1960. 

During his life, he was a marine engineer, and he worked on the other side of the River Thames from his home in Bermondsey, less than a three-iron shot from Tower Bridge and the City of London. For that reason, he made a great deal of effort for the cause during the Second World War, and was involved in the D-Day landings. My father told me he left for several weeks around that time and when he returned he was covered from head to toe in soot. He had been jumping from ship to ship maintaining and repairing the boats to get them to the other side. He slept for a very long time when he returned home.

He is one of many who were never granted full British citizenship, mainly, probably, due to that one word: "Russian". Britain and Russia were never the best of friends once the Tsar fell, despite being the first country in the world to officially recognise the Soviet Union. But without bilateral treaties, even with countries in the direct neighbourhood, every foreigner had to fulfil a certain duty to remain in the UK. My grandfather had to leave the country for 24 hours every year, and reapply for entry upon return. He didn't go to another country - he took the opportunity to go into the Thames Estuary on one of his friends' boats and get slammed for a couple of days.

And here is the main point: my grandfather, along with hundreds of thousands of deracinated people, have found new homes in their destination countries. The vast majority of immigrants and their children have contributed to society in ways that are often under-appreciated by people. Lots of them have become famous names (Sigmund Freud, Sir Alec Issigonis, Zaha Hadid, Anish Kapoor), and some have even risen to lead their country (Nicolas Sarkozy, Benjamin Disraeli). Immigration is good for any country - being a popular destination for immigrants is the best endorsement any country can have. It is a sign that newcomers can fit in, that the local population there is not bothered by change and people are considered people, no matter their origins. My grandfather, a larger-than-life character, was known locally as the Duke of Bermondsey. He made the most of his adopted country, and said it was the greatest nation on Earth. Immodestly, I cannot disagree with him. 

My grandfather left his home to seek new climes. He was an international man in a local setting. He had bigger ambitions for himself and he set off to better himself. If he had stayed there in Poland, he would have experienced two World Wars, numerous invasions and would have been witness to the horrors of the Holocaust and the next Soviet occupation, leading to the People's Republic of Poland. Instead, he took the chance to find a place he and his future family could thrive.

Immigrants have one thing in common: their entrepreneurial spirit. They know how to get on in life wherever they go. They will never be the same again once they do, because once you leave, you can go back, but you can never go back home. You are seen as a foreigner in both places. But in general, there is no reason why being a foreigner should make you a stranger. And the fact of the matter remains, the children of those immigrants will most surely never be seen as foreigners. In a country like the United Kingdom, we don't really talk about foreigners, only when referring to those who have still stubbornly kept up their stereotypical façades. It is very wrong to say that people should speak the local language at home or adopt every local custom. That is too much to ask, and is totally unfair. They should keep their own home fires burning - I do. I mean the ones that refuse to do any integration at all. The ones that have little or no desire to accept local customs, who never take part in local events, who do not learn the language and who keep unswervingly to their own traditions. 

As I said, being popular with immigrants is a good thing for any country, as it means the conditions are right. In the current crisis sweeping Europe, it is no wonder that so many of those refugees want to go to countries known for their tolerant attitudes to newcomers. If I were one of them right now, there are countries in Europe I would really not want to settle in. I wish some of the cynics would stop peddling the "benefits" myth. Of course I'd want good conditions for my family if I were an immigrant or refugee. Why would I say to my family, "lets go to Poldakia or Molvenia because if we can avoid being beaten by the police and rejected by the authorities, we stand a chance of getting our own room above an abattoir"? I would not. I would want to go to a country that made me feel welcome. The fact they provide me with food, money and shelter is another sign that they want me not to have to struggle with poverty upon my arrival. How horrible would it be if people arriving from war-torn countries were made to fend for themselves from day one? It would say more about us than about them, that's for sure.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of spending some time with some of the younger Syrian refugees in Saarburg at an art session at the cultural centre. They were making clay winter- or Christmas-themed figurines. I really liked their imagination. Below are some of their works. All of them, despite their torturous recent experiences, had made it to a place of safety and were adapting quite well to local life. Some were already speaking reasonable German. They all seemed well-adjusted and acted very maturely. I have a deep respect for anyone who undergoes such a harrowing journey to look for calm in their lives. Some of them will one day go back to rebuild their country, but many will stay, and having met some of them, I can safely say they will be a credit to their new society. My grandfather's life was not half as bad as theirs was back in Syria, which is why to deny them the chance of a new life and happiness is to betray everything my grandfather ever did.

Here's to another hundred years of migration!

So, what are we going to do about the refugee crisis?

It is Europe's fault. As clear as crystal, it is our fault. When Africa and the Middle East were decolonised back in the post-war period, many previous occupiers just upped sticks and moved back to their capitals, leaving those behind to fend for themselves. They did not leave sufficient depth in the remnant institutions for those countries to maintain the relative peace and unity of the colonial days. Let us be honest here, what I mean is people did not fight each other under occupation as they had their foreign lords and masters as a common enemy. British colonies faired the best, with the majority of them being bequeathed the institutions and laws which have turned them into fairly successful countries in their own ways (barring a few abysmal failures), but it does not mean at all that they are exonerated. Most colonisers more or less lowered their flags, played the bugle and scuttled off home again, the only real leftovers being the languages inherited from their previous overseers.

The West's guilt
What these powers also did was divide up the Middle East and Africa in such a way that there were no real ethnic or religious boundaries, and for a reason: the French and British were worried about Arab unity. If the Arabs were able to unite under only a few leaders, they might become powerful and ultimately dangerous to European dominance. Look at India today. The Sykes-Picot deal made the area so unrealistically divided, bringing in kings, sheiks, presidents and dictators to rule the area, often being replaced when they had outrun their use, that it would keep them busily at each other's throats for decades to come. They needn't have worried so much - sectarian skirmishes and various long-lived grudges didn't take long to appear. And so the plan worked enormously well. Even when the region tried to unite under the umbrella of the United Arab Republic, a kind of EU-prototype conjoining of Ba'athist regional powers Syria and Egypt, it did not last long when one of the two member states underwent a coup d'état. Iraq was also hoping to join this group, and if it had, the momentum may have swung other regional powers behind the union, so chances are high the Syrian coup d'état was the brainchild of someone sitting uneasily in the Elysée Palace or Number 10, who did not want a successful Arab bloc at the end of the Mediterranean.

So it was all going to plan for the former colonial powers until the 1980s, when dictators like Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi started to get too big for their boots, wanting more firepower and weaponry to inflict the latest atrocity on their huddled masses and threatening the West with all sorts of vengeful actions. The Lockerbie disaster and the invasion of Kuwait were two of those actions. I remember, during the retaking of Kuwait by the West and the Allies' subsequent march into Iraq, they didn't finish the job off. They didn't remove Saddam from power. That may be because American intelligence under Bush Senior knew that Saddam Hussein was still the right man for the job in Iraq. He was holding the various loose pieces of fabric together and keeping a firm lid on any uprisings. This was perhaps the smartest move of the last hundred years. The smartest move of a lot of very reckless ones, but a smart one nonetheless.

