Random Views

Overheard on the bus

2012-02-16T20:59:00.000Z

It’s not quite clear what the etiquette is when listening to people’s mobile phone calls. Should we shut our ears since listening is no better than reading someone’s mail? Than listening at someone’s door? Than working for a tabloid newspaper?

Well, I suppose we could. But if someone on the upper deck of a London bus is prepared to paint a picture of her intimate life, why shouldn’t I enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Lucian Freud’s painting at the National Portrait Gallery last Friday?

Well, no, not as much, obviously, but with exactly the same sense of entitlement.

The game is to reconstruct the other side of the conversation.

‘I’m doing something first but I’ll try and pop round later,’ said the young woman.

So she doesn’t want to tell a young man interested in her that she’s seeing another.

‘How long will you be going on till? Will you be playing a set yourself?’

A picture formed of a pub somewhere, a modest little stage in one corner cluttered with amps, speakers, a drum kit, a piano. A group of hopeful young men, disappointed by the poor turnout. They get up on the stage and try to make up in enthusiasm for what they lack in talent. They maintain that enthusiasm despite the lack of interest from all but a small number within the sparse audience.

Still, judging by her questions and her cheerful responses, the young woman was being encouraging. Although she did at one point say ‘well, I hope it goes well. Let me know.’

Bad news, I thought. She won’t be able to make it in time so she isn’t going to go at all. What did he have left to hope for from the desert of the evening stretching before him? His insecurity was mounting and her attempt to hang up failed.

‘Oh, what, you mean this evening? Oh, just popping out to dinner.’

Combining the words ‘just’ and ‘dinner’ was disingenuous, wasn’t it? The word he didn’t want to hear was ‘dinner’. Sticking ‘just’ in front of it wasn’t going to make it hurt any less.

‘Oh, you know,’ she continued, ‘with Ali M.’ A pause. ‘Do you know him?’ ‘Him?’ she was twisting the knife.

But then she turned merciful. Dropping her voice, but far too little to prevent me hearing from several seats away, she added ‘he’s gay.’ Her tone suggested reluctance. Why should she share this confidence? She could go out with whoever she chose. What right did he have to demand she explain herself?

Not much encouragement for him and yet not completely discouraging either. She had a strong hand and was playing it skillfully. Keep the pike on the fishing line, the man on the phone line, while you make up your mind whether to reel him in or not. Very wise, very prudent.

Meanwhile, she was making another attempt to cut things short.

‘Sorry? Sorry? It’s cutting off...’

But again he relaunched the conversation for a few minutes before she could wrap it up.

‘Well, see you tomorrow.’ Sounds hopeful, but it isn’t really, is it? If they’re not meeting till tomorrow, there’s a whole evening with the supposedly gay friend. A whole night. ‘Yes, yes,’ she ended, ‘so do I.’

So did she? What? Love him? Think it was a good idea to meet up tomorrow? Wish him all the best for the evening?

I don’t know, but why should I? Good narratives often end in ambiguity. This one brought about a neatly constructed symmetry: the man on the line was left unassuaged but so was her audience on the bus. Some things we shall never know or understand.

Making the experience much more like a Lucian Freud exhibition than one might expect.

Tomorrow's leaders seen by yesterday's target

2012-02-14T22:06:00.000Z

Ten years as a University of London student are an eloquent testament to my misspent youth. Single-mindedly buckling down to study was not my top priority. Still, I had a lot of fun, and not all of it morally reprehensible.

But among a lot of good memories one that jars was the low-grade anxiety I felt every time I stepped onto a train, a bus or an underground. It became second-nature to check under seats, in overheard racks, up and down aisles. Was there an abandoned case or a bag? ‘Who,’ someone might ask, ‘does that bag belong to?’

I never saw a bomb explode but twice heard them. And once the police stopped me leaving a Chinatown restaurant for several hours, while they cleared the streets in response to an IRA bomb threat. The restaurant had a plate glass front and, although my colleague and I were sitting at the back, it was quite obvious that if a bomb went off nearby the flying glass would have a distinctly career-limiting effect on us.

Now, I’m a strong supporter of the Irish Republican cause. It strikes me as indefensible that six out of 32 counties on one island should be run by the island next door. It seems almost obscene that for 25 years and more young Englishmen were sent out there to become targets or, even worse, perpetrators of brutal violence.

Not only do I believe that the Republic should take over Ulster, I often toy with the idea that it could take over the rest of the UK too. The role of the Catholic Church is unattractive, but surely waning, and at least absorption by Dublin would rid us of the monarchy and the House of Lords and perhaps reduce our inclination to get mixed up in further foreign wars.

But my enthusiasm for republicanism stops short of wanting to be cut to shreds in furtherance of its aims. Even in a Chinese restaurant. However good the restaurant. I find it hard to maintain much cordiality to anyone likely to be cut me into little bits.

Nor am I partial to the people who fund actions to spoil my meals in this way. Way up at the top of the list in eighties was a bunch called Noraid, the Irish Northern Aid Committee. This is a US organisation which strenuously denies ever having financed terrorism, which presumably means that it only proves the oppressive nature of the American establishment that the Department of Justice obliged to Noraid to list the Provisiona IRA as its ‘foreign principal.’

All this is interesting because all those upstanding gentlemen currently bucking for the Republican presidential nomination are making such mileage out of their commitment to eradicate terrorism. And not just the candidates: a leading light of the Republican Right is Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who has gone so far as to organise hearings into the radicalisation of American Muslims.

‘80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists’, he declared in 2004, describing this presence as ‘an enemy living amongst us.’ Curiously, this same King was a long-time leading supporter of Noraid. Only last year he declared that ‘if civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it.’

It’s nice to know that had the IRA blown my restaurant to pieces and taken me out in a storm of glass shards, Congressman King would have found this regrettable. On that point, at least, he and I are in complete agreement.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
But it's all the same if you're at the receiving end

At the risk of seeming a bit picky, though, I’d feel more comfortable if he denounced the terrorism that targeted me back then with the same vehemence he directs at the Islamic variety today. Otherwise one might suspect it isn’t so much terrorism he abhors as Moslems.

Now that's a position it would be nice see Santorum and Gingrich distance themselves from, wouldn’t it?

But I'm not holding my breath.

Enjoying memories of a certain kind of Jewishness

2012-02-12T17:24:00.000Z

My childhood gave me a particular view of British Jews.

They tended to be open towards other cultures, which made many of them fine linguists. They were open to the arts, which made some of them great performers: one of my great uncles took particular pride in the setting he published of traditional Yiddish songs. They admired intellectualism or at least education, so they tended to have at least a passing if ironic acquaintance with Marx, and were happy to discuss Sartre or Camus at length even if they knew little about them. Just like me.

They were almost by definition of the Left. I associate them with corduroy trousers, again a tradition I keep up, though I don’t go for the tweed jackets or thin-rimmed glasses. They thought the Attlee government was the best thing to have happened to Britain. They were Keynesians to a man, a tradition that it would be well to revive today, when we see the destruction the other lot are wreaking around Europe if not the world.

And they loathed Franco: I remember a colleague who greeted the news of Franco’s death by declaring, ‘I blame his doctors.’ Faced with our astonishment, he went on, ‘had they been worth their pay, they would have kept him alive for another six months of increasing agony.’

Out of this simmering cauldron of ideas built on liberalism and tolerance came an important current of inspiration for the British Left. These days could hardly be more different. Today mainstream British Jews are little more than the UK branch of international Likud. Dull, conservative, conformist, sometimes latently or even blatantly racist. Firmly aligned with the David Camerons of this world.

So it’s particularly gratifying to have the chance to enjoy an evening of nostalgia for those glory days. Yesterday we went for dinner with an old Jewish friend — old only in the sense of the friendship, of course, since she’s as young at heart as ever.

It was a good evening of the kind of wide-ranging, lively conversation that I associate with the best evenings I remember. And the food was great too — Jewish, of course, so we ended with a wonderful cheese cake of which, inevitably, I ate far too much. The quality of the cooking was all the more remarkable as hour hostess had damaged her foot badly — good luck, Brenda, with the X-ray: I hope it reveals nothing broken — and though I’m not suggesting that Jewish cooks use their feet they do, like anyone else, have to stand on them at the stove.

But above all it was great reminder of a time I valued in my youth. And of a tradition which did much to enliven and stimulate the British Left. Could do with that coming back again.

Then, come to think of it, just what tradition does Ed Milliband represent?

The call of the wild: not always irresistible

2012-02-11T15:25:00.001Z

The great outdoors is a challenging place. Misty, always an outdoor cat, has had particular cause to make that observation recently.

He has, as I’ve pointed out before, become much more affectionate recently, even on a few occasions coming to lie on my legs while I’m watching Boardwalk Empire, for instance, a huge improvement over his earlier inclination to limit all interaction with me to the occasional scratch when he wanted my attention, followed up with a bite if I didn’t respond quickly enough.

He’s even taken to sleeping on our bed at night again, not something he ever used to do, regarding it as a waste of time when he could have been out terrorising — usually briefly and horrifically — the local population of small rodents. But it’s clear that this tendency to curl up with us may not be entirely motivated by affection.

In his new mild-mannered persona, Misty no longer nips my ankles when he wants to go out. These days he just sits quietly and patiently by the back door until we wake up to his needs and slide the door open. The other day, though, when the blast of cold air hit him he started back, took a look at the treacherously gentle white blanket on the ground, turned and fled.

He hadn’t altogether understood the situation though. A few minutes later I found him by the front door. Presumably his thinking was that if leaving by the back door only led him into this unpleasant snow stuff, which had insolently turned up without so much as a by your leave, he’d try a different door in the hope that on that side of the house the world had a more benign aspect.

Imagine his disappointment when he found this wasn’t the case. He gave me a filthy look, as though to say he’d expected more of me. ‘This is no better than the other side, you poor fool,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘did you think I’d put up with this kind of behaviour at the front of the house having already rejected it at the back?’ Fortunately, in his new mild incarnation he didn’t resort to violence to express his displeasure as he most certainly would have done a few months ago.

Instead, with unwonted gentleness he resigned himself to becoming, temporarily at least, a house cat.

It's safer indoors.
Though I’m not sure I'd look for comfort where he does

And I’ve discovered that it wasn’t just a white threat he was avoiding, but a black one too: his nemesis, the black cat that roams this neighbourhood, has been giving him a bad time. Misty is one of the largest cats it has been my pleasure to know, but size isn’t everything, and the black is, sadly, more than a match for him. The other day Misty came back badly clawed and bitten under his jaw.

Such is his dominance over me that I didn’t even think ‘ha! a touch of your own medicine, my lad. May it be a lesson to you.’ Oh no. I immediately agreed with Danielle that veterinary treatment was a must, and urgent, with no expense spared. The antibiotics and painkillers have done a wonderful job apparently, even causing him twice to vomit on newly changed bedclothes, but hey, that's all part of the delight of cat ownership.

These days he goes outside rarely, sometimes only when we push him out (I don’t know why I saw ‘we’: Danielle’s the only one with the courage to treat him that way, the only one who has inspired enough respect in him that he doesn’t treat her with the highly effective viciousness he would inflict on me if I tried that kind of thing). Or occasionally he goes out with Janka: nothing like a dog, Misty seems to feel, to make good tracks to step in through the snow.

To say nothing of how effective a large black protector is at at keeping a vile black interloper at bay.

Misty's protector. But she likes the snow

Kindling my enthusiasm

2012-02-08T20:26:00.000Z

Years ago, my son David told me that a day would come when people would read books on electronic screens and rather than on paper.

‘Oh, no,’ I assured him, ‘that’s not going to happen. The books is such an attractive object. Look what you can do with it,’ I said riffling through one until I found my page, ‘that’s never going to be possible with some kind of electronic reader.’

Well, I’ve said before that it’s salutary to have your prejudices overthrown, especially when you overthrow them yourself.

My other sons, Michael and Nicky, gave Danielle and me a joint Christmas present this year, of a Kindle. I dug in my heels and resisted the temptation to succumb to this device. Several seconds went by before I gave in to its seduction.

Of course, I’ve taken it over. Poor Danielle doesn’t get a look in. I’ve even had to buy her one of her own. I’m not going to be separated from mine.

Glory of a bygone age?

It’s brilliant! Why, I even have a subscription to The Guardian on it. I get up in the morning, and there’s the new edition. I don't have to wait for a paper boy or struggle through the cold to the newsagent’s. Why, even when I was getting up in California, there was the new edition without the difficulty of trying to track down the only good newspaper there is, in a nation benighted by its unavailability.

In fact, because of the bizarre phenomenon I’ve commented on before, whereby it isn’t the same time, at the same time, everywhere in the world, I even got the next day’s edition in California at 4:00 the previous afternoon.

I still haven’t worked out how they managed to get it to me so early.

What’s more, I couldn't believe how light my suitcase was. I'm never quite sure which books I’m going to want to read when I set off on a trip, or how many I can get through, so I always take too many and exceed my baggage allowance or have to leave my boots behind.

But this time I travelled with 25 books and I could carry them in the inside pocket of my jacket. And then I added two weeks worth of a heavyweight daily newspaper but the Kindle stayed as light as ever.

It even makes me feel virtuous. I mean, in the only comprehensible book I’ve read on economics — The Undercover Economist — Tim Harford argues that as societies become richer, their luxuries tend to get bigger and more resource consuming, until a tipping point is reached, when suddenly people realise that there is kudos in having commodities that actually damage the environment less. It’s happened with cars, except among Americans or Jeremy Clarkson: most people now pursue fuel efficiency at least as much as size and speed.

That’s how it is with the Kindle. I can read my paper without using up any paper. That means fewer trees chopped down, less fuel consumed in highly expensive shipping. Apart from the initial outlay, the Kindle is green. A luxury that makes me full good about myself. What more could I want?

Well, actually, I could want one thing. I wish I could ring the Kindle, like I ring my phone, when I don’t know where I’ve left it. Apart from that, the Kindle leaves nothing to be desired.

So, David: you were perfectly right. I’ve had to overthrow yet another of my prejudices. And the process has given me a lot of enjoyment.

Bannockburn, Murrayfield, Scottish glory and the stirring call for Devo Max

2012-02-06T22:41:00.001Z

Relations between the English and the Scots are going to provide plentiful entertainment for at least the next two years.

That's how long it's going to take to get to the proposed referendum on whether Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom or leave it. Or something in between. Because there is an intermediate choice,or ‘Devo Max’ as it is catchily called.

It offers maximum devolution of control over its own affairs to Scotland, leaving only foreign affairs and the military in the hands of the United Kingdom. My view is that this is the option that Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, is really seeking. There just isn’t enough support for full independence in Scotland, and Salmond is much too canny not to know it.

As a result, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the threatened United Kingdom, has completely ruled out including Devo Max in the referendum. This uncompromising stance by Cameron almost certainly means that the option will be on the ballot paper. Cameron has a glowing track record for taking strong positions in public and then backing down from them in private: he made a lot of noise telling our European partners they couldn’t use the Union’s institutions to tackle the Eurozone’s problems, but is now much more quietly letting them get on with it.

Similarly, because it is Salmond who wants to hold the referendum in 2014, Cameron has again issued a firm and resolute ‘no’ to that timing. That more or less guarantees that the referendum will take place to Salmond’s schedule.

Salmond is keen on 2014 because it will be the 700th anniversary of the great Scots victory over the English at Bannockburn. Not, of course, that the referendum is in any way anglophobe.

Personally, I don’t begrudge him celebrating a Scots victory over the English. It's not as though there have been that many of them. In fact, on Saturday I watched them failing to achieve another. On the opening day of the Six Nations rugby championship, Scotland lined up to take on England, on their own iconic turf at Murrayfield, outside Edinburgh. England have a lamentable record of defeats at Murrayfield, particularly in the rain, so I was a little relieved to see that the weather was fine.

What then followed, however, was an English performance of such stultifying mediocrity as to reduce even me, committed supporter that I am, to despair. I watched the other matches over the weekend and saw some fine games played by France, Ireland and Wales — the last two in the best match of them all, swinging from one side to the other right up to the last whistle. It was clear to me that had England faced any of those teams and played as they did against Scotland, they would have been, to use the technical term, stuffed.

So how come they didn’t lose to Scotland? Because Scotland showed an unerring capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They had much more of the ball, they made some excellent opportunities, they played with great skill — or at least they played with great skill until they got within a few seconds of actually scoring points, when they would inevitably collapse and let England off the hook. Again.

Great run. Going nowhere

What a contrast to the independence campaign! Salmond exudes complete confidence, sure of the rightness of his cause and of his own ability to deliver its goals. He sidesteps and weaves round the sluggish, uninspired and untalented Cameron, always a step ahead, turning to his own advantage every ploy the Englishman launches.

It’s as though Scotland had wisely reserved all its ineptitude for the rugby field. All the skill and competence that would have been necessary to beat the English on Saturday has been sucked out of the rugby team and recycled to the nation’s statesmen. It’s the only way I can explain the cack-handedness of the team and the sure-footedness of the politicians.

So I suspect the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn will be marked by another victory of agile, quick-witted Scots over sluggish and dull-witted English opposition.

Paris is worth a mass, claimed the future King Henry IV of France. And Devo Max must be worth a lost rugby match.

Even if ‘Devo Max’ itself sounds like nothing other than some kind of toilet cleaner.

Luton: winter sports centre

2012-02-05T15:51:00.000Z

I’ve often quoted that great line from The West Wing about economists having been put on Earth to make astrologists look good.

