Ostriches not unicorns

The trick is to pick your myth and then follow it unswervingly

It’s often said that if you want to solve a particularly challenging problem, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, the crucial step is to admit that you have a problem at all in the first place.

Surprisingly, I’ve now discovered that this simply isn’t the case. The far more effective way of dealing with such difficulties is to deny them. You decide that they don’t exist and, lo and behold, they go away.

To illustrate the point, here is a statement on anti-Semitism from the Labour majority, the Corbynist faction that now dominates the Party.

Our attitude, from the outset has been, “there simply isn’t a problem. Labour is anti-racist, so we can’t be anti-Semitic. Which means that if there were ever a trace of anti-Semitism anywhere in our ranks, we would ruthlessly drive it out. Which is why there is no anti-Semitism anywhere in the Party.”

All we have to do is look around to see how well our approach is working. Barely anyone talks about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party any more, do they? Why, we were even able to readmit the MP Chris Williamson to full membership of the Party, after a brief suspension, with hardly anyone noticing. That’s why objections to the readmission were so muted.

You may have forgotten about Williamson’s case, since it generated so little discussion, let alone controversy. He’d originally been suspended for suggesting that, though we were doing little enough about anti-Semitism, even that much was excessive. He, like so many others in the current majority faction, had identified measures against anti-Semitism as entirely superfluous.

We have declared ourselves anti-racists, so we must be.

We deny the existence of and anti-Semitism in our ranks, so there can be none.

Some have been so churlish as to point out that we were forced to suspend Williamson again within two days of his readmission. But that’s OK. We’re simply going to ignore that too.

What comrades need to understand is that denial is one of the most powerful weapons available to a political party. See how well it’s working for us on Brexit: we have refused to take any position for or against the EU. Who can doubt that it is this subtle and masterly stance that accounts for our soaring position in the opinion polls and our outstanding performance in the recent European elections?

Some have accused us of chasing unicorns. This is a vile slander. There is no such thing as a unicorn. But there is such a thing as an ostrich. It, we are told, hides its head in the sand on the basis that any danger it can’t see must be non-existent.

A noble beast. A fine response. An excellent role model we intend to keep following.

After all, look how well it’s worked for us so far.

BoJo: do or die, as long as someone else does the dying

… his ancestors had always been amongst the first to get to grips in any conflict. In every siege, every ambush, every stricken dash against fortified emplacements, some de Worde had galloped towards death or glory and sometimes both.

I mentioned only recently how much I liked Terry Pratchett, a novelist whose stature I feel is still not recognised as it deserves. One of his novels I particularly enjoyed re-reading was The Truth. Its central character is William de Worde who, though descended from a long line of aristocrats, is determined to separate himself from his lineage, insisting, for instance, on being called ‘Mr de Worde’. All the more because there are figures in his background who would always brainlessly rush to the front of any desperate charge for death or glory (or, as Pratchett points out, both) in battle.

Charge of the light brigade:
De Worde style death or glory... and mostly death

The trouble with such glorious figures is that as well as dying themselves, they often take a lot of others down with them.

That all came to mind this morning when I read the words of that fine fellow Boris Johnson, soon to be leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (less united than once it was, but still held more or less together by legal bonds that are hard to break). He declared that the said Kingdom would leave the European Union on 31 October, “do or die”.

In other words, Brexit would happen, with or without a deal agreed with the EU.

There are diehard Brexiters who, it seems, firmly believe that Britain can leave the world’s biggest trading bloc without any agreement, and suffer no ill consequences. Few with any trace of economic or political sense share that belief. Leaving such a bloc must inevitably have harmful effects on Britain.

BoJo, as many of us like to call him, whether or not we like him, is not quite as clever as he often suggests he is. His tenure as Foreign Secretary, for instance, was littered with gaffes which a brighter statesman could easily have avoided. Certainly, a more sensible one. Even so, he’s got to be smart enough to know that a no-deal Brexit will do the country untold damage.

But he probably doesn’t care. Because unlike the death or glory de Wordes, BoJo’s “do or die” embodies a strict division of labour. He sees himself handling the doing, while others see to the dying. He, and indeed his friends, will be just fine. He shares the background of entitled privilege of the de Wordes, and that will protect him against the consequences of his recklessness.