The most reckless action of the last thousand years (or more) took place on the watch of America's most undeserving president, George W. Bush, and Britain's messianic Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and in the aftermath of the semi-apocalyptic destruction of two towers in New York by an extraordinarily wily and ostentatiously rich Arab psychopath with a bone to pick, these two decided to send in the heavies to "clear up" the Middle East. Now... although a lot of us were fooled by the idea that Saddam was an awful dictator who needed removing before he murdered all the minorities, we did not expect that Bush and Blair would totally fudge the entire change of regime. If they really wanted to bring in democracy, they had to realise what they were letting go of. Decades of relative calm held in place by the threat of brutal retaliation by the leader, the sectarian powder keg that was Mesopotamia was firmly sealed by Saddam Hussein, and his removal was going to open it all up.

Reasons for leaving
And it did. But not only that, it brought out all the other dissatisfied wretches and rejects from every other part of the world. It gave the Jihadis a place to really get their act together and begin the reconquering of the world. The Jihadis of Islamic State are not there to just retake what territory they lost, they are there to humiliate and ultimately bring down the governments of the West. And where better to start than right on their doorsteps? The twisted ideology, self-publicity and money-raising capabilities of these warmongers are nothing short of genial. Recruiting the frustrated, the lonely, the talented oddballs, the pious and the rejected, they tell their targets about the wonderful life they could have in the new Islamic State. They tell about the feeling of superiority these outcasts will have, and the responsibilities they will be given.

Imagine being given the power of life and death over whole towns. Imagine a country like Syria, which despite the brutal dictator, had a pretty good quality of life and a high standard of education, falling apart due to sponsored destabilisation by rich madmen and other regional rivals, and then taken over by the worst kind of warrior. Let us not forget, despite the atrocities carried out by the previous regimes in Iraq, Syria and Libya and all the other dictatorships in the region, if not the world, most people still stayed in the area, even if it was under threat of gassing or midnight removals. Nothing as brutal, savage and inhuman as Islamic State ever happened under the other dictators that caused such mass panic and the fleeing of hundreds of thousands of people to Europe. Imagine, having been a well-to-do middle-class Syrian five years ago, being told your mother has been tortured, your wife abducted, your daughter gang-raped and your son executed. Imagine being the neighbour of that family, as yet unscathed. Wouldn't you pack up and get out of there as quickly as you could? Wouldn't you, right now, be either on a Greek island, at Keleti railway station in Budapest, or scrambling over the Austrian border on your way to a place where you would be given a bed, some food and a new life?

What is worse, we in the West sold the previous incumbents the hardware to be able to carry out these crimes on their people - or at least we sold the hardware to the side our governments supported at the time. Not only the West - Russia and China are most probably in it up to their midriffs too. So when the little guys started fighting back, our governments chose a side and supplied more weapons to them. It was not uncommon for them to change sides, depending what they could get out of it all - fuel, minerals, lucrative contracts - nothing was governed by principles of fairness or justice. The Taliban was, at one time, an ally. There are many reasons why we in the West are now reaping what we sowed, and this is the final repayment of the Karma debt: what we failed to do back then to alleviate their transition to independence and the subsequent brutalities which led to the necessary intervention of the West (again) have led us so far that we have unwittingly created the diabolical cults of Jihadism and Islamist violence. This is the result of our short-termism and complacency.

Blood on our hands
And this has been the case from Eritrea to Erbil, Somalia to San'a, Palestine to Peshawar and Casablanca to Kandahar. We are guilty of great human suffering, even if by proxy, even if 50 years may have passed since we lowered our flags. What we should have done at the end of our empires was to integrate those countries into the world economy by setting up trade talks with international organisations. We should have split the countries up more logically rather than flippantly drawing ridiculous borders after liquid lunches which ended up with names like Winston's Hiccup. We should have let them form their own alliances and not stepped in when things got a little tricky. If we wanted to keep them busy, we should have made it clear from the start that we wanted to be their commercial sponsors and patrons and given them skills and trades. We should not have just let them get angry about everything. And don't get me started on Israel. Good idea in theory, but in practice, we should have been more insistent about Palestine and guarding the inhabitants who were already there. And the playing of the anti-Semitism card, getting easily offended by sometimes very trivial things like the recent palaver over the water showers at Auschwitz every time something does not go their way is wearing very thin.

So all these power-flaunting irritations of varying sizes have morphed into a giant middle finger to the Arab world. And in turn, as we have the stability and the power, we are both their enemy and their role model. Their bully and their refuge. Their bomber and their saviour. It is a strange situation to be in. And right now, having invaded Libya on a whim, having deposed Saddam in a little over a fortnight, having spent years in Afghanistan, having overpowered so many brutal dictators, we get cold feet at the very moment when we actually should do something about it. We are creating haters here in Europe due to our lack of a clear strategy and making it seem like our governments don't care. But there is a clear strategy: Russia is a very powerful player in Assad's Syria. The Russians have a fleet based on the Syrian coast courtesy of Assad. Recent pictures show that area to be totally at ease and peaceful. I am quite sure the West had been waiting for IS to overrun Assad all the way to the coast, therefore forcing Russia out of the picture, before stepping in, but now that looks unlikely. So there have been rumblings in France and Britain about sending in more military firepower. The West's distaste in confronting Russia is at least a sign it has thought about a strategy, even though it seems very likely Assad is now entrenched. The optimistic, dare I say unrealistic, plan to force Assad out through a six-month "transition period" is post-colonialist daydreaming, to say the least.

Misleading facts and figures
This is the fact about the Syrian refugee crisis: there were about 20 million people living in Syria before the troubles. Over half of them, about 12 million, have in some form or another been displaced. The vast majority of those, about 8 million, have fled to safer parts of Syria and about 4 million to neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Jordan. Only 250,000 have tried to get into the EU, but more are coming all the time. There are also great numbers of people coming from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sub-Saharan Africa. The number of people displaced is an appalling humanitarian catastrophe and a very dark period in our history. The total number of people trying to reach European shores is unknown, but they are coming for a reason.

