Of course, Saddam should be tried, but it makes no sense to do it against a background of a civil war in which he is, alas, still a figurehead

Saddam is being tried when the war to remove him is increasingly recognised as a disaster

Saddam’s trial wouldn’t pass for justice in a dictatorship

There is one last excuse for those of us who were so trusting as to support the war in Iraq — and that excuse is disintegrating before our eyes.

We were soon proved wrong in our assumption that the Pentagon had serious plans for post-war reconstruction: the Americans hadn’t a clue. We were hopelessly wrong in imagining that the Iraqis would somehow work together to build a brighter tomorrow: they are engaged in a civil war of ever mounting savagery.

Continue reading Saddam’s Trial – Iraq and post-war reconstruction →

It is .. utterly incredible that the state should now be trying to prolong our national car seat agony

individual choice .. or .. international coercion

Has Labour gone finally potty in asking the cops to spend their time poking their noses into the back seats of our cars…

We need proper standing committees with the power to mandate ministers, and to refuse to accept directives even if they are decided at a majority vote

Brussels is taking a big liberty with children’s booster seats

Of all the sensations of joy and release that Nature in her kindness has bestowed on the human race, there is little or nothing to beat the moment when you get rid of the baby’s car seat.

It beats getting off a long-haul flight. It beats taking off a pair of ill-fitting ski-boots after a hard day on the slopes. It verges, frankly, on the orgasmic. As you take the wretched thing to Oxfam, you thank your stars that never again will you have to grapple with that incomprehensible buckle.

Never again will you stand sweating over your baby as it screams and writhes and sticks yoghurt in your ear. Never again will you have that struggle of wills, as the child’s efforts to escape become ever more desperate and violent, and you grow later and later in setting off on your journey.

For children and parents alike that precious moment – when it is deemed that the offspring are capable of sitting on their own in the back with only a seat belt – is one of the pleasures of growing up. It is a rite of passage, a moment of pride and childish prestige.

If you want to know at what age boys start talking then go here and find the best information. Language milestones are successes that mark various stages of language development. They are both receptive and expressive (speech). 

Continue reading Children’s Car Booster Seats and EC Directive →

The best thing Yvette can do is stop forcing houses on the South and let the market work, so that people seek cheaper accommodation in places like West Yorkshire

Head oop North and save the golden couple’s marriage

It is a tough time for Ed and Yvette, the nearest thing the Government has to a golden couple. You remember who I mean. He is Ed Balls, the Chancellor’s jut-chinned henchman; she is Yvette Cooper, the elfin housing minister who reduces the Tories opposite to pathetic simpering croons.

They are the kind of dynastic union that Hollywood used to produce – the closest the Yorkshire Parliamentary Labour Party has yet come to Bogart and Bacall. Apart from the ghastly, bossy, high-taxing politics they both espouse, they are as charming and fortunate a pair as you could hope to meet in Westminster. But now their union – this marriage of minds and hearts – has been struck by tragedy.

Continue reading Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper – Boundary Commission →

Blair has nothing more to say to us: he should go at once

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. You have only to read the latest memo from Downing Street to see that something in the bunker has finally snapped. Maybe they are putting Orozac in the water cooler. Maybe they’ve disconnected the television. Maybe they have special dummy editions of the papers, produced by Alastair Campbell’s gnomes in the dungeons and then brought up on silver salvers to where Tony and Cherie recline on their couches and dangle grapes into their crazy mouths.

Here we are, with British soldiers being killed almost daily in Iraq and Afghanistan on missions that are growing in scale and horror. We have rises in gun crime, rises in unemployment, rises in interest rates — and these flaming lunatics in Downing Street seriously expect the nation to line the streets with bunting and shower Tony with confetti as he goes on a six-month lap of honour, a “farewell tour” in which he accepts the praises of a smiling people.