“Death or Glory”. His glory. Others’ death.

That’s not pure metaphor. Far fewer will die, of course, than will struggle through, surviving rather than living. But some will die. We’ve seen it already. The Institute for Public Policy Research has calculated that had trends from the first decade of the century continued, something like 130,000 deaths could have been avoided in Britain between 2012 and 2017. The IPPR told the fullfact website that, while all these extra deaths couldn’t simply be attributed to austerity, a combination of that sad endeavour and other poor policy choices are likely to have contributed to these preventable deaths.

That’s what nine years of Tory government have done. And BoJo is promising is something harder still.

Boris ‘Do or Die’ Johnson

He would love the opportunity of doing. But he’ll certainly leave the dying to others.

At least the de Wordes put themselves on the line alongside their followers.

Corbyn, or socialism in words

First, a short cautionary tale for our times.

The top man in an organisation appoints a friend as a senior executive. She proves a most loyal supporter, if far less kind to the other employees, fiercely driving them to accept her rigid discipline, and rewarding them far less than they probably deserve, and certainly need. He awards her a 15% salary increase, putting her on nearly four times the median household salary in Britain, while she limits everyone else to 2.2%.

That’s not just less than a sixth of what she got, it’s less than the rate of inflation (measured by the way retail prices are going), so it’s effectively a pay cut.

It’s the story of Britain over the near-decade of austerity: real wages fell year after year until 2016, since when they have flatlined. Meanwhile, the number of millionaires is rising, and the total fortune they hold keeps going up. Those least able to absorb the pain of austerity are paying the price, while a self-serving elite makes sure it’s well protected from its worst effects.

Real value of wages over the near decade of austerity
from Full Fact

That’s Tory Britain for you.

That’s what Labour exists to combat, and never so energetically than when the Left is in charge. So with Corbyn as leader, we would expect the fight to be waged all the more intensely.

Except that the cautionary tale I started with wasn’t about the Tories. That was the Labour Party. The top man is Jeremy Corbyn. The tough operator he appointed and then rewarded with a 15% increase is his chief of staff, Karie Murphy. Speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, one staff member said of her:

It’s got to the stage where people are afraid to speak up as individuals, because when you do you get sent to Siberia. When an individual has that much power in an organisation, it’s a concern.

Guardian photo of Corbyn with his Chief of Staff, Karie Murphy
Apparently a dangerous woman to challenge

All the worst aspects of a bullying, top-down, private-sector organisation, in fact.

Now when I first posted on this subject, a Corbyn supporter replied to me to point out that decisions on pay weren’t in the leader’s gift. My first response is that this is a standard Corbynist copout: anything good that happens is all down to the revered leader; anything bad is somebody else’s fault.

My second response is that Corbyn is constantly promising a fairer, more equitable, ultimately more socialist distribution of the resources of society. That’s going to take a huge effort from a Labour government (assuming Corbyn can get into government at all, which is by no means a foregone conclusion): convincing parliament to pass the necessary legislation; working with a lot of public and private-sector organisations to ensure not just the letter but the spirit of the measure is applied; convincing many reluctant if not frankly hostile groups to accept the principle on which it’s based.

If Corbyn can’t even get them accepted within his own organisation, the Labour Party, what possible hope is there of his achieving anything in society in general?

But there is another and far more worrying implication of this story.

Does Corbyn really mean what he says? There is a conviction on the far Left, as on the far Right, that anything they say must be correct simply because they say it. Corbyn claims he is a socialist, so what he says, and what he does, is socialism. Consequently he can apply a deeply iniquitous and thoroughly right-wing wages policy, and it’s socialist because it is he who is behind it.

Might that not be exactly what he does if he ever gets into Number 10? Let himself be convinced that a wrong-headed approach to wages must be the Labour way, because he incarnates Labour values? His track record rather suggests that this is just what he’s doing inside the Labour Party, after all.

Or, to put it in simpler terms, if he can’t even implement socialist values within his own party, why should anyone trust him be a socialist for the nation?

Manchester: a near miss

It’s fun to be back in Manchester. It’s one of those cities stretching across northern England – Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds – that fell on hard times after a prosperous past, but are rebuilding themselves a future full of dynamism.

