Apologies For Absence

I have been away from this blog for a few weeks. I apologise. The world has been in a catastrophic mess. It still is. It has not really seemed that I can add anything to the commentary on Trump's war in Iran. By calling it Trump's war I am probably doing a disservice to Netanyahu. Hey ho. I will say only this: this war has been prosecuted on a vainglorious whim boosted by a misunderstood Zionist zeal; the Americans have not come even close to articulating a proper reason for their attack; Iran is a crazed theocracy but the way to deal with it is not Operation Epic Fury.

Enough of such things. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three. Last week BH, MS and RW were kind enough to let me join the Appleby Renegade Tour, a golfing trip of sheer fun. The history would bore you, suffice to say that Appleby was the venue for the early QMT golf tours - I have blogged about that before and, as I always say, it's a long story so I won't weary you with it.

Immodestly I have to relate that the Pig won the golf. Not through any great competence but by sheer obduracy. Enough of that. The courses. First up was Bentham, comprised of nine old holes and nine newer. I'm glad to say you could not really see the join. The Pig got the tour off to an inauspicious start by blasting two out of bounds from the first tee - thereafter a degree of sanity and good fortune came to his rescue.      

A god meal and a few pints were followed by a goodish night's sleep (I'm not as good as I used to be with an unfamiliar bed) and we even went for a walk around Appleby on the second morning before our afternoon outing at Appleby Golf Club. I had played Appleby twice before and thought it adequate. I was wrong - this is a fine golf course on wild moorland. We played through a blessedly short but biblical storm and under high winds. I should also record that the Pig produced an improbable clearance break of twenty-two to clinch a frame on the clubhouse snooker table. Great moments in sport.

More food. More beer. Another truncated night's sleep and then an early start on the journey home. We broke the journey at Breadsall Priory which is where QMT Tour is to be held in June. Very much a hotel/resort set-up with two courses. We played the Priory course. A perfectly decent lay-out but very hilly. Not remotely as memorable as Appleby but a good end to the trip. I slept well back at home and woke as stiff as a board. I was till sore on Sunday morning but dragged myself out for a thirty minute run and that made me feel much better. You're not getting any younger Pig but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

You Cannot Avoid Stopping To Think

If you read my entry for yesterday you will have gathered that I was in a rather good mood. Today feels different. I had a disturbed night and, no, it wasn't the bottle of Malbec or the home-made broccoli and stilton soup (home-made by the Groupie you understand). No, it was that foul oaf Donald Trump. His latest effrontery is to impose trade tariffs on his supposed allies if they will not connive with him in the annexation of Greenland by the good old U S of A.

It does not need repeating that I am no fan of the EU. However I have always been steadfast in applauding the work of the (admittedly imperfect) NATO alliance. The United States has been the generous cornerstone of that alliance and, notwithstanding the inelegance of how he has said it, Trump has been quite justified in coaxing his allies to increase their defence spending. But this latest megalomaniac attempted land-grab is utterly immoral. The man has no shame, not an ounce of decency. And I'm totally fed-up of having him spoil my sleep. Now, I'm going to church.    

The Myth Of Those Italian Trains

I'm afraid that it is not true to say that Mussolini got the trains running any more efficiently than before he seized power. I know this to be the position because various search engines and a touch of AI have told me so. As any fule kno, the internet never lies.

I mention this nubbin of information only because it has robbed me of a ready cliche to deploy in making my reaction to the recent editions of the television spectacular that is The Donald Saves the World. Now before you go scurrying off to check-out this programme, no it doesn't exist (although I would confess that I can't be arsed to check out this statement), it is merely my glib way of wrestling (as I have been for weeks) with the self-proclaimed saintliness of Donald J. Trump as he goes around the world stopping wars and generally dispensing balm.

My (highly unoriginal but it cannot be said often enough) point is that truly bad men can do good things. So I might have started by saying that Mussolini made the trains run on time, but we have already established that this was not actually the case. No matter, what I will say is that Hitler revived a moribund German economy and that nice bloke Stalin galvanised Russia to defeat said Hitler. Either or both may have made trains run on time.

