December 2014 book and film review

Welcome to my final media review of the year. A diverse collection once again awaits. In the New Year I intend to write a "review of the year in media"; meanwhile here are my final offerings for 2014.


BOOKS


A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, by Khaled Hosseini. A young girl is born out of wedlock in Afghan and finds herself a social outcast without understanding why. Then her mum dies and her dad marries her off to a bloke who lives in Kabul, far from the tiny mountain village which was her home. All seems to go well with her new husband until she finds herself unable to carry a pregnancy...


Khaled Hosseini's first book, The Kite Runner was a huge hit world wide, with its basic message of "The Afghan people are good, the Taliban are bad", a message the West was only too keen to adopt in a post 911 world. That story was a relatively simple tale, but here Hosseini sets his narrative against a backdrop of 30 years of turbulent times from 1974 to 2004. And most interestingly, his two main protagonists are both women- women whose characters are drawn with considerable skill and remarkable empathy. But once again, his message shines brightly: lives full of hope threatened by brutish, murderous thugs who wish to impose their will on the world. Notable.


THE BOOKSHOP, THE GATE OF ANGELS and THE BLUE FLOWER, by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Three short books by one of Britain's most skilful and subtle writers. I had never heard of Fitzgerald and her most famous book, The Blue Flower until I heard a discussion on Radio 4's A Good Read when two contributors named it when asked to cite their favourite novel of all time. Better give it a try, I thought, and I shall be forever grateful to that programme for the tip. The edition I purchased contained two other novellas which also turned out to be perfect little gems of writing, indeed, minor masterpieces is not too strong a phrase to describe them.


In The Bookshop,  a middle aged widow decides to set up a bookshop in a small town on the East Anglian coast in the late 1950s. Business is anything but brisk until she hears of a publishing sensation that has books racing off the shelves around the country: Lolita. Suddenly she is turning a healthy profit, but reactionary forces in the town disapprove of her and would seek to bring her down.


A deceptively simple tale where very little appears to happen, but in which a marvellous spell is cast by an author of supreme narrative powers.


The Gate of Angels is set in the Cambridge of 1912, where a junior fellow of an ancient college meets a girl under rather strange circumstances and immediately falls head over heels in love. Slight problem? His college does not allow its fellows to marry. Worse, the girl disappears before he can get a chance to become acquainted. Undaunted, our hero sets out to track her down and snag her before someone else does.


The Blue Flower concerns the early, and tragically brief life of the German poet Friedrich von Hardenberg, who adopted the pseudonym of Novalis and established himself as the first great romantic novelist. Barely out of his teens, Fritz, as he is known throughout, who has been recognised from childhood as possessing a prodigious intellect, dismays his friends and family by falling for a twelve year old girl who is not very bright and not even especially pretty. He announces he will wait for her majority and then marry her. As he is from an ancient noble family and she is less high-born her parents approve. No one else does though. Not that Fritz cares. He is in love, and that's the end of it. Then she falls ill...


All these stories seem very simple on the surface and are remarkably easy to read: funny, thrilling, spooky sometimes. But they all have the same touch of greatness about them. Simply wonderful.


FILMS


FROZEN (2013) D- Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee. (animation) A beautiful young princess inherits the throne when her parents are lost at sea. Grieving over, all seems set for a great future for her and her ditzy kid sister Anna. Except for one thing. The new queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) is an "ice genius": she has the ability, sometimes at her command, sometimes involuntarily, to turn everything to ice. And her strange gift/curse is getting worse. After a row with her sister she disappears; meanwhile her entire realm is plunged into eternal winter. Some elements would wish to find her and kill her; her sister however wants to find and rehabilitate her. Somehow...


This Disney/Pixar movie has become in less than a year the most popular animation feature of all time and the fifth most popular movie of any kind. Based loosely on Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen, the film looks great and the characters are exquisitely drawn. The two female leads both have that innocent/foxy appearance which is highly alluring (my wife has forbidden me from buying the dolls as terrible things might happen to them at my hands) and the dialogue is amusing and sometimes very knowing. In summary, what's not to like about Frozen? The answer is, practically nothing, a verdict apparently shared by the entire nation, and indeed the whole world.