Canal Street, centre of the Manchester gay scene
and one of the liveliest places in England

We nearly moved to Manchester decades ago. At the time, I was working for a company which had an office up there from which it seemed to make sense that I might work. That was particularly so because we could have afforded a significantly more comfortable house in North West than the best we could buy – and were living in – down in the South East.

Danielle was open to the idea, though she felt it was a bit of a wrench. We’d started making friends in Dunstable, where we were living, and it would have been a shame to abandon the life we were building. I still felt we should consider the possibility, if only because Manchester seemed a great deal more interesting than a small and increasingly run down market town which was little more than the intersection of two major and heavily trafficked roads.

It was not to be.

We set off for the drive North Westwards in bright sunlight. I told her about the many exciting possibilities the move would open up to us. In the warmth and under a blue sky that sounded all the more convincing and we travelled in good mood and full of optimism.

However, Danielle wasn’t terribly well. The closer we came to our potential new home, the worse she felt, until a few miles out a hammering headache took agonising hold of her.

And then, with no warning, the thickest clouds I have ever seen covered the sky. They were so dark as to be virtually black. You know, it’s like those pieces of clothing described in catalogue as ‘charcoal’, suggesting some kind of dark grey, when frankly they’re like pitch. Honestly, I had to put my headlights on at midday.

The mood suddenly lost all its buoyancy. Danielle, who’d been smiling and cheerful, began to look increasingly unhappy or even scared, until she could stand it no more.

A pleasure for which some uncomfortable commuting is a price well worth paying.
“I can’t move here,” she said.

I wanted to argue with her but frankly couldn’t. I don’t believe in signs from the gods but, hey, if ever there were such a sign, we were being served one just then. “Don’t move here,” it was saying loud and clear.

It was just as well. A year or so later I changed job and, if I had to move at all, it would have been to Worcestershire rather than to Manchester – a long way south.

On that occasion, my eldest son’s classmates actually raised a petition to stop us going. “Don’t take David away from us,” they demanded, with an impressively high number of signatures. Again, it was clear that I was up against an irresistible force, and I conceded and resigned myself to commuting an hour and a half in each direction for the next two or three years.

Oh, well. I was clearly stuck. But, on the other hand, we kept the friends we’d started making back in Dunstable. Indeed, they remain some of our best friends to this today.

A pleasure for which a difficult commute was a small price to pay.

Shoot the messenger

It’s wonderful to see Donald Trump firing three of the five polling organisations he previously had working for his re-election campaign.

Even more wonderful is the reason why: he was responding to leaked internal polls which showed him behind some potential Democratic opponents and way behind some others.

Bring me the news I want to hear or fear the consequences

That’s naturally immensely gratifying in itself. We’re still a long way out, of course, but the lower Trump’s starting point in his battle for re-election, the less likely he is to close the gap, and the better that is for all of us. That’s all of us including the majority of his own supporters, incidentally: the poor and left-behind who allowed themselves to be deluded into believing that he would do something for them.

It’s also a real pleasure to see Trump responding this way. He doesn’t like the message, so he shoots the messenger. And declares:

We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled. We’re winning in Texas very big. We’re winning in Ohio very big. We’re winning in Florida very big.

The evidence is neither here nor there, what matters is what he believes.

This, as I mentioned last time, is the way Fake News works. You present things the way you want them to be, and then you believe it, because it’s what you want to swallow. Ironically, that doesn’t stop Trump – inevitably – denouncing any news he doesn’t like as fake news. He made that clear in a tweet:

The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!

The numbers his own pollsters gave him had to be wrong, because they didn’t support his conviction, true because he wishes it so, that HE WILL WIN AGAIN!

Well, he might win again. But for the moment at least, the omens are against him. Those who prefer evidence over belief have to wonder whether his victory is quite as assured as he claims.

Especially as the evidence came from people he had himself employed to reinforce his wishful thinking. He must think it extraordinary that they reached the opposite conclusion. That’s nothing short of treason, a word he’s keen to throw at others while trying to duck the accusation himself. And at the very least, it represents a failure to deliver what was required.

It’s only a wonder he kept two of the organisations on and fired only three of them.