So here's the thing, Trump's peace accord in the Middle East (actually it's that most annoying of legal things - an agreement to agree) is to be welcomed. Hamas and Likud are, how should we put this, both bat-shit-crazy and would happily have carried on their wanton acts of destruction and desecration until the sacred cows come home. So an abeyance is good. We might carp that Trump could have brought Netanyahu to heel fifteen months ago but better late than never. Will it hold? Let us pray so - though to which version of God we should pray is a matter of contention.

As I say, truly bad men can do good things. Trump has done such a thing. He remains a malignant narcissist whose driving passion is that we should all love him as much as he clearly loves himself. Fat chance.    

Noblesse Oblige And Other Dead Reckonings

Not that I think it causes you any worry but this blog is hard to write these days. I find myself mired in a contrary sludge of happiness and apathy. Happiness at my own good fortune and apathy about the state of local and global politics. We may be going to Hell in a handcart but at least Big Fat Pig has got a nice cart. 

I used to be an employer of a reasonable number of people. I hope I took my responsibilities seriously. Actually let's put false modesty aside, I know I did. Virtue, in this respect at least, is its own reward. Not a point that self-appointed class warriors ever appreciate. I do believe in noblesse oblige even if that makes me a patrician old fart. This is not a point that Donald Trump would understand, even if he could speak French.

His Vileness the Donald is on his second state visit to the UK. Realpolitk perhaps makes this necessary but I would prefer that the odious one not be here. We have, as a country, played host to plenty of worse dictators but we are entitled to expect better from our 'closest ally'. America should know better. Noblesse oblige.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle - what a pair of tone deaf grifters. I won't bother wasting virtual ink on Prince Andrew and his horrendous ex-wife.

The rule of law. What happened to that as the underpinning of true sovereignty? 

Apathy overwhelms once again. I can't be arsed to moan any further. Take my advice - seek out healthy institutions of any size and concentrate your good offices on their survival. If we all refuse to be worn down by the mediocrities (this is being generous) who govern us and do our small bit, then hope exists.  

   

A Mad World My Masters

As the pace of change quickens, the good things can get obscured by the avalanche of the inane and the downright immoral that make up so much of modern life. You will not, of course, be surprised if I allude to Donald Trump and his wicked cohorts being at the forefront of much that is bad. However I will steer clear of pontificating on the Donald for now. If, like me, you are a gob-smacked Trump watcher, you will perhaps join me in hoping that he will be brought low by his own glaring crassness. I wish I was more optimistic.

Let us, then, steer clear of global politics. Instead let us consider the precarious state of my two favourite team games - rugby union and cricket. I was passably competent at the former and an occasional fumbler at the latter but it is cricket that I prefer watching. Both games stand at a precipice of commercial oblivion. And when I say this, I am talking about the two sports in their pure forms.

A fanciful imagining of BFP in his prime

Rugby Union Football has been worn down by professionalism to a mere shadow of the glorious, muddied oafdom that was so deliciously available to earlier generations. Fifth team rugby is now a thing of distant memories and it will never return. BDR used to say that if a game is worth playing, it is worth playing badly. This ostensibly glib remark masks a lost truth. I am partly to blame because I played and coached rugby with a distinct desire to win. However I hope I never quite lost the instinct that it does a man (or indeed a woman) no moral harm to be bested every now and again. That is part of sport/growing up. Myriad genies are out of the rugby bottle and cannot be put back: misplaced professionalism; tactical substitutions; impact players; the advancement of the interest of the paying spectator over that of the players. The latest new kid on the block is the wrteched R360, a devil-child rugby version of the woeful and divisive LIV Golf. Shame on you Mike Tindall. I am glad I played when I did, from my early efforts at prop aged eleven to my final joyous season at No. 8 for the fourths at AOE at the age of forty-eight.