My own variation on that theme is that it is the role of weather forecasters to make the economists feel good about themselves.

So when the English meteorologists announced snow for this weekend, I was absolutely confident that the weather would be clear and cold, or wet and muggy; alternatively, we might have snow last Wednesday or next Wednesday, but certainly not at the weekend.

Instead, though, the forecasters gave economists and astrologers renewed cause for optimism. They got it bang on: it snowed on Saturday night and by this morning we had 5 centimetres on the ground, just the depth predicted.

Why, this won’t just do good to the astrologers, it might even give rapture prophets hope again.

Last year when the snow came we regretted not having our cross-country skis with us, having left them in our cellar in Kehl, less than an hour from the Black Forest slopes. So Danielle brought them over when she went out there a few months ago and, given we’d seen no previous snow this season, we went out at once this morning. Skiing through the streets of a town had all the charm of an unfamiliar pleasure, only heightened by the fact that these were Luton streets that we knew well from travelling along them by car or on foot so often in the past.

Our pleasure was shared by the people we met, whose most common comment was a variant of ‘brilliant idea! that’s just what you need to get around in these conditions.’

Cross-country skiing in the lesser-known
Luton end of the Black Forest

Once in the park, the world was transformed. We might have been back in Black Forest: wide expanses of undisturbed snow between trees dripping quietly under their white coats. And then, round the corner, we found the children in their dozens, out on their sleds, making the most of the Bedfordshire winter sports centre. It may not be the world's best known or most frequented, but it was obviously capable of giving as much enjoyment as any of them.

Luton's kids show the way to enjoy the conditions

Healthcare reform and its victims

2012-02-04T11:28:00.000Z

From the moment the present British government was formed in May 2010, the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has been dead set on reforming the National Health Service.

Lansley: minister for caring

In particular, the organisations that control around 80% of the Service’s budgets, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) are due to go by April 2013. That means that bodies employing some 200,000 people are into a process of closure that will, by the time it’s over, have lasted practically three years.

Many are jumping ship as quickly as opportunities open, conscious that it may be dangerous to cling on to the end: most will probably be reassigned to positions in the new hierarchy, but some will certainly be made redundant. As people leave, few are being replaced, so the remaining staff are facing increasing stress dealing with an undiminished workload.

And that’s going to go on for another fifteen months: the certainty of growing pressure coupled with nagging uncertainty over the future.

The process is likely to cost around £1.2 billion at a time of pressure to reduce expenditure.

I’ve been working with the health service for over quarter of a century and I’ve seen repeated reforms of its organisational structure; I have yet to see any that were clearly better than any other.

I’ve only seen one that was significantly and radically different: the Thatcherite initiative to introduce ‘GP fundholding’. This meant that General Practitioners held the budget to pay for hospital care directly themselves. Many of the reform initiatives, including Lansley’s, have had the proclaimed goal of involving GPs in decisions about hospital care, but fundholding was the only one which got them actively engaged with the process, because it gave them real clout.

It was, however, fundamentally flawed: as well as ‘commissioning’ (i.e. paying for) care, GPs were also providers of care, meaning that they could buy services from themselves. That made the system open to abuse that came close, on occasions, to outright corruption.

In fact, the only time that I’ve seen real improvement in the service was under the last government, and not because of any of its tinkering with management structures, but because it invested more money. Spend a bit more and the NHS gets a bit better.

Will Lansley’s brave new system be an improvement? The clue is perhaps provided by the recent revelation that it will involve five levels of management in most areas, and more in some. It will pay lip service to the principle of GP involvement but in reality it will be administered, as usual, by professional managers — the ‘bureaucrats’ the media love to hate but which cost only 3% of the NHS budget and mean that clinicians spend as little time as possible on administration.

So the reform will be painfully disruptive and expensive while leading to little or no gain. Since everyone is against it — the vast majority of health service professionals themselves as well as their organisations — there is some optimism around that it may be possible to block the changes. That’s not an optimism I share: a British government with a majority in the House of Commons can ultimately force any measure through that it has set its heart on. This will go through. The government will do it simply because it can.

So spare a thought for the people working in the PCTs. Most of them take pride in jobs they believe make a real difference. In general, they work hard and do their best to deliver a good service to others.

And they will in the end have spent three years watching their organisations slowly dying, colleagues leaving, their workload piling up and their futures being increasingly clouded with uncertainty.

British Prime Minister David Cameron used to like to claim that he was building a Big Society in which we would all find our place. Imagine what it would be like if he set out to build a small one.

Does reality have to be so confusing?

2012-02-02T22:06:00.002Z

There are things that I understand completely but which I still find baffling.

Take the curvature of the Earth. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? It makes perfect sense — why, a schoolchild can understand it — that the time is different in different parts of the world. At the same time.

Of course I can get my mind round that. My mind’s fine with it. It’s just the rest of me. I mean, somewhere deep inside me, it makes no sense at all to me. I can cope with the fact that the French insist on being an hour later than us. That’s just the French. It’s the kind of thing they do. OK, and the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, why even Liechtenstein. They all play that game. It’s part of their charm.

I even have colleagues in Ukraine. They claim it’s two hours later. I can manage that too. They just start work early. Fine. That’s their business. Sometimes I can't sleep late either.

But last week I was in California, and it just got silly. People were going to bed when I was getting up. Or was it the other way round? I couldn’t come to terms with it at all.

Take my birthday. I got up and found that people had been sending me birthday greetings for hours. Very kind, very touching. But they really got off the mark ridiculously early. And then, a while later, the greetings were still coming in, but with apologies for being late. Late? They weren’t late. It was early evening. What was their problem?

In the end, it felt as though my birthday had gone on for about 36 hours (OK, OK, 32, but who’s counting?) Now of course, the little voice of rationality was saying to me ‘it’s all about the curvature of the Earth, local time in one place is different from local time somewhere else. That’s why they call it local, for crying out loud.’ But somewhere else, a much more believable voice was saying ‘a 36-hour birthday? Enjoy it! You’re not likely to have a longer one.’

And it occurs to me that maybe I should pay attention to the voice of my instinct. Why should I have to listen so hard to cold reason?

This stuff all proves that the arrangement of the world is completely bizarre. Mind and instinct in contradiction. Who’d do things that way? What’s the point? When it’s midday, it should be midday everywhere, not two o’clock in the afternoon in one place and four in the morning somewhere else.

Easy to understand and yet completely incomprehensible

It’s the same with the seasons. I mean, I went downstairs yesterday morning pleased as punch that it was light outside. Wonderful. And then I found the car covered in frost and froze my hands scraping it: I didn’t have time to fetch any gloves.

Now, what’s the sense in that? It’s getting light. It’s a good time (sorry, southern hemisphere people). So why does it suddenly get bitterly cold? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the cold when it’s dark, so we can got the whole ghastliness over in one go? Why spoil the returning sunlight with a cold snap?

It's the other way round in what we laughingly call summer in Britain. Nice long days but that only gives the rain longer to spoil things. In a properly organised universe, the days would be warmest and driest when they were longest.

That’s why I laugh when people talk to me about intelligent design. You call this intelligent? If it were intelligent, I’d be getting back to my desk after lunch at pretty much the same time as people I might want to speak to in Tokyo, Berlin or San Francisco. The long evenings would be the balmy ones when we could have barbecues that didn’t get drowned out by storms.

And I wouldn’t have to keep calling on reason to explain why things aren’t the way they feel they should be.

Cameron and the EU: in with a roar, out with a whimper

2012-01-30T07:11:00.003Z

The American commentator H L Mencken famously said ‘no one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.’

It’s a terrible, cynical indictment, one that those of us who cling to our faith in democracy can only abhor.

On 9 December, Prime Minister David Cameron won himself a reputation for firmness and courage when he exercised Britain’s veto to block EU treaty change aimed at controlling Eurozone budgets. His ‘No’ was seen in many quarters, including the bulk of the British media, as an assertion of national independence and a much-needed stand against bureaucratic meddling from Brussels.

At the time, despite all the plaudits Cameron won, many of his critics pointed out that what he’d exercised wasn’t exactly a ‘veto’. Usually, a veto is understood to be something that blocks an initiative or a law. This one simply meant that the other 26 nations would go right on doing what they planned to do anyway, unblocked, even unfazed by the UK attitude, with the only effect being that Cameron had sidelined his country.

Cameron, however, was at pains to ensure we all understood how resolutely he had acted. He underlined his determination by refusing the right of other 26 members to use EU institutions to police whatever agreement they eventually adopted, or even to meet in EU premises. Under pressure from his officials, he soon started to row back from this petulant position and his partners (or adversaries) in Europe soon found they could at least use EU office space for their discussions.

That process of rowing back has continued ever since. Just last weekend, it has emerged that Cameron is likely to cave in on his opposition to the use of European institutions such as the Court of Justice to police any fiscal agreement the other members make. So it looks as though the way has been cleared for the Eurozone members to set up their new arrangements and use EU mechanisms to enforce them.

The only effect of Cameron’s ‘veto’ has been to exclude the UK from their operation. But the UK was going to be excluded anyway since it isn’t in the Eurozone. So basically Cameron’s ‘no’ was really a ‘yes’. Or, given his use of a metaphorical megaphone in December, his ‘NO’ looks set to become a ‘yes’.

What is ironic is that in December Labour was running two to four points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. Hardly a massive lead, hardly even an encouraging one, but a lead all the same.

Since the ‘veto’, the Conservatives have caught up and, indeed, they even took the lead for a while. These days, they are level pegging with the opposition. It seems that the loudmouth ‘no’ followed by the whispered ‘yes’ has done Cameron’s party nothing but good.

The lion that whimpered.
Self-satisfied? He has plenty to be satisfied about

There are admissions that it gives me no pleasure to make. Some indeed give me great pain. Not for the first time, though, in the light of the evidence, I can't help feeling that Mencken was far from entirely wrong...

My exploits and Caesar's, and goodbye to Emeryville

2012-01-28T16:41:00.003Z

Stations are romantic, exciting places. The sound of the trains sets the heart beating, while all around the joy of greetings for new arrivals mingles with the excited anticipation of those setting out on their journey.

Airports on the other hand are synthetic and soulless. Because San Francisco airport is my gateway back to home and Danielle it promises pleasure, but in itself it’s a miserable place. Utilitarian, pedestrian, rushed. No heart. The contrast is all the starker because I’ve spent a week in a hotel next to the Emeryville Amtrak Station, from which several times an hour I’d hear that haunting sound, iconic of the United States, of a train’s horn. Its mournfulness seems to express the sorrow that this country, which did so much to pioneer the railways, has since turned its back on them, preferring the dullness of air travel.

How right one of my teachers was to say that if God had intended us to travel by air, he would never have given us the railways.

While we were here, we didn’t actually use Emeryville Station because, although San Francisco itself is right opposite, the Amtrak lines run all the way along the Bay but not over it or under it. Instead we used the BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit. We took it several times in complete innocence, not realising until I was warned just a day ago that our nearest station is regarded as a dangerous place.

There’s no way we could have known: we had nothing but pleasant experiences there, above all with a wonderful woman who was manning (womanning? personing?) the information booth. She came out to help us get our tickets from those appalling machines the BART provides for the purpose, and which are entirely incomprehensible until you’ve undergone intensive training. After that, whenever we saw her she would smile and chat to us about how we’d enjoyed the city.

Nor is that the only pleasant recollection I shall take away from Emeryville. For me, the town will from now on be forever linked with Julius Caesar.

‘Emeryille?’ I hear you cry. ‘Rome, certainly, even Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, all the places to which that extraordinarily mobile conqueror travelled. Even Britain. But Emeryville?’

He never made it to Emeryville, except in (my) spirit

Ah, but Caesar’s association with this little town is my own entirely, a purely personal link. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been enchanted by a series of podcasts recommended to me by my son Michael: The History of Rome, put together over a long period with considerable, pretty well unremunerated effort by Mike Duncan, as apparently disinterested in the enterprise as he was interested in the subject.

This week,while I’ve been pounding the streets of Emeryville, I’ve been listening to his episodes about Caesar. Out running every morning, I’ve heard about the great general’s own feats, to the accompaniment of the boots of his legionnaires hammering the roads, like mine, though in their case they were criss-crossing Europe and the Middle East; as I’ve targeted my own personal goal for this week’s runs, I’ve listened to the tale of the great statesman’s drive to achieve his objective of power over a great Empire.

Let me say that my target was was no easy one for me to hit: to complete a half marathon. Not in one session - that’s not quite in my capacity - but at least over several. This morning I made it, as the sun rose above San Francisco Bay and Caesar fell to his assassins’ daggers.

The sun rises over Emeryville Marina, perhaps to salute my (minor) triumph

My achievement, I admit, hardly rivals his, but by my scale of things, it was quite satisfying enough. And at least it didn’t leave me bleeding to death at the foot of Pompey’s statue.

Fiddling while healthcare burns

2012-01-27T06:05:00.000Z

It has been a fascinating experience to spend 25 years –what am I saying? knocking on 30 years – working in healthcareinformation.

Throughout that whole time, the field has been marked by twopowerful and constant trends. The first of these is a growing capacity to dealwith more and more diseases. Whether it’s breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals, insurgical techniques, in equipment and consumables, or simply in approaches to care,the number of conditions that can be diagnosed, treated and cured has steadilyincreased.

And the second trend has been a reflection of the first: a steadilyageing in population, at least in the developed world. People are living longerand that is a tribute to the success of healthcare progress.

Unfortunately, the two trends come together to reinforce athird and much more worrying development: uninterrupted grown in health expenditure. When I started work in this area, healthcare expenditure in Britainrepresented around 6% of GDP, and in the United States, around 9%. The figures today are over 9% and,staggeringly, over 16% respectively.

Now nobody has ever worked out the maximum an economycan spend on healthcare. We know that on current trends,the US is heading towards 100% of GDP going on healthcare by the end of thecentury, which is obviously crasy. But what if costs were halted at 50%?That does seem a bit high. What about 25%? Could a society stand that? Could it still spendenough on education? On roads? Or, given the tendency of both Britain and theUS to intervene in other countries’ affairs, on the military?

What is clear is that somewhere there must be a limit. Andit’s equally clear that the two great forces that have marked the whole of mycareer both push that limit: as populations age, they tend to require morehealthcare, and they require it for longer; as technology improves, it allowsmore to be done, but generally at higher cost, at least when innovations first appear. So we have a conundrum.

However, it’s not all bad news. Because one of the effectsof improving technology is that in the long run it makes it possible to reduce, rather than increasing, costs. Bydoing things more effectively, we can avoid certain forms of expenditure. Andthere tends to be a tipping point in all technology developments: there comes apoint where things become cheaper because they become more efficient –we’ve seen it in cars, that have improved massively in efficiency and thereforein cost. And we’re seeing it in healthcare, where for example keyhole surgerytechniques have reduced the cost of care substantially because patient recoveryis so much quicker, without any great increase in the cost of the operation assurgeons have become more proficient and comfortable as the techniques become routine.

That’s why so many procedures that used to involve severaldays in hospital can now be performed on a day case basis. A striking exampleis cataract extractions. Even more serious surgery, such as open heart operations,have so evolved that an otherwise healthy individual may be ready for dischargewithin four days, where in the past it might have taken twelve.

These examples are a clear signpost of the way forward: useevolving technology to improve care delivery. In particular, use it to limitthe time patients spend in hospital: hospitals are nasty, dangerous places, full ofsick people and the longer you stay in one, the greater the chances of pickingup a nasty infection and leaving in a worse state than you came in. They’realso about the most expensive places in which to receive treatment – anything wecan do to get treatment carried out in a GP’s surgery, or even in a hospital on an outpatient basis rather than as an inpatient, is likely tobe a benefit to the patient and a saving of money for society.

Vital when needed, but best avoided if you can. And very expensive...

Now all this has been known for decades. The trick is tostart doing it. Start cutting out the unnecessary treatment, or at any rate theunnecessarily expensive treatment.

But that means taking clinical decisions, deciding what isthe most intelligent and appropriate approach to delivering care.

So why instead of tackling those issues does governmentafter government instead try to find economies in the area of healthcaremanagement? The British National Health Service spends around 3% of its moneyon management. Just how much can you save from that?

And are the savings real anyway? If you take out theadministrative support staff, the administrative work still has to be done. Sowho does it? Why, the front line staff themselves. The nurses and doctors. Thatdiverts resource from healthcare, and is also far more expensive: most nursesand certainly most doctors cost a great deal more than mostadministrators.

But governments do worse than that. In my time, in Britainalone, I’ve watched the Griffiths reforms bringing in General Management. I’vewatched the idea of ‘Hospital Trusts’ being introduced, and later ‘FoundationTrusts’. I’ve seen the creation and abolition of Area Health Authorities, the setting up of Primary Care Groups and then their replacement by Primary Care Trusts, now just over a year fromabolition themselves, if the latest legislation goes through.

In other words, I’ve watched government tinkering with theorganisation, fiddling with the structure. Andrew Lansley’s proposed NHS reforms are probablygoing to cost about £1.2 billion – all in the name of seeking out economies. And all the time the real savings, which at the same time can generate realimprovements in patient care, need clinicalreform, not managerial change.

No wonder the controversy about the latest proposals is sointense. It deserves to be. The new initiative represents a huge expenditure to addresscompletely the wrong issue. Not because trying to control healthcareexpenditure is wrong, but precisely because it’s so badly needed: Lansley's legislation would waste money and fails to address the real problem.