Fake news and 'The Truth'

Terry Pratchett was one of the finest English writers of recent years. That’s not as widely understood as it might be, perhaps because he wrote fantasy novels and too few people realise that they are, in reality, not concerned with his invented ‘Discworld’ but with our own life here on Earth, to which he held up a revealing mirror. Or a searchlight.

Terry Pratchett: excellent writer whose insight we sadly miss

The Guardian recently published an article on the Pratchett biography due to be released next year by Marc Burrows. He discovered that Pratchett, who started his professional career as a journalist, conducted an interview in 1995 with Bill Gates of Microsoft. Pratchett correctly foresaw the arrival of fake news; Gates mistakenly countered that there would be an authority on the net which would classify material and allow readers quickly to establish that certain items were simply untrue. How wrong that was…

Pratchett had said:

Let’s say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the second world war and the Holocaust didn’t happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research which has undergone peer review and so on. There’s a kind of parity of esteem of information on the net. It’s all there: there’s no way of finding out whether this stuff has any bottom to it or whether someone has just made it up.

Lisa Forbes, newly-elected MP for Peterborough
Confused about the anti-Semitism of posts she decided to like

It’s ironic that he chose an instance of anti-Semitism to illustrate his point. Today, we see a great deal of anti-Semitic material on the internet, masquerading as anti-Zionism, and plenty of people are empty-headed enough to endorse it unthinkingly. That’s what Lisa Forbes did, before becoming the new Labour MP for Peterborough in its recent by-election. But there’s Islamophobic material out there, and anti-vax material, as well as stuff about conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, the moon landing or pretty much anything else you care to mention, so that the right can fall for it just as readily as the left or the simply naïve.

Pratchett also wrote a novel to explore these problems, aptly entitled The Truth. It focuses on William de Worde who launches the Discworld’s first daily newspaper, the Ankh-Morpork Times. As William comes to grips with his new profession of journalism, he begins to discover some of its more curious aspects.

In the Palace of Ankh Morpork, William attempts to collect information about an offence alleged to have been committed there. But the Commander of the Watch (the Chief of Police), Sam Vimes, refuses to tell him anything useful. However, when William needs something from the kitchens, Vimes is at least good enough to point him in the direction. William decides to poke around there, until he’s challenged.

‘… who are you, askin’ me questions?’

‘Commander Vimes sent me down here,’ said William. He was appalled at the ease with which the truth turned into something that was almost a lie just by being positioned correctly.

He’s absolutely right. Nothing helps a lie gather momentum so much as having it transmitted through a statement that is strictly true. Vimes did indeed send him that way. But Vimes gave him no permission to interview anyone or, indeed, continue his investigation of a crime on which the police were working. And yet, isn’t that exactly the impression William’s words give?

The problem, in William’s view, is summed by an old saying about lies and the truth: ‘…lies could run round the world before the truth could get its boots on.’ But what gives that statement its power is the thought with which he follows it up:

And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them.

Here’s a lovely example of both these notions: that a dash of truth makes fake news more palatable, and that it will be more quickly accepted and spread by people who want it to be true.

In the recent Peterborough by-election I mentioned before, Labour surprised most commentators by holding the seat. Many had expected it to be won by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. For Labour to hold it after the previous MP, also Labour, had been forced out following criminal action, was remarkable. And many remarked on it. One such remark I saw on social media, claimed that it was a great success, especially as Labour not only held the seat but increased its majority.

Clearly, the writer really wanted to believe in a Labour triumph in the seat. And since the candidate had indeed increased the majority, the justification for this belief might seem solid. Until we look at more evidence. A little more truth, in fact.

The Labour majority at the previous election had been 607 votes. At the by-election the majority had climbed to 683. So it’s perfectly true that it had increased. But it had increased from a wafer-thin majority, by a wafer-thin amount, to another wafer-thin majority.

And what triumphalism over the election result doesn’t take into account is that Labour’s share of the vote fell, and by a far from wafer-thin amount: from 48.1% to 30.9%, a drop of 17.2%.

Indeed, taken together, the vote of the right-wing parties – Conservatives and the new Brexit party – took 50.3% of the votes, an absolute majority. Labour only won because the right-wing vote was split.

Labour had something to celebrate in holding a difficult seat. But triumphalism? That was hardly called for.

Unless you’re ready to believe a distortion made possible by, as Pratchett shows, positioning the truth in a particular way. Which you’ll be all the happier to do if you just want to believe the lie in the first place.

