Asymmetric Warfare

In an early episode of The West Wing, the tyro President Bartlett agonises over military action and muses angrily that some day someone is going to have to explain to him the meaning of  a 'proportionate response". I wonder if the Donald was similarly vexed when ordering the air strikes on Syria. We can only pray so because one has to say that the world makes precious litle sense to anyone in these fractured times. Just why does the use of chemical weapons tip the balance of atrocity to one that demands western action? I'm only asking because it is not obvious to me. War is shitty, however one wages it - full stop.

If you press me I will shamingly concede that the American strikes make a warped sense in a warped world. We welcome America back to the world stage after it had been so poignantly vacated by Obama, vacated moreover in favour of a gangster like Putin. The trouble is, one wishes these decisions rested in hands more dextrous than Trump's.

Listening to now

But enough of all that. I'm listening to a bit of Belle and Sebastian as I write. One of Scotland's better exports. The other platters that have mattered recently have included Stevie Wonder's masterful Songs in the Key of Life. Why was that not in my advent countdown? I think you should demand a recount.

Have been listening to

I have decided to be pleased that Sergio Garcia won the Masters. I didn't back him (don't ask - I'm still mired in my losing streak) but in the final measuring it is nice to see a man wrestle with and defeat his demons. Never mind the birdies he made - best of all was the par he made from under a bush at the thirteenth. OG style golf one might say, only good. I wouldn't look good in a green blazer anyway. Not my colour. Mind you I do believe that my dear friend Big Will Macfarlane owns such a garment - a permanent reminder of his richly deserved captaincy of the Royal Chav (Cavendish Golf Club to the uninitiated). To re-coin an old phrase is, Big Willy is a man who looks good in anything - except clothes. Mind you I have seen him in the showers and you have to say he looks pretty rubbish in the buff as well. Too much information?

Talking of golf, the annual pilgrimage to Ireland hoves into view. Yet again I have thought long and hard and have solved the puzzle of how to be good at golf. I really have cracked it this time. I'd tell you but then I would have to kill you. On that very subject (golf not murder) I do seem to have been bombarded with junk mail informing me that the key to golfing success is to buy a wondrous new club called the GX7. All I have to do is part with $200 and success will be mine. Not bloody likely - I've had cars that cost less than that.     

Kindly Leave Us Alone

In principle I was in favour of Barack Obama when elected, if for no greater reason than that my old friend Jeff Blodgett in Minnesota both worked for and endorsed him. However there is something irritatingly smug about Obama, first signified by his deliberate references to 'British Petroleum' rather than the correct 'BP' at the time of the oil spill fiasco. Now he has excelled himself by his pompous and semi-informed urgings on behalf of the EU Remain campaign. Quite why he feels the need to be so raucous on the topic would be a mystery were it not for his lame duck status back home and the consequent desire to think that he actually still matters. So it is that the sainted one has taken the lead from the equally smug (but massively less photogenic - one has to concede that Obama looks presidential) Boy Cameron and has chucked the truth out of the window in making his euro point.

Here's some verbatim Obama drivel:

From the ashes of war, those who came before us had the foresight to create the international institutions and initiatives to sustain a prosperous peace: the United Nations and Nato; Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and the European Union. Their efforts provided a foundation for democracy, open markets and rule of law, while underwriting more than seven decades of relative peace and prosperity in Europe.

Can we please get this straight - the European Union was created only in 1993, progeny of the EEC. And as for it being a bastion of democracy, well don't get me started.

More Obama:

In this complicated, connected world, the challenges facing the EU - migration, economic inequality, the threats of terrorism and climate change - are the same challenges facing the United States and other nations. And in today's world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the collective action that today's challenges demand.

I'm sorry but really - 'cherising their sovereignty' - what he really means, condescension being his long suit, is that untrammelled sovereignty is fine for the big boys but that a little bitty piss-ant has-been like the UK should stop being so twee about something as passe as representative democracy. That is, as I have said before, a perfectly arguable point but what I also keep coming back to is that it is one that should be made openly and truthfully. Obama is an impressive and symbolically important figure but his utterings on the EU are mere sententious claptrap. Shame also on our Prime Minister for encouraging him in this sort of smallness, although it's pretty much what one has come to expect.
 

Happy Christmas

I had a rather lovely Christmas Day. This of course was largely due to the Groupie's organisational and culinary skills and to the presence of almost the full Roberts clan. My job was to look ornamental and get mildly drunk. I managed the latter of these tasks.

Local holy man

The day had started with mass at Holy Trinity Sutton Coldfield conducted by the very amusing and pleasingly holy Father Michael Ho. He fled Vietnam in 1982 and he tells good jokes. He exudes a resolute happiness and has charisma.