When it comes to hare-brained government initiatives, it hasto be right up there with the very best of them...

Land of surprise and curiosity

2012-01-23T21:48:00.001Z

Amazing how one can become passionate about, or at least interested in, something to which one was previously pretty much indifferent.

Here I am opposite San Francisco, surrounded by colleagues who live here, and who almost universally support the 49ers. Who are the 49ers, I hear you ask, where by ‘you’ I mean practically anyone who lives outside the USA? Well, they’re the local team in the grand old game referred to in this country as ‘football’ and more or less everywhere else in the world as ‘American football’.

I can make no claim to any kind of expertise in this sport, although funnily enough after a childhood spent despising any kind of professional game, the first match of any kind that I ever attended happened to be an American football game. It was between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Browns. Practically the only thing I remember about it is a man in a brown scarf jumping up and down and chortling wildly when the Browns scored. He was silenced by a single, quiet scowl, probably because it was being directed at him not by one man by about 50, sat all around him.

Coincidentally, it was the same New York Giants who were playing the 49ers yesterday. The San Franciscan team hadn’t, apparently, been enjoying much success in recent seasons, so when they scored a dramatic, dying gasp win over the New Orleans Saints last week to qualify for the semi-finals of a prestigious championship against the Giants this week, it was a moment for jubilation throughout the City and among my colleagues.

That persuaded me to watch the game yesterday, and I found it surprisingly enthralling.

The first thing to say about the experience was that it was extraordinarily long. If you take a standard rugby game, say, the eighty minutes of actual playing time plus ten minutes of half-time break, usually takes about 100 to 110 minutes to complete. During the Six Nations Championship, for instance, you can be pretty certain that you can safely start a second game a couple of hours after the first without much danger of their overlapping.

An American football game only lasts sixty minutes, not the eighty of rugby. But yesterday’s match ran from 3:30 to after 7:30. It takes four times as long to complete as the playing time.

What’s more, in a rugby game, the great division in a side is between the forwards and the backs. The forwards tend to be bigger and heavier and their major role is to drive the ball forwards, while the backs are lighter and quicker and their major role is to run with the ball. But they’re all on the field at the same time and part of the beauty of the game is how these two divisions mesh with each other.

In addition, when the forwards aren’t driving the ball, they’re trying to prevent the other side driving it back the other way, and when the backs aren’t running with the ball, they’re tackling their opposite numbers to stop them breaking through their lines. In other words, both divisions play both in attack and in defence.

In American football, although each side only has eleven players on the field at a time, it can actually be made up of 53. You get a group that specialises in attack, or as they like to call it here, offense, a group that specialises in defence, or defense as they call it over here, and a group that specialises in specialisation (I kid you not: you get a ‘specialist’ team). This means that every now and then, a whole team will leave the field to be replaced by a whole other team specialised in different skills.

Together with the fact that the play stops every few seconds for another set piece - both sides line up against each other, offense against defense, and pause before the side with the ball launches another brief flurry of frenetic activity - it’s not in the least surprising that it takes forever to get through sixty minutes. In the course of yesterday’s match I even had a brief siesta and a bath and managed not to miss any of the actual scoring action.

On top of that there are commercial breaks several times an hour, to make sure you don’t get too engrossed in the action.

Despite all these layers of sophistication, the whole match ultimately came down to that simplest of events, the bane of teams in every imaginable sport, the defensive blunder. And not just one but two of them - by the same player. Spare a thought and a little compassion for poor Kyle Williams from the 49ers, a beginner or, as they like to say over here, rookie who twice let in the other side - once to take the lead, the second time to win the match and qualify for the finals. What a morning he must have woken up to today!

Whoops! Williams spills the ball in his second match-losing error

Amazing the game hasn’t caught on around the world. What could be better in our bankrupt economies than to play a sport that requires 53 players to field eleven? If it got popular enough, it could actually seriously dent the unemployment figures.

Postscript: French at the wheel. The United States is not particularly celebrated around the world for its mastery of foreign languages. I always remember a Louisiana senator some decades ago announcing ‘if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me,’ one of the more delightful examples of the kind of captivating wit that makes it such a pleasure to visit this country (and which compensates for some of its less attractive features).

These days, Spanish is pretty ubiquitous but other languages barely get a look in. So Danielle and I were amazed to discover in three cab rides that our driver was French-speaking. On one occasion, we were a little offended by the taciturnity of the man behind the wheel, who answered our polite comments in monosyllables until he overheard us talking French to each other. At that point he revealed himself as Algerian and chatted to us cheerfully all the way to our destination. Of the other two, one was also from North Africa, the second from Guadeloupe.

Not what I’d have expected in the US. But then one should never underestimate this country’s capacity to surprise.

Prayer, miracles and wonders

2012-01-23T06:37:00.003Z

It never snows but it pours. All of last week we were wondering when the snow would finally reach Lake Tahoe. In the end, with our departure due the next day, we travelled up to the ski slopes on Friday to take our chances on the man-made snow, since the natural variety just wasn’t showing up. No sooner had we got there, though, than the real kind started to fall, so we had our day’s skiing under grey skies and with tiny, wet snowflakes stinging our faces as we struggled through the wind.

We were even told, in the café on the slopes where we stopped for lunch, that we’d ‘timed that pretty damn’ well’, as they were going to shut immediately after our orders, having just been told that the ski-lift was closing down. One of the ski patrol people did tell us, with a charming smile (the friendliness and warmth of everyone we met was in stark contrast to the bitterness of the weather), ‘sure, you’ve got the time to eat your sandwiches, but don’t hang around, and if you look like being the last out, make a move for the door’.

By then the blizzard had got well under way, and all we could do was leap on the lift just before it shut and ski back down to the main station. It was a great day all the same, but truncated. Which made me think with wry amusement of the sign, we’d seen in the café where we had our lunch: ‘pray for snow’.

Faith invoked to overcome the drought

By next morning, the prayer had been miraculously answered, and the place was under a good blanket of snow, right down to the lakeside. We even had to fit chains to be able to drive away. Of course, for us, a day earlier would have been no bad thing. Timing is so important, isn’t it? A day’s skiing on fresh snow would have been a delight; instead we got to drive through it, which is much less fun.

Even so, I’m not complaining. We had a great time, however difficult the conditions and however short the day. And it was a relief to see some snow whenever it came, after so long when it looked like there’d be none. I even have to admit that, despite the lousy performance of most weather forecasters, who just kept pushing their prediction of snow back by a day each day, making me feel justified in thinking that one might just as well flip a coin, the local crowd did really well: right from the beginning of the week they said the snow would come on Friday, and they were bang on. They at least got the riming right. And showed me up for maligning them so mercilessly as I usually do (and no doubt will again).

An answer to a prayer - and vindication for a forecaster

Postscript. I loved the sign in the ski station, at the stop for the shuttle back to town: ‘Shuttle Bus to Gondola’.

A miraculous metamorphosis that would have been a wonder to behold

Now that’s a transformation I’d have loved to have seen. Would the driver have turned into an Italian with a fine tenor voice? Would his wooly hat have turned into a straw boater? Would his fleece-lined coat have turned into a stripy shirt? He might have been horribly cold, in the conditions.

But I never found out. We were in a hurry to get away. Timing again, you see. I had to be satisfied with miracle of snow falling in answer to a prayer. The even more miraculous conversion of a bus into a gondola was a wonder I would simply be denied.

Post-postscript. When we got back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was struck by a pair of road signs: to the left ‘Ex’pression College’, with that apostrophe, for which I can think of absolutely no meaning; to the right, the ‘National Holistic Institute’.

‘Yes’, I thought, ‘we’re back in the San Francisco area.’ All it would have needed to complete the picture was a few chanting monks in saffron robes.

That evening Danielle and I went out to Japantown, which we'd never previously visited, travelling as we have on every occasion in this visit, by cable car. At our age, behaving like complete tourists no longer embarrasses us, so we can just let ourselves go and enjoy the pleasure. As well as a pleasant Korean meal in Japantown (yes, yes, I know, we thought it was Japanese until we were inside), we were delighted by the many people we met on the way back, who were all heading for an Edwardian evening.

Wonders of the San Francisco streets

A wondrous sight, and just what one might hope for from that great city, it provided a good way of wrapping up Danielle's visit here. I stay on for another six days.

Strange emeralds and ill-advised signs

2012-01-20T03:17:00.002Z

Our stay in the Lake Tahoe region continues to provide constantly renewed pleasures. Some of my satisfaction comes in the form of mild irony, but hey, there are few things I appreciate as much - why would I complain?

For instance, the justification for being here at all is to get on with some work. That was supposed to reach its end early this morning, a time marked by splendid sunshine, warming us as we stepped outside, sparkling on the lake below us. But we overran and because, really, genuinely, we’re not hear on holiday (sorry, vacation: this is the US after all), we conscientiously ploughed on until we’d finished our agenda. By which time the clouds had come up, the temperature had fallen, a bitter wind had begun to blow and, before we got to the local beauty spot of Emerald Bay, the snow had started to fall.

Snow. All week we’d been hoping for snow so that we might get a little skiing in before heading back to the big city on Saturday, and not a single snowflake had fallen. It chose instead to start coming down once we’d decided on a hike.

Emerald Bay remained gorgeous place, but it had some trouble living up to its name. Unless of course there is a breed of emerald that is a fine slate grey trending towards jet black (do emeralds have breeds? Not that it matters - I’m sure they don’t have this one.)

Lovely spot. But emerald?

As it happens I nearly didn’t make it down to the lakeside. As we started out on the hike (or gentle country stroll to use the term we prefer in England) I came across a warning sign.

A whole mile? Bad news for health conditions apparently - whatever the condition.
In any case, aren't they lying? We surely are being advised. By this very sign.

Do I have a health condition? Well, of course I do. The condition of my health is, mercifully, pretty good. But it’s certainly a condition.

Should I have stayed in the car park (sorry, parking lot)? Perhaps in the van itself, with the heater on? It would have protected me from the cold and the snow, certainly, but can you imagine? I would have missed the unique experience of seeing grey emerald waters.

In the end I decided that I couldn’t deprive myself of that pleasure and headed down the path. But not without gratitude to the Park authorities for showing such solicitude for my wellbeing.

Thanks, guys.

A place of beauty and a game of chance

2012-01-18T23:55:00.000Z

There are places which, at every first sight, immediately strike you as belonging to the world's great sitees of natural beauty. Danielle and I are at Lake Tahoe, and it's right up there with what's most outstanding. A mountainlake stretching into the misty distance, with snow-covered peaks gazing down on all sides, the slopes covered withage-old woods extending as far as the eye can see.

Well, when Isay ‘snow-covered’, they ought to be at this time of year, but today all they show is some pretty impressive rocks with oddpatches of ice. The snow is only striking for its absence. Bad news for the villages clustered around thelake and which depend on the winter sports: they’re having a bad time of it.

As for us, we’rehaving to resign ourselves to not skiing, but it hasn't been hard. We're here because a group of my colleagues invited us along so I could join them for some discussions on product strategy, and they've been invaluable. Those colleaguese are also excellent company. So Danielle and I areenjoying spendign time with them, there’s plenty to eat and drink, and the setting isglorious.

Besides, as well as being beautiful, the setting has features than can conjure up a smile.

We happen tobe in Nevada. We got here from California. And how did we know that we’dcrossed the State Line? Just before we turned off the main road, we came across theinfallible sign that we had moved into Nevada: a casino.

The landmark for our arrival in Nevada: the Heavenly Village Casino
But we lost the bet on snow

It’s in thesame village, but a different state. On the California side, you can live invirtue with no contact with the corrupting influence of gambling. But if you’retempted – well, just a few minutes walk will take you into the hands of thefiend and you can gamble your heart away.

Give mevirtue. But only when I don’t feel like sinning. As a commandment it may seem a litte pragmatic, a true game of chance dependent on where the line between two States was drawn. That won't satisfy someone who believes that morality should be, well, a little more absolute than that. But at least a rule that flexible seems to take human nature more fully into account.

Andit's probably a lot easier to apply to life.

Enjoying the present, reliving the past

2012-01-16T23:59:00.003Z

In a memorable line, the Comedian Eric Morecambe assured his audience that he was ‘playing all the right notes, though not necessarily in the right order.’

We've never been that good at getting the order of things right. When the judge granted Danielle, then married to her first husband, her divorce, he took a look at her belly and said ‘I expect you’d like me to reduce the time lag before the decree becomes absolute to the minimum.’ He took it down to a week from the normal six, and as a result Danielle and I were married just eighteen days before our son Michael was born.

With Danielle’s first son David with us, and Nicky showing up not that long after Michael, there was no way we have a honeymoon at the right time - i.e. then. So instead ten years later, with a business trip to San Francisco in the offing, I suggested that Danielle come along and take the opportunity to have a delayed honeymoon. Better late than never, after all, and we would enjoy it all the more for having waited so long.

And we did enjoy our trip to what quickly became Danielle’s favourite city anywhere. We stayed at a hotel which boasted a penthouse which was more a pentshack: a wood and glass construction placed on the roof, with breathtaking views of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and the city, where we were woken in the morning by the sea lions barking and could watch a flock of parakeets flying past our windows.

When, nearly twenty years on, I again got the opportunity to take a business trip to San Francisco, Danielle announced ‘I’m coming along.’ It struck me as a good idea, so she’s at my side as I write this.

This time we did everything much more by the book. The first evening we were in China Town to indulge ourselves in truly superior Chinese cooking. The next day we had a walking tour through part of the city, enchanted but shivering through weather that had turned to bitter winter overnight. To warm up we headed to a vegetarian restaurant, Green’s, where we had an excellent meal against the background of yet another view of the bay and the bridge.

Our first visit to San Francisco had left me with only one regret: we’d had a remarkable breakfast at the famous Cafe Roma, sitting in the tiny back terrace area, under vine leaves through which the surprisingly warming October sun was shining. But I chose not to wash down the meal with mimosa, the combination of orange juice and champagne that would have been the perfect complement to my scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.

So I took great pleasure in correcting that omission while I was at Green’s, and we had mimosas there - though as befits the constant innovation that marks the city still, this one was made with pomegranate juice rather than anything so pedestrian as mere orange.

Ready to enjoy mimosas and correct an old omission
Pomegranate, no less - my dear, the style, can you imagine?

Then we set out to find our hotel with the pent shack again, which was not as straightforward it sounds, since we couldn’t remember the name let alone the address. But we tracked it down, and found the San Remo unchanged, and still endowed with its jewel of a pent shack.

We also travelled round the city by the most appropriate means, cable cars, even hanging on for dear life to the outside on a couple of occasions. That was a mode of transport we’d disdained first time, this trip has really seen us being quite exemplary in ensuring we did things properly.

The right notes in the right order, for once. And the notes themselves are pretty special, they resonate with us. San Francisco remains Danielle’s favourite city.

And I have to say that I too find it hard to imagine one to prefer to it.

The wonders of private healthcare and of Scottish government

2012-01-14T23:46:00.000Z

In Britain, a very small proportion of healthcare is delivered by private hospital

These are organisations that provide healthcare for profit, or at least try to (anyone can run a business badly). As a result, they only do what is referred to in the trade as ‘cold surgery’ - in other words operations carried out on a planned basis rather than in response to an emergency.

These can be relatively low-key operations such as a hernia repair, or something more substantial, like a hip replacement. But what they all have in common is that they are carried out on patients who are, broadly speaking, in good health: they obviously have the condition for which the surgery is needed but otherwise they’re well - they don’t have anything likely to turn into a nasty heart attack, or a major neurological problem such as a seizure or, even worse, a stroke.

It will come as no surprise that this is the kind of case that is most likely to generate a profit.

Partisans of private hospitals argue that by handling this kind of work, they relieve the NHS of having to do it. What that argument leaves out of account is that what’s left is the more difficult cases that are likely to be the most expensive. What it leaves even more out of account is what happens if things unexpectedly go wrong, as they have a tedious way of doing in healthcare.

What if, against all the available indicators, a patient has a heart attack while in the private hospital?

I came across exactly such a case some years ago, though I won’t mention the private hospital involved, because why should one embarrass the guilty? What happened was that reception staff called for an ambulance. When it arrived, NHS paramedics took the patient into their charge at being shot of all further responsibility for him.

Because that’s what the private sector does. It cherry picks the easiest cases. And it avoids any of the huge infrastructure costs associated with building centres capable of dealing with the serious problems, with the life-threatening conditions. No wonder the private sector can aim at profitability.

Why is this important today?

Because the latest reorganisation of the NHS aims to make it possible for ‘any willing provider’ to deliver healthcare. That form of words led to a bit of a storm of controversy so now the government is saying, ‘well, yes, of course the provider as well as being willing also has to be suitable, properly qualified, and shown to be capable of delivering quality.’ If only they’d said that from the outset I’d have less trouble believing them. But suitable or not, these hospitals are still going to be creaming off the most lucrative cases while avoiding the burden of the difficult ones - for which they’ll have to turn to the public sector for support.

Anyone in Britain questioning that suggestion need only look at what’s happening in connection with the latest healthcare scandal: breast implants provided by a (now-bankrupt) French company, PIP, using industrial-grade silicone. That’s a bit like putting a load of diesel oil in your body and being told, ‘don’t worry - there won’t be a problem unless the pack leaks.’ Inspires confidence, doesn't it?