And here is where we need to take an honest step back: not everyone coming to Europe is doing it because their lives are threatened. Many are coming for economic purposes. There are also a number of rumours that are sweeping conspiracy theorist websites everywhere: that there are lots of Jihadists in amongst them, especially since IS warned they would send hundreds of thousands of "soldiers" to Europe back in February. The theories are not stupid and it is not wrong to be worried about this being the case. It is entirely feasible. Think about it: if the price of transport to Kos, Pantelleria or Sicily costs between one year's salary and five years' salary for one of those refugees, imagine how much a family would have to pay to get across the sea. Who is paying for them? The theory goes that some rich Sheiks are paying the traffickers to send hundreds of thousands of Muslims to Europe to dilute the secular population and flood Europe with Muslims. Again, another plausible theory, but not one I have yet chosen to believe.

Right-wing threat
What seems to be threatening to occur now, unless more people are mobilised to intervene and prevent civil unrest, is the following: the Hungarians and the British, with their fence-building and detaining of refugees at Röszke and Calais for no good reason, are no better than each other, and are giving Europe a bad name amongst those fleeing violence. Intimidation, corralling, delaying the process of registration and integration, these are all making new enemies of Europe. Showing pictures of rubbish strewn on footpaths as if it's something new; people rushing police;  people being tripped up in order to get a shot of an angry Arab; these all add to the fuel of hatred being spewed by Europe's many right-wing leaders, like Nigel Farage, Filip de Winter, Marine Le Pen, and Viktor Orban. If we don't properly welcome these moderate, fairly secular Syrians arriving at our frontiers, we risk embittering already desperate people who just want peace.

Furthermore, we seem to have let the right-wing media and politicians tell us these people are just troublemakers in disguise. I have a different theory. These are very, very different people indeed. I know lots of north Africans and Middle-Eastern people from my time living in Belgium. I also know many from when I was in London. They fall mainly into two categories: very well brought up, courteous, thankful, respectful, fully integrated and well-grounded (often much more so than their autochthonous European counterparts); or frustrated, lonely, badly-integrated, vulnerable, impressionable and looking around for a friend. And it is these people who need saving. It is indeed these people that I can relate to and identify, because a similar thing happened to me, although not in a religious context, I hasten to add. If I had been promised friendship, camaraderie and support, I would have given the same back. If I had been told angry stories of mistreatment and insult, I would maybe have wanted revenge for my new friends. It is a very easy hole to fall into, and understanding that these new arrivals are more like us on a human level than we have been led to believe is one thing that scares the right-wing media. So what we need to do is welcome these people immediately, and fast-track them into work and an autonomous life so that they feel part of us as soon as possible. They are, after all, smartphone-using, mostly well-educated, well-behaved people who, like their counterparts of 70 years ago, are looking to escape persecution.

There is hope
And that seems to be happening. Angela Merkel, at least, has played a significant role in alleviating the impact of so many arrivals by firstly spreading the word that people must be tolerant, helpful and welcoming, causing the refugees to make Germany their top destination. And this is currently the case. It is gratifying to see that the German government is making a real effort and taking the lead in showing respect, trust, and a level of humanity these arrivals have not experienced. Many of these people will never go home again. But once the war is over and the cancer of terrorism has been purged, some may choose to return to their ancestral lands. But first, it is necessary to clear the place up.

How? How do you deal with the embodiment of evil that is Islamic State, and how do you persuade people to return to places that have seen such grotesque acts of barbarity and especially to move back into properties that were usurped by other people in the meantime? There is a precedent for this, and that is the Second World War. All sorts of people who were displaced by it, whether Poles, Jews, Belgians, Russians or Germans, the bombs rained down, the mass executions took place, the persecutions carried on, the atrocities widespread. There are still scars of history in places that will forever keep their air of sadness: Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, parts of Warsaw, Bergen-Belsen, Katyn or Dresden in the Second World War are some of those places. In more recent times we can look to Srebrenica, Kigali or the World Trade Centre. All have been places of the most atrocious of crimes, resulting in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and despite the abominations that took place there, people have still returned, even if many wounds have yet to heal.

I do believe that once the Jihadis of Islamic State and other nefarious organisations have been eradicated, people will once again return to their lands. Not all, but many. In the meantime, the West had better start dropping its proclivities of setting up puppet democracies and learn to tolerate the relative safety and calm brought about by strong dictators. It had also better give the various ethnic groups the chance to run their own lands, not least the Kurds. The Turks will protest long and hard, but the Kurds need to be treated as equals. Once all of these things have been achieved, it is time the West grew up and left that area to deal with itself.

Is the West endangered by Russia? No. By an ineffective Germany? Yes.

In recent weeks, there have been murmurs of Russian expansion into Western Europe, both in military terms and economic terms. I for one don't buy the theory that they are preparing for a wholesale takeover of the continent, or even a partial one; we should just keep them at arm's length, get on with trade and leave it at that. I fear Germany and its dismissive inactivity in areas of security and territorial integrity, combined with its grip on Eurozone austerity much, much more.

I live in Germany, a country that looks east and west in equal measures. Because of its self-instilled role as benign regional superpower, it had bestowed on itself a mainly symbolic role in diplomatic affairs. This troubles me, because I see this policy as breathtakingly hypocritical. Germany is a country with a recent history of washing its hands of highly-charged political and economic upheaval, not throwing enough energy into the fight against the international threats of terrorism, disease, poverty, hunger, or saving the planet, and seems to be happy enough to let the poorest EU member states drown in the waters of its own enforced austerity measures. Germany is getting rich off the backs of others' misery. At the same time, despite jittery Poles, nervous Balts and baffled Swedes, all who have been recent victims to Russia's mind games, Germany seems to want to carry on playing the old appeasement tune, as if in some sarcastic way to say "you emasculated us in 1945, now you'll see what the consequences are!" At this time, sitting on the fence is the most alarming thing to be doing. It is making countries who have had a peaceful recent history get second thoughts on their alignments and allegiances.

Poland and the Baltic States have had a long and troubled relationship with Russia, and no other countries are better experienced in trying to second-guess Russia's next moves. They are justified in being worried about the future and believing they need to start preparing for a Russian onslaught. This is not necessarily because they think it will happen - it is because they do not trust the bigger powers, especially Germany, to defend them if necessary. I for one believe that Russia will stay away from Poland, although the Baltic States I am not sure. But we should encourage those four countries nonetheless to increase their military spending. We should also be helping them by bolstering the number of NATO troops in the area even further. This is however not happening. The West is running out of military personnel running around putting out little fires in other parts of the world, like the Middle East and East Africa. What it should be doing is watching its own back.

Russia is loving every minute of this - watching its former underlings criticising the senior NATO members for not providing enough reassurance that they will honour the NATO promise to come to the aid of any of its members. And this is the fundamental reason why we need not fear a Russian invasion: Russia has always believed politics to be like chess - you win the game not by a full-on attack, but by tricking your opponents and making them paranoid about you. Chess is war by proxy. You manoeuvre your pieces in a way that makes the opponent fear and respect you. But it is not about territory, war or invasion. Russia wants NATO and the EU to implode by itself and so it is sowing the seeds of doubt. And at the moment it is winning very comfortably.