Just as Pratchett warned.

Into every life a lot of rain must fall

It seems I’m having bad luck with water at the moment. Apparently it’s a matter of water, water, everywhere, enough to make me think.

First, as you may remember, there was all that rain falling on my head in Yorkshire at the beginning of the week. Because I had a little free time before my meeting next day, I’d carefully chosen myself a hotel out in the country where I could have a restful and yet bracing walk.

Had I done so, I would have left with a suitcase full of soaking clothes. The rain was drenching down.

Fortunately, I was about to head for somewhere far warmer and, or so I hoped, far dryer: the banks of Lake Como in Northern Italy. This had all occurred by happy chance: a colleague from New Zealand had left the UK when her visa ran out and was having to leave the country before her replacement could start. She agreed that a brief handover between the two of them would be useful, but knew she was unlikely to be allowed back into Britain so soon after her visa’s validity ended.

On the other hand, she was happy to meet our new colleague in one of the countries which she was visiting as part of a sort of grand tour before heading back to the antipodes. Italy fitted the bill. At first, our intention was to meet in Milan, but then we discovered that hotel costs had risen to obscene levels in that fine city. But in Como, on the lake to which it gives its name, prices were about a third as much.

A cheaper alternative to go to a place many would give their eye teeth to visit? Well, we didn’t hesitate.

And indeed it’s beautiful, warm and dry. At least, dry overhead. But it seems I’ve hit more problems with rain all the same. The only difference is that, this time, it’s not falling on me but some distance away: in Switzerland. Where it’s mixing in the rivers with snow melt and forcing the lake’s water level up.

So that we couldn’t actually drive to the hotel where we’re staying. The road was awash. It made me feel like a variant on the Mohammed and the mountain saying: if I couldn’t go to the lake, the lake would come to me.

That's my hotel down at the bottom.
The other side of the floodwater

It is now lapping at the walls of the hotel, making me glad that my room’s on the fourth floor. Still, it’s not terribly menacing at the moment, and most people seem to be enjoying the experience far more than they’re getting worried by it. Especially the kids: there’s something particularly appealing to a child, it seems, to be able to ride a bike straight through a long and deep puddle covering a city street.

Kids enjoying the floods

You’re on the road but in the water. On your bike. What’s not to like?

Still, it feels to me that there’s a lesson for me to learn here. It seems I’m fated to be followed around by rain, in some form or another. And like anyone that tries to outrun his fate, I am only in fact running towards it.

Still. If it gives the kids some fun on their bikes, who am I to complain?

Now that May is out

Whenever I look down from the aircraft window at the kind and welcoming city of Valencia, where I live but which I’m leaving yet again, I wonder at the irony of an existence that has taken me somewhere so pleasant but prevented me staying there any length of time.

The Jacarandas are flowering in Valencia

The feeling is particularly strong when I leave my home bathed in sunshine in 24-degree weather (the mid-twenties are my favourite, warm enough without being too hot) and I’m heading for England where, the pilot assures us, the temperature has struggled to get into double digits and the rain is chucking it down. Why, I wonder, am I exchanging early summer for mid-autumn?

Joyous welcome at Heathrow

Ah, well. England has many charms – the glorious green, for instance, the upside of all that rain – and I suppose one just has to live with the conditions, doesn’t one? After all, it’s often said of the country that it has no climate, only weather. Cold, wet June? Unexpected, maybe, but Britain is the country where it’s best always to expect the unexpected.

In any case, England has no monopoly on lousy weather. Valencia may have less but when it lets itself go, it can be thoroughly maddening. My family from Scotland joined us in Valencia at Easter and had to put up with day after day of rain, while the weather at home was apparently glorious.

Bad weather is international. Indeed, it provides one of the more entertaining illustrations of the cultural links across nations, at least in Europe. Weather wisdom shows just how strongly we all belong to the same family, across our continent, and that our differences are matters of degree only.

For instance, many countries have old sayings warning people of the need to keep wearing warm clothing later than they might think. In England, for instance, we say:

Ne’er cast a clout till May be out

Just for clarification, this has nothing to do with getting the leader of the Conservative Party out. Theresa May’s out already, and the pantomime to select a successor’s already under way. Topical though it might be to interpret the proverb as relating to her, it is in fact meteorological, not political.