As I write this I am listening to commentary of the first day of the World Test Championship between Australia and South Africa at Lord's. I am delighted to say that there is a full-house and will allow prejudice to prompt me to add that South Africa seem to be getting the better of it - I can't be doing with that Steve Smith, brilliant as he can be.

Have you ever tried to watch the entirety of an IPL game? It takes for ever. The ingenuity of the batting, I will grant you, is staggering. The fielding is sublime. But it is nothing more than glorified (very glorified) pub cricket. Pop has eaten itself. Enjoy test cricket while you can - it will not be re-invented.  

     

It's a Funny Old World

On the macro-political side of things, it's been a bloody awful week. On the micro-personal side of things, I've had an absolute blinder of a week. It's a funny old world.

The bad stuff first. One really cannot get away from that bastard Trump and his shameless lies. He works on the principle that if you say a lie often and loud enough, it will mutate into a truth. Thus Ukraine 'started' the war and the embattled Zelensky is apparently nothing better than a dictator. Of course Trump neither wants nor cares to convince effete liberals like me that his sordid dissembling represents some new truth. He merely has to carry with him enough of his enablers to continue in power. I was wrong - his is not a policy of America First, rather closer it is America Only. Even that is wrong in the ultimate analysis - in this age of the unrestrained grifter, what we are witnessing is Trump First/Trump Only. 

To happier things. I have eaten well and sensibly this week. I feel good. Golf: on Tuesday, in partnership with MB, we posted a net 62 in the Winter Alliance. I think we might have won although I have not checked yet. Just nice to be in contention. I feel good. And best of all, yesterday I enjoyed a joyous lunch with eleven men with whom I had started at KEGS Aston back in 1971. To JRS, ICW, CDL, SH, MN, DC, SS, RGB, SW, TS, and NN, my heartfelt good wishes. Some of these I had not seen since the late 70s when we all left school. The years fell away. I feel good. I hope they all do as well. Particular chapeau to the good doctor, MN, who put it all together. 

Listening to the Moody Blues. I feel good.

Differentiating The Great From The Merely Good

Not a peep from me about Trump pardoning violent criminals. Res ipsa loquitur.

So, enough with the Latin and back to my pre-occupation with films. The marks I award to films are guided by the marking of exam scripts and essays. That is to say that anything seventy or above indicates a first, sixty an upper second, fifty a lower second, and downwards to odium. And please don't think that I have any bias against the good old honourable gentleman's 2:2 - we have rather made a speciality of these in our family. The art (and I'm sticking to this) is in setting out to get a lower second and effortlessly achieving it. This I managed from my accustomed position in the bar of The Zetland public house in South Kensington. Golden days.

This musing on the rating of movies has been prompted by the three films I consider today, in ascending order of merit. The first is Heaven Can Wait, which The Groupie and I saw when we were courting strong. It is a slick piece of film-making and the leads, Warren Beatty (who co-directed) and Julie Christie are attractive and strong. Audiences liked it, quite possibly a pleasant distraction from the cares of the age (1978). The Groupie has the best descrition of it - 'a nice Sunday afternoon film'. 67/100.  

I have written before about the merit of the films of Christopher Nolan. Today's subject is, however, from just below his top drawer. As with any Nolan picture, the visuals are stunning but Interstellar tips into sentimentality at its end and thereby does itself down. Still a first-class offering and, as science fiction goes, a massive step up from the pretentious piffle that is 2001. And, as an aside, the sentient computers in Interstellar are a comforting alternative to the predations of HAL in 2001. 72/100. First class but not quite a great film.

Which leaves the best to last. Shane is George Stevens' 1953 masterpiece western. As with many of the best of this genre (think The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Shane ponders on its own obsolescence. The enigmatic hero wanders out of the frame at the conclusion, a man who is out of his time. The Wyoming mountains leer over much of the action. All is superbly done. Alan Ladd was never better and Jack Palance barely says a word but manages to ooze menace. Also notable and important is one of the great juvenile performances (as young Joey) from Brandon deWilde. A great film. 87/100. 