I have been a critic of Barak Obama's pieties but I must confess you could not be other than impressed by the President's television walk on the wild side with the bonkers Bear Grylls. Grylls was gushingly in awe of Obama and it is undeniable that the President has mega charisma. Much as I  might be underwhelmed by his politics he is an ornament to the American Dream - a thought which drags me back to reality and the wretched Donald Trump. May his downfall be the political story of 2016. Any other outcome is too miserable to contemplate.

The girls are taking me to see the new Star Wars later today as part of my Christmas present. Report to follow.

Strange Bedfellows

Obama and (God help us) Piers Morgan are both right. There, I've said it. Now you will all know that I love America (see my posts from July if you doubt it) but on gun control, I'm sorry folks, you're just getting it woefully wrong. Listen to your Commander In Chief. In this, if in nothing else, he gets it spot on. I say this as a friend and admirer.

In The Final Analysis

Anyone can make predictions, but only the brave (such, of course, as your correspondent) are willing to be measured against them. So here is what I said back in January:

Predictions for the year, O wise one, I hear you cry. Well since you goaded me here goes: myriad Liberal Democrats will continue to suffer political altitude sickness, some will ignore advice, look down and promptly fall off and land on Simon Hughes; England will win the Six Nations; New Zealand will finally win RWC again and Richie McCaw will go to heaven where he will immediately be sin-binned by St Peter for entering from the wrong side; I will pull my hamstring again; the Euro will implode/contract; The asset bubble in China will burst and my investment in India (which I keep meaning to make but never get round to) will look wise; Obama and Cameron will continue to refine the art of the platitude whilst doing very little of any import; finally and justifiably I will still be just as bloody cynical by the year end.

How did Ido?

• All right I admit the Liberal Democrat thing was an easy call but you have to admit they are bloody funny. At least we hear less of St Vince these days, although only because he's become so bleeding tedious.
• England did win the Six Nations.
• New Zealand did win RWC. Richie McCaw is still invisible when offside.
• Hamstring went again. Twice.
• The Euro is on a marginally slower fuse than I thought but just watch this space.
• Chinese communism must fail. This is in the greater interests of mankind. India needs to harness the strengths of its democracy to a decent capitalism which does not mimic the greed of Goldman Sachsianism. India remains the world's great hope. America and Russia categorically are not.
• Obama is a vacuous appeaser of mediocrity. Cameron is less effective. Both will still be in place in a year's time, though do not be surprised if Cameron is free of the burden of coalition.

2012? Well France will win the Six Nations now they have a decent coach. Wales will not be as good as their followers are being encouraged to anticipate. England will be half-decent which will make the appointment of a permanent new coach all the trickier. Anticipate serious civil unrest in southern Europe. My capital wealth will be further eroded by the malfeasance of others. Goldman Sachs will prosper, though hopefully not in India. GB will win 16 gold medals at the Olympics. Our press will charcterise this as failure. Public sector employees will eventually have to accept that their pensions are unsustainable and their industrial action will fail to attract its own Billy Elliot style romanticism - there will be no ballet dancing son of a geography teacher plucking at the heart-strings of the public.   

Back On The Chain Gang

I've been away too long. All that December blogging wore me out, but now I'm back and the Beast remains untamed. He has a new tune ringing in his ears which he wants to share with you. He heard it on Radio 2 (alright, calm down at the back it's not that bloody funny) in the small hours of a wakeful night and here it is:



New year resolutions - I usually keep these to myself and casually ignore them but this time around I'm going to share them cryptically and you can try to guess what they are. If I actually manage to complete some of these tasks I will reveal all and we can have a jolly old vitual party on the interweb thing. All of my resolutions have numbers attached to them. The numbers are

one

four

eight

twenty

thirty-seven

one half

Ok folks step away from the enlarged colourful font please, nothing to see here. Yet.

To be quite honest 2011 has not got off to a great start. All has been well with me but the world is still going to hell in a handcart. Vince Cable is still in government. Some Americans apparently take Sarah Palin seriously. Even worse they like Piers Morgan. Biffo ('Big Ignorant F***** From Offaly) is still running what is left of the show once known as Ireland. Alex Salmond has been on Desert Island Discs. The producers of The Archers blew a perfectly good opportunity to kill the tiresome Helen and her poor benighted infant and instead pushed good old Nigel off the roof at Lower Loxley. Lewis Moody is injured and will miss the start of the Six Nations. I have quite unjustly put on weight and strained my hamstring. Vince Cable is ... sorry already said that.