I’ve always enjoyed the double ambiguity of the expression.

The first ambiguity is easy to resolve. Since a ‘clout’ can mean a blow, ‘cast a clout’ sounds like ‘throw a punch’ or slap someone. But it only takes a moment’s reflection to realise that in this context, ‘clout’ must be clothing in some archaic form of English, so we’re being told, ‘take off not a single article of clothing’.

But what about ‘May’? It could mean the month of May. My suspicion, though, and other authorities seem to agree, is that it might mean the ‘mayflower’, hawthorn. So don’t abandon any of your clothing until the hawthorn’s in bloom – which happens at the end of April or beginning of May. A little early, in my judgement, given my experience of what an England do in late April or early May.

Hawthorn in bloom:
England can be lovely when the may is out

The French are more explicit:

En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil; en mai, fais ce qu’il te plait

“In April, don’t take off so much as a thread; in May, do what you like.” France is further south, of course, so maybe they can afford to take more of a chance.

Strangely, though, travelling further south still, to Spain, leads to a far less optimistic view of the weather prospects:

Hasta el cuarenta de mayo, no te quites el sayo

“Until the fortieth of May, don’t take off the tunic.” Possibly they mean a smock, rather than a tunic. It’s a more rustic form of traditional clothing, and I suppose most of these weather proverbs have agricultural roots.

Isn’t it amusing that all three nations have such similar advice? All three use a little epigram, with an internal rhyme and a witty structure, to generate a smile and stick in the memory. There is only a small difference on the dates. But that’s a mere detail, in contrast to the similarities between nations that obviously belong to the same family and have so much culture in common.

It’s curious, too, that the Spanish advise going right into June before casting a clout. The fortieth of May would be the tenth of June. That felt inappropriate as I made for the airport this morning, on just that date, through the sun and warmth.

It seemed far more applicable in England, where the pilot had to warn us about stepping from the plane to the jetway, where driven rain had made the floor slippery. And where the first thing I had to do once I’d recovered my suitcase was pull out a sweater and a waterproof jacket (yes, I’d had a little foresight).

In England, I had to put on an extra clout or two though May was well out. For any understanding of the word May: blossom, month or Conservative leader.

Basel: enjoying the present and remembering the past

What a joy it was, to be back in the grand old Swiss city of Basel, built around the elbow of the Rhine when that majestic river turns from its early westward course, to run straight up the map to the North Sea at Rotterdam.

It’s an enchanting and exciting city. That may be a surprise, given the Swiss reputation for stolid respectability. The qualities the nation seem to prefer are hard work and honesty, you might think, not the pursuit of the unorthodox and original.

Well, you’d be mistaken.

The honesty bit is perhaps not quite as obvious as one might imagine, in a country that is home to Nestlé. And Basel itself is a major centre of the pharmaceutical industry, not a sector that has won itself many plaudits for its probity and commitment to equitable behaviour.

Still, on the other side of the coin, I love the fact that Basel can give you sudden and surprising glimpses of a different Switzerland with an attractive sense of humour.

Helvetia on the 2-franc coin, and on her holidays in Basel

In this instance, the other side is that of the 2-franc coin. It shows Helvetia (Switzerland) wearing a cloak and carrying a spear and a shield. One of my favourite spots in Basel has a statue of Helvetia when she decided to take a holiday from the coin. She’s sitting on a low wall with a glorious view of the river below. She has flung her cloak over the wall, and her spear and shield are propped up behind her, next to the suitcase she’s travelling with.

Also on this visit, I went out for dinner with three colleagues. It was warm enough to eat out of doors, in a lovely courtyard off one of the main squares. And what a delight it was to suddenly find an entire choir from the Music Academy assemble practically next to our table and entertain us for half an hour of a cappella singing. What greater pleasure is there than an unexpected one?

A Choral surprise

Still, it isn’t just for the beauty and charm that I like returning to Basel. It’s also the city closest to the French village where Danielle, later to be my wife, was living when I first met her. At that time, she was at the centre of a group of young people who were open, warm-hearted and fun. Where by ‘fun’ I really mean ‘party animals’.