The Poles and the Baltic States should rightly worry about the future, and prepare for the worst just in case, but the US and especially Germany should hang their heads in shame at the ambiguous and complacent way they are treating those countries. In the end, Realpolitik may win the day, as it should, where Russia and Europe co-exist and rely on each other for trade, but we should not allow Germany and Russia to ruin us by doing nothing to defuse the situation.

Germany needs to man up, start throwing some of its weight around and act like the geopolitical power it is. 1945 is no longer an excuse; it needs to prove itself militarily. Herein lies the problem - after such a protracted period of demilitarisation, Germany is now full of conscientious objectors: people who are against war whatever the reason. How can any nation justify that in this day and age? We should all strive to avoid war, but sometimes it is the only option. There is no other way to defeat the barbaric 12th-century mob of mercenaries that calls itself the Islamic State. Al-Shabab and the like neither. At the same time, we should not seek war with Russia, Iran or any state where diplomacy would be more appropriate, but we should encourage the defence of all of our borders, no matter what the threat, and with nobody in particular in mind. Germany has shirked its responsibilities in all these areas, and continues to lord it over the Eurozone, enforcing its draconian and remorseless policies of austerity on countries whose governments have become more or less de facto puppet states of Brussels and Berlin.

This is the type of country that goes about its business with nothing in its conscience except saving its own bacon by cuddling up to Russia and China, whilst at the same time looking like the Good European. Germany's ability to persuade countries from Finland to Portugal and Greece to Ireland dance to its tune unquestioningly but with a modicum of fear and reverence, is testament to its stranglehold on European affairs. Countries like the Czech Republic, Denmark and the UK, which have a tradition of being slightly more aloof in the European context, are often isolated to the point of humiliation, the UK often being the last one standing. These are all trade-offs, you see, and the UK doesn't often give in to that, even if others do.

However, I think our feckless and thumb-twiddling politicians need to start acting a bit more streetwise. At the moment, they look like a group of bumbling and out-of-touch buffoons not dissimilar to the two hapless detectives in the ever-relevant Tintin comic strips. If I were a member of the EU Council of Ministers, no matter which country I was representing, I would be trying to persuade or even embarrass Germany into changing its stance of selfish inaction on many fronts, the UK to stop listening to the oil lobby about its objection to creating more wind farms, and also to stop reducing the size of its military, and the rest of Europe to start getting a lot quicker in its response to everything. It is so slow - it often meets and talks about matters that may have happened a week or more earlier and the world has moved on by then.

Russia though is not off the hook. Crimea seems a long way off, and the east of Ukraine has dropped off the newsreels. But it does not mean it is over - far from it. Right now, the people of that region don't know what the world is doing to them. It could be that through Europe's own policy of letting Germany actively do nothing (yes, you can actively do nothing!) we are letting the people of Ukraine down. Who is to say that the same would not happen to Poland or the Baltic countries, if such a scenario were to happen there? And this is where the UK and France come in - if Germany, having its hands firmly squeezed by Moscow due to its patronage of a lot of Russian trade, is reducing talks between Russia and Ukraine to "kiss and make up", what does that tell us about its leadership? As long as its economy is going along nicely, there's food on the table for everyone, its austerity measures kicking in everywhere except in Germany itself, what does it care? It has never acted in the interests of the whole, only its own.

According to a recent opinion poll, Germany is the most positively-viewed country in the world. Within 5 years, I think people will see that going down. It is starting to look a lot like Europe in the 20th century, as Germany is adopting a similar air of careless disregard for Poland, but this time as its so-called ally, not its master. If the EU is to survive Putin's mind games, Germany needs to stop relying on the UK and France as the EU's military wing, and allay the fears of Poland and the Baltic States by more than just words. Angela Merkel's dismissal of other nations' concerns, from protection of Polish and Baltic territorial integrity, through British repatriation of powers from Brussels, to Spanish and Greek austerity, could cause the EU to collapse. It is time we either started to take some of the responsibility away from Germany whether it likes it or not, or made it realise it is doing great harm to everyone else through its own lazy and two-faced policies.

Eurovision 2014: Conchita fires the starting pistol for 21st-century warfare

Something monumental yet very subtle happened last night in Copenhagen. Something that was barely noticed by the audience of 11,000 in the B&W Hallerne and approximately 120 million in the rest of Europe and the world at large. It was so subtle, I think most people haven't actually got it even now, 24 hours later. Conchita Wurst, the Queen of Austria, swept away the competition towards the end of voting, giving her home country its first win since 1966. It wasn't this either. It was the bit before that. The liberal-minded people of Europe voted for her against a backdrop of recent turmoil in lands further east, where it is not uncommon to attack, harass or even jail people of Conchita's kind with total impunity. There was a subliminal groundswell of support for Conchita earlier in the week; but what happened on the night was the Europe of tolerance and understanding giving the inflexible and sneering part of Europe a damn good open-hand slap on the chops.

What made this the moment the starting pistol of war was fired, even if it was a pistol stuffed full of shredded tinsel and stardust and made a fizzing sound upon pulling the trigger, was Conchita's acceptance speech on-stage: "This is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom. You know who you are. We are unity and we are unstoppable." Bang. 

Or is that Boom-Bang-A-Bang?

Anyhow, it infuriated the Russians, who swiftly turned their post-Eurovision chat show into a tubthumping diatribe of everything wrong with Europe and why you'd be morally safe and sound under Putin's parental umbrella. In fact one of the key speakers in the debate said that it was the "end of Europe". Look out for your children all those with sons and daughters abroad in the EU - they might return gay. Or worse still, wearing a long figure-hugging sequined dress and sporting a beard. Yeah, right... I think if you find something to your liking you'll do it anyway. And vice-versa.

"I really dream of a world where we don't have to talk about unnecessary things like sexuality, where you're from or who you love," she went on. "This is not what it's all about." Well that's now where Europe's at, girlfriend. It's just up to the rest of the world to fall into line. In fact, I think you single-handedly made Gay Pride events in the EU obsolete. They were set up to further tolerance and understanding for the LGBT community. Well I get the impression they've been firmly accepted now. And thanks to you, we can get to grips with what is really right and wrong on our controversy-torn continent. There is one thing you can tell to President Putin over there in his sumptuous palace that he is loath to abandon: people's freedom does not start at the ballot box. It does not start at the push of a telephone button. It does not even start at the supermarket checkout. The freedom to choose, which is an important one, whether it be a politician, the next singing sensation or that evening's dinner, is so wide of the mark as to be insulting to 21st century human intelligence. And two of those you try your hardest to rig. The fact is, it starts in our heads and in our hearts. And when leaders of pressure groups, religious organisations and political parties try to lobby for the censorship of what you can and cannot see/do/think/feel, it can only create a huge storm in our society as to make the tectonic plates of opinion and philosophy rub so hard against each other as to cause an irreparable continental divide so powerful, it will take a war to put it together again. 