THE LEGO MOVIE (2014) W/D- Philip Lord and Christopher Miller. (animation). In a Lego world threatened by evil president Business, only everyman construction worker Emmet, armed with the legendary Piece of Resistance can save the day from mindless conformity and create a brave new world of diversity and individualism. In this seemingly impossible task he is assisted by "Wild Style" (think Melanie Griffith in Something Wild) and Morgan Freeman playing his spiritual advisor (think a kind of Lego Obi Wan Kenobi).


Got all that? It doesn't really matter if you don't. This movie races along at breakneck speed with its assortment of zany characters delivering one-liners with lightning speed before plunging to its life-affirming conclusion: the world is a better place if we are allowed to be ourselves. Visually it is quite unique. The screen is constantly busy, perhaps too busy for the small screen- in common with films like Paris, Texas or Laurence of Arabia, this is one you really need to see in a cinema. And you will need to set aside your misgivings about any movie which is essentially a 95 minute commercial. Lego has seen its already healthy profits soar since this movie came out, and like Frozen this film has clearly tapped into the zeitgeist with unerring accuracy: it was Britain's most popular movie of 2014. And it's hard to begrudge its success.


SINBAD THE SAILOR (1947) D- Richard Wallace. Sinbad, everyone's favourite lovable rogue, engages in a search for the lost treasure of Alexander the Great, ably assisted by Maureen O'Hara. Oh, the japes and scrapes they get themselves into!


Maureen O'Hara, I am ready to reveal. is the main reason I obtained this movie but I fear it was an error. Certainly her luminous loveliness shines in every scene she is in, and her costumes are sumptuous, but really this is a terrible movie, slow, leaden, uninspired and featuring a Douglas Fairbanks who had not modified his acting style one jot from his days as an icon of the world of the silent movie. See it only if you are a seriously committed O'Hara fan.


BAGDAD (sic) (1949) D- Charles Lamont. A beautiful Bedouin princess (Maureen O'Hara) enlists the help of the military governor of Bagdad (Vincent Price) to track down her father's murderer, but he'd rather get inside her panties than assist her in her quest, which maybe even leads back to himself. But she has an ally in the form of a local potentate who also finds her somewhat appealing. Appealing? Yes. Arab? I think nottle. With the gorgeous peaches and cream complexion of a coleen born and raised in the Emerald Isle Maureen O'Hara is the least likely Bedouin you could ever imagine. No matter. O'Hara herself said later about these films (see Sinbad the Sailor) that the producers called them "tits and sand" (you could also call them "lust in the dust" I suppose)  movies, they being principally vehicles to dress the divine one in a series of lavish and low cut gowns. They have no argument from me on that score, but as we have seen, cinematically they were not of the best. This one wins out slightly over Sinbad in that it is more tightly paced and saved to some extent by a gloriously evil Vincent Price. Passable, but barely.


ELYSIUM (2013) D- Neill Blomkamp. In a world destroyed by environmental catastrophe, the elite have decamped to a vast orbiting space station and live lives of unbridled luxury. They even have some sort of scanner which can cure any disease. Enter Matt Damon, whose GF's daughter is dying of leukaemia, to hatch a plan to take the girl through the elaborate security net surrounding the space station and procure a cure before she succumbs.


Neill Blomkamp received a lot of praise for District Nine, a film which used the device of aliens arriving on Planet Earth only to be herded into compounds and abused as a means of highlighting the evils of apartheid. Here the gulf between the poor and the rich is his starting point, though for me it doesn't work half as well as District Nine.


For me the biggest problem is the space station. As Neil deGrasse Tyson might have observed, why didn't the wealthy elite simply requisition Hawaii or somewhere and build their exclusive paradise there? You could say for security, but as we soon find out, it seems perfectly easy to penetrate the net surrounding the space station anyway, thereby kind of negating the whole idea of putting an exclusive paradise in space. Having said that, Matt turns in his usual effective performance, as does Jodie Foster, who makes an excellent job of the autocratic director of the space station. Not bad.