 

Yesterday I Have Mostly Been:

Worrying - about my stiff knee; about Trump's clear victory in the US election. Shame on the Democratic Party for finding no better candidate than Kamala Harris. But the sun is shining on the Great Orme as I write this and I will expend my energy on things I can control.

Walking - along the coast path at Trearddur Bay, probably the nicest village on Ynys Mon. I was, of course, with the Groupie, so life can hardly get better.

Eating - at the Sea Shanty in Trearddur Bay. Monster portions at bargain prices with swift, unobtrusive service. Washed down with a pint of Golden Gate IPA. Altogether most satisfactory.

Reading - The Mabinogion. Still.

The Trap Of Certainty

I know, I know, You've long since got the message that I can't stand Donad Trump. I think he's vile and, in all but unimportant matters, pig ignorant. But his advent on the political scene (and to a lesser extent the scar on British politics that is the dissembling Boris Johnson) has taught me an important lesson - life is not merely about policy. It is also about decency. You should not want to be governed by someone you wouldn't want to share a dinnner table with. Sorry Donald, sorry Boris, you're not getting invited. 

And what has got me trundling down this philosophical by-way? It was a combination of watching the Tory leadership contenders making their respective pitches to the party conference and something I read. Of the contenders I will only say this - I don't like the cut of Robert Jenrick's jib. As for that thing that I read, it is from Pope Leo XIII in 1878. In my less moderate days I might have seized on this as a clinching argument. Now I merely offer it up as a stimulating contributor to life's puzzles. The subject His Holiness considers is that of socialism/communism:

Misled by greed for the goods of this world which is the source of all evil, and the desire for which has caused many to err in the faith, they [socialists] attack the right to property sanctioned by the natural law, and while they pretend to have at heart the needs of all men and claim to satisfy all their desires, they make a criminal attempt to seize all individual possessions whether acquired by legitimate inheritance, intellectual or manual work, or by economy, and to make them common property.

Makes you think, well does me anyway.

 

Definitions And The Defined: Enablers And Their Enabled

Enabler: one that enables another to achieve an end, especially, one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behaviour (such as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it posssible to avoid the consequences of such behaviour.

And examples closer to home. It matters not (save as a matter of personal conscience) that they have recanted from their positions.

 

New Year Resolutions And Other Garbage

I do have some resolutions but my main one is not to share my resolutions with anyone. Some things are best internalised.

Which, you might think, would be an end to this blog. But no, I promised some other garbage so here it goes. Something is rotten in the state of Britain, indeed in Northern Ireland as well, if we are to be terminologically correct.

Why are there so many bloody potholes on our roads? Why are junior doctors on strike? Why are standards of public behaviour so lamentable? Knife crime? I could go on but you know where I'm coming from. And this is not some churlish new year hangover-induced melancholia. No, I'm actually that most unusual of people - one who likes January. With my rose-tinted backward-facing goggles I reminisce fondly of fields of January mud that slowed the game to my pace and allowed me to play some of my best rugby. As I say, rose-tinted goggles.

I'm trying really hard to be fair about this but is there anyone in our political class about wehom I can feel sanguine, never mind admiring? Rishi Sunak is plainly a bright bloke but he seems to have fallen captive to what the spin doctors feel should be his public persona. Thus he meanders around the questions that are put to him and simply comes across as shit-scared, rabbit-in-the-headlights awful. Mind you the quality of political interviewing leaves much to be desired. Oh for those Sunday lunchtme Brian Walden interviews where seriousness was prized above assinine point-scoring. What about Keir Starmer I hear you say. Well (and I will concede that he has a point) he is so plainly scared of putting his foot in it that he finds new and more boring ways of saying precisely nothing. It will be an achievement of staggering imbecility if he manges to lose the upcoming election, opposed as he is by a shower-of-shit Tory party.

Could be worse - we might be in America and faced with the possibility of a second dose of Trump. I have decided that 'vulgar' is the mot juste. 'Dangerous' and 'evil' are equally apt. 