And that is what happened last night. 

But this war will not be not a cold war. It is not any particular temperature at all. We had the War of Jenkins' Ear, well this will be the War of Conchita's Song, and it will not be fought on any battlefield with any military hardware at all. This will be fought on computer keyboards, smartphone tapscreens and tablets all over the world. It is a war against immorality. 21st-century immorality. I am totally convinced that the word "morality" has fundamentally changed in meaning. It no longer just stands for that Judaeo-Roman ideal of patriarch-dominated heterosexual image of society as the "Guide to Family Life" would have us believe. "Morality" is not about believing society will collapse like Sodom and Gomorrah. "Morality" in the 21st century stands for accepting the idea of freedom to be who you want to be, without fear of insult, slander or persecution. It is the freedom to make choices based on your own sexual preference, your own religious belief and your own political stance. 

And the war we are fighting is one of 21st-century morality: small-mindedness versus understanding.

I remember, when I was an impressionable young lad back in the nineties, being taken round a busy office building. It was a bit like open day. And I distinctively remember seeing a guy with a beard, hairy neck, a bit of a beer belly and stubby, freckled arms and legs, also fairly hairy. I say legs, because I saw them poking out from under his tartan skirt. A little later, and a long way out of earshot, I discreetly inquired as to that man, and the answer I got changed my opinion about life in oh-so-many different ways: the guide, who was also his boss, said: "if you're ever as good as he is in your job, you can come to work in a bikini if you like." Well I won't, because the weather's bad enough as it is, without me causing driving rain and thunderstorms by showing off my legs and arms. And I am sure way more than half of those who voted for Conchita last night would say the same. But this is where we stand out from the intolerant rabble: we wouldn't dress in a skirt and beard ourselves, but you have our blessing, and we'll damned well defend your right to do it if you want. 

So Conchita, I salute you for showing up the amoral people in our society for the small-minded, mealy-mouthed drabs that they are, and I look forward to love-bombing a few of them on your behalf very soon.

See you in Vienna in May 2015!

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 in 2050 - part III, the scenarios

So, with the observations of the previous two articles in mind, how can the world look in 40 years?

If you're in the Western hemisphere, I think you have a good chance of finding the place quite different, possibly for the worse. The various scenarios are either chilling or hopeful, with little in the middle.


Scenario 1: China rises and rises

With this in mind, to see 2050, it would be wise to consider the world we live in today, as I said at the beginning. People are becoming less able to concentrate for long periods of time; the effects of the Internet, TV and computer games mean that most people do not really spend long thinking, really contemplating. Politics has become a bit of a soap opera in many democracies, and businesses are more powerful than at any time in history, some being classified in GDP listings alongside nations. China has had a part to play in this temporary, throw-away world we have permitted to come into being. For this reason, China may use this to its advantage, slowly infiltrating people's lives without them knowing, slowly affording itself the purchase of the odd bank here, the odd mining company there, an oil giant or two, plus some car companies, and gradually the world takes on a reddish hue.

Once various strategic firms have been purchased, the only way is up. The world will be a Chinese one. This is not an anomaly. The last three millennia have mostly been Chinese-dominated, with the exception of the 17th to 20th centuries, where the British, Americans and to some extent the Europeans have been in the ascendancy. Now things are going back the other way, and although most forecast this for the year 2050, I think it could be much, much sooner than that. If not already.

The Chinese could quite easily take advantage of the weak economies now at the mercy of the IMF, and choose to invest heavily in them. Imagine: the Chinese bail almost everyone out of the current mess, then start imposing their own policies and ideologies on everyone. I mean, there is no way the West would be able to further criticise China's dismal democratic record if they are the ones who put us back on track again. Furthermore, there would be reason to believe that businessmen and women favoured by the Chinese government would be sent to take control of those companies and banks bought or saved by them, and what then? If you dare criticise, insinuate, even look incredulously at their business policy or political stance, not only will you go out, but you may even be blackballed for various other positions elsewhere after.

Once this slow erosion of our rights has been noticed, only the people pigeonholed as conspiracy theorists, or those classed as slightly deluded will voice their opinions more strongly, but once it is too late, the rest may have understood.

Scenario II: China rises and falls

This is also a possibility, but could only happen if China makes some rash errors or gets too big for its own good. But how big can that be when you are a behemoth already, and have not even begun to execute your masterplan for world domination?

If China is to fail, then it will be a collective effort of everywhere else. And it will have to be done behind their backs - this may be impossible in the world as it is now, but once the Chinese have bought nearly everything that matters, own a sizeable chunk of the banks and have uncalculable mineral reserves to hand, then what would stop them? Only when the governments of the West have paid back their debts to China can they even think about tackling the re-establishment of democracy.

The Internet is currently politically neutral, but for how much longer? It may be a golden period for us, with free access to nearly everything, but with newspapers beginning to charge, with other outlets considering a priority list, it could go the way of US TV, which is full of advertising and only the good stuff is on pay-per-view. There is also nothing stopping China from influencing the future's media and broadcasting; allowing itself a self-congratulatory headline each day.

But there is an alternative.

An alternative so radical, it may not even work, but would be worth it just to keep us democratic: the governments of the Western world should consider having no truck whatsoever with China, keeping their hands free of debt to Asia and keeping it in the family, so to say. There could be an agreement where debt to each other is delayed so that debt to China can be the first repaid. Once that is out of the way, we can squabble amongst ourselves, but at least then we do not have the extra worry of having to do China's bidding.

A further way is that China could be the victim of its own success. Once, we dreamed that countries like Ireland and Spain were the Monaco and Switzerland of the future, but how wrong we were. Although I do not believe for one moment that China will be so complacent, I can see it taking some wrong decisions. Mainly, having too much going on at the same time. Empires always collapse in the end. The Chinese have learned from the Europeans that colonisation does not work as it causes rising anger in the places you colonised. The Chinese have also learned from the Americans and Russians that invasion wins you few friends and causes your expeditory departure from that place far more quickly. So they know now that the best way to conquer is to buy everything. In the corporate sector, where there are no political entities, no land borders, and where business pervades borders like tobacco smoke which does not remain solely in the smokers' area, the Chinese can make their mark where the Western powers failed.

We should not let this happen. However, considering the spineless leaders we have, I am sure they would sell their own grandmothers to make some money.

What is the greatest nation in the world?

What is the best country in the world?

Surveys are made by newspapers and magazines on the subject. TV documentaries are broadcast showing people's opinions. Newsweek even put out a thirty-page spread about it. But these types of surveys don't talk about the real question: what is the greatest country in the world?