THE IMITATION GAME (2014) D- Morten Tyldum. At the time of Britain's darkest hour in World War II, a team of cryptographers is assembled to attempt to crack the "unbreakable" German ENIGMA code. Its unlikely leader is an eccentric Oxford don by the name of Alan Turing, a man of whom the Americans might say "does not work well with others". Can this motley collection of crossword buffs and theoretical mathematicians pull of the impossible?


The story of Alan Turing is now well known to the wider public. His contribution to the war effort, his perhaps even greater contribution to the world of computing is well known, as is his homosexuality, which cost him his freedom when it was uncovered by an over-zealous police force in the early fifties. And here, in a film which despite its high production values still feels more like a television play than a mainstream movie, we see the man in full played superbly by Benedict Cumberbatch in a role which could have been created for him (for all I know it was). I also liked Charles Dance as his C.O and Keira Knightly as his somewhat improbable love interest. Superior stuff.


THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) D- George Clooney. At the close of World War II a crack team of art experts, under the command of George Clooney (who also wrote the script, so we certainly know who to blame for it), is put together to retrieve at least some of the vast haul of art purloined by the Nazis.


There you have it. All the elements, you would have thought (huge star in the lead, brilliant plot outline, all the money in the world to make it look good), to make an outstanding movie. Wrong. This movie sucks. There's no drama, no death or glory, no real love interest (despite the presence of Cate Blanchett in the cast) and, most importantly, no emotional engagement.
When the North Koreans hacked into Sony's emails, one emerged showing how George was truly devastated by the poor reviews for his film, believing he had really given it his best shot. Poor old George. We can only hope he has sought, and found, solace in the arms of his lovely new wife. He won't get any from reading this. Or the box office takings. It bombed


AMOUR (2012) D- Michael Hanake. An elderly couple are enjoying the autumn of their lives together in Paris when she has a stroke. She is paralysed down the right side but can still speak, but soon she is descending a slow arc towards oblivion and death. Her husband promises he will never send her to hospital or a care home, but he is over eighty and becoming disabled with arthritis. How will he manage?


This marvellous film justifiably carried all before it in 2012, winning the highly sought after Palme D'Or and securing for Emanuelle Riva the best actress BAFTA, at 85 the oldest ever winner of that award. Jean-Louis Trintignant too shines as the husband, crowning a career that goes back over fifty years, while Isabelle Huppert is terrific as the daughter who is crushed by her mothers decline. Brilliant.


THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004) (animation) D- Robert Zemekis. A child is woken by the sound of a train outside his house. Funny, he lives nowhere near the railroad tracks... He gets on regardless and is taken, along with a group of other wide-eyed kids, on an epic journey to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus.
Now what could possibly be wrong with that? You start with one of Hollywood's most successful directors adapting an enormously popular children's book. Then you book Tom Hanks to voice not one, but six characters and finish off by spending no less than 165 million dollars on it, still the most money anyone has ever laid out on an animated picture. And what do you end up with? I'm sorry Bob, but with something ultimately unsatisfying. True, some of the set-pieces, like when the train has to traverse a frozen lake and comes off its tracks, or where it is roaring through vertiginous mountain passes, are really stunning. But you never get inside any of the characters; you almost don't care if they get to the North Pole or not. I also had a problem with the animation. The style was hyper-realistic, so realistic in fact that I wondered why they didn't use real actors and just animate the other stuff, just like Zemekis did so brilliantly with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
 I imagine if you'd hacked Zemekis's emails you'd have seen the same sort of "I just don't get it, why didn't the public go for it?" laments. In the event it did make its money back, but only just. Disappointing.


WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007) D- James Gray. "We Own the Night" is the catchy little epigram carried on the badges of night cops in New York City, but there's a gang of ne'er-do-wells out there who would seek to own the night for themselves. Police chief Robert Duvall is there to prevent that. His son  happens to be the manager of a night club where the bad guys like to congregate. So Phoenix is recruited, albeit a little reluctantly, into the service and goes undercover with a wire. But these bad guys aren't stupid...


Tough, realistic cops and robbers thriller which held my attention well, even if parts of it are a little predictable. Enjoyable.


