The Politics of Dancing

On Friday morning, after the vote in the House of Commons on Thursday, a vote   preventing any military response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons, a line of poetry from Louis MacNeice lodged in my head:- ‘And so Thursday came and Oxford went to the polls And made its coward vote And the streets resounded to the triumphant cheers of the lost souls.’ It comes from Autumn Journal and describes the Oxford By-election in the fall of 1938 which resulted in the victory of the pro appeasement candidate Quinton Hogg, later to become Lord Halisham. It is, some might say conveniently, forgotten now how popular appeasement as a policy was, true in the absence of accurate opinion polls the exact scale of that popularity is difficult to gauge, but no serious historian doubts the widespread popularity of the policy. Crowds Cheer Chamberlain after Munich When the British engage in activity that is cowardly or shameful, such as Munich or Suez they dress it up in high moral ...

'Today's pygmy protesters are no heirs to Martin Luther King! From badgers to fracking to Occupy, these anti-democrats are deluded to believe they're courageous rights activists' Nick Hebert MP   http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/29/pygmy-protestors-no-heirs-to-martin-luther-king So Mr Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert, "Nick" Herbert to you and I, believes that protest is not what it once was; the 40 year old MP for Arundel and south Downs grows misty eyed when he looks back on the struggles of the NAACP and the speeches of Martin Luther King. Nostalgia for those days makes him reflect on the ‘pygmy’ character of today’s protestors who it seems, amongst their other failings, are middle class and eat Marks and Spencer sandwiches! [1] It is a long time since I regularly attended protest marches, as far back indeed as the 1980’s when I attended, amongst others, [2] Anti Apartheid marches, at a time when Mr Herbert was standing as a candidate...

I can barely bring my self to write too about the events in Syria , The situation is truly awful, it has felt like watching Srebrenica all over again. The more Assad got away with the bolder he and his thuggish crime family became. We now see the results in the suburbs of Damascus . Had we intervened earlier, when the regime was haemorrhaging support, when the Free Syrian Army was the primary source of opposition and conflict, relatively uncontaminated by sectarian infighting and there were few fundamentalist Jihadist forces, we might have tipped the balance? There were never any easy options, now there are no good ones, only less bad ones. Certainly one cannot be sure of the consequences of air strikes.  As western governments watched on, wringing hands and tut tutting, Assad committed numerous crimes under international law and a popular uprising descended into a bitter sectarian civil war. It is now difficult to see any outcome that will meet the needs of the Syrian peop...

Smoke and mirrors are the weapons of choice in the intelligence game, tricky thinking, double dealing, truth being presented as if it where a lie and a lie well disguised to look like the truth. Of course the diseases that are born in this culture are paranoia, conspiracy mania and ultimately madness.   With this in mind something very funny is going on, and it centres on a story in yesterdays Independent newspaper:-  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uks-secret-mideast-internet-surveillance-base-is-revealed-in-edward-snowden-leaks-8781082.html This piece is headlined :  Exclusive: UK ’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks. Yet Snowden has denied that he is the source for this story and indeed has previously never had any dealings with The Independent and would have no reason for doing so now. This leaves open the question of the source for this story, which unlike some other leaks is clearly d...

September has its own smell. April too has a distinctive aroma, though it is September that possesses the most evocative scent. This perfume can sometimes be caught in August. Indeed the day after carnival in Notting Hill the pervading smell is of the death of summer and the scent of September. On some of the cooler mornings recently I have caught this change on the wind. In Bulgaria this season is marked very startlingly by the migration of mass flocks of birds, which I observed flying south over the bay of Bourgas . I used to watch them in the morning smoking strong cigarettes, drinking wine and black coffee, entranced by the sad poetry of the performance and the meaning contained in this flight. Autumn is to the academic world what spring is in the natural, the sap rises and the aptly named ‘freshers’ descend upon campus to engage in the Bacchanalia of ‘freshers week.’ Well at least that is how I remember it. Now I expect it is very different, as the government turns u...

Londoners pay twice for the services they receive from the Metropolitan police, once through general taxation and secondly through a proportion extracted from their Council Tax. In exchange for paying the salaries of Plod & Co you might think a certain degree of accountability could be demanded. On Sunday night the boyfriend of a whistle-blower was held and interrogated for 9 hours by the Met under legislation designed to combat acts of terrorism.   Enter the press in the form of Nick Cohen, who has a few pertinent questions to ask on behalf of the general public. The response was less than forthcoming:- I phoned the Met press office. You will need to read our statement before we can answer your questions, a spokeswoman said. She emailed me the statement. True to form, it said nothing worth noting: ‘At 08:05 on Sunday 18 August 2013 a 28 year old man was detained at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was not arrested. He was...

Prince Charles criticised for 'planting moles' in government departments MPs are to raise the matter in the Commons after the heir to the throne was described as a 'constitutional crisis in waiting' Guardian 18/08/13 Charles awakes, just after five feeling no particular thrill to be alive. Another day spent waiting in the wings An ‘almost king’ a sad and empty thing. Surveying the crumpled bedding now he sighs, Feeling the need to move to wash and dress He calls his valet to come in with the press. The papers make grim reading, On every page a mess Cock-ups and blunders it drives him to despair Oh to be like ‘mum’ and no longer really care. He dwells upon a thought, One day to really rule Oh how sublime how truly satisfactory To destroy the clanking cock-up factory. Camilla rises picks up a copy of The Sun “I see they’re being rude again my dear.” She wants to make a joke, but it’s no laughing m...

August is not meant to be spent in land locked cities. There is a languor about the month that requires the presence of the sea. London feels bored with itself, only the tourists think it spontaneous and fresh. When I open the window to relieve the tedium I only let in the bored stale air. Auden understood this need to get away   August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier, and soon The luxuriant life of the steep stone valleys The sallow oval faces of the city Begot in passion or good-natured habit Are caught by waiting coaches, or laid bare Beside the undiscriminating sea. There is more than a hint of snobbishness in Auden’s observations; it is the suspicion and dislike of the working classes that is imbibed while attending any British public school. It took Orwell a lifetime to shake off the prejudice, few even bother to try. This prejudice currently manifests itself in the reg...

Evasion is the least effective of a politician’s tool kit; it is so often nakedly obvious and irritates voters. This has not deterred David Cameron who seems to view evasion as a cunning and subtle device for deflecting difficult questions. Given our Prime Minister’s consistent refusal to answer a straight question on the tobacco industries involvement, if any, with the decision to drop plain packaging, I thought I would have a go my self. Well why not? I couldn’t do any worse than a string of backbenchers or professional media pundits. I made a Freedom of Information request along the following lines:- ‘What representations formal or informal had the Prime Minister received from the tobacco industry respecting plain packaging? What representations formal or informal had other government ministers received from the tobacco industry respecting plain packaging? Fairly straight forward questions you might think. The response I got was as clear as the Thames at low tide. I ...