And guess who did 95% of the operations? Private hospitals, of course. And who picks up the tab if things go wrong? Oh, yes, you guessed it: the public sector. The private cosmetic surgery companies reckon that they just can’t afford to do the work of removing the implants themselves - it would cost too much. Why, it might wipe out their profits. So they expect the rest of us to cover them for them.

Leaking industrial grade silicone - just what every woman wants inside her
The private sector can fit them. To take them out, just turn to the NHS

Oh brave new world that has such people in it!

What a wonderful, liberating experience it’s going to be having all those ‘willing providers’ helping out the NHS.

Postscript: they order these things better north of Hadrian’s Wall

This week David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, decided to confront Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, a major part of that same United Kingdom.

Salmond wants to hold a referendum on independence for Scotland. But because he’s a wily old fox and he know time’s on his side, he wants to hold it in 2014. And, because he knows he might lose the referendum, he wants it to include an alternative possibiliy - maximum devolution, with Scotland running all its own government except for foreign affairs and defence (often the same thing these days) which would be left to the residual UK.

Now Cameron is calling him out. The referendum must be held in 2013. And, he maintains, it can’t contain the maximum devolution question.

So Cameron is taking on Salmond head on.Cameron. Self-confident to the point of brashness, indolent when it comes to preparing his ground, convinced that success is his due. Against Salmond. The smartest operator in the UK today.

I’m looking forward to watching the contest. Cameron might best him. But I won’t be putting any money on that.

Cameron, left, looking for an idea. Salmond looking as though butter wouldn't melt
I know who I'd put my money on

Happy anniversaries and an affectionate feline

2012-01-11T22:17:00.000Z

Marking memorable moments

A former boss once asked me, ‘David, you know the best way of ensuring you never forget your wedding anniversary?’

‘No,’ I dutifully fed him the reply he wanted.

‘Forget it once,’ he told me.

Funnily enough, our marriage hasn’t been like that at all. For the first 22 years, Danielle forgot the anniversary each and every year, and in all but one of them I alone remembered. So year after year I’d turn up with a bunch of flowers, and Danielle would say ‘oh - is it today?’

Seven years ago that all changed with the birth of our granddaughter Aya, coincidentally on the very day of our anniversary, 11 January. At least, I hope it was a coincidence, because otherwise I’d have to start accepting the intervention of supernatural forces that I’ve always found it more comforting to deny.

Anyway, with something really important by which to remember the day, Danielle’s never forgotten it since.

So tonight we celebrated our twenty-ninth anniversary. And Aya’s seventh birthday, of course.

Well, not exactly celebrated,though Danielle’s potato salad was outstanding. We marked it, at least. We’re saving ourselves for next week in California when Danielle will be out every day on the ski slopes above Lake Tahoe, while I’ll be indoors discussing product strategy.

And how’s that not an appropriate way to celebrate?

29 years - the moment deserves celebration

Mixed messages from Misty.

A strange transformation has come over our cat Misty. He has taken to coming and lying on my lap, even at one point abandoning Danielle’s to choose mine. He stops to greet me when I let him in, instead of just pushing past to get at his food, protesting if there isn’t enough.

He treats me like a human being, even sometimes like a fellow cat.

It’s actually quite troubling. I mean, I’ve known for years that he’s a worryingly talented cat, something that can have quite disturbing effects. For instance, as the three of us were standing on our doorstep once, while Danielle was opening the front door, I casually commented that Misty was putting on a little weight. Up went his tail and his nose, and he stalked away. For the next 24 hours, he’d have nothing to do with me.

I’m concerned now that from an understanding of spoken English, he’s now graduated to reading the language too. In a recent blog, I made some comments about his attitude towards me which he may have regarded as hurtful. Perhaps he’s putting all this effort into showing me that he deserves my affection.

Misty, you don’t need to. Very nice to have you lying on my lap from time to time, to have you purring beside me, but you don’t need to force things. I liked you even when you treated me with contempt and bit me when I didn’t jump to do your bidding.

Relax. Be yourself. That’s the way I like you anyway.

Coming down to earth

2012-01-07T17:59:00.000Z

If Christmas is a family time, we did it right this year. We saw my mother and my brother; we had our granddaughter with her parents in the run up to Christmas; and at various times over the Christmas and New Year period our other two sons and one of our charming daughters-out-law.

It was only on Monday that our daughter-out-law left, to start a new job in Madrid, proving that jobs can be found in Spain despite the much trumpeted unemployment. One son went on Wednesday, the other on Friday, so the wind-down after Christmas has been tapered, not brusque, making the transition back to work, which I found painful this year, easier than it might have been.

Now, though, we’re back to our own devices, with little to show for the festive period but a large number of bottles for recycling and some kilos to lose.

One lasting legacy of the family visit is a recommendation my son Michael made to listen to a great podcast series: The History of Rome by Mike Duncan. This is the internet at best: somebody who has nothing to gain by it has simply prepared and delivered a history of Rome in dozens of bite-sized episodes, with just the right level of detail to be informative while remaining entertaining.

Listening to this excellent series I was particularly struck by the history of Etruria. It was the home of the Etruscans, a nation of extraordinary wealth and culture. And indeed power: in the early years of the city, Rome was ruled by Kings and the last of these were Etruscan.

Many centuries later, in a struggle with another and equally ruthless imperial power, Benjamin Franklin would tell his fellow revolutionaries, ‘We shall hang together or we shall hang separately.’ The Etruscans were hanged separately. They wouldn’t bury their differences and they paid the price.

Take Veii, once their wealthiest city, their jewel, not ten miles north of Rome. Never heard of it? Nor had I, or if I had, I’d forgotten. Today it’s part of a village in the Rome municipal area. With some fine ruins.

I can imagine the scene, just before the slaughter of the population when Veii fell to the Roman siege (the soldiers broke in through the sewers, demonstrating that for all their love of honour, Romans valued success still more). I picture a worthy citizen, not realising that he would meet a violent death within a few hours, declaring ‘Veii has always stood proud and wealthy, the greatest of the Etruscan cities, and we’re certainly not giving up our independence to them, far less to those upstarts from down the road who’ve had the temerity to send an army against us.’

The rest, as they say, is history. Etruscan has vanished as a language. The people of Etruria were completely assimilated into Rome, speaking Latin and playing their own part in Roman life within a few generations.

Veii: not a lot left. The price of standing aloof?

Over the Christmas period, the British Conservative Party moved ahead of Labour in the opinion polls.

That statement may seem unrelated to what came before, but bear with me: I shall explain.

That Conservative lead is particularly bad news for Labour. In mid-term, an Opposition needs to be building up a good lead in the polls if it’s to win the next election: there tends to be a swing back to the incumbents in the final stages, so the Opposition needs a cushion. Being behind is pretty desperate.

What caused the Conservative surge?

On 10 December the Daily Mail referring to a historic moment the day before, told us ‘Defiant Cameron stands up to Euro bullies...’ This was the historic moment when Cameron vetoed changes to EU treaties so that the whole organisation could get behind attempts to solve the Eurozone crisis.

Others less inclined to see Cameron as a latter day Titan taking on the erring gods have taken exception to the word ‘veto’. Usually a veto, as they point out, stops something happening. This veto meant that 26 countries would go ahead and do it anyway, but without Britain.

I sometimes wonder whether Cameron only realised that afterwards. Because as soon as he’d cast his vote, he told our EU enemies, sorry partners, that they couldn’t hold their discussions in EU buildings - you know, ‘if you’re not going to play by my rules, I’m taking my ball away.’ Later on, Britain backtracked from that position - civil servants, who are professionals after all, probably pointed out that this might not be the best way to make friends and retain some influence among people whose support we might need again some day.

But the virulence of Cameron’s initial reaction does rather suggest that he caught himself by surprise, doesn’t it? I can see him saying ‘well, you can’t do that because I’m saying ‘no’, so there, now what you are you going to do, eh, don’t look so clever now, do you? What do you mean? You’re going to go ahead and do it anyway? What without us? You’re going to ignore my veto? Well - if that’s the way you want to play it, you can’t use these nice offices then...’

In Britain though we tend not to think about the after effects of this kind of gesture but prefer to concentrate on the gesture itself. People loved it. ‘Standing up to to the Euro bullies’. Wonderful stuff. And it got him a tick up in the polls. Ahead of the opposition. Brilliant.

That got me thinking of other times in history when people have struck out on their own and told their partners to get stuffed. The Italian city states, for instance. Our daughter-in-law, when our granddaughter’s family came to stay with us, gallantly stood in a queue at the National Gallery for four hours so that we could all go and see an exhibition of paintings by her long-time favourite, Leonardo da Vinci.

I particularly liked the pair of fabulously beautiful portraits of Ludovico Sforza’s wife and mistress. I often wonder how each of them must have felt about the other picture. And I can just imagine Sforza saying ‘Milan isn’t just an Italian city. It’s a proud and powerful centre with a long history of its own. We’re not going to be sucked into some kind of bogus unity with the rest of the peninsula.’ But while Leonardo was there, the French turned up and sacked the place, and over the next few centuries, Italy was regularly the playground of invading armies.

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine: Ludovico Sforza's mistres
Culture, wealth, sophistication - but they were no protection against the French

One of the places I particularly liked in Alsace, where we used to live, was the Haut Koenigsburg, a fine castle beautifully and inaccurately restored by the German Kaiser Wilhelm (Alsace is like that: what country it’s in depends not just on geography but also on history). Why did the castle need restoring? Because it had been overrun a Swedish army. Swedish for crying out loud. Why the Swedes? Because until all those little German princedoms finally got together and sank their differences, Germany, like Italy, was a wonderful place for other countries to fight their wars.

Like Veii and the other cities of Etruria, the proud little Italian and German States were hanged separately because they wouldn’t hang together.

Well, the Conservatives have drifted back behind Labour again. Not by much, but still behind. It’s as though after the excitement of the veto that never was, cold reason has reasserted itself. Ater all, nothing has changed. The French and the Germans haven’t surrendered to us. The economy is still dire. Unemployment is still rising.

It’s a bit like us taking out our empty bottles and resolving to lose those extra kilos. After the warm glow of the festive season we’ve had to come back to earth. Reality once more exerts its sobering influence.

Charming traditions

2012-01-05T21:07:00.001Z

One of the high points, or at any rate one of the points, of the recent Christmas break was that great English tradition of the Boxing Day hunt.

On the 26^th of December, some hundreds of those who like to think of themselves as superior, turned out with pretty red coats and large horses to go careering across the countryside after a bunch of hounds, while some hundreds of thousands of people with no more sense but far less money turned out to support them.

It seems that this year the supporters numbered about 250,000.

Oscar Wilde had it right. Fox hunting is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

The unspeakable at play

Well, the uneatable has been illegal game since 2004, when Parliament decided that having dogs tear a fox to pieces at the end of a hunt wasn’t acceptable behaviour in the twentieth century, however much fun the unspeakable may have got from the process. And however time-honoured the tradition.

Of course, there have been a few accidents when hunts have actually led to the death of a fox but, hey, accidents happen.

Remember Apartheid South Africa? They used to happen to activists who got too close to windows on the upper floors of police stations.

What about these days in Russia? They happen to journalists who get to close to uncomfortable facts.

At least in Britain, it’s foxes who tend to be the victims rather than people. Where Britain resembles the other two countries is in the fact that the police don’t waste their time or anyone else’s investigating these unfortunate incidents. Sorry, accidents.

So the unspeakable are still going strong, heavily supported, galloping around the countryside as though they owned it which, come to think of it, they probably do. And with their friends now in government, there’s some pressure to get the hunting legislation repealed.

It’s a curious business, that. I never liked the ban. Not because I’m fond of the unspeakable of lack sympathy for the uneatable. More because I just don’t like bans. I reckon they ought to be kept to the bare minimum needed for a civilised society.

So, murder: yes, ban it (much though I’d like an exemption made for certain individual victims I could name). in a week which saw the conviction, eighteen years on, of two of the men who killed the teenager Stephen Lawrence for daring to be black in a public place, it’s hard not to feel that certain bans are highly desirable. Ban rape, ban violence against the individual generally, ban burglary, theft, fraud, and so on.

But can’t we keep bans down to the strict minimum necessary?

Take cannabis, for instance. It seems that at least three million of my countrymen smoke it on a regular basis. That suggests that we have at least as many dope smokers as we have churchgoers. So just how useful is that ban?

It’s easy for me to oppose the ban on cannabis: dope doesn’t bother me. It’s easy to tolerate things I have nothing against. The real test of tolerance is when we have to apply it to things we don’t. It’s more of a challenge to oppose bans on things that make me uncomfortable. For instance, I don’t like the wearing of the niqab, the full face veil, but it’s not clear to me that entitles me to call for it to be forbidden?

Equally, I dislike fox hunting pretty intensely. But I’m not convinced it should be banned, principally because I dislike the idea that a majority, just because it is a majority, should be able to impose its will on a minority that is no threat to its wellbeing.

What’s more, I’m less uneasy about hunting than I am about our knee-jerk tendency to reach for the statute book to deal with any problem. That’s another of our traditions in our great nations of the rule of law: faced with a problem, legislate, if only to make it look as though the government is taking action.

I’d much rather see certain things wither away than be banned. Reading toxic newspapers. Binge drinking. Believing in things because a few centuries go someone claimed, without a shred of evidence, that they were the word of God.

So where does that leave fox hunting?

Well, there’s pressure for the ban to be lifted. Will it be? No, it won’t. Polls show a hefty majority in favour of keeping it. No politician who wants to ensure his re-election is going to go out on a limb on this one.

So what will happen? Another great tradition will be respected: the unenforced law. On the one hand, the law will stay on the statute book, and those who loathe hunting will feel self-satisfied on that account. On the other hand, those who want to tear around tearing a little animal to pieces will go right on doing it knowing the police will do nothing against them. At the price of a little hypocrisy, everybody can get what they want. It’s win-win. Except for the fox, of course.

Ah, traditions. Charming, aren’t they?

So you want to know what's going to happen in 2012?

2012-01-02T17:36:00.002Z

As a public service, here are my predictions for the new year:

There will be a lot more talk about the likelihood of the Euro failure. It will either fail or it won’t fail. The Eurozone will still be in crisis at the end of the year.

The London Olympics will take place. Everyone responsible for organising them will describe them as an outstanding success. Everyone caught up in the jams in London will describe them as a major pain in the backside.

Obama will be re-elected to the White House in November. Or he will be beaten by Mitt Romney. The US will still be in crisis at the end of the year.

The ratings agencies will make a whole series of baseless judgements about different national economies. Because the people who make the markets will slavishly follow the ratings, they will all be proved accurate. Governments will continue to allow the agencies to dictate their policies.

The Chinese will discover the hard way that ‘overheating’ really is a phenomenon and you can’t sustain unsustainable growth indefinitely. Or they will have another boom year and that painful but salutary lesson will be postponed again.

Germany will win the European football championships. Or they won’t in which case one of the other teams will. It might be Spain but then again it might not.

In other football-related news, a leading star, faced with his 25-year old supermodel showing her age, will make a fool of himself with a seventeen year old mesmerised by his figure - the athletic one he shows on field and bedroom or the one in his bank account. He will try and fail to block publication of the story. Eventually he’ll find it cheaper to pay off the teenager, who will make the easiest 300 grand of her life, and the wife will stand Tammy Wynette-like, by her man’s earning potential.

The Queen will celebrate her diamond jubilee. It will all be jolly wonderful. People in countries round the world who take joy in poking fun at the British monarchy will be glued to their TV screens to enjoy the pageantry.

David Cameron will do all he can to take credit for the jubilee as he’ll have no other achievements to his name. He’ll get a three-point bounce in the polls.

The pope will piss off the followers of one of the World’s great religions. It might be the Catholics.

The Tea Party in the States will continue to delight us by achieving that ideal and elusive balance, sought by our best dramatist in some of their finest plays, between side-splitting caricature and and naked menace.

Sticking with the States, the day of rapture will be announced, will be prepared for by believers and will pass without their leaders offering a word of apology or learning an ounce of humility.

And on the ounce of humility front, starting in mid-December forecasters will tell us what’s going to happen in 2013 without the slightest mention of what they previously told us was going to happen in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Submerged by the Brazilian surge

2011-12-30T00:12:00.003Z

There was some shock in Britain this week at the discovery that the UK had been knocked off its position as sixth largest economy in the world to be overtaken – oh, indignity – by modest little Brazil. Modest and little because it has a population of only 190 million compared to our mighty 62 million, making Brazil barely three times bigger.

Well, OK, just over three times bigger.

I’m not quite sure what losing sixth slot means. We don’t make the cut? We don’t get to play in the final? That can’t be right. If you listen to the doom and gloom merchants, the final is already under way, and not the final match but the final act, and we’re all in it.

What I don’t understand is why it was such a big deal that most of the papers carried the story, as did the BBC. Surely if it's interesting at all, it’s a matter for congratulation, isn’t it? For far too long Brazil was struggling with poverty, crime and vile military regimes. They’ve apparently successfully put the military back into its box. Crime seems pretty much as endemic as ever. If they’ve started to make some inroads on poverty, well that has to be good news on two fronts out of three, and not something we should be getting upset about.

If anything, a bit more of the same would be good. Leaving to one side the issue of how much growth a resource-constrained world can stand, a bit more GDP per head would be good: in Brazil, it’s still about a third of Britain’s. So great that they’re doing better than they were, but a bit more of the same might be no bad thing.