THE BIG STEAL (1949) D- Don Siegel. An army lieutenant (Robert Mitchum) is robbed of a $300,000 payroll he is guarding and army detective William Bendix is convinced he's walked off with it himself and goes in search of him. But Mitchum is himself trying to track down the real perp, whose girlfriend is the extremely attractive Jane Greer. He finds her alone and soon strikes up a friendship, made easier as it emerges she has been left in the lurch. All this is going down in a lawless Mexico where other miscreants hear of the loot and would wish to obtain it for themselves. All is winding up to a pretty thrilling climax...


The world had already seen the on-screen chemistry between Mitchum and Greer in Out of the Past (also known as Build my Gallows High) two years earlier, and this film only cements it. Here we find what The Polar Express and The Monuments Men  lacked: belief in the characters. We love Mitchum; we'd like to be him if we could, we're certainly on his side, we want him to get the girl; why, we even like William Bendix even though he's trying to bring down our hero. This is film noir close to its best.


THE BEAST OF THE CITY (1932) D- Charles Brabin. Police captain Fitzgerald (Walter Huston) is determined to clean up the mean streets of Chicago but the gangsters are extremely well organised and will stop at nothing to maintain their power base. As usual, they have the best looking molls too, in this case a twenty-year old Jean Harlow, already fizzing with the sexuality that would make her a legend..


Famous for the extreme violence of its final, climactic scene, shocking even today, eighty years later and also for its first featuring role for the blonde bombshell herself, this shows what Hollywood could do before it got de-balled by the Hays code. Stirring stuff...

Did you see Santa on Christmas Eve? We did!

That's right. At 6.20 PM on Christmas Eve, having been alerted by the internet, we stood in our garden and watched a bright star pass overhead from west to east. With night glasses it was just possible to resolve two rectangular structures, presumably panniers filled with prezzies attached to Santa's sleigh. My binoculars were not strong enough to make out the reindeer, but there can be no doubting they were there all right.


Some cynics say it was actually a sighting of the International Space Station, orbiting some 350 miles above the Earth at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour, and that those two tiny rectangles were the vast twin solar cell arrays, but that didn't stop thousands of parents across southern England taking their kids outside and pointing out Santa's progress across the firmament. As agent Mulder used to say, I want to believe. He also said The truth is out there, but clearly, as we witnessed three nights ago, the truth is up there.


How was Christmas for you? For us it was rather more successful than of late despite occasional (and inevitable) minor disasters, like my brother's much vaunted Brussels sprouts au gratin which by the time they reached the plate were as hard as gobstoppers. Never mind. His mulled wine was terrific.


Hope yours was good. I'm off to watch about seven Carry On  movies I've recorded over the last couple of days. What's wrong? They represent a phenomenon that is the distilled pure essence of Britishnesss in the 60s and 70s, before we lost our innocence and punk, and Margaret Thatcher, changed everything forever.

OMG I'm liking Christmas now! Whatever next?

Normally, as followers of this blog may have perceived, I hate Christmas and everything to do with it. The commercialism, the stress that pervades everyone's life until well after Boxing Day- leave it out I say. Go and spend Christmas in Morocco, or skiing somewhere (that's worked for me in the past; try Austria, where they have their big meal and presents on Christmas Eve and the Big Day is almost like a normal day, especially on the pistes).


But, courtesy of a number of Christmas movies I have found myself watching in the past couple of weeks, it somehow feels different this year. It started with a mega production called The Nativity Story, made in 2008 and approved by no lesser authority than the Vatican itself. They were mortified, perhaps understandably, when it emerged later that the 17 year-old actress playing the virgin was in fact in the early stages of pregnancy during the filming. Apparently this affected the box office in devout Italy, though for me it was a pretty serviceable re-telling of the old story, non-immaculate conception notwithstanding.


Then there was the 2009 British film Nativity, a generally awful movie saved by the excellence of Martin Freeman as the schoolteacher who wants to mount the best goddam nativity play ever produced. Next came Elf, a film every bit as good as Nativity was bad, so good in fact that in its transcendent happiness and life affirming qualities it has perhaps become the It's a Wonderful Life of the Millennium.