Firstly we need some criteria. So we must look at the country's history - what is the point of a greatest country without a full story behind it? Then we should look at its people, who will of course have a collective memory, a rough stereotypical peculiarity and a thriving culture, all shaped by its history. Finally, we should look at its present. How is it now? Is it a successful nation or just plodding along? Are there many things to ascribe greatness to it in the present day?

So, let's look at the candidates:


1. France

History - Solid beginnings, lost their way when dealing with the monarchy. Replaced kings (beheaded) with the same kind of thing but not (always) born in a palace (see here). Got ever so tetchy about being only the second or third largest empire in the 19th century and was doubly upset by being invaded in the mid-20th and having to be rescued by their old rivals. Twice.

People stereotype - food, strikes, attitude and hygiene issues. Mainly socialist in public and conservative in private. Good films, bad TV. Most of it summed up by this man here.

How now? - see here.

Chances of winning accolade: - I won't be hanging out the Tricolor any time soon...



2. The USA

History - Completely missed out on the Renaissance due to not yet existing. Once established, went around charging other countries extortionate fees for rescuing them from Nazism and Communism before electing a series of baboons as leaders and invading a host of independent nations if they had differing views to those held by their chief monkey. The whole country is held together by glossy magazine celebrities.

People stereotype - Gullible, trigger-happy religious fanatics with a penchant for only seeing the world in black or white. Four legs good, two legs bad, size also matters here.

How now? - Most have no idea of the difference between what's right and what saves a few bucksworth of tax per year.

Chances of winning accolade - No chance, unless they ban oil drilling and propping up despotic régimes, renounce their addiction to money and put out a decent cricketing team.

3. China

History - Despite inventing a whole load of clever technical stuff whilst we Europeans were still swinging about in trees, lost the plot fairly early on through obsession with self-image and pageant, getting by with a vague change in the standard of civilisation each century until the mid-20th century, when after overthrowing four thousand years of Empire, the country was set back yet another thousand years by misguided ideologists who liked to take whole crowds for long walks. Only in the 21st century have they reached the point where they have to share the status of biggest economy in the world, but in the leagues of spreading human indignity and suffering, lack of care for the environment and lack of morals will always remain first. And considering this planet contains such barbaric places as Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea, that takes some beating. Came of age at their Olympic Games in 2008, which were big on impressive technicalities and tiny on heart.

People stereotype - Don't ask - you'll get the same answer: "we're all happy and we love our country. And weren't the Olympics fantastic?" Mmmyesss.... Although if you turned the corner in Beijing, you wouldn't have known they were taking place.

How now? - Busy buying up minerals to sell to us when we run out, cosying up to dictators who can provide the elite classes with wealth beyond even Westerners' dreams, and destroying whole swathes of their own countryside with grand architectural projects to "civilise" their rural population.
Chances - About as slim as my chances of becoming next Pope. Will maybe be the biggest in everything one day not so far in the future, but never, ever the best. Ever.

4. Germany

History - Feuding princes and lords set about expansion in Europe quite early, developing a penchant for it. Did it every few decades or so. Country oddly disunited until the 19th century when someone had the brilliant idea of putting it together politically. A certain indiscretion in the middle of the 20th century sent this country's candidature to the back of the queue (except China) but its modern-day image is very good and continually rising.

People stereotype - Either über-efficient, über-capable and always blasting opponents off the football pitch, or sausage-munching, beer-swilling Lederhosen-wearing yodelers who drive at excessive speeds on Autobahns in their still German-owned cars.

How now? - A country at ease with itself these days, although still having trouble with foreigners (mainly French politicians and Austrian or Dutch maverick speakers), but still capable of impressing us with its stable economy and smaller but still thriving industrial base. "Made in Germany" still means something.

Chances - Would have been real contenders but for a slight misunderstanding of the territorial rules of the game of football in the mid-20th century, namely the game is supposed to remain on the same pitch.

5. The UK

History - Got invaded once by some angry Norman guy and didn't really enjoy the experience. Spent the next thousand years atoning for it by going off elsewhere so when invasion almost happened again, traded in their status of largest empire to keep their independence, only to immediately trade it in again for an equal share in a huge political pie with the very people they had only recently tried to fight off. Very dodgy infrastructure due to being the oldest industrialised nation. Has a language everyone speaks badly, and a reputation for the exportation of awful reality TV.

People stereotype - Badly dressed, or over-dressed, tea-drinking, umbrella-obsessed, aridly sober or gutter-crawlingly drunk, seagoing individuals who invent amazing stuff in sheds and queue up for the chance to get on overcrowded trains.

How now? - Refreshingly different to everyone else, although this may be its problem. The country was in the process of reinventing itself through the power of taking away from the people its centuries-old faithfulness to civil liberties, replacing the friendly policeman with a camera on every building. That was, until the 2010 election, whose outcome fortunately may have caused the reversal of this disturbing trend. Still the benchmark when it comes to innovation and invention (if the Chinese don't steal it and patent it).

Chances - Strongest contender so far, and not because I'm one of them.



But..........



I'd like to consider a dark horse in this contest, a country which if it were human you'd probably not notice, sitting there in its quiet corner being busily occupied with the continent's plumbing and electricity. This contender is entrant number
6. Poland

History - After driving out the Hungarians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Russians, the French, the Prussians and even the mighty Swedes over centuries and centuries of invasion from north, south, east and west, this prized strategic area of land had a powerful influence on early democracy. It was the object of the desires of the leader of our candidate number 4 in the middle of the 20th century. After suffering from the most abysmal atrocities it was saved by a neighbouring country which then occupied it for the next 45 years, subjecting it to humiliating acts of subservience from time to time. This did not stop the people from rising up against them in brave acts of defiance. Was quickly accepted into the EU after the fall of its occupiers, now one of the most respected members of its new family of nations, contributing a compatriot to be European Parliament President. Due to its people's practical skills, is well on the way to being the most needed nationality in Europe.

People stereotype - People speak a fairytale language full of tricky fricatives and nasal vowels, but "you have a leaky tap? No problem, my cousin Wojciech will fix it for you for a reasonable price and a happy smile on his face." For a nation that has endured so much, the fact they have such a happy attitude and a proper sense of community still, signifies something much deeper than what lies on the surface.

How now? - Although still has some catching up to do, the fact it has survived its centuries of invasion and reinvasion, occupation and destruction, it is a country at peace with itself. Despite not having many motorways, has some of the best driving roads in the world and gives ordinary visitors the kind of welcome reserved for princes elsewhere.

Chances - Maybe, just maybe...

I can't think of any other decent contenders.

How to find your family history

I have just been on a trip back to London for the first time in 8 years. I have been back to visit the UK on numerous occasions, but this time I went as a tourist, and boy does it look good. I can't stand those who talk down the place. It's got more potential than any other city on earth and is, and will always be, this planet's capital.