As it happens, the people who brought us the news about Brazil’s move into sixth place do reckon they will keep doing better. Here’s the league table they produced:

Source: ECBR

Now that table is just brilliant, in so many ways. Look at Germany dropping like a stone, leaving it hovering only just ahead of the UK; France even falls behind us.

And look at Russia and India just powering up the rankings. Heady stuff.

But that’s not what I mean about the table being brilliant. The brilliant bit is the stuff around it.Let’s start with the word ‘forecast’, on the column for 2020. Did they imagine that without it we would believe that they’d built a time machine, travelled to some time after 2020 to take a look at the state of the world, and then had the goodness to travel back and tell us what they had found out, not as a forecast but as a matter of historical record?

Even more important is the source of the information. The ‘CEBR’ is the Centre for Economic and Business Research. That casts the notion of ‘forecast’ in a completely new light.

A Centre for Research of any kind just demands your respect, doesn’t it?
If I pop down to the pub with four or five mates and we talk about the dire state of the world, that’s just whinging over a drink. But if we raise some money and take an office in a prestigious location and stick a brass plaque on the door with ‘Centre for Research’ on it, we become a reputable authority deserving to be taken seriously. Even if round the meeting table it’s the same five guys, with the same beer and the same brand of crisps.

Things are pretty much the same in those great centres of contemporary power, such as rating agencies. As I’ve said before, they’re seen as forces of nature expressing the will of God, or perhaps the will of the Market, insofar as they make any distinction between God and the Market, but in fact they’re just twelve guys sat around a table condemning Greece or Italy or anyone else that attracts their ire, to several more years misery.

Of course, you can't really compare these people with my five mates. These are experts in economics or business. Which makes them special. And I really mean special: economics and business experts are the only people who prevent weather forecasters being at the bottom of the mockery pile. Which presumably making them fundamental to the forecasting profession. If only in the sense that the fundament is the bit we all sit on.

Here’s a little illustration.This is the Guardian on 27 December talking about the Italian plan to sell more bonds in an auction over the following two days: ‘In an indication that traders fear the auction could prove expensive for Italy, the indebted country saw its 10-year cost of borrowing rise by about 11 basis points to 7.13%, before settling back below the psychologically important 7%.’

The following day, when things turned out rather better than expected in the first phase of the bond sale, the Guardian blog ran with the headline ‘Successful Italian bond sale cuts its borrowing costs’.

Then on the 29th, after the second auction didn’t raise quite as much as the maximum hoped for, the paper gave us ‘full details of today's Italian debt sale’ and commented ‘analysts aren't impressed.’

Yeah, right. Would these be the same analysts who were so concerned about Italian debt on Tuesday, reassured on Wednesday, now reverting to pessimistic type on Thursday?

Personally, I’ll reserve my admiration for economists until they get that time machine built.

In the meantime, all I can say is – ‘good on you, Brazilians. Doing well. Keep it up.’

Crazy about the Moon

2011-12-29T07:25:00.000Z

The word ‘droll’ is one we don’t use enough these days.

Itmeans humorous, but in an odd or whimsical way and, since I rather like whimsy, I feel the word deserves an effort to rescue it from its gradual disappearance. To that end, what could be better that to dig out a little drollery from amongst the general misery that is the news these days?

An item that recently caught my eye and got me smilingwas the announcement that a group of scientists were launching a hunt for signsof visits by space aliens to our moon.

Desirable residence for ET and his mates?

Why the Moon? ‘Although there is only atiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon inthe form of an artefact or surface modification of lunar features,’ they wrote,‘this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for animmense duration.’

So – we’re looking there because it’s easier than lookinganywhere else.

I’m irresistibly reminded of the story of a man returninghome late one night who comes across another on his hands and knees under alamppost, anxiously searching the ground.

‘What’s the problem?’ asks the first man.

‘I’ve lost a contact lens,’ comes the reply.

‘Oh, I’ll help you,’ says our protagonist who gets downand starts looking too. But after twenty minutes of fruitless hunting,he stops and asks:

‘Are you sure you lost the contact lens here?’

‘Oh, no,’ says the other, ‘it was nowhere near here. Butthis is the only place with any light.’

We should salute those scientists for their keenness andtheir spirit of enterprise. And wish them every success in their droll endeavour.

Family time

2011-12-26T18:37:00.001Z

Christmas is a family time, isn’t it? So it was great havingNicky, our youngest, with us. He pulled his weight too, even to the extent oftrimming and scoring brussels sprouts for us. The product would be a major contribution to a most congenial Christmas evening with friends.

Contributing to human family and friends

Unfortunately the effort exhausted him, helped no doubt by acountry walk in the morning followed by a reasonably generous helping ofcountry beer.

And then to the feline component

It was wonderful to see that even in his unconscious state,however, he continued to contribute valuably to family life, providing an idealplace for Misty to take his own rest.

A merry Christmas in a Christian country

2011-12-24T09:36:00.005Z

Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, declares that ‘it is one of thehappiest characteristics of this glorious country that official utterances areinvariably regarded as unanswerable.

So when it was announced the other day, by no less a figure than David Cameron, our great British Prime Minister, or at any rate Prime Minister of Great Britain, that the country we shared was Christian, how could I possibly answer the claim except by immediately concurring?

Cameron was speaking on Friday 16 December, atOxford, addressing churchmen at an event to celebrate the fourth centenary of the King James’s Bible. This is the one I'm always being told is admirable for the quality of its poetry. So I opened my Bible at random and found myself reading 2 Samuel 8:2. Let’s see how the uplifting message blends with the glory of the language:

‘And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting themdown to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and withone full line to keep alive. And so the Moabites became David’s servants, andbrought gifts.’

Too right: I’d become a servant and bring gifts if I’d justwatched two thirds of my people cast down. Still, in that event I might perhaps console myself with the thought that it had at least been described in limpid and moving language – if that was my idea of limpid and moving language.

But back to the other saintly David: ‘...what I am saying isthat the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which makeBritain what it is today.’ Well, I’m sure he’s right. We don’t actually measurepeople in lines before we mow them down in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the rest wefollow to the letter.

So it’s about values. Cameron made that explicit. And valuesmatter to our Dave. As David Edgar pointed out in the Guardian on Monday 19December, Cameron’s speech contained a particularly telling passage:

‘A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as longas you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral betweendifferent values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; itbelieves in certain values and actively promotes them. We need to stand up forthese values.’

So that’s the hidden agenda. The government’s going to tellus what our values are. Amazing how these enthusiasts for small government loveto tell us how to think as soon as they get into office themselves.

‘We are a Christian country,’ Cameron assured us.

Interesting comment that. Lots of people say it, and I’veoften wondered how they measure it. Even Tearfund, which is a Christian charitywith no obvious interest in understating religious practice in Britain, claimsthat only 15% of the population attend Church regularly (at least once amonth). But if as he suggests, it’s values that matter to Cameron, perhaps whathe means is that our society lives by Christian principle.

On the radio the other day, my favourite Churchman, GilesFraser, quoted Luke 1:53. Luke being a book of the New Testament, as opposed toSamuel that I quoted above and which is in the Old, makes it perhaps a bettertest of what is specifically Christian. So what does it say? ‘He hath filledthe hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.’

Well, you be the judge. Unemployment is approaching athirty-year high. Among young people it is particularly disastrous, condemninga large portion of a generation to a life of employment insecurity. Socialbenefits are being withdrawn – one recent measure had the effect of plunging100,000 children back into poverty. Meanwhile, bankers’ bonuses, after a briefdip in 2009, are back up to the pre-credit crunch level. And last year topexecutive earnings rose by an average of 49%.

Filling the hungry with good things? Sending the rich awayempty? Not sure that’s exactly what’shappening.

Still, it’s Christmas Eve. Not point in being a killjoy.Have a merry Christmas, all of you! Whether you’re Christian, of some otherfaith or of no faith at all. And whatever you think Christmas may actuallymean.

Suitably Christian image for the season

... and a happy 2012! Which means one that proves the economists wrong...

Usurpation

2011-12-21T20:43:00.000Z

Something odd has happened to our cat Misty.

He’s alwaysbeen good looking of course, and he’s also always been fun, but to enjoy thatfun has in the past required a measure of sado-masochism. Particularly on mypart.

He became quite wild and, frankly, a bit surly.He insisted on being let in early in the morning to have a bite to eat, afterwhich he would slip out again, I presume for what the Americans so delicatelycall a comfort break, and then insist on being let inagain. He would go and lie down for a day’s rest on one of the beds. So hewas indoors at a time when, on most days, we were out.

In the evening he would have another snack and then demandto be let out, for most of the night, though he might come in for part of the evening, when he would lie on Danielle’s lap –she, by treating him with sternness and contempt, had won his respect andaffection while I, by meeting his every wish and even anticipating some of them– I would stand by the back door while he primped and preened himself until hedecided he was ready to go out – had earned only his utter disregard. If Itried to take him on my lap, he would scratch or even bite me. Scratching, followed by biting if I didn't attend to him quickly enough, was also the way he would attract my attention, when he wanted more food, some water or for me to get outof his way when he wanted to climb up on to Danielle’s lap.

Well, recently he’s completely changed. He comes up to bestroked, even by me, he purrs all the time, he spends far longer indoors(admittedly, the weather isn't really conducive to being outside) and he’sjust generally much nicer. Why, he’s even taken to lying on my lap whenDanielle’s isn’t available. When he does that my legs basically freeze so I don’t cause him any inconvenience, and I stroke him as though stroking a cat was going out of fashion, for just as long as he condescends to stay.

It’s quite extraordinary. He seems to like our little cornerof Luton and apparently feels more relaxed there. It’s a wonderful and mostwelcome change.

In one direction, though, Misty always showed great affection, even in his fierce and aggressive time. That was to our dogJanka. Misty will regularly lie on one of Janka’s mats and when she comes near,he tries to get her to lie down next to him, reaching out with a paw to try topull her alongside him. It doesn’t often work. She seems rather toresent finding him on one of her mats, as well she might.

Not that she dislikes him particularly. She just seems to regard him as a piece of the family that she’s content to have with us, but little more.

Now Janka’s very good at divining whenwe’re going to bed. She’ll ignore any number of trips upstairs when, somehow,she knows we’re going to come down again. She somehow knows, however, when it’s definitive, when we’re turning in for the night. Then she scrambles upstairs and into the bedroom, to stretch out on her no 2 mat, by ourbed (on Danielle's side, of course).

Not last night. I interrupted my tooth-brushing when I heard Janka emit a few low, querulous barks. When I emerged I found her trying to go intoanother bedroom – not ours at all. It was dark and uninhabited but still shewanted to get in. So I took a look at our room and understood why she was upset: Misty had appropriatedJanka’s mat. Clearly, as always, he was hoping Janka would join her, but thoughthat was obvious to us, it wasn’t to Janka. All she saw was a very large cathogging pretty well all of her much cherished bed. An interloper. An occupying force.A usurper.

The usurper ensconced on Janka's bed

She barked. ‘What the hell are you doing, you crazy cat?’she was obviously snarling, ‘find your own bed – that one’s mine.’

Eventually she drove him out. ‘Be like that,’ he seemed tobe saying, ‘I was only trying to be friendly.’

Eviction by the rightful owner

Janka couldn’t see the warmth. Misty couldn’t see that hehad invaded her space.

Some tension between the two of them, then. But for my part I’m just delighted that I’m not at the receiving end of any from Misty. I can’t remember when he last bit me. Longmay it remain that way.

Delicate elephant steps

2011-12-18T22:31:00.003Z

Finding out where an artist turns for inspiration can oftenraise a smile. For instance, I love the fact that the little door in Alice in Wonderland giving a glimpse of a beautiful and unreachable garden, is based on the door cut in wall of Oxford’s Christchurch Chapel, so that the real life Alice’s father could get easily fromhis garden into the main part of the college.

So it was a pleasure to find out why a good friend of ours inStrasbourg, Marie-Paule Lesage, decided to include images of elephantsin her engravings.

She came across elephants during two trips to Laos. Thefirst taught her to admire and delight in the paradox of the delicacy and lightness of these huge animals. She decided to go back and produceengravings based on elephants – and then have them help her with the printing, bygetting them to press the plates under their feet.

But it turned out to be an uphill task. Elephants arefastidiously careful about where they put their feet, and very sensitive aboutwho touches them. Having given up trying to get an elephant to help her withher printing, Marie-Paule decided just to try to draw outlines of their feet onthe wooden plates, but even that proved elusive work.

Lively dance between artist and elephant

Her film shows how the elephant would place a foot brieflyon a sheet of plywood and, as soon as she felt Marie-Paule’s pencil drawingaround her toes, she would pull it back.

The result? Thin, floating, eery lines, overlapping each other andpainting a picture of this strange dance between a gentle giant and an artist.

Marie-Paule Lesage tracings of an elephant's foot

Pot-pourri, some of it seasonal

2011-12-15T21:33:00.001Z

Wonderful notes, buta bit wide of the mark?

It’s the time of year - when could be better? - for listening to Bach’s wonderful Christmas Oratorio.

I particularly love the section ‘prepare thyself Zion’. In magnificent uplifting song, Bach calls on the nation tobe ready for great joy. But which nation is that? Why, it’s Zion, the spiritualhome of the Jews. And the joy? Why, it’s for the birth of Christ. So, in someof the most glorious music Bach wrote, and by that token some of the mostglorious music ever written, Bach calls on the Jews to celebrate the foundingevent of the Christian religion.

How can you avoid admiring Bach's sense of music? Second to none. His sense of spiritual significance? Probably right upthere with the best. His sense of irony? Well, could perhaps have tried harder.

One more for myoccasional series on toiletries: this WC is notdisabled.

There was a time when toilets that could be used by peoplein wheelchairs were referred to as ‘handicapped’. But as that term came to beseen as pejorative, it was replaced by ‘disabled’, leading to glorious noticesproclaiming ‘disabled toilet’, which ought to have made any possible usersnervous about trying their luck.

But now I see that we refer to them as ‘accessible’. Whichsuggests that toilets for relatively able-bodied people should perhaps be inaccessible.

They might be up on the roof somewhere, offering a challengeto prove that users really are ablebodied. While also providing them with the opportunity for a little exercise.

The Chancellorregrets

Saw a glorious sign in a hospital yesterday. It was on ablocked door, closing off access to a whole corridor. And I could hardlyimagine anything more appropriate.

Appropriate. And not before time

George Osborne, our esteemed Chancellor of the Exchequer, aswe Brits quaintly like to call our Minister of Finance, has been buildinghimself quite a reputation for closing the doors of opportunity and blocking off the way through to hope. And hospitals are a lot of the punishment.

Has he finally at least found the decency to apologise forthe pain he’s causing?

Cameron takes on the Eurobullies: a cabby's view

2011-12-12T22:38:00.000Z

Emerging from a London restaurant recently and looking for ataxi, Danielle and I were delighted to see one for hire just across the street.I hailed it, but with no luck: the driver simply didn’t see us and drove on.

It was no great blow since there was sure to be another along in a moment. But as we started walking we were surprised to see a young man running towards us.

‘Did you want that cab?’he asked.

‘Well... yes,’ I told him a little perplexed.

‘It’s waiting for you at the corner,’ he replied.

And it was. The young man had flagged it down for us. Acompletely gratuitous act of kindness that was as pleasant as it wassurprising.

That however proved the high point of the experience. We’dbarely been under way a minute or two before the driver asked us, ‘So thatCameron, eh? Were you pleased with what he did?’

There's a question I’ve never been able to resolve to mysatisfaction about London cabbies. I mean, they take that immenselytaxing qualification the ‘Knowledge of London’. If you see somebody travellingthe streets of the town on a small motorbike with a clipboard fixed to thehandlebars, it’s almost certainly a trainee cabby ‘doing the Knowledge’, trying out allthe routes, noting the one-way systems and the hold-ups, cramming for a tough exam.It can contain questions such as ‘it’s 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday. You have to getfrom Claridge’s Hotel to Liverpool Street Station. What’s the quickest route?’and the candidate has to provide one that takes account of likely trafficdifficulties, road works and the time of day.

I’ve always admired London cab drivers for having gotthrough such a gruelling test, though the real value of it was only broughthome to me in the back of a Paris taxi. I had just watched the driver spendingten minutes leafing unavailingly through a book of street maps, only to end byasking me ‘do you know where it is?’

What I haven’t understood is whether the ‘Knowledge ofLondon’ test also includes questions designed to weed out anyone marginally tothe left, politically, of Francisco Franco. There was a time when London cabbies,if they saw white faces in the back of the cab, would open a conversation with someovertly racist statement. These days they’re more circumspect, preferring touse code and talk about ‘immigration’ instead. And certainly on matters ofeconomics and finance their admiration for Thatcher is only limited by a sensethat she was a little too pink for them.

So the driver was calling on us to join him in unbounded admiration forDavid Cameron’s courage in standing up to the bully boys of Europe. There seemsto be a fairly general view in this country that by exercising Britain’s rightof veto against plans to amend EU Treaties to allow fiscal harmonisation within the Eurozone and save the Euro, Cameron has taken a position somehow analogousto that of Britain in 1940: you may remember the David Low cartoon of a Britishsoldier on a rock in a raging sea shaking his fist at a stormy sky and shouting‘Very well, alone’. Ah, glorious days.

Spirit of Cameron?

Trouble is, back then Britain really was standing aloneagainst a vicious dictatorship that had violently broken the bulk of Europe to its will, andfollowed up its triumph with further brutality at least the equal of any previoustyrant’s, backed by far more effective technology.