OG advises that you follow his lead - keep your head down and seek out the many reasons that still exist for being happy. Don't let the bastards wear you down. As a starting point you might like to note that the utterly brilliant and charming Paddington 2 is available on iPlayer for twenty-one days. 

An Important Primer On A Degraded Profession

Before I became a lawyer I had failed in my initial desire to be a hard-bitten, truth-searching, investigative journalist. My heroes were Woodward and Bernstein. You might think that there is something wrong with a boy/man who had successive ambitions in the loathed professions of journalism and the law. You would be wrong. I will argue the toss with anyone about the social value of ethical lawyering and I hope you would agree that good journalism is as important now as it has ever been. This latter sentiment is all the more important in the age of that loathsome toad Donald Trump.

All of which leads me in a roundabout sort of a way to a good film that makes a hero of the objective journalist. Mr. Jones is not up there with All the President's Men but it is a worthy bit of cinema all the same. It tells the story of Gareth Jones and his heroic exposing of Stalin's Holodomor, the deliberate starving of millions of Ukrainians, sacrificed on the altar of Communist orthodoxy. In addition to a fine central performance from James Norton there is a nicely chilling portrayal by Peter Sarsgaard of the real-life villain (he won a Pullitzer on the back of untruthful reporting of Stalin's 'miracle') Walter Duranty. Look Duranty up if you want to get a measure of this particular creep. Fake news is not new.

 Back to the film - it has a slightly clumsy framing device that brings George Orwell into the picture and it wanders around thematically on occasions but, overall, this is godd film-making. 69/100.  

Laughter Is Permissible, But Not At The Expense Of Vigilance

In my world-weary way these things make me laugh even as I remember their significance. First some looky-likeys.

Trump

 

 

Mussolini

Silly I know (and not original) but it casts some light in the shade. Consider this, taken from the Afterword to Frank Dikotter's catalogue of twentieth century infamy, Dictators: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century:

Vigilance, however, is not the same as gloom. Even a modicum of historical perspective indicates that today dictatorship is on the decline when compared to the twentieth century. Most of all, dictators who surround themselves with a cult of personality tend to drift into a world of their own, confirmed in their delusions by the followers who surround them. They end up making all major decisions on their own. They see enemies everywhere, at home and abroad. As hubris and paranoia take over, they seek more power to protect the power they already have. But since so much hinges on the judgements they make, even a minor miscalculation can cause the regime to falter, with devastating consequences. In the end, the biggest threat to dictators comes not just from the people, but from themselves.

I buy books new and old and cannot resist a browse along even the dingiest charity shop shelves. In an Alnwick back-street I unearthed a fiftieth anniversay edition of Robert Penn Warren's novel of American politics, All the King's Men. Warren was a wise man and his novel is thick with insight, but I doubt that even a man so sagacious could have conjured up a character to match Trump - he would have found the whole thing too fanciful. We are cursed to live in interesting times. So laugh to scorn but remember that what you laugh at is real. 

More cheery stuff to finish. Almost eight years after it debuted I have finally got around to watching the twenty pacy episodes of Dickensian. Pacy and clever, bloody clever. Derivative, of course, almost by definition, but bloody clever. I really enjoyed it. It is on iPlayer. Just when I'm going all free-market I find something that makes me fall in love with the licence fee all over again. How gleefully annoying.

 

At This Rate I'm Going To Have To Run Bloody Miles

I feel better about myself and the world when I am running regularly. Thanks to the wonders of my chiropractor and my expensive insoles, I am free of injury most of the time these days, barring, of course, the aches and pains that come from a combination of encroaching old age and decades of reckless endeavour on the rugby field. 