Continue reading Goodbye to Blair →

That’s It Uncle Sam

Right. That’s it. Entre nous c’est terminé. After 42 happy years I am getting a divorce from America. From the very emerging of my childhood consciousness I have been aware that in the eyes of billions of people around the world I have won first prize in the lottery of life. I possess it, the thing competed for by everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the most desperate Mexican wetback, and I have it by simple dint of my nativity, on the Puerto Rican Health Scheme, in New York General Hospital, NY, NY.
I am entitled to an American passport. I must confess that this knowledge used vaguely to tinge my sense of identity. My brothers and sisters are British, and so are my parents, and I would like you to know that I am a loyal subject of Her Majesty, speak in an English accent, and for years I have travelled exclusively on a British passport. But my first passport was green, and when we landed at Dover or Heathrow I felt secretly cool to be the one to present his document to be stamped.

Continue reading American Passport →

Civilisation is built on Physics (alas), not on Business Studies

You remember being at school, and looking at the timetable with a lurching horror. You’ve just been doing something cushy, like playing football or snoozing through a movie about global warming in Double Geography. Or perhaps, if you have been really cunning with your options, you have been making biscuits with lovely Mrs Sindall in Double Cookery.

And then you look at your schedule to see how your teachers propose to divert you for the last two periods of the day; and a shadow passes before your face and your hair stands on end, as though you had been plugged into a van der Graaf generator.

Continue reading Physics at A Level →

Unlike Hizbollah, Mel, Israel is not trying to kill civilians

Apart from a pint of tequila, I don’t know what got into Mel Gibson when he decided to favour the Los Angeles police with an anti-Semitic rant.

I don’t know what whacko religious convictions inspire the Aussie heart-throb, or whether he genuinely believes that the “f—— Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”.

But whatever Mel was having the other night was powerful stuff; and, you know what, my impression is that a lot of folks across Britain are secretly having a snifter of the same. Across the country there are sober people who would never dream of calling an LA police officer “sugar tits”, or swinging like an ape from the bars of their cell. Yet these people seem to share the essentials of Mel’s analysis of the Middle East.

Continue reading Middle East Crisis →

Admit it, Blair: Britain is no better than Belize or Belarus

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. It was frankly a bit of a miracle, too. Yesterday a sweltering sun rose on Prescott’s Britain, and I suppose we should all be grateful that we woke up at all. Not only is Two Jags in charge of our roads: for the next two weeks – or for however long Blair is away – the former Cunard waiter is in charge of our Middle East policy, and, which I think you will agree is truly terrifying, Prescott’s porky thumb is poised over the British nuclear button.

Prescott is having his annual bash at supreme power and, in honour of his accession, I thought I would make a pilgrimage to the place that is at the heart of his troubles. Indeed, it is the one building that sums up all the pretensions and deceptions of this Government.

For the first time in more than five years, I went to North Greenwich. And somehow managed to experience once again the super casino at Prescott, as you know right now, I am more into 666 casino, an online casino which is easy to deal with and very convenient that allows me to play wherever I want. I got out of the Tube, and once again I saw the vast parabola of our great national tent, our marquee de sad, its silhouette figuratively soaring from ludicrous hype to bitter disappointment.

Except this time, of course, there was no one there, or no one except a few security guards and the odd desultory builder. There hasn’t been anyone there since it closed, amid shame and ignominy, on December 31, 2000. Never mind Prescott’s Stetsons and the embarrassing hand-tooled cowboy boots and the undeclared stays at the billionaire’s ranch. To understand why Labour is in such difficulties about casinos, and that’s why some people decide to play in online casinos instead such as the Judi Online where people can gamble and make money online.

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If the gambling card already owned is convinced it will have one plus size smaller back than the usual playing cards. Thus if one value on each card is convinced that it really will not use a few numbers. If from one difference it is already present in one card which is a type of Domino card when compared to returning with a playing card model that requires all players to be able to know more.

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Just before the big top opened, Tony Blair declared that it was going to be a “triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity”. Well, it was a triumph of spin over substance, and a very considerable floperoo. Instead of celebrating any aspect of British history or achievement or civilisation, the Government produced a cultural nullity, a politically correct void inside a vacuum inside a huge New Labour inanition.

Certain online casinos like Sabung Ayam Online have made it so some of these laws do not apply to them. They are not abusing said right, but corrections to this new law will have to made to include everyone and be more fair.