One of my most vivid memories of that time was driving a Range Rover belonging to people I barely knew, down a woodland lane at night with branches whipping its sides, as I tried to keep up with the far smaller car which Danielle was driving at speed towards a clearing where we could light a fire, cook sausages, drink too much and while away the night listening to young people (well, we were all young, but they were younger) strumming guitars and singing songs about such respectable subjects as the consumption of cocaine (not that they actually took any).

Now, I was in Basel for the most sensible, you could almost say Swiss, of motives. A gentleman called Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis had spent time studying in the city and then kept up a long and voluminous correspondence with his former professor and one of his sons.

I can say without boasting that I was at one time the world’s leading authority on Maupertuis. That really is no boast, because I revelled in that rank simply by virtue of being the world’s only authority on him. Obscure? The term could have been invented for people who suffered his fate: he enjoys the somewhat paradoxical claim to fame that his reputation was destroyed by someone far more talented and celebrated. In Maupertuis’ case, that was Voltaire and let me tell you, when Voltaire destroyed your reputation, it stayed destroyed.

To give you an idea of how Voltaire dealt with his adversaries, let me pass on an anecdote which I’ve never been able to verify but I feel ought to be true: Voltaire is said to have replied to correspondence from a critic, “Sir: I am sitting in the smallest room in the house. Your letter is before me. Soon it will be behind me.”

Back then, I was in Basel to consult the large collection of manuscript letters in the University Library. Now libraries tend to be warm, quiet, tranquil places. Eighteenth-century paper has a peculiar, not unpleasant smell, which has nothing of the stimulant and it. And reading handwriting two and a half centuries old requires a lot of concentration.

If you’ve spent the whole of the previous evening with a bunch of party-goers, and the evening tended to be loosely interpreted so that it extended into the small hours – sometimes the big hours (to give you an idea, this was the only time in my life that I missed seeing the dawn because we were simply too late for it) – then sitting in a library poring over manuscripts is a difficult thing to do without your eyes beginning to close.

There were occasions that I just had to get out, breathe some air and even take a brief nap. The closest place I could go to fulfil both aims was the botanical garden behind the library. An enchanting place. And it had benches.

Sadly, even though I’m far from tall (my father used to tell me I suffered from ‘duck’s disease’ – arse too close to the ground), the benches were too short even for me to be comfortable. I suppose the advantage is that it kept my naps short so that I got back to my manuscripts quickly: it’s hard to sleep much with the edge of a bench digging either into the back of your neck or into your ankles.

In the evening, of course, the partying started all over again.

I made a point of getting back to the Botanical Gardens on this visit. A happy trip up Memory Lane. The memory of discomfort, you see, is far more pleasant than the experience of it…

Bench in the Botanical Garden
Not ideal for sleeping

Draft Dodger D-day tribute

Seventy-five years ago today, my father was flying along the Normandy coast taking photographs of what was happening on the beaches below, as the D-day landing forces struggled to get a foothold on the French mainland.

He was particularly impressed by the bombardment being thrown at the German defences by the big ships in the Channel. Even from several thousand feet up, the sight was chilling.

“All I could think,” he told us, “was how glad I wasn’t down there on the receiving end of that.”

The D-day beaches from the air

The war still had nearly a year to run in Europe, over a year to run in the Far East. But when those soldiers landed in France, a great turning point was at last reached. From then on, the road to Berlin and the final defeat of Nazism was open and, though it would prove bumpy with some nasty surprises along the way, ultimately the Allies would not be stopped travelling down it.

Today international leaders have met again on those beaches to honour the men who fought and in many cases were injured or died there.

We are now so far from that time that none of the leaders present are of an age to have served at that time. But one in particular could have served in another war. Here’s what he told the British journalist Piers Morgan about why he didn’t go to Vietnam:

Well I was never a fan of that war. I'll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war.

So far so good. I frankly couldn’t disagree with him. It was a senseless war, in which huge numbers died for absolutely no benefit to anyone, either American or Vietnamese. I wouldn’t have wanted to serve there either.

But Donald Trump – for, as you guessed, it was he – didn’t stop there. He went on:

Nobody ever – you're talking about Vietnam at that time and nobody ever heard of the country.