On a more personal note, the spring sunshine was tremendous, the flowers were in full bloom and the trees were blossoming like adolescent shrubs awaiting full adulthood.

My purpose of visiting was to go to the National Archives in Kew, a place which, when the underground is shut for the weekend, requires a course in mapreading just to locate the place. I have been researching my family history for years, but unfortunately have had little opportunity to do it. At last, a period of time when I have the funds and the time.

We stayed in a delightful bed and (enormous) breakfast just two minutes away with a delightful room containing a bed whose mattress was so thick you couldn't get gamma rays to pass through it and when you lay on it your eyes instantly closed in some deft pavlovian manoeuvre only outdone by the effect of the smell of coffee, which naturally had the opposite effect.

On day one, I spent the morning getting acquainted with the place, learning the ropes and understanding that it wasn't going to reveal some Dan Brown-esque code to th esecret of my family. Chances were, I'd have had a stroke of luck finding anyone in the 1911 census, which was the obvious place to start. But find we did, and we recorded several generations of my paternal grandmother's family. It turns out that she was from a fairly well-to-do lineage.

The afternoon of day one passed quite slowly, trying to trace my grandfather's passage into London in 1915. He was a Russian Pole by nationality, but (and here is where the trail goes cold for now) he was born in Batumi, Georgia, then in the Russian Empire, and his last place of residence was Montréal, Canada. That is going to take quite a bit of unravelling. So, I have a very special footsoldier on the ground in Georgia as you read these lines, who is dedicating days to travelling from Tbilisi to Batumi and back again, a four-hundred kilometre journey, just to check out the records for me. He happens to be a professor of history, presidential medal-winning genealogist and speaker of Georgian, Russian, English and Hungarian. Pretty good credentials, and someone I have the ultimate faith in. If anyone can solve the riddle of my grandfather's birthright then he can. If he is unable to find any trace of him there, I will probably have to go back to Moscow.

Either that, or I will need to contemplate the unthinkable: that he lied about his past. You never know, it might be for a good reason. But I think we're far enough in the future to realise that it has no consequence in the present.

Now stay with me in this next bit: my grandfather made the journey to London on Merchant Navy ships, arriving on 22nd December 1915. He was about 25 years old. Within three years he had swept a married woman with one child off her feet and she had divorced her poor husband, serving King and country in France. The divorce proceedings were quite fiery, especially considering the period in history. Back then it was pretty difficult to get a divorce, and adultery was one of the only ways. It was still a man's world, so once for a woman and she was shelved, whereas a man could do it as often as he liked and only when he became a local scandal maker could the wife divorce him. In my grandmother's case, a child was evidence enough for the divorce.

The rhetoric spewed in the proceedings say, that my grandmother was "guilty of adultery" in "divers (sic) locations". Wow, they really knew how to write seriously in those days.

The second day was spent checking my grandfather's Merchant Navy records. I went through about 400 documents, spread over 8 records and found very little. I need to return there in the coming months.

The Eurostar terminal at St Pancras is a delight. You really feel like you're going on a great journey when you arrive there. It sort of harks back to the glory days of rail travel: the great old iron and glass roof, the iron pillars and the brickwork on the cathedral-like station make it a pleasure, despite the bustling concourse full of shops.

So, finally, I have decided that the following course of action needs to be taken to get to the secret of my grandfather's ancestry: I am going to Marseille soon, Poland soon after, and I will take my main holidays in Georgia if the professor comes up with some interesting evidence.

Something is rotten in the state of Russia

I have been a few times to Russia and found the place to be a mix of glory and hopelessness. People would moan about their circumstances on the one hand but on the other find happiness in far more interesting pastimes than we have here. With Russians you can talk about everything. They are intelligent, educated (mostly) and very welcoming people. But they just have one main flaw. They never question their leadership, even when that dipsomaniac Yeltsin was there. The foreign policy of Russia was holy to them - their politicians blindly revered and their actions always cheered. Russians will not see anything wrong in their government's recent behaviour towards Estonia, Ukraine or Georgia. They are, after all, Mother Russia, the centre of the earth and the only real country that matters. The Soviet Union might be dead, but the territories around it are still claimed by its people, especially those living there.

Stalin had a policy to keep the USSR together forever. One strand of that policy was to deport people to different parts of the USSR in an effort to bind the people to each other. There were Georgians in Siberia, Kazaks in Lithuania and Armenians in Moscow. But in the late 20th century and even more so now, it has made the ethnic groups more polarised than ever. What is the most striking point about it all is that most Russians do not bother to learn the language of the sovereign state they now find themselves in. A sizeable population of Russians can be found in the Baltic states, and they argue for the reconstitution of those independent nations to Russia, or the establishment of Russian as an official language.

Another strand of Stalin's policy was to make the manufacture of products more intra-national. So as soon as the USSR broke up, it became almost impossible even to build a television set there. The screen might be manufactured in Tadjikistan, the knobs and connections in Latvia, the internal parts in Uzbekistan and the frame in Novosibirsk before being put together in an assembly unit in Kaluga.

This blind-leading-the blind (or leading-the-blinded) attitude has caused untold ethnic problems in the Russian mindset, to the extent that they seem to blame Western Europe, NATO and the US for their isolation today. It has never occurred to them that in fact the EU has been trying to bring them closer, that NATO wants co-operation and the US would like to make Russia a main trading partner. Nor does it occur to them that they could have a far bigger and better say in world politics if they would stop acting so hurt by surrounding countries' alignment to the EU and similar bodies.

To cry wolf over Georgia was one thing. To then do it to Ukraine smacked of sour grapes, but Estonia, a fully paid-up member of the EU, was childish and spiteful. All over the repositioning of a Soviet war memorial. Estonia does not want to be reminded of its oppressed past. Its people are forward-thinking and independent-minded. But now the Russians are getting on a major EU, NATO, UN and Commonwealth country, Britain. The repercussions are enormous. I hope nothing too dramatic comes of the latest Russian toy-throwing rant, and I don't think it will. Everyone has too much to lose, but serious consequences could follow. Russia may have put its reliability as a provider of energy back ten years. Countries will think twice before importing gas, preferring to go to a less volatile supplier. Would Korea stop supplying cars to your country if its government was upset by something your leader did? Or even said?

As for the British government, it used to be quite resolute on these matters under Prime Ministers from Margaret Thatcher and back. Since then there has been a half-hearted response to diplomacy. But in this case you get the feeling that someone is going to stand up to the belligerence. Gordon Brown seems like the type of PM who won't take fools lightly. And David Miliband is a straight-talking Foreign Minister with a great deal of substance and resolve. Listening to him on BBC this weekend he never avoided a question with long-winded rhetoric, the tradition of the past. The Gordon Brown government has shown itself to be inspirational, capable and no-nonsense. I cannot see it rolling over to get its tummy tickled. And with the Germans suffering a similar incident this week, Russia has the ball in its court. However the Germans don't want to rock the boat because they're in too deeply with Russia already. France, meanwhile, has stuck its neck out and told them a thing or two about etiquette. Vive la France!