So, anyway, I am here in Anglesey to get some work done and I prefaced that work with a run this morning. And what did I think about while running - not Walter Bagehot (the work I referred to) and not the divine views of the coast. No, it was that bastard Donald Trump. He was arrested yesterday on what, I'm afraid (and you will remember that I am a lawyer), seem to me to be flimsy chrages. The charges come down to his having misdescribed the money he paid to the porn star he undoubtedly shagged as 'legal expenses'. He was at his egregious self-justifying best when he returned to his lair in Florida and lamented this 'witch hunt'. I hate to say this (because the man is the  biggest stain on mainstream politics in the Western world - and these things matter) but the Democrats may have ushered themselves closer to another own-goal. Trump is a shit of the first water. But Joe Biden is as ineffectual an opponent as one might care to imagine. And if they really want to nail Trump they need something better than this. 

Good news - after a slow start, I got some of that work done and tonight I think I'll watch a film. No wine though - it's a weekday and I'm being a good boy. This midweek abstinence does my body some good but not my wallet, since I am weighed down by my increasing dependence on good Barolo and Rioja for vinous pleasure. You can't take it with you. 

Beyond Satire

I am blocked. As in, I can't find any inspiration to write. This despite a whole world turning about me.

Bluntly the shithole of modern life is beyond parody/satire, call it what you will. Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister and within a matter of days has to accept the resignation of Gavin Williamson who, it seems, is a graduate of the Prince Andrew school of charm. Inflation (us oldies can tell you youngsters a few tales of how destuctive it is) is poised to go full Tonto. That arch-bastard Trump seems to be on the point of declaring that he will run for President again. I suppose, on the bright side, his candidacy will give me something to write about. He would be funny if he wasn't so very real.

But then I stop and ask myself, a manic depressive, how I feel in myself. Well, there's the rub. I feel great. I have my family. I have my friends. Perhaps it is a fact that, just as I write my best poetry when depressed, so my pen is only barbed (or so I hope) when I'm at my worst.

I feel great, so don't expect any shafts of wit any time soon. Incidentally, not that you could care less, I had successive birdies when I played golf on Monday. Not flukes either - good drive, accurate approach, shortish putt. Sometimes, just sometimes, things look good. And for no reason other than that I like it here is a Kandinsky print. See ya.

2021:1

It's been a funny old year. Again. You might have noticed that I can be mistaken for a creature of certainties - this is deceiving, I am rather a creature noisy only in my uncertainties. I am a catholic convert who is also a Unionist and sympathetic to the ministry of women. These are hardly the signatures of the adamantine. And 2021 has been a year that has seen my core prejudices shift under the pressure of events. I didn't want this to happen, Damn you 2021. Or should that be thank you?

I thought it might be interesting (for me really - this is my selfish space after all, that anyone else ever reads it is a constant source of joy and wonder)  to look back on the twelve months of this challenging year and to pick apart one event per month. This approach does not pretend science but might just cast some light on the shifting sands of my psyche.

On January 6 2001, an outgoing President of the United States repeated the lie that an election had been stolen from him. He did so knowing full well his own mendacity and desiring nothing more worthy than  to shore up his monstrous self-esteem. The results of his speech probably surprised him as much as they delighted the scumbag. An insurrection followed and people died in the human mess that Trump stirred up. The United States of America had surrendered its right to be the beacon of the free West. That great and sadly diminished country has replaced the megalomaniac Donald with a decent geriatric who cannot control his own idiotic left wing. As the Washington Post trumpets - democracy dies in darkness. 

As I write this the sclerotic state of American politics persists. The party of (as we are tiresomely reminded) Abraham Lincoln remains in thrall to a bouffoned kleptocrat and lacks the morality to call him what he is. Meanwhile the party of JFK spews the idiot identity politics that pass for intellectualism in diminished circles. Meanwhile we are invited to take comfort in the knowledge that if anything happens to the dotard Biden, Kamala Harris will take over. This does not help.

 

 

The Kipling Test

When Donald Trump expressed his 'America First' doctrine, the sane world winced at the moral inadequacy and the cowardice of it all. Now Joe Biden unapologetically takes a page from the Donald's book and oversees a quite craven retreat from Afghanistan. 

I will not enunciate the Kipling Test because its terminology would cause proper offence. However there is, beneath a racist carapace, a method in Kipling's entreaty to America. Or to put it in the phrasing of a more modern fable, Spiderman, 'With great power comes great responsibility'. 