Finally the two versions of Miracle on 34th Street. The first, made in 1947 and featuring the estimable Edmund Gwenn as the Santa nobody can bring themselves to believe in until it is made obvious to everyone that he is indeed the real deal, is one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. It didn't need to suffer the ignominy of a remake, but they did it anyway in 1994, with Dickie ("darling") Attenborough as Santa. To be fair, he did make a pretty fair fist of it in the event, but, as I say, it wasn't really necessary. How do you improve on perfection? Answer: you can't, stupid, so don't even try.


And there we have it. Through the medium of cinema I have made myself believe again- in the fun, the family and even the underlying meaning of it all. I'm ready for you Xmas! Bring it on!
And while I'm still in a good mood (my wife pointed out one unerring truth: I'm feeling good because Christmas Eve is definitely better than Christmas Day)- may I wish a very happy Christmas to all my readers! And may all your Christmases be relatively stress free...

We don't know what's going on. Seriously

One of the best things about New Year's Eve is the publication of papers hitherto considered not fit for public consumption for thirty years. By this means we get a glimpse of what really happened- though even then the information is strictly limited. Some more sensitive information is kept secret for fifty years, like the cracking of the ENIGMA code in World War II. Some are kept under wraps for 100 years, and we have to assume that some extremely embarrassing stuff has the word "NEVER" scrawled across the top.


Hence we may never know what is really going on at the highest levels of government. Occasionally, however, we get unexpected insights well before the thirty years papers emerge, like the Snowden revelations,or, just the other day, the leaked email trails from Sony. On that one, by the way, President Obama expressed his disquiet over Sony pulling their film The Interview, but I wonder if one day it could emerge that he actually insisted on it, not wishing to see a chain of cinemas bombed by the North Koreans. We don't know.


Also the other day it emerged that the Saudis are secretly backing the ISIS fighters in their struggle to convert Syria and Iraq into a unified Islamic Caliphate- not wholly unlike the system that currently operates in the KSA. So the story goes, the oil-rich sheiks are funding ISIS partly out of a guilty conscience over their own profligate activities: adultery, gambling, drinking and drug taking, all proscribed the Koran but widely practised behind closed doors in cities up and down the Arabian peninsula. I note there appears to be no guilt over their disgraceful treatment of women in many parts of the Islamic world- that's cool apparently.


I think what I'm saying is, by all means watch the news on TV and read your newspapers, but remember: it's not even half the picture. To get the other half is much more difficult, though not impossible.

Viva Cuba! Viva!

Like a lot of people I have been a little disappointed with the results of Barack Obama's presidency. His "Obama-care" health policy changes were strangled at birth by an implacable Republican party, sentencing millions of indigent Americans to third class medical care or, in many cases, no care at all. But in areas where he could have made a difference he has been depressingly silent- like the Israel/Palestine question, where he has been no more effective than his predecessor, who as we recall was no help at all beyond coining that catchy phrase "the road map to peace" Now there's a road less travelled...


However, in the last couple of weeks we have seen two significant pronouncements coming out of the White House. First, nearly seven years after saying he would do something about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, he has at last released some of the prisoners. Good work, though I understand there are still many people still held there without charge for more than ten years. But it's a start.


Then yesterday he announced a thawing of relations with their old enemy, Cuba. America loved Cuba under Baptista. He was their kind of leader: ultra-right wing, putting the interests of big business (especially American big business) before the concerns of the ordinary citizen. And naturally they were horrified when Castro and co. ousted that hated dictatorship and began to build roads, schools and hospitals that even the poorest could benefit from. Indeed, so horrified were they that JFK authorised a highly speculative counter revolution to take things back to the good old feudal days. The attempt was an embarrassing failure, and ever since in an attack of pique that has lasted nearly fifty years, they have slapped a trade embargo on that already impoverished country, thereby depriving it of the enormous market that lay only ninety miles to the north.


Now it seems all this hatred and paranoia is going to come to an end, with normal diplomatic relations being resumed and perhaps a lifting of the embargo only just around the corner. Nice one Mr President! I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to do anything to justify the huge wave of optimism that surrounded your election way back in 2008.