What Cameron has done is say ‘no’ to a group of partnernations who are in desperate financial trouble and have at last woken up to theneed to do something serious about it. Most of my compatriots seem to think ofthis act as heroic; all I can say is that their idea of what makes a hero is very different from mine.

At any rate, I’mpleased that there’s been some decision by the Eurozone nations to act. Not that ‘decision’ and ‘action’ are exactly the same, and it’ll be interesting to seeif they can really take the plunge. If they do, they’ll have demonstrated the old truth that crisescan be opportunities: it was always a matter of some doubt whether you couldhave a common currency without political union. The Eurozone may at last bemoving towards some degree – maybe a sufficient degree – of political union ina way it probably wouldn’t have had the courage to do without the crisis.

The ideal would have been to act with Britain; to fail toact would have been disastrous; to act without Britain is only a second-bestsolution, but a good second best, and it at least has the merit of getting adisruptive and obstructive presence out of the process.

And what about Britain itself? Cameron said he wielded hisveto to protect the City of London. So here’s one irony: the City is doing justfine, paying its leaders the kind of eye-watering bonuses that should have goneout of fashion with the financial crisis – for which they were among thechief culprits. And the other irony? If the Euro comes through its currentproblems, with fiscal union of its member states, it will be immeasurablystrengthened. And the financial centre of the Continent will be drawninexorably to Frankfurt.

So Cameron, by ensuring that Britain will not be representedat the meetings where this future will be planned, has sealed the lingeringdecline of the City of London he was ostensibly defending.

Our driver felt that Cameron deserved congratulation. Proof,if any were needed, that though the cabby’s Knowledge of London may well have been excellent, I certainly wouldn’t turn to him for advice on either politicsor economics. Even though he seemed to expect it.

E-Mail attack tutorial: the copy list

2011-12-10T11:27:00.001Z

Not enough research has gone into the use of the e-mail as an offensive weapon, and yet it must be one of the more common and effective today. In my usual spirit of willingness to contribute to the sum of public knowledge, here’s my take on a particular aspect of the attack e-mail: the use of the copy list.

Twice in recent weeks I’ve come across an interesting use of copy lists on e-mails by clients wanting to make a complaint. Let’s say, for instance, that in a piece of software, they’ve failed to notice (or rather remember, since you’ve explained it at least twice) that you have to press a button marked ‘OK’ before aparticular report is displayed.

‘Please immediately address the failure of the report todisplay,’ they will write, ‘since our users are all expecting to be able toview it today.’

And that copy list: it includes John, Mary and George fromthe correspondent’s own department; Carol and Anne who were at the meeting onThursday; plus of course Colin, Richard, Terry and the other Mary who werethere the week before; their boss, the correspondent’s boss, George’s boss; theboss of the whole division; two of his colleagues from the board of directors;and the guy from administration who always seems to be copied on everythingthough no-one’s quite sure what he does.

You scamper around trying to find out why the report’s notworking and, after an hour’s wasted effort which also involves interrupting twoof your colleagues and getting them to take a look, you establish there’s absolutelynothing the matter. You reply with something tactful like:

‘Thank you forbringing this to our attention. The report does now seem to be workingcorrectly. Could you please try it again, ensuring that you select it from thedrop down menu at the top of the screen, set the date and departments for whichyou want it to run and then press the ‘OK’ button?’

All that guff about the drop down menu and the selection ofthe department is just there as smokescreen, to save their blushes, so that itisn’t obvious you’re really just saying ‘come on, you moron, you didn’t clickon ‘OK’ did you?’

Back comes a response quarter of an hour later.

‘Thank you for getting back to me. The report does indeedwork correctly. My apologies, but I hadn’t realised that I was supposed toclick the ‘OK’ button.’

And who’s on the copy list? Just the guy from administrationwho always seems to be copied on everything though no-one’s quite sure what hedoes.

But I’m wise to this tactic now. When it happened to memost recently, I carefully copied all the names in the copy list back into my reply andbasically wrote, ‘OK, so now you’re admitting it was you that was being denseall along, are you?’ Not of course that I used those terms – I said somethingalong the lines of ‘given the position, does this mean that you are now happythat everything is working correctly?’ I then added a few more names to thecopy list. Two can play at that game, you see.

Though the response was in writing, I could practically hear the gritted teeth behind it. ‘Newinformation now available,’ his ‘unfortunate absence due to other commitmentsfrom the most recent meeting’, all the excuses, as a prelude to the admissionthat he was glad (yeah, right) to ‘acknowledge that everything does indeed now seemto be working correctly.’

And, I’m glad to say, there’s been no repeat of thecomplaint.

Why settle for second best, even in a quarrel?

2011-12-08T22:51:00.001Z

Why not strive for quality in every area of human endeavour?

Why not strive for excellence even in a field as apparentlyunpromising as animosity?

So when I saw an advert for ‘Better Rows’ the other day, I thought‘yes, why not? If you’re going to have a row, make it a good one.’

It could be an original approach to, say, marriage counseling,couldn’t it? ‘We can’t stop you arguing with each other, but we can atleast help you make sure the quarrels don’t descend into mere banality. We canmake sure they have that special quality that marks them out from theordinary.

Yes, I can imagine there’s mileage in that. Perhaps even a littlemoney to be made, if you play your cards right.

Then I looked at the ad again, and I realised they weren’tpromoting a superior form of argument at all. They were doing that rathertedious thing that advertisers like, of making two words, on different lines,share an initial letter.

Turns out it’s just about threading which, I’m assured, is a wayof thinning out eyebrows by pulling out individual hairs with cotton threads.

‘Doesn’t hurtat all,’ Danielle assures me. It amazes me the arrant nonsense women sometimes talkand expect us to believe.

At last - an end to bad arguments?

‘Doesn’t hurt at all,’ Danielle assures me. It amazes me the arrant nonsense women sometimes talk and expect us to believe.

And here's another sign:

Marks and Spencer offering 25% of men’s clothing.

But why should all men swear? Surely something to be celebrated,isn’t it?

And a lastthought:

That question I started with - why not strive for quality in everyarea of human endeavour?

It actually has a good answer: because sometimes it isn't worthit. I can't discover who originally said it, but there's a great statement I’vetaken to quoting rather a lot recently: if a job isn't worth doing, it isn'tworth doing right.

Amazing how often people spend a lot of time trying to persuade meto put real effort, real striving for quality, into doing something which therewas no point in doing in the first place.

I always end up in a row with them. Which may be why I'm temptedby the idea of better rows.

Losing your shirt

2011-12-05T13:11:00.001Z

Mankind loves its metaphors.

If the Euro collapses, economies will fall like dominoes.Our economies are in the hands of financial institutions playing in the lastchance saloon. The leading figures in finance are heartless incompetents incapable of raising their eyes above the shortest possible term and the satisfaction of their own greed.

Sorry, that last bit wasn’t a metaphor, merely a statementof fact, but you get the picture.

It strikes me that even quite trivial matters can be made to stand as metaphors for much more fundamental ideas. I find, for instance, that my progress through life can be traced by a humble article of clothing. It may not have the same ring as Shakespeare’s original words, but Imight say ‘all the world’s a stage, and one man in his time wears many shirts.’

As a child, my shirts were chosen by my parents which, Isuppose, meant by my mother. Little stripy T-shirts, for example, all the morecomfortable for their familiarity.

Then I went to a conventional English school withsmart white shirts and ties. For reasons that are now obscure to me, I used tobite the cuffs which must have limited the smartness, but no-one evercomplained.

As a young man I chose my own shirts but I was lousyat it, so I took refuge in the principle that I would never compromise so farwith bourgeois society as to wear clothes that complied with its demands forconformity. I wore ghastly worn out things that didn’t coordinate with the restof my clothes. Fortunately, the only people I was keen to impress were youngwomen and they seemed able to cope with the idea that it was what was insidethe shirt that mattered more than the outside.

I never learned the trick the son of a friend of mine later perfected,of popping down to his local charity shop and buying a string of shirts at apound each, then wearing them until they really couldn’t go any further withoutwashing, at which point he’d give them to the same shop and pick up somereplacements. A pound apiece, he felt, was a reasonable price for launderedshirts.

Then I started work. That principle of non-conformity had togo. I realised that I could after all compromise so far as to wear a suit, a ‘smart’shirt, even a tie. I who had sworn I would never be a businessman, andtherefore certainly never look like one, quietly slipped into the part with nosense of committing perjury.

Of course, I was a British businessman, so I dressed withexactly the casual elegance and eye-catching charm for which Britishbusinessmen have won a worldwide reputation.

And then time moved on again. A friend of mine pointed outto me how amused he was, at Parent-Teacher meetings, to see the men in casualtrousers and office shirts – as though they had only had the time for a minimalchange of clothes before heading out again, or at least wanted to give theimpression that they were that busy. That was a sufficient spur toget me to change my shirt as well as my trousers when I got home in theevenings.

As for the ties – these days I only wear one to certainmeetings and I put it on in the car park outside, taking itoff the moment I’m back behind the wheel, before driving away.

So where does that take me? The Bard assigned seven parts tohis view of man – the baby (‘mewling and puking inthe nurse’s arms’ ’ what a way with words), the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, theslippered pantaloon, and finally second childishness. And I’ve listed five shirtsin my life – the child’s, the schoolboy’s, the young man’s, the businessman’s,the father’s.

The other day I discovered I’d reached my sixth. I got homeand decided to slip into a shirt less formal, of thicker and warmer cloth. Butwhen I reached for it, hanging in our bedroom, a room we never heat, I noticed itfelt horribly cold. I decided that I was now at a stage in life when I couldindulge yet another desire for creature comfort and hung the shirt on aradiator in another room for a few minutes.

Just how completely I had reached the next stage of life becameclear when a little later I decided to put the shirt on. Back in thebedroom, I was shocked to discover that it was no longer there.

‘But I’m sure I had it just then,’ I said to myself. ‘Daniellemust have tidied it away’ (terrible how much easier it is to blame one’spartner than to accept responsibility for one’s own idiosyncrasies, isn't it?) (OK, OK, inanities not idiosyncrasies).

It took me a while before memory returned. By then theshirt was beautifully warm. But it certainly brought home to me how clearly myuse of shirts mirrored my ageing.

The experience also rather suggested that I might be closerthan I’d like to the seventh and final shirt. Which would presumably be somekind of bib.

Totally unrelated postscript

You can say what you like about Luton, but when it comes to the Christmas spirit, we know what it takes.

The Christmas spirit takes off in Luton

Not so much when it comes to taste, decorum or understatement. But revelry – for that we defer to none.

Words: seeking meaning, seeking action

2011-12-03T13:50:00.001Z

Recently I made the mistake of making some disparagingremarks about Ludwig Wittgenstein in the presence of one my closest friendswho, I’d momentarily forgotten, was a great fan of the philosopher.

I’m the first to admit that my criticism of his thinking islargely based on ignorance. But, in my defence, I would contend that I can doabsolutely nothing about that ignorance. It’s not as though I haven’t tried tocome to grips with Wittgenstein, but when his statements aren’t simplyincomprehensible, they seem to me of such banality is to take us nowhereforward at all. For instance (PhilosophicalInvestigations, Part I, section 43):

For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in thelanguage.

OK, is this saying anything else but ‘meaning is generallywhat we mean to say, but not always’? And, OK again, I may be rather miserablypragmatic about these things, but I really would like philosophy to helpunderstand the world or guide action in it. What I draw from this illuminatinginsight is that I may not always mean what I think I meanwhen I talk about meaning but in most cases I probably do.

Ludwig: no way through that I can see...

Enough to make me want to pick up a different book, which iswhat I generally do. That may explain why I don’t really understandWittgenstein much.

Now, in one of the books I recently picked up as an alternativeto his I read the words:

The expansion of choices to bemade is both an opportunity (thechoices can be made by oneself) and aburden (the choices have to be made by oneself).

Now that I regardas an insight. And limpid, easy to follow.

We in the West harp on endlessly about freedom, and inparticular freedom of choice, but the reality – and I recognise this in myselfas much as in others – we frequently want to escape the burden of decision. Notalways: in some areas of work and life I vigorously defend my right to take orat least contribute to decision, but much more often I’m happy to fit in withothers.

A couple of pages later the same writer picks an examplefrom healthcare, to show that freedom doesn’t have to mean the freedom to control. The fact that someone else controls making it available doesn't make a freedom any less valuable:

... the freedom to live in anepidemic-free atmosphere may be important for us, and given the choice, wewould choose to achieve that. But the controls of general epidemic preventionmay not be in our hands – it may require national and possibly eveninternational policies. If we do not have control over the process ofelimination of epidemics, there is no more to be said, as far as ‘freedomof control’ is concerned, in this field.But in a broader sense the issue of freedom is still there. A public policythat eliminates epidemics is enhancing our freedom to lead the life – unbatteredby epidemics – that we would chooseto lead. (65)

Not just clear and insightful, this statement has immediateresonance for me, working in the field of healthcare. In Britain, governments –of either party – have long trumpeted the importance of freedom of choice. You must it seems have the choice of whichhospital to go to for treatment.

But it’s a completely false choice. I don’t choose to go tothis hospital rather than that one. I choose to be free of my disease. Here whereI live, in Luton, 95% of hospital admissions are to our local hospital. Offeredthe choice, the vast majority of people choose the closest. The only surprisingthing about this finding is that some people find it surprising.

My friend challenged me to name a modern philosopher I’d preferto Wittgenstein. I mentioned a couple, but now I’d like to add a third: AmartyaSen whose refreshing perceptions on freedom I’ve been quoting (want to knowwhere from? Inequality Reexamined,Oxford 1995, pages 63 and 65 respectively).

Amartya: possible antidote?

Why are they so refreshing? Because he uses words to guideaction. Words for their own sake strike me as insipid in contrast.

Besides, if the venerable Ludwig is right, and I can’t evenknow whether I always mean the same thing by ‘mean’, what on earth would be thepoint in them?

Time to chill

2011-12-01T22:32:00.001Z

You have nothing to fear but fear itself Franklin Roosevelttold us. And in that spirit I have to say that little frightens me quite asmuch as how frightened we seem to be these days.

It’s doing us a huge amount of damage. We’re all worriedsick about the Italian economy, so the fearful people with enough money to make adifference start trying to unload Italian bonds, so the yield rises, so itbecomes more expensive for the Italian state to service its debts, so theeconomy gets worse. And yet, at root, the problem is only fear. If we all justsaid, ‘hey, it’s the Italians, it’s part of their charm,’ and had another glassof Barolo, the problem would be well on the way to resolution.

Exactly the same is true of terrorism. There was lots offear last week about the fact that the passport officers would be on strike onWednesday, opening our borders, or so it was claimed, to all sorts of sinistercharacters. There were calls for passport officers to lose the right to strike.

The 9/11 bombers got into the US through fully-staffedpassport control checkpoints. What on earth difference did they make? The bombers who attacked London on 7/7 2005were born and bred in this country. They didn’t even need to go throughpassport control.

Besides, 7/7 cost 52 lives, and there have been no otherdeaths from terrorism in Britain since. Over that period, nearly 12,000 peoplehave been killed on the roads. So if you’re concerned about saving lives,shouldn’t you start by banning cars rather than limiting the right to strike?

In any case, none of that is the point. The right to strikemay be immensely irritating when it’s exercised, but it’s still a fundamentalright. Before it was recognised as fundamental, we lived in societies whichwere significantly uglier than today’s – the occasional inconvenience seems aprice well worth paying to block any move back towards those times.

I never tire of quoting Benjamin Franklin, who was bang onthe money when he said ‘he who would give up a fundamental freedom for a littletemporary security deserves neither freedom nor security’.

This constant striving for safety is bound to fail anyway.I recently quoted Eliza Manningham Buller, former heady of the British SecurityService MI5, from her second Reith lecture of 2011. Let’s look at what she saidin the third:

‘It’s important to keep a rational perspective on terroristrisk. Bin Laden must have known that 9/11 would make this especially difficult,for at least two reasons: the endless images of the horror, recycled andreplayed round the clock by the 24 hour media, and the unrealistic view thatsociety can become risk free. The world is full of risks and dangers, only someof which can be reduced.’

That’s right. Anyone who wants to live in a risk-free worldshouldn’t be in this world at all.

So if you’re scared about terrorism, just remember it’sextremely unlikely to affect you. Worried about car crashes? Don't, you're probably not going to be involved in one. As for anxiety about the Euro, bear in mind that stoking up thegeneral sense of panic may make the very thing you fear more likely.

Not perhaps an answer to our woes,
but a great palliative

So my advice? Relax. Chill. Open that bottle of Barolo andset about emptying it. You may do the Italian economy some good, andyourself a lot more.

Saintly St Pancras

2011-11-29T20:02:00.001Z

A little while ago I expressed a fear that Christmas, thatdeeply spiritual time of year, the second most significant entry in theChristian calendar, might perhaps be in danger of falling prey to creepingcommercialism.

Now I may be alone in feeling that disquiet, but I have to admitthat I can’t entirely shake it off, that it remains forever a nagging concern atthe back of my mind.