The climax, I seem to recall, was a mystifying mime show, with men on stilts acting the part of large orange bogeys. The “experience” cost the thick end of a billion, drew half the visitors expected and, even after it closed, has been costing the taxpayer about a million a month. The only way to rescue the project – and so save New Labour face – was to claim that it was part of a big redevelopment project for the Greenwich peninsula, a particularly ill-favoured patch of soil that had previously hosted a gasworks.

Blair and Prescott cast around for a solution and, in the summer of 2002, Prezza had his first meeting with Philip Anschutz. Wonderful news – this charming and delightful American had a plan. He took the Dome off the Government’s hands; he even paid for it, and he and his allies began to produce fantastic mock-ups of how Greenwich might look.

You can see them yourself, just by the Dome. There are marinas and parks and schools and upscale flats and social housing. There are a total of 25,000 new homes envisaged, and 10,000 jobs, and 360,000 square feet of new retail areas – and yet, in the five years since the Dome closed, not one has been started.

Why? Because it is the plans for Anschutz’s Dome entertainment complex that generate the life and the jobs in Greenwich; and at the heart of the Dome there is still a void and a hole and a great quivering question mark. Anschutz needs one thing to make sense of his project. From the beginning, Prescott and Blair can have been in no doubt what it was.

This guy makes money from the drug of optimism. People sit in serried rows at his Las Vegas machines, their bottoms almost welded to their chairs, robotically pulling the levers. Every time they make the mistake of believing they can win, they give a little more to the casino, and Anschutz knows that, unless he is able to trade on that central delusion, it is much more difficult to make the Dome pay. Without gambling, the hotel is non-viable, and the 23,000-seat theatre less easy to fill.

Blair and Prescott have understood this reality from the beginning. The Americans have left them in no doubt. That is why the British Government has moved heaven and earth to legalise US-style super-casinos in this country. That is the reason – and that is the only reason – why we had the Gambling Act and that is why Prescott is now so desperate, so eye-poppingly hair-pullingly desperate, to get a super-casino in Greenwich. Forget about Blackpool or the claims of other, poorer cities.

Under the pressure of public disapproval, Labour has been forced to reduce the number of super-casinos to one, and it must must must go to the Dome; or else the deal could falter.

What a sordid and unbelievable spectacle. The Government has changed the laws on gambling in this country to salve its embarrassment over the Dome, and to give Anschutz a sweet enough prize.

It’s not so much that I object to the gambling in itself, though there is plenty of evidence that people find it hard to cope with the drug. Anyone who has been to Las Vegas or Surfer’s Paradise will testify that these are not sophisticated casinos. There are no James Bond-style tuxedos and girls draping themselves over the back of your chair; just chinking avenues of self-delusion.

Nor do I accuse Prescott or Blair of any personal corruption. Of course they are not benefiting in any way, apart from the boots and the hat. They are doing what they think is the best thing for Greenwich and the country.

It’s just the pretence that drives me mad, the pretence that Prescott has had no hand in steering the super-casino to the Dome; the pretence that Anschutz should invite Prescott to his ranch for any other reason; the pretence that there is no connection between saving the Dome and permitting super-casinos.

Of course we expect governments to change their laws to suit the needs of foreign billionaires. I am sure it happens everywhere from Belize to Belarus. It would just be nice if they were honest, and admitted that it now happens in Britain, too.

Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines

Often is his gold complexion dimm’d

Livingstone and Lawrence – they could take a bit of heat

Hot? Call this hot? One warm day and the whole country flops down in a faint like a bunch of wilted pansies. I mean what’s got into us, eh?

After being AWOL for most of June, the British sun has put in a brief appearance, and at once our airwaves are jammed with portentous government doctors warning us to stay indoors, wear loose cotton clothing, turn off the central heating and above all to slather our skins with oceans of foul seal-blubberish suncream. We are warned of heatstroke, kidney failure, heart attack and – mystifyingly – cold sores.