Edinburgh dispatch

I have visited Scotland nine times in my life: to Orkney (twice) the outer Hebrides, the west coast, the east coast, skiing at Aviemore (twice), the highlands and the lowlands. For some reason, however, I have never visited its splendid capital city. Last weekend I finally put that right. And my goodness, am I ever glad I did.


It had snowed in the days before our visit, and there was still quite a bit around when we arrived in temperatures hovering around zero degrees. We were at least appropriately dressed, and attacked its major sights with some gusto: the elegant shopping district which is Princes Street, with a large Christmas fair situated right next to it in the shadow of the great Scott Monument. Innumerable stalls could be found selling everything from genuine German bratwurst (manned by genuine Germans) to outlets featuring cashmire scarves (almost impossible to avoid in Edinburgh), again staffed either by Germans or Chinese with broad Scottish accents. It was cold, but great fun and we parted with much of our cash but securing what we felt to be bargains (that, by the way, is the definition of a bargain: if you think it's a bargain, it is).


Next door to the Christmas market lies the Scottish National Gallery, featuring a sumptuous collection of works by masters both old and new. Perhaps the highlight for me was a room housing seven large pictures by Nicolas Poussin, depicting the Seven Sacraments. The atmosphere created was so powerful you almost felt as though you were standing on holy ground. There were other marvels too: the largest known picture by Vermeer, two wonderful Van Goghs painted during his sojourn at the insane asylum at Arles, and, especially poignant, a self portrait by Rembrandt painted towards the end of his life when he had suffered the disgrace of bankruptcy and was forced to sell his art collection and most of his other possessions. You can see the tiredness of life, the ennui coming from his eyes which, it seems, can only see the way forward to dusty death...


The following day we trudged up another glacial dunlin along the Royal Mile to the dark, imposing mass of Edinburgh castle, standing proudly atop a volcanic remnant, much restored in recent times but retaining enough of its ancient past to preserve its atmosphere redolent of the grim march of history. My highlights were the Scottish Crown Jewels, where, sharing the same bullet-proof glass case as golden crowns and necklaces with pearls the size of your thumbnail, was the celebrated Stone of Destiny- just a three hundred block of rough sandstone- or is it? It isn't hard to see it as imbued with some magical, animistic power.




Picking a day of reasonably clement weather we decided to make the walk up Arthur's Seat, a 252 metre high volcanic peg which actually lies within the city limits, a little enclave of wildness surrounded by the hubbub of modern city life. The walk proved much more of a challenge than we anticipated. Here the snow and ice had not melted as it dad done on the city streets, making the steep paths extremely hazardous, especially on the descent, which seemed, reassuringly, to present a formidable challenge to nearly everyone attempting the journey. I saw one Japanese girl simply sit down on the sheet ice at one point and burst into tears. As we slithered past, her boyfriend was doing his best to encourage her, putting his arm round her and whispering encouraging words into her ear (in English, oddly).


My own wife was not dressed quite appropriately for the occasion. She wasn't exactly wearing a cocktail dress and high heels, but her apparel might have been more suited to, say, shopping in a city during the winter. Nonetheless, we both made it up and down without major catastrophe, an achievement of which we were both justifiably proud.


On our last day, back in the relative safety of the city again, we spent a couple of hours wandering in Edinburgh's "New Town". In 1766 the architect James Craig was given the task of gentrifying the area of the city north of Princes Street to attract "men of rank" to the city. And over the course of the next twenty years he created a Georgian enclave that rivals anything to be found in Bath, Buxton or Harrogate. In an area of 500 rolling acres he built a network of streets, squares and circles with a panache rivalling anything achieved by Hausmann or L'Enfant. Magnificent rows of town houses look out over a series of delightful little parks (most of which,  as in Mayfair, are locked against the general public). I presume most of these huge houses are now divided into apartments, though the atmosphere remains extremely gentile. At a small café in the heart of New Town I overheard a trendy young man ordering his breakfast: "I'll have the veggie breakfast please."  Then an afterthought: "With bacon."
Why not?
Edinburgh. I have heard it described as the Athens of the North, and while I am usually suspicious of anywhere being described as the something of somewhere else, on this occasion I believe it to be justified. Edinburgh is not the Athens of the North: it is entirely its own entity: one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Run away! The robots are coming! Aargh!