Furthermore, the Russians have delayed their reaction already 36 hours (at the time of writing) since a UK newspaper revealed that Mr Berezovsky was victim of an attempted assassination in the last few weeks. Boy, they must be feeling a little bruised...

And what will this response be? Either the Russians will totally close off their embassy in London which will mean it will be hard for UK nationals to go there and vice-versa, or they are right now going around all the Russian companies telling them to pull out of the UK or they will be classed as traitors.

UPDATE THURSDAY 19th JULY:
So the Russians' response is to expel four British diplomats... Come on Vlad, show us your nasty side - you know you want to ;-)

Eurovision: the Warsaw Pact returns

I take it all back. The Eastern-Eurovision Song Contest has replaced the festival of music we all know and love(d).

Musical ability doesn't count when partisan vote-rigging takes precedent above all. Of the ten qualifiers, only Turkey (whose song I really didn't rate at all) is not an ex-socialist or Balkan representative.

Denmark, Israel, Andorra, Poland and the Netherlands deserved at least to qualify in place of the entries from FYR Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovenia and Georgia. The hall also seemed to agree, with a mass booing at the end followed by the quickest emptying of the venue I have ever seen. Normally there's a party afterwards, but the place just evacuated like a fire drill had been announced.

However, considering the rest of the qualifiers, Hungary was for me the most meaningful, Serbia the most deserving and Latvia the best potential. But still New European countries - what about the Old Europe, the founding members? Well Belgium's entry should have had a chance tonight but the cartel won out. France has a chirpy number which stands a chance of getting in the top ten. Germany is a hot favourite, the UK's ditty has no chance and Spain is just another mamma's boy in a vest. Ireland has a good folky number but a little too cliché. Sweden is again typical Scandi-pop and Finland obviously doesn't want to win twice in a row.

Tonight's article is intentionally short as I don't wish to waste my typing on the shocking results announcement I've just witnessed. But for the credibility of the contest, I hope the EBU changes the preliminary voting.

If you split the continent in four so the ex-Soviets, Balkans, Mediterraneans and Old Europeans all had to battle it out for places in the finals, plus reduce voting rights from the non-qualifiers, so their maximum was six points instead of twelve, we might get some more justified results. And they wouldn't be so friendly to each other then, would they? Or if it went back to juries with a 50-50 split with the public vote, we might get rid of some of the nonsensical cartels which have risen up. The Soviet Union has a lot to be responsible for - the amount of expat Russians in European countries means their votes will assure Russia of a top-five finish even if they sent the Cacophonic Barking Stray Dog Chorus of Magnitogorsk.

It's no fun any more - it's political and it's maybe time to dump a few countries. I mean, what's Armenia doing there, in the name of Terry Wogan's toupée? Only EU countries to participate maybe? Never, I'm afraid - not if marketing in Russia and the Balkans would suffer, God forbid.

At least if the best song wins on Saturday, we might have a chance of salvaging its reputation. My money's on Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia or Germany (although unlikely seeing as they don't have a load of expats spread all through Europe).

I'm off to put my Eurovision fan club membership card next to my gas cooker - if it all goes political on Saturday, it's getting roasted.

Boris Yeltsin 1931-2007

Boris Yeltsin, that beacon of hedonistic governance, passed away this week, taking with him the decadent lawlessness he fostered during the "Wild East" period of the nineties. I can't say I'm too sad about it. Under Yeltsin, rampant capitalism unseen in Europe until then took hold, allowing former Communist Party members, ex-KGB agents and gravy train riders to pillage the country of its natural resources and set up vast commercial enterprises which led to the rise of the oligarchs and their own rule of law.

Vladimir Putin has the right idea, trying to rein them in, but their walled-off tax havens outside Moscow mean they have made themselves virtually untouchable. Changes in the law and imaginative criminalisation have dampened the Yeltsin-era grab for cash, only to be replaced with draconian limits on freedom. When I was in Russia in the early nineties, there were a lot of bandits roaming free, ripping the poor off, making a grab for anything they could, and it worked well. Some of these have ended up painting their living rooms gold and thinking nothing of buying multinational companies as "playthings". They rent whole hotels in the Mediterranean so they don't have to mix with ordinary tourists. They shamelessly buy works of art for double the price to outbid any rivals. They know no compassion. They evacuate whole tower blocks on land they've bought to redevelop, ejecting families onto the streets with 24 hours' notice. These "people" have no upbringing. To put it bluntly, all the money in the world doesn't buy class. They'll still be the children and grandchildren of the Communist proletariat.

To think European and North American shareholders and owners let them purchase whatever they want just shows us what sort of people run our world. How did this all start? Boris Yeltsin made the biggest mistake in Russian history by freeing up the markets overnight, permitting everyone to have a share in Russia's wealth. Most Russians, finding themselves on the poverty line, did nothing more than sell their shares to the aggressive and persuasive New Russian entrepreneurs to feed their families. Result? A very small, elite pack of all-powerful, blood-sucking, unethical monsters who keep all the money while Russians continue to starve.

Vladimir Putin has remained popular during his term as President because ordinary people put their own needs over civil liberties. Russians have never known true freedom in the European sense, and thus know no different, but many are happy that Yeltsin's successor didn't allow their desolate situation to get even more extreme. It just amazes me that not only in Russia, but outside, governments, companies and even charity organisations feel the need to economise year after year, to assure the bank balance looks larger and profit margins greater. This is rampant capitalism on cocaine. Why do we find companies shedding jobs, frowning on pension schemes, cutting down on holiday time, bringing in the cheapest outsourced companies to do the manual tasks, even reducing travel allowances for people to get to work? Simply to bring greater profits to the shareholders, owners and directors: the Pharoahs of the 21st century.

I don't put the culpability at the door of the former Russian leader, but he helped make it acceptable in Russia. What has this led to in Europe? We dare not criticise Russia, or our gas will be switched off, Ukraine-style. So EU leaders pussyfoot around pretending to be great friends of Russia whilst behind their backs looking for ways out of the deal.

And what of the future? Russia is on the frontiers of the EU, a possible candidate. If it applies one day, we can't treat them like we do to Turkey. Russia won't accept being handled as second-class: we'd have to let them in. Imagine the power it would have. We might as well change the name from European Union to Russian Union. Or why don't we just go back to calling it the Soviet Union? The great dream of Stalin and Lenin will finally be realised: if invasion doesn't work, just buy the place.