I expressed that anxiety in connection with theappearance of a Lego Christmas tree inside the main hall of St Pancras station.It was curious therefore that my attention was caught this morning by a sign inthe same station that referred to that tree. Based on the carol ‘The TwelveDays of Christmas’, it gave twelve reasons for being in St Pancras:

Capturing the spirit of Christmas

One Giant Lego Tree

Two Lovers Meeting

Three Styles of Moët & Chandon

Four Sourced Hampers

Five Sporting rings

Six Tube lines stopping

Seven minutes to Westfield

Eight Monsoon scarves

Nine tales from Foyles

Ten Hamleys teddies

Eleven Neuhaus Truffles

Twelve Cath Kidston Crackers

Interestingly, fully three of these involve no logo andadvertise no brand (just in case you were wondering, the ‘two lovers meeting’ is about the rather splendid statue just inside the main entrance on the upper level – take a look, it’sgreat, especially the reliefs round the plinth – while the ‘five sporting rings’are the Olympic rings up for the 2012 games, so really a bit more advertising,and the ‘six tube lines stopping’ – well, that’s six lines stopping).

Funnily enough, I don’t fully understand the need to givereasons to visit St Pancras. I mean, it’s a splendid station and all that, asstations go, but surely the only reason for going to a station is to gosomewhere else, isn’t it?

That’s rather implied by the entry for ‘seven’, come tothink of it. I love the idea that one of the reasons to go to St Pancras isthat it’s seven minutes away from somewhere else, as it happens a majorshopping centre. ‘Come here, it’s a bit of a hike to somewhere else’. Not the most compelling advertising, wouldn’tyou agree?

Perhaps if that’s the standard of commercialism, there’shope for Christmas yet.

When the spooks get it right...

2011-11-27T20:49:00.001Z

Once again I’ve had the experience of having to reconsider some of my fondest convictions. This time I had my lesson from Eliza ManninghamBuller, former head of the British security service, MI5, in one of her BBCReith lectures this year.

Ex-spook chief with remarkable insights

The unease that comes from feeling personally targeted camewhen she referred to those sceptics who tended to see security and freedom asopposed, with her firmly on the side of the former. That was, I shamefacedlyhad to admit, certainly my position, to classify among those inclined to limitrather than to defend liberty.

Her view is that there is no contradiction between securityand freedom. For her, MI5’s mission is to protect both. As she pointed out,twice to stress the point, the stated objective of the organisation is todefend parliamentary democracy.

Within this general framework she made two specific pointsthat struck me particularly.

On the use of waterboarding by the United States, she said ‘torture is illegal in our national law andin international law. It is wrong and never justified.’

Like quite a few opponents of the use of torture, I’vetended to argue that it doesn’t generate good intelligence. She on the otherhand believes that it sometimes does, but points out that the argument thatlifesaving intelligence was sometime obtained by it, ‘and I accept it was, still does not justify it. Torture should beutterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives. I amproud my Service refused to turn to the torture of high-level German prisonersin the Second World War, when, in the early years, we stood alone and there wasa high risk of our being invaded and becoming a Nazi province. So if not then,why should it be justified now?’

It was chastening to listen to her. The argument overwhether torture is effective or ineffective is irrelevant – it’s quite simplywrong. Turning to a utilitarian justification only weakens the moral argument,which is more than strong enough on its own.

As it happens, though, she comes out with something close toa utilitarian argument herself, almost as an afterthought.

I believe that theacquisition of short-term gain through water-boarding and other forms ofmistreatment was a profound mistake and lost the United States moral authorityand some of the widespread sympathy it had enjoyed as a result of 9/11. And Iam confident that I know the answer to the question of whether torture has madethe world a safer place. It hasn’t.

Giving up the moral high ground weakens us and attracts morerecruits to the ranks of our enemies.

But Manningham-Buller made another point that struck mealmost as strongly and much more personally. It concerned the rule of law. She declared:

The Security ServiceAct of 1989 was long overdue - the government of Mrs Thatcher was not, atfirst, convinced of its necessity - but its importance was critical. TheService’s experience of working on a proper legislative basis has been wholly positive.But even at that early stage in 1989 we knew its importance.

Like most people, I would have expected the spooks to do allin their power to resist legal oversight. So it was a bit of a surprise to findthat Manningham-Buller was, on the contrary, only too pleased to have a properlegal framework for her work.

Funnily enough that chimed with a personal experience of myown, though not perhaps at quite her level.

My work involves using large quantities of healthcareinformation, often including confidential material about identified patients. Followinga series of scandals some years ago – you know, the usual things: lost USBkeys, stolen laptops, all the mundane disasters that can happen with unsecureddata – regulations were so massively tightened that it became almost impossibleto do my job.

Recently, though, good sense has prevailed. Regulations havebeen revised and intelligent procedures put in place. People have realised thatthere is no point in having a system so restrictive that it’simpossible to do the very things they regard not only as legitimate, butactually necessary for the sake of good healthcare.

For instance, a key thing whenlooking at how an individual case has gone is to be able to look at other casesfor the same patient – but that means knowing who the patient is, which in turnmeans working with ‘patient identifiable data’, the very stuff the regulations hadoriginally made inaccessible.

The problem's been met by setting ways of doing things that mean that, as long as we stick to rules about who can see what, how it needs to behandled, how long it is kept and so on. And, funnily enough, I find itsurprisingly relaxing to work that way: I know that what I’m doing is withinthe rules, it isn’t going to expose me to any unpleasant consequences with thelaw, and at the same time it’s making sure that patient confidentiality ispreserved.

And since, in other conditions, I’m a patient myself, I’m reallyrather happy about that last point.

So it’s good to be able to say with Mannigham-Buller that my‘experience of working on a properlegislative basis has been wholly positive’. I know what she means.

On the bigger points, though, about the morality and natureof a security service – well, I can’t claim to have anything like her insight –only, despite myself, to rather admire her point of view.

A safe haven, but short on appeal

2011-11-24T20:00:00.001Z

At the risk of makingit look as though I spend a disproportionate amount of time in our smallest roomw, I can’tresist the opportunity to share another toilet sign with you.

It read ‘Out of order. Please do not use.’

What’s special about that, I hear you ask? We see it all thetime. Very irritating it is too, but profoundly banal.

Ah, but you’ve missed the point, I reply. This sign was onthe inside of the door. What it wassaying was ‘this loo is absolutely fine, but out there things are seriouslymessed up. Probably best not to take the chance of going back.’

Probably good advice

Not far off the mark, I’d say. Probably good advice. Sadly,though, even if I do spend longer intoilets than is strictly customary, I have to confess that I find thepossibilities they offer frankly limited. Not that attractive a spot in whichto take refuge from the evils of the world.

So I screwed up my courage and plungedback out into the maelstrom we call daily life. Scary stuff, but moreentertaining.

Still, I appreciate the advice from the lavatory. Nice to know someone is looking out for us that way.

What's to be so relaxed about?

2011-11-22T20:16:00.001Z

It’s sometimes worrying how easily one can be sucked into asuperficially plausible view to which normally one wouldn’t give any house room atall.

For instance, like rather a lot of other people I’ve tendedto go along with the idea that it’s no bad thing that Greece and Italy now have‘technocratic’ governments. I’m not quite sure why I should be relaxed aboutthis idea, because ‘technocratic’ only seems to be a synonym for ‘unelected’. Ilike to think of myself as a bit of a democrat, so how can I reconcile myselfto this obvious travesty of accountability?

And yet when I saw an Italian being interviewed on thestreets on that heady day when Berlusconi finally fell, and heard him say ‘now,we just need to get things sorted out, there’ll be time for elections later’ Icaught myself nodding and agreeing. But what happens to the principle of onecitizen one vote?

In the cases of Greece and Italy we seem to have reduced itto 15 or so non-citizens, one vote.

On the one hand, we have Merkozy, one half of which at leasthas the merit of being relatively civilised, though the other half is just awould-be Napoleon who worries all the time about his physical stature,presumably because any other kind is beyond him. He has all the qualities that won Berlusconi the general admiration he so richly deserves, as well as the career exit he had done so much to earn himself and which, we can but hope, Sarko might soon emulate.

Less impressive half of Merkozy

Then there are two or three international financiers, theheads of the European Central Bank, the IMF, whatever.

And there are the credit rating agencies.

Because let’s not forget that one of the main drivers behindgovernment policy and government changes recently is the need to satisfy the‘markets’.

And that means the credit ratings people.

Have you noticed howpeople talk about them as though they were impersonal? I heard it last week.‘Standard and Poor’s are considering downgrading France’s debt.’ Standard andPoor’s? They make it sound like an oracle of some kind, a handing down of tabletsof timeless truth from the Lord himself on top of a mountain in a desert.

Just bear in mind that S&P’s is basically twelve guys insuits sat round a table in a board room in New York and voting - yes, voting– about whether Italy or Iceland or the US itself deserves needs ticking off.If seven decide to reduce the grading, a bunch – which can mean some hundreds hundredsof thousands – of people lose their jobs or their pensions or their savings.

And what qualifies those seven to make these decisions?

They’re accountants. Or economists. Or they’ve spent someyears in – wait for it – financial services.

Feeling relaxed about seeing them calling the politicalshots can’t be right. Surely?

Season's greetings from our sponsor

2011-11-20T14:39:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago, a friend from Marseille wrote tocomplain about an initiative to include the name of a sponsor in that of the City’s historicstadium, the Vélodrome.

‘Will it become the ‘Vélodrome Nutella’?’ he asks. Andgoes on to wonder whether Bernard Delanoë, mayor of Paris, isn’t missing atrick. ‘Why not turn the Champs Elysées,’ he suggests, ‘into the Champs L’Oréal – because we deserve it?’

Funnily, not morethan a couple of hours after reading his remarks, I discovered that St James’sPark, as iconic in Newcastle as the Vélodrome is in Marseille, was beingrebaptised the Sports Direct St James’s Park stadium. It seems that there’sa bit of trend starting here.

My friend sees cynicism in all this, quoting Oscar Wilde’sview that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value ofnothing.

Well, maybe. On the other hand, isn’t this just a matter of turningsome grand old monuments into tributes to business? And doesn’t businessperhaps deserve them? After all, isn’t it to some our greatest businesses, especially in financial services, that we owe today’s climate of economic stability and widespread prosperity?

On the other hand, I was a little disturbed by a sight thatgreeted me as I came through St Pancras International station the other day.The main hall now houses a massive Christmas tree made of Lego bits.

Lego gets the tone right

At first sight, I was amused by it – it’s striking and funnyat the same time. But then I thought again.

Christmas is the second mostimportant feast of the Christian year after Easter (yes, though you wouldn’tknow it from the scale of the celebrations, the death and resurrection trump, inliturgical terms, the birth. You’ve got to admit that birth’s more common). This is a time of year devoted, by Christians at least, to giving thanks forthe birth of the Lord and Redeemer of all mankind. Turning it into anopportunity for advertising by Lego, however charming, might seeminappropriate.

After all, what would it say about our moral qualities inthe West if Christmas became just another massive binge of commercialism?

Postscript with no relevance to the above: we’ve juststarted watching the second series of TheKilling. It’s proving as gripping and powerful as the first (I’m talkingabout the original Danish version – I don’t know about the American remakewhich I haven’t watched).

What’s extraordinary is that Series 2 manages to be strikingly fresh infeeling, even though the formula is exactly the same: a main story that is aclassic thriller based around murder (but with an extraordinary central characterin the detective, Sarah Lund), a family struggling with events risking to tearit apart, and a reasonably likeable political figure having to cope with a crisisof fearful complexity without being able to place full trust in his staff.

Well worth watching.

Toiletries

2011-11-17T23:06:00.001Z

‘This toilet is reserved for the use of Intellect’ read thesign on the door.

Putting the works of the mind in their place

Now I have certain pretensions to intellectualism – purelyamateur, you understand, I remain a mere dilettante – but I have to admit that the sign may convey a particular, and fundamental, truth .

If you'll excuse my bad language, I'm afraid that I've read rather a lot of intellectual work which I'd have to describe as such a pile of crap that I can only assume the author is simply taking the piss. It therefore seems particularly appropriate and insightful to reserve a toilet specifically for intellectual use.

Of course, the toilet may be only for the use of visitors to an organisation that has chosen to call itself, perhaps a trifle pretentiously, ‘Intellect’,and whose offices I happened to be visiting. But how much duller an explanation that would be - I reject it out of hand as unfit to puncture the monotony of the everyday.

The sign put me in mind of a note of Voltaire’s which I have never been able to track down, but would nonetheless like to believe was by him: ‘Sir, I am in the smallest room in the house. Yourletter is before me. Soon it will be behind me.’

Postscript on a related subject: after a conference dinner tonight, the speaker who happens to be doctor, told the story of a visit to a toilet in the Department ofHealth building in London. Written across the cubicle door were the words ‘2000people work here. Right now, you are the only one who knows what he is doing.’

He also described life as a bowl of shit, and a doctor’s role as steering patients to the shallow end. Not perhaps the most noble description I’ve heard of medicine, or of life for that matter, but is it wholly without merit?

Back to the quiet life...

2011-11-15T23:46:00.001Z

Such a relief to be out of the woods at last.

No, no, I don’t mean that the Euro crisis is over, or thatItaly is back on an even keel. On the contrary, Italy’s new Prime Minister isgoing to have to live up to his name: Monti has some steep hills to climb.

What is finally over is the bad time for poor oldJanka, our black-haired, rasta-curled dog.

She and I have a ritual of slipping out at theend of each evening for the final walk of the day. It’s a precious time for usboth. Conversation is, I will admit, limited but she trots along perfectlyhappily sniffing the curious smells she comes across, while I listen to an audio-bookor a podcast on an i-phone. We may walk in silence, but it’s a companionablesilence, which helps us drain the last of the day’s stress before settling forthe night.

But between mid-October and mid-November all that gets seriouslysubverted. It starts with Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, enlivened withits fireworks. It builds from there to Guy Fawkes Day, when we Brits lay on aspecial feast for our young children, to celebrate the torturing to death of aCatholic dissident four centuries ago – and we celebrate with fireworks. Inbetween, there’s Halloween which has nothing to do with fireworks but, hey, ifyou’ve been letting them off for Diwali before and will be letting them off forGuy Fawkes immediately after, you might as well keep letting them off for Halloweentoo.

Since the people who set off fireworks seem to feel the needto get some serious practising done in preparation for the major festivities,no night goes past without bangs occurring somewhere.

And as a result, at home Janka cowers at our feet, while on the streetshe turns and bolts for home, only restrained by her lead, by which she dragsme back towards the house.

This evening, however, we had our walk without incident. As we strolled home, I realised, with blessed relief, that we had emerged from our bad times for another twelve months.

Janka: able to relax again at last

Janka has regained hercomposure. And we can enjoy our evening ritual again, in perfect contentment.

Next: how we got Italy back to stability and solved the Eurocrisis.

We shall not see his like again. Or won't we?

2011-11-12T20:22:00.001Z

It has taken until today, we hope his last day in office,for me to understand something that had been bothering me about Silvio Berlusconi: something about him seemed strangely familiar, but I couldn't place it.

What was it that I was reminded of whenever I saw him?

Then this evening, as I watched film of him being driven awayfrom the Parliament in Rome and bestowing on us that smile with all the charmwe’ve come to expect from him, it suddenly struck me: he reminded me ofLewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland.

Judge for yourself.

The Cheshire Cat as seen by John Tenniel

Berlusconi demonstrating his charm.
Spooky, isn't it?

Obviously, the resemblance between the two characters isn’ttotal. The Cheshire Cat did have a certain air of mystery about him, whereasthe only mystery about Berlusconi is how he managed to maintain his hold overthe Italian people for so long. And the Cheshire Cat, though he could often bedeeply irritating, did have some redeeming features.

The similarities, though, are striking. And one of them is a matter of concern: the Cheshire Cat would gradually disappear with the smile going last, andBerlusconi is doing the same; the Cheshire Cat would then reappear unannouncedat inconvenient times, and Berlusconi has shown a tendency to do that too; so the frightening thought is, could he pull the trick off again?

I find myself looking around for a wooden stake.

Still, let’s stay positive. For now he’s on his way, and forthat let us be properly grateful. It’ll be wonderful to see the Cavaliere’sback – if only so that we don’t have to see that smile.

Lest we forget

2011-11-11T20:53:00.001Z

Today was the eleventh day of the eleventh month and, byhappy chance, of the eleventh year of the present century.

At eleven o’clock this morning, Britain held a two-minutesilence in memory of the dead of the First World War. And the Second World War.And all the other wars we seem to keep on fighting with monotonous consistency,generating ever more dead. Even though the number of dead we suffer tends to beincomparably lower than the number we inflict, particularly among civilians,every single one of them is a sad blow that deserves to be marked.

So 11 November is not a cheerful moment in this country. TheFrench have a holiday; we have two minutes silence.

Many people like to tell me about the timing of the FirstWorld War Armistice. Their voice becomes incantatory and their eyes open wide, asthey intone with mystic solemnity ‘the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of theeleventh month’, with awestruck resonance.

Now I like to think I’m as sensitive to symbols as the nextman, but this particular instance leaves me uncomfortable. To explain why, letme just mention four names: George Edwin Ellison, Augustin Trébuchon, GeorgeLawrence Price and Henry Gunther.

George Edwin Allison fought at the Battle of Mons, one ofthe first engagements of the war, in 1914. He was killed at 9:30 in the morningof Armistice day, an hour and a half before the fighting stopped, the lastBritish death.

Augustin Trébuchon was the last French soldier killed, at10:45. He was on his way to tell his comrades that soup would be servedimmediately after the cease fire – talk about dying for a hot meal.

George Lawrence Price was the last Canadian and lastCommonwealth soldier killed. He was hit by a sniper’s bullet at 10:57 and diedat 10:58.