No lesser personage than Steven Hawking has announced the end of humanity as we know it if it pursues its desire for ever more intelligent machines. Once they reach the level of human insight and analysis, he claims, they will start to communicate with one another without our even knowing it and eventually, as did the computer Hal in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, conclude that humans are no longer necessary for them to carry out their mission, whatever that is. This view exactly mirrors the plotline in The Terminator movies, where computers from the future have actually declared war on the human race.


Now I would normally be slightly reluctant to take issue with one of the most intelligent people alive on this planet. Steven Hawking is said to have an IQ of 215; hence it would probably be unwise to argue with him about anything. However, reckless as it may be, I do choose to take issue with him on this point.


Alan Turing is hot right now, with Benedict Cumberbatch (who is even hotter) playing him in the new film The Imitation Game. I haven't seen it yet, but I wonder if, along with the struggle to crack the Enigma code of which Turing was a critical part, there is any discussion of one of his most famous concepts: "The Turing Test". Trying to answer the question "Can computers think, or could they ever think?" he proposed this acid test: if by communicating with a computer, by whatever means, their response is indistinguishable from how an intelligent human being behind a screen might respond, then to all intents and purposes that computer is thinking.


No computer has yet passed the Turing test, but around the world the race is on to design software that could do it, and when it is finally achieved, it will be one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time. That great futurologist Arthur C Clarke imagined his computer Hal could pass the Turing test with ease, and that by the year 2001. Thirteen years past that date it still hasn't happened, but I am told that the computer world is finally closing on this holy grail. In some ways there are already signs we are approaching it, like when you mis-type something into google and it helpfully asks if you meant something else, which is usually exactly what you did mean.


I might live long enough to see this historic milestone passed, and it will certainly change the world irrevocably. Apart from anything else, it could end loneliness once and for all, as we could purchase a sentient companion we could talk to, even have a meaningful and caring relationship with. Indeed, there is perhaps no limit to what could be achieved. Obviously safeguards would need to be built in (see Asimov's three rules of robotics)- but wouldn't it be nice if we could build similar safeguards into our relationships with other human beings? It's a brave new world I'm talking about here, and I for one can't wait for it to arrive.

The banality of evil in Britain today

Normally I am very cautious about sounding morally censorious in this blog. Let he who is without sin etc. And when I use the term evil, I more cautious still. The leadership in North Korea, the gun lobby in the United States, those followers of ISIL who are happy to behead people when they don't subscribe to their own brand of Islam- these are examples of evil at its rawest.


But you can find it right here in Britain today, as was revealed today when it emerged that the giant food company Premier Foods charge their suppliers simply for the right to supply to them. Remember, a lot of these suppliers are small family concerns who survive on razor-thin profit margins. Does Premier Foods give a toss about this? Do they fuck. They know there is intense competition among small suppliers to be taken up by PF, and therefore they can get away with keeping their boots on people's necks when they do business with them.


It is known that the big retailers, Tesco et al, operate a cutthroat policy regarding the deals they offer to their smaller suppliers and that they in turn have no option but to be as competitive as possible in order to avoid losing their contracts and thereby their livelihoods. But at least they don't charge them just for the privilege of supplying them in the first place.


Business secretary Vince Cable (Vince for PM! I say, and if not him then Peter Hain, though I guess both prospects are equally unlikely) has vowed to put a stop to this iniquitous practice- let's hope he is able to, and that the arch-capitalists in the cabinet (George Osborne and his buddies) don't slap him down. I'm sure nothing makes them happier than doing that...

November 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


FRAMLEY PARSONAGE, by Anthony Trollope. A young vicar is favoured by the local dowager baroness, but he is tempted to join the fast set surrounding the Duke of Omnium (whom the baroness hates). While staying at the Duke's ancestral home he is prevailed upon by an unscrupulous M.P. to lend money- more than he can afford to say good-bye to- which naturally, as always seems to happen in Trollope novels, he does. Faced with public disgrace when he cannot honour the loan (which has been sold on) he is forced to rely on the good graces of the baroness's eldest son- but then falls out with him. What a to do!