Listen, my friends. Here is my own personal weather analysis. It is a lovely sunny July day. It is admittedly a trifle close on the Tube – but how on earth can that be an excuse for closing our schools?

On trains, passengers are continually interrupted by the guard warning them to drink water, bottles of which may conveniently be obtained from the buffet car at a mere two quid a pop. What next? Will they have to remind us to keep breathing? Have we lost all sense of proportion?

The Middle East is aflame. Our Prime Minister has been exposed in a posture of abject servility before the American President, summoned with a click of the fingers and the words “Yo, Blair”, as if he were Jeeves to Dubya’s Wooster.

I only refrain from calling Mr Blair a poodle because several correspondents have protested to me that this is an insult to poodles, who are, apparently, keen independent spirits.

The Labour Government is in a state of meltdown far more serious than any softening of the tarmac at Eastbourne, and in only a few days’ time we must endure the national agony of seeing John Prescott at the helm of the ship of state.

In spite of all this genuine global catastrophe it seems that the main news – the big, front-page news – concerns the efficacy or otherwise of sun gunk.

In order to terrify its poor benighted readers one newspaper has recruited two groups of warring scientists. The first lot says that you must baste yourself with two 5mm layers of sun gunk, being careful to leave it on the skin like war-paint, otherwise it will have no effect and you will get cancer. The second lot says that you must rub it in, otherwise it will soon wear off and you will get cancer.

Which is it? And isn’t the dreadful truth, frankly, that we would be just as well off using Mazola?

Let me remind you of one thing, all you local authorities which seize the chance to close the schools on a gorgeous sunny day. The parents of these kiddies save thousands of pounds to buy them holidays in the sun everywhere from Crete to Cancun.

Look up at the sky and every 60 seconds you will see another huge airborne cattle truck taking the British to be scorched in climates far fiercer than our own. We sit in our villas and our condos around the shores of the Mediterranean, like pale frogs about a pond, and when our own watery sun is so pretentious as to put on a Mediterranean performance, we go into a national spasm of alarm.

Is this the nation that built the Empire? When Lawrence was cantering his camels through the sands, was he pursued by health warnings about exposing the tips of his ears and nose to the desert glare?

When Livingstone toiled through the sweltering jungles of central Africa, did he have coolies toting bottles of Evian and government officials warning him of dehydration?

This is a nation whose imperial greatness transformed the world, and which disseminated ideas of freedom, parliamentary democracy and above all the English language, the language of the globe, polar, tropical and temperate.

We pulled it off because we were equipped with colonial servants who didn’t care whether it was as hot as a chilli on the back streets of Bangalore. They were pink of cheek and rheumy of eye, and when their French and German rivals were having a siesta, they were out in the noonday sun claiming the planet for the Crown.

How fallen, how changed we are from that magnificent ethic. Even since the 1970s, when we last had a heatwave and, interestingly, movies about Superman and the Poseidon Adventure, we seem to have softened like a strawberry mivvi in the sun.

Our footballers blub when they lose a match. The nanny state won’t let us take our T-shirts off in public lest we get sunburn, and from November all children under the age of 11 will have to be equipped with an expensive plastic booster seat banquette before you can take them in the back of the car.

We have become so wet that the Government has tried to intrude in the housing market and abolish the ancient principle of caveat emptor, and while I am on the subject there is one final point I want to make before I fire this piece off to the Telegraph and go for a well-deserved pint of beer with dewy condensation running down its cold, golden flanks.

No matter how great the hysteria about the heat, no matter how many scientists warn us about the risks of either applying or failing to apply sunscreen, we should not allow anyone to convert the current panic into legislation.

We don’t want any more of those directives that make employers criminally liable for failing to see that their employees are covered with gloop factor 15.

Let us in conclusion remember the words of the poet. Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines, he pointed out, and for some weeds out there that is the case this week.

But the key point, as he went on to say, is that Often is his gold complexion dimm’d. That is the way of the British sun, and that, if I read the forecast correctly, is what is going to happen this weekend.

My heatwave health advice is to jump in the delicious river Thames, upstream of Henley. And if you really can’t stand the heat, move to Scotland, where it seems to be raining already.