The last allied soldier killed, an American, was HenryGunther; he’s recognised as the last soldier to die in action in the war, whenhe was charging a position held by Germans who knew the armistice was going tostart – sixty seconds later – and were trying to tell the Americans to stop.

In all, nearly 3000 men were killed between the moment the armistice was agreed and the moment it came into effect. It may just be me, butthat sounds like a high price for a symbol.

Perhaps it isn’t inappropriate that we mark the anniversarywith solemnity rather than good cheer.

Wreaths of poppies, the symbol of World War One,
at the Cenotaph in London

Postscript. Thisfeels like a good place to tell a First World War story.

Adolf Hitler served for the whole of the war. He didn’t havewhat you might call a glittering career, never making it beyond the rank of corporal– he was considered for promotion but his superiors decided that he didn’t haveleadership qualities, which is amusing: the German word ‘Führer’ means leader.

Though he didn’t move far up the ranks, Hitler did win acouple of iron crosses, one second class, the other first. He was a despatchrunner. The action that won him the second and superior decoration took placeat a moment when communications to a front line unit were completely down. A lieutenanttold Hitler and one of his colleagues that if they could get a message through,he would personally ensure that they both won the Iron Cross first class. Bothgot through, both got back.

That was an action that certainly took courage, but thelieutenant’s superiors felt that it wasn’t perhaps the kind of conspicuous gallantryfor which a top decoration should be awarded. Hitler must have shared thatscepticism: in later life, the story told was that he’d won it by personallycapturing fifteen French soldiers – that certainly sounds more glorious thansimply running from point A to point B, even under fire.

But the lieutenant was a man of his word and argued for amonth to ensure both men got the decorations he had promised them.

Now that’s not a bad story, I hope you’ll agree.

What turns it into an outstanding one is that thishonourable man, who took such trouble to ensure that Hitler wasawarded his highest honour, was a Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann.

A Jew.

I fear the Greeks and can't cope with Latin

2011-11-09T20:29:00.003Z

It took me years andyears to realise that I wasn’t going to master Latin. An appalling language. Forinstance, the subject moves around the sentence and you have to track it down whichmeans you have to recognise it. Since it has a different form in each of thesix declensions, to say nothing of the sub-forms of the third, the task feelsinsuperable, at least to me.

I’m not saying I didn’t get anywhere with it. In theeighteenth century, German or Nordic scientists, aware that no-one was evergoing to learn to read their languages, used to write in Latin. In fact, at thetime, not many could cope with English – Voltaire was exceptional in mastering it,since most of his compatriots couldn’t even be bothered to try, a traditionproudly kept alive by their descendants to this day. Even so, though English scientistsalso wrote Latin (viz Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica) theywould occasionally stick to English (viz Newton’s Opticks with its interesting take on spelling).

It may have been that refusal of English-speakers to use an international language consistently that eventually forced the worldto adopt ours. Helped a bit by the power of the US dollar, of course. And not alittle by the power of the US bayonet.

Anyway, back in theeighteenth century, much scientific material was in Latin. So when I wasworking on eighteenth-century science I’d occasionally have to read Latin,which was always a curious experience. I could usually work out that the authorwas talking about planetary orbits, for instance, but couldn’t always tell whether he wassaying that they were elliptical orthat they weren’t. A little learningcan sometimes be a frustrating thing.

Ultimately I’ve had to accept defeat. Now my knowledge of thelanguage – until perhaps I get another chance to have a go in retirement(assuming I get to retire some day) – really comes down to a fewhalf-remembered tags.

One of these is ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’, which seemsto be saying ‘I’m timid when confronted by Danes and iron women’ but I’m reliablyassured actually means ‘I fear the Greeks when they come bearing gifts.’

Well, last week was when the rest of Europe tried to make agift to the Greeks. Or was it perhaps the other way round?

First the Eurozone offered Greece a pile of money, but onlyon condition it spent a lot less. Sounds like one of those ‘good news, bad news’things, doesn’t it? ‘Have all this lovely money, just don’t use it.’ Then thesoon to be ex-Prime Minister said he’d have a referendum and ask hiscompatriots whether they’d like a tad more austerity, reduced pensions and alot fewer jobs, because people usually say ‘yes’ when asked that.

My first reaction to the idea of holding a referendum wasone of horror. For God’s sake, I wanted to scream, there isn’t any other offeron the table. What if the electorate says ‘no’? You think Merkel and Sarkozyare going to say ‘well, in that case,we’ll dip a bit further in our pockets and come up with some more?’

So the moment I heard he’d withdrawn the referendum promise –or threat – I was relieved. But then I began to wonder. I mean, what if theGreeks had said ‘no’? Maybe it’s timesomeone did.

In a sense, that’s what the ‘Occupy’ protests are all about.They’re not demanding anything in particular – more money spent on schools,less on the military, or whatever. They’re saying ‘the way we’re going isn’tright. Let’s check the direction of travel before we go any further.’

And they’re right. What’s being imposed on the Greeks isjust more of the same, which of course means a lot less. Less public health.Less education. Less employment. While the elite who got Greece into this messin the first place will contrive to look sorry while hanging on to their loot. In Britain, bonuses inthe Finance sector fell from £14 billion in 2008 to £12 billion in 2009 – only togo back to £14 billion in 2010. The pay of Chief Executives of our biggestcompanies rose by 49% last year. Some people are doing just fine in this crisis,mostly the ones who got us into the mess and then demanded we pay for it.

Those people in the tents around St Paul’s are saying thatthere must be a better way.

I’d have feared it if the Greeks had brought us a giftconsisting of a ‘no’ in a referendum. But perhaps it would have been no bad thing to face that fear and deal with it.

Virgil's Aeneid warned us about the Greeks. I think.

Postscript. It’snot all bad news at the moment, is it? It looks like Berlusconi’s on his wayout. Of course, I won’t believe he’s gone till he’s actually been replaced – hehas a way, like the monster in a horror film, of re-emerging again and againwhen you think the hero’s finally got him. But I guess we can at least start tohope that this is, finally, the beginning of the end.

Mockery can unite us

2011-11-07T22:14:00.000Z

What an edifying spectacle Europe presents for us thesedays!

David Cameron retains some residual popularity, in Britain, or at least England, though it stops dead at the White Cliffs of Dover.

Silvio Berlusconi is the butt of everyone’s humour, thatbeing the only response possible, other than despair, at the idea that the fateof the Eurozone, so dependent on Italy, is in the hands of a man facing atleast three separate trials on matters of fraud and moral turpitude.

No-one can stand Sarkozy, seen as a latter day Napoleon,minus the charm. To say nothing of the vision, courage, competence or ability.

Angela Merkel is running out of road. Even Barack Obama, celebrated to the point of notoriety for keeping his cool in all circumstances, seems tobe losing patience with her.

As for George Papandreou, with his flip-flops between caving into the pressure on Greece or resisting it, he has spent the last few days simply drifting inexorablytowards the only solution on which his countrymen seem virtually unanimous:that he should go.

Now I’ve been a committed European for years, strongly infavour of turning the European Union into a single, federal state.

Don’t the the present circumstances provide a powerful argument in favour of thatposition?

Surely, if only from the point of view of efficiency andcost effectiveness, it would make much more sense to have a single governmentfor the whole of the Union? What on Earth is the point of having all thoseseparate little chiefs to despise and drag through the mud? Why don’t we havejust one?

Then we could channel our contempt at just one set of leaders and leave them to get on with getting up the noses of the Americans and Chinese on behalf of us all.

A convenient target for all our mockery?

Postscript – another train experience: This morning, sitting across the aisle from me, was a womanin her thirties dressed for power but with great taste and fine aesthetic sense.

As we pulled in to StPancras station, she rose from her seat and from the luggage rack above her pulled anexquisitely tailored coat – one of those that swings through the air, like acloak with sleeves. She wrapped it round herself in one graceful movement, hittingme on the side of my head and sweeping across my face in a way that would have sent my glasses flying to the ground had I been wearing them. Next came herhandbag, large but finely designed, which she swung the other way – had I notducked it would have taken me in the forehead. Finally, she floated gracefullydown the carriage, as self-controlled and self-confident as ever, andcompletely oblivious to the injuries she had so nearly cause me.

At least, I hope she was oblivious. I can forgive thecondescension which made her unaware of her impact, literally, on the peoplearound her; I would find it more difficult to excuse her arrogance if in fact she knew what she’d done and chose to ignore it anyway.

Physician,heal thyself

2011-11-05T18:17:00.001Z

My commuting has been a bit disappointing for a while now.

Imean, the trains have been fine – largely on time, efficient, comfortable. Butsomehow I’d come to see them as more than that, as sources of edifyingencounters, providing me with many interesting insights that I could sharehere. And yet – for several weeks, there’s been nothing.

So it was a delight last night to find myself at atable with two young women who lived up to all my expectations.

When I firstjoined them, they were exchanging anecdotes, mostly drawn from one of the finegossip newspapers with which this nation abounds. Children had been born tosemi-celebrities, some within marriage, some not; there had been weddings,there had been divorces. One item was sufficiently salacious to be read out:

‘A couple have been forced to abandon plans to marry beforethe birth of their first child, when their parents, meeting to make thearrangements, realised the awful truth that the young people were brother andsister.’

To be honest, even I found that one interesting. A lot ofstories down the ages have dealt with the fatal attraction of siblings broughtup in separation – there’s plenty of mileage in that one yet.

In the meantime, my travelling companions had switched tomore personal matters.

‘Do you think Anne is pregnant, then?’ asked one of them.

‘I think she’d like to be,’ replied the other.

‘Well, if she is, Astrid will get pregnant immediately too,you know.’

That struck me as quite an interesting proposition. Myknowledge of human biology may not be what it was, but I didn’t think that thiswas how the process worked. The statement worried me even more later, when Idiscovered the profession of my travelling companions.

There was a fundamental problem with these putative pregnancies.

‘I don’t want Anne or Astrid to get pregnant. I’d hate to giveup our skiing trips and we’d have to if they couldn’t come with us.’

That sentiment I could understand. I was beginning to feelthat a week in a chalet alone with either of these two might indeed be a littlepainful.

At that point the train pulled out of the station. As thoughthat was a signal, a bag appeared on the table and out came a ring-pull can ofwine.

‘It’s Froglet,’ one of them announced. At least I think shesaid ‘Froglet’ – it’s hard to believe that anything with pretensions to be regardedas wine could be called ‘Froglet’, but that was what I heard.

She took a sip and made a face. ‘It’s perfectly awful,’ sheconcluded.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied her friend, ‘I’ve always liked Froglet.’

They stopped complaining and both continued sippingthroughout the rest of the trip, so I assume they managed to reconcile themselves to its poorquality.

Next came out a heat sealed plastic box of chicken legs. Thefirst woman made several increasingly energetic but repeatedly unsuccessful attemptsto open the packet.

‘It’s like they didn’t want us to open it at all,’ she said,‘perhaps they think the smell’s so bad no one should eat it on a train.’

They both tittered merrily, but the thought didn’t preventthe second woman attacking the lid with her teeth. She got it open, immediatelyconfirming the first one’s judgement: the contents smelled diabolical. Liketheir conversation, which they’d been conducting at a level that ensured all around could enjoy it, it was clear that most of the passengers in thecarriage were now being allowed to share the aroma of their meal. Why, even the young woman opposite me,of Indian extraction and therefore almost by definition trained to behaveimpeccably, couldn’t prevent her nose wrinkling before recomposing her featuresinto a mask of studied neutrality.

Odd that the women only started their meal once the train wasmoving. Is there some code of etiquette that bans eating on stationary trains? It wasn't until the first jolt that they got the food out, but they were well stuck in before our carriage had properly left the platform.

Their conversation next turned to that other absorbing subject,money. There were complaints about the scale of pension contributions, and thenof indemnity insurance – at which point a disagreeable suspicion began to formin my mind, quickly confirmed by the next subject.

‘Yes, I really want to get into repatriation medicine. Youknow – someone gets sick in Australia. They fly you out there business class,you’re there four days, and then you fly back. OK, you have to have some poor buggerwith you on the return, but nothing ever happens: they never let them get on aplane until they’re fully recovered. And – they pay you for every hourfrom the moment they send you out. And they give you a £60 allowance for every meal.’

‘£60? It’s actuallyquite difficult to spend £60 if you’re not having wine.’

‘Exactly – I tell you it’s brilliant.’

I felt a chill in my soul. These were young doctors. Demonstrating, as if anydemonstration were necessary, that medicine is a vocation, driven by altruismand concern for others.

Wine, woman and gossip: all the elements of a vocation.
With vile-smelling chicken legs and a dose of cupidity to add some spice

Now I’m on the brink of that stage of life when things startto fail and you have to get your money’s worth for all the contributions you've made to the healthcare system. You can imagine the delight with which I wascontemplating the prospect of being some poor bugger in the caring hands ofthese two. Especially as I rather assumed their table manners were probably agood indication of what their bedside manner would be like.

The public address system announced, ‘we are now approachingour first stop, Luton.’

‘Luton?’ cried one of them, ‘oh doom.’

It made me feel quite proud to be getting off the trainthere. Because though I'm the first to criticise the many failings of Luton, last night it had one great thing going for it: it wasn't going to contain those two young ladies a moment longer than it took the train to leave the station.

Time to take back our souls. With or without the Church

2011-11-02T22:52:00.000Z

It’s a tough confession to make, but I may have been guiltyin the past of lying in church.

This happened on occasions when I attended Christianservices, usually because I knew that it would give pleasure, or at leastcomfort, to someone else if I was there.

In that spirit, I intoned with the others that I believed ‘inone holy Catholic and apostolic Church’.

Now that wasn’t strictly a lie. After all,I certainly believe that such a Church exists. Several, in fact, and eachconvinced that theirs is the only one. Still, I’m not convinced that my beliefreally honours the spirit of the affirmation.

We laid claims to lots of other beliefs too. That Jesus Christwas the son of God, begotten not created, born of a virgin. That he was takenand crucified and on the third day rose again. The whole shooting match,basically.

Except that actually it wasn’tthe whole shooting match. Not by a long stretch. That was made clear to me, inthe kind of blinding flash someone really insightful provides when he explainssomething obvious that has previously escaped your attention.

It was a Guardian articlethat pointed out that the Nicene Creed we so glibly repeat, jumps directly from the conception andbirth of Christ to his death and resurrection. All his life inbetween is just left out. Gone is the reference to its being easier for a camelto get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom ofHeaven. Gone is the driving of the moneylenders from the Temple. Gone indeed isanything that might have made a structure of power and privilege at alluncomfortable.

As the writer of the article pointed out, the Nicene Creed expressedthe views of the Roman Empire when it decided to adopt Christianity as a statereligion, without being keen on giving up any of its prerogatives. It markedthe transformation of Christianity from a religion of the poor and oppressedinto a religion of the strong and wealthy.

Who wrote that article? Giles Fraser. And last week heresigned as Cannon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Why?

Now that’s a question worth asking. And answering.

As I mentioned in my last blog, we had visitors from France overthe weekend. On Saturday, we popped by the tented demonstration outside thedoors of St Paul’s Cathedral. The protest is directed against the ethicaldecline that allowed the wealthiest members of our societies to bankrupt us andthen continue to subsidise their lifestyles at our expense. Where else inEngland would be more appropriate for such a protest than the City of London, home ofour financial institutions, as well as of St Paul’s?

I have rarely seen so peaceful a demonstration. ‘Gentle’ isprobably the right word for it. When we arrived a rabbi was preaching andoccasionally chanting. Near him stood a Hindu holy man, and there were priestsof various denominations of Christianity around too. The atmosphere was that ofreligiosity, of deeply but not violently held belief.

St Paul's protesters: in tents but without evil intent

And yet the Cathedral had shut its doors, on the pretextthat the demonstration represented a health and safety threat. Next theauthorities went to court to ask for the demonstrators to be moved on; policeaction was expected within a few days, with a possible descent into violence.

No wonder Fraser felt he had to resign. As he said himself,he could imagine Christ being born in one of those tents. So what we wereseeing was the clearest illustration of one of the two sides of Christianity. Theofficial Church had closed its doors on those who were appealing for justiceand charity, and now it was planning to use state power against them. It was the Nicene Creed, Christianity with its compassionateheart torn out of it.

Since then, however, the other side of the faith hasreasserted itself. Graeme Knowles, the Dean of St Paul’s who announced the closure ofthe doors, has also resigned. And now the Church has dropped its legal actionand opened them again.

It seems that the tensions that the Council Nicaea tried tosettle live on unresolved in the Church to this day.

To me, though, what matters in all this is what it says ofattitudes in society.

Those people in front of the Cathedral represented no threat.They were not aggressive. But they were differentfrom the image that our leaders want to project for us all. And in today’satmosphere of stultifying conformity, such difference is not to be tolerated.

Well, the Church’s change of heart means it will tolerated alittle longer. And perhaps on the shoulders of the protest will come a moregeneral awakening that says ‘I too have no wish to be the same as those whoclaim to lead us. Why model ourselves on them? They destroy and then conspicuouslyfail to make any contribution to rebuilding.’

If enough people pick up the challenge, then maybe we canput the soul back into a belief system hollowed out in the Nicene Creed. Andgive all of us, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Moslems, Christians and others bettervalues to believe in than those of the City of London.

Even the non-believers.

Even the ones who haven’t always been strictly truthful inChurch.