The word 'Taliban' apparently derives from the terms for 'students' or 'seekers'. That which they seek is a perverted Islamic fundamentalism that relegates women to enslavement and condemns music as unholy. Is the world safe with these people in charge of Afganistan? Of course it isn't. Being the 'Home of the Brave' ought to have meaning beyond the confines of America. And as America discharges its burden, so ought we.   

There's An Eerie Hush In The Close Tonight

The pandemic is still with us, its physical effect still being felt and its economic backwash still to come. There was a deadly attempted putsch at the U.S Capitol only threee weeks ago. And yet all already seems quiet and less worrisome than has been the case for four years. And it is all because the wretched man Trump has pranced off the world stage in a fit of high dudgeon - vaingloriously and with no sense of irony, going out to the most vainglorious song of them all - the problematic My Way. What a prick.

He will be back in the limelight in a fortnight when the Senate has to hear his impeachment trial. You do just wonder if the Democratic leadership is missing a trick with these proceedings. Might they be better off leaving him to sulk in his Florida redoubt or should they press on with trying to exclude him from future politics? My personal (and I accept vindictive) hope (a forlorn one I am afraid) is that enough Republicans gather behind the impeachment to convict the weasel. Take note of what his odious offspring, Donald Jr., barked at the mob at the Capitol on that lethal January day: 'This is no longer the Republican Party, this is Donald Trump's Republican Party.' Do the world a favour and prove him wrong. 

Insurrection. Democracy Dies In Darkness

But reconciliation can’t happen without truth, and the truth is that the blame for the American carnage we saw unfold in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, can be laid at the feet of the president and his many Republican enablers. Those with integrity will admit, first to themselves and then to the wider world, their complicity in the deceitful and disgraceful presidency of Donald Trump. It is the only decent thing to do, and we’ve gone far too long with an absence of decency. (Peter Wehner in The Atlantic)

Yesterday afternoon in Washington a lunatic mob urged on by the sitting President of the United States invaded the Capitol. Four people lost their lives in the insurrection. I had been searching for a suitable summary of the depths of sadness I feel at this state of affairs. Wehner encapsulates it nicely. Read his whole article at Insurrection

I had originally intended my piece today to be an unsubtle excoriation of the loathsome Ted Cruz - a man of clear intellect who has, for reasons which can only be attached to his own ambitions, been an enabler in chief of the malevolent and conscienceless President. However, let us instead hope that yesterday will stand as the low-water mark of this Trump inspired era. It is difficult not to have doubts.

I have a friend in America, a wise and good man - JB. He is a lifelong Democrat and he and I would diverge on many matters of policy. However what we would agree on is the mandatory preservation of the rule of law and, more flowery I know but still true, the need for common decency. Trump has trashed both of these concepts and done long-term damage to the serious Right. Let us put it in terms Trump would understand and let us do it in his own childish font - LOSER!!! This is apparently a term that Trump despises - there are nastier and yet justifiable epiphets one could use but let's keep it simple shall we. Sleep well America but rise wisely.

Goodbye To all That

2020 is at last behind us. The year started in the shadow of my father's death. We did at least get to give him a memorable funeral before the darkness of Covid engulfed us all. By government dictat we spent much of the remainder of the year cowering in our homes - could it have been handled better? Well yes possibly but no plausible candidate for stewardship of the ship of state suggested him or herself. Perhaps the only political illumination in the year came last week when the largely risible Michael Fabricant kept referring to Keir Starmer as a smarmy lawyer. 

My golf did get marginally better but paranoia sufficiently clouded governmental sense to mean that we could hardly even lock ourselves away in the Anglesey home we own and on which we pay punitive tax. What did they think we were going to do - run around the village coughing our nasty English germs through people's letterboxes?  

Anyway, it's over now and the new year does at least arrive with the hope inherent in the new vaccines. And in nineteen days Donald Trump will cease to be President of the world's most important country. Do you think we ought to tell him he lost? Loser.