He’s citing ignorance as the basis for not joining his country’s war in Vietnam? He’s saying that he didn’t object in principle to a “terrible war”, he just had no idea what it was about. And, indeed, he took no stand on principle at all.

Now I wasn't out in the streets marching. I wasn't saying, you know, I'm going to move to Canada, which a lot of people did. But no, I was not a fan of that war.

Not a fan? But not enough of an opponent to do anything about it?

The Illinois Democrat, Senator Tammy Duckworth, replied succinctly:

I don't know anyone who has served in uniform, especially in combat, who would say they are a fan of war. In fact, I opposed the Iraq war, but volunteered to go when my unit was deployed.

What price did she pay? She lost both legs in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. In uniform.

Trump, on the other hand, swung himself a medical discharge from Vietnam, something which far poorer people, many no doubt far less well than he, didn’t have the means to obtain for themselves. It seems he was unfit to serve because of bone spurs on both his feet.

Now he’d like some reflected glory so he has travelled to Normandy to the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of D-day. He probably sincerely believes that, despite his proclaimed ignorance and his real duplicity, his presence is honouring the men who fought and suffered for his freedom.

I bet some of them had bone spurs.

It’s a shame I can’t ask my father for his opinion of these curious events. Although I don’t have much trouble imagining what he might have said.

A trip down Memory Lane is only as pleasant as the memories it conjures up

It wasn’t until I arrived at the hotel where I’m spending the night that I realised that I’d been here before. Not to stay, but to present a piece of software I’d been working on with a team of colleagues. A piece of software that wasn’t quite ready.

Nothing unusual about that. I’ve known exceedingly few software projects that complete on time. I even came up with an addition to the traditional grammar to cover the problem, a new tense I called the ‘future present’. You use when you say something like “the system does this” when what you really mean is “it will do that thing long before the time you slow lot get around to deciding to order it.”

This isn’t a lie. I was firmly convinced that the software would do all we claimed for it and more. Sadly, I’m not certain my audience shared my conviction. Nor did the executives of the company, though many of the colleagues working on the project with me certainly did.

Sadly, both they and I turned out to be cruelly misled. We never completed the project. I had naively believed that the owners of the little company for which I worked were keen on delivering a high-quality system to their clients. In fact, in a perfect illustration of all that the Left denounces in capitalism, they were only interested in maximising the gains they could make by selling the company.

The company’s systems, of which my project was only the latest module, had started off pretty damn smart. But time had passed, technology had progressed, so what had at one time been dynamically innovative had eventually become old-hat, and been overtaken.

What’s more, it suffered from the problem that afflicts a great many ageing systems. It had been tinkered with far more than was good for it. So bits had been added to correct problems or to improve functions, but no one had bothered to document any of those changes or check whether they might, in fact, solve a problem in one area but create a far worse one somewhere else.

By the time I came to work on it, it was a colossal mass of what is technically referred to as spaghetti logic, a maze of interwoven functions which it was beyond the capacity of the human mind ever fully to understand. Somebody wanted a button to be orange over here? No problem. We’d make the necessary changes. And only afterwards would we discover that we could no longer enter a date over there.

Fixing all this was a huge task that would have involved the company owners in a considerable investment, and a delay in realising their capital by selling their shares to someone else.

The far simpler solution was to fire a whole bunch of us and sell the company as it was, with its products as they were. Of course, they didn’t call it firing. We were made redundant but, believe me, anyone who’s been made redundant knows that it doesn’t feel any different from being fired.

You’d think that a company with a piece of software that really didn’t work any more wouldn’t fetch a high price. You’d be wrong. The executives of bigger companies like nothing more than buying smaller ones. It gives them the sense of having far bigger external genitals than the people around them. I think that’s even true of the female executives, despite the obvious biological problem that their genitals are internal. Don’t ask me to explain.

So the executives of the company that had just fired me and my colleagues sold it for a princely sum, making themselves really quite wealthy. That included the laziest executive I’ve ever come across, a man capable of disappearing for weeks at a time and doing nothing useful even when he returned, who actually made more money than anyone because he held the most shares.

The software module I was working on disappeared without trace. As far as I know, no part of the company’s software is still in use anywhere. But a few people made a lot of money while a few others lost their jobs.

Glorious setting for a hotel

Still. The hotel’s in a great location. And I’m happy with my comfortable room.