Predictions for the year, O wise one, I hear you cry. Well since you goaded me here goes: myriad Liberal Democrats will continue to suffer political altitude sickness, some will ignore advice, look down and promptly fall off and land on Simon Hughes; England will win the Six Nations; New Zealand will finally win RWC again and Richie McCaw will go to heaven where he will immediately be sin-binned by St Peter for entering from the wrong side; I will pull my hamstring again; the Euro will implode/contract; The asset bubble in China will burst and my investment in India (which I keep meaning to make but never get round to) will look wise; Obama and Cameron will continue to refine the art of the platitude whilst doing very little of any import; finally and justifiably I will still be just as bloody cynical by the year end.

But you know what? My wife still loves me (at least she said she did this morning) and that is quite sufficient to last me several lifetimes. May you be as lucky.



I Haven't Changed My Mind But

The Overgraduate is a critic of both Blair and Obama. There is a whiff of piety about both which is off-putting. But today I find myself in agreement with both. In this I seem perhaps out of step with the general populace so that much at least is reassuring.

The Divine Blairness first. Today it has been announced that all royalties from his memoirs, not to mention the £4.6m advance, will be donated to the British Legion. Good for him and shame on the moaners who have been so swift to bleat to the media about how this is nothing more than 'blood money.' No doubt they would have had something else to say if he had quietly pocketed the money. Dodgy war, nice gesture.

Obama next. Yesterday he spoke out in favour of the right of American muslims to build a mosque on ground they own at ground zero, the site of the fallen twin towers. What he actually said was that it is no business of the federal government to intervene in such plans provided no planning or local laws are contravened. Spot on. As a test of the rightness of his comments we need only apply the Sarah Palin test - because if she agrees with you then you are probably wrong. On this occasion she has condemned her president so for once he deserves my support.

The World Cup, Patriotism and Stuff

The mighty England demolished Slovenia 1-0 this afternoon and march triumphantly into the last 16 of the World Cup. I shouldn't carp because they played far better this time and might easily have won by more. Nonetheless the last ten minutes were pretty nerve-wracking with England needing to win to progress. The country goes through the emotional wringer again on Sunday.

And very loosely the World Cup brings me to the subject of the day - patriotism. I was out running this morning and you have to find something to keep your mind off the pain and boredom. I ranged over flag-flying, Harriett Harman, Barack Obama (I know, it's an obsession) and leftiness and rightness in general. It seems to me that someone should do some research into why men don't think about sex every seven seconds when they are running. The methodology of any study would be interesting.

As is now the norm during sporting festivals the St George's flags are flying from cars, from windows, from trees. English patriotism is everywhere. I encountered an internet joke site the other day where the jibe of the day was along the lines of: how can you tell a man with a penis less than 2 inches long? By the small white flag with a red cross flying from his car. Now this offends the first rule of good jokes, namely that it should actually be funny, but we will let that pass for the purposes of the current debate. There had been a flurry of indignant comments posted on the website, mostly from outraged and over-sensitive Englishmen. The poster of the joke had responded with a confession that yes he was indeed Scottish and that the English were pathetic and ought to lighten up. Now I'm with the Scot on this one but I'm also fairly convinced that he would be a better man if he didn't think this so damned funny in the first place. As I laboured round the streets of Four Oaks I also wondered what would be the reaction if the roles in the joke were reversed. Now this would require one to imagine that Scotland had actually qualified for the World Cup, an act easier for those of my generation who remember such things happening with a cheerful frequency. But to return to my original point - I suspect the Englishman making the joke would be deemed by certain sensitive souls as ignorant, arrogant and even racist. Which makes you think. Or does when you're out running. Instead of sex I suppose.

Now as the sweat dripped down my nose (a sensation I rather enjoy, feeling as it does a signifier of virtue) I constructed a little theory, no a hypothesis. This brings me to the difficult subject of Harriet Harman. Why does she hate us all so much? Why is she so angry? I had heard her berating David Cameron in parliament, not of itself a bad thing but why so preachy and charmless? Now you know that I am distinctly underwhelmed by Barack Obama but I think there is an important difference between him and La Harman - like most Americans he is instinctively a patriot. He is comfortable in his nationality. He does that hand on heart thing during the national anthem and he means it whereas a Brit doing it can only look a bit of a prick. And there we have the distinction between the American left and the British left - our prototypical strident  lefties (Harmans) are deeply ashamed of being British. They don't approve of themselves and feel the need to apologise for all sorts of things they never did. Which is a real pity because I don't like to think of all these essentially decent people being so unhappy.

Bad news. As I have been posting this the Germans have won and England's next match will now be against them on Sunday. This cannot be a good thing. We will lose. On penalties. And on Monday all the flags will look rather sad and Scotsmen (and Harriet Harman?) will be happy. Which just sucks.