Cited by John Major as his favourite book, this is a characteristic romp through the mores and sensibilities of the middle and upper classes of rural England in the middle of the 19th century. All human life is here as usual: the fast-living M.P. who has to sell his ancient seat to pay mounting debts, a battle of wills between opposing members of the aristocracy, charming, unsophisticated girls coming up from the country and wood by the scion of the manner (who may or may not be a bad egg) and a censorious priest who would rather he and his children starve than accept charity from anyone, because people of means must be evil by definition. My wife has read Trollope's entire canon of over 20 books and pronounced this one of her favourites, hence my decision to go for number 4 in the series of 6 "Barchester chronicles". Truth to tell, I had so much fun with it I'm wishing I had started at number 1. Never mind, there's still time to put that right...


  


TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by John Reed. In Russia during the momentous days of early November 1917 and the birth of the Russian Revolution, an American writer and committed socialist is there to record the events for posterity. What emerges is one of the greatest pieces of journalism ever written; equal in stature say, to William Russell's dispatches to the Times on the Crimean War or Bernstein and Woodward's famous coverage of the Watergate scandal.


The detail is meticulously recorded, the personalities of the big players dissected minutely. Two giant figures emerge: Lenin, not a figure of great personal charisma but with an incredible ability to explain complex political theory in a way that even the most illiterate peasant could relate to, and Trotsky, a man with truly huge personal character who with a few words could galvanise an exhausted, demoralised mob to grab their weapons and run to man the barricades. Interestingly, Uncle Joe Stalin is mentioned just twice and then only briefly. It wasn't until 1924 and the death of Lenin that he began to come to the fore.


The rest is history, and not very pleasant history at that. But John Reed would not live to see all that. He was dead from typhus within a year of the great revolution. But his book remains as his sublime legacy, a book full of tiny but telling detail, like the day when the first snow of Winter begins to fall, lightening everyone's mood considerably. Reed doesn't understand at first, but soon realises: ice and snow are a lot better than mud and rain...  Then there is the time during a crowded meeting in a literally smoke-filled room when one delegate stands up and declares:
"Comrades! No one can breathe in here because of the smoke!".  A quick vote is taken, and a motion to ban smoking during meetings is passed unanimously. But within minutes everyone is smoking again, and just as frantically as ever...


THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, by Sir Walter Scott. In mid-18th century Edinburgh, a young girl is sentenced to death for child murder- this despite the fact no child's body has been found. No matter, the law of the time did not require one. Her older sister decides to travel to London to petition the King for clemency- an extremely hazardous journey in those days. But she has two pieces of paper in her pocket which may assist her. The first is written by no lesser figure than the late Duke of Argyle, who wrote a testimonial for the girl's grandfather after he had saved the duke's life during a pitched battle some fifty years before. The other is a safe conduct pass penned by one of Scotland's most notorious felons. Even so, it seems an almost impossible mission. However in Jeannie we have a heroine of unsurpassed determination. If anyone can do it, she can...


We are off to spend four days in Edinburgh shortly, so it seemed only fitting to explore for the first time Scotland's most famous writer, and to read one that is actually set in that great city. Scott was fabulously successful in his day, not just in the United Kingdom but in Europe and America too. A kind of forerunner to Dickens, his character studies are full of wit and insight, and his plots race along like a horse and carriage at full speed. Much of the dialogue in Heart of Midlothian is in what is called "lowland Scots" a dialect which is difficult to understand at first, though one soon gets to grips with it. Fascinating stuff.


THE WASTE LAND, by T.S. Eliot. First published in 1922, this poem of just 434 lines (it covers just seventeen pages of text in my edition of Eliot's poems) was almost immediately accepted as one of the greatest poems ever written in the English language. The poem draws on sacred Hindu and Buddhist texts, as well as the writings of figures like St Augustine of Hippo, and, critically, as Eliot himself acknowledges in the first of his explanatory notes, Sir  Charles Frazer's seminal book  The Golden Bough, which attempts, apparently for the first time, to take an anthropological view of religion and spirituality. Frazer's view is that cultures proceed from magic, to religion, and finally to science as they attempt to understand the world around them, and Eliot's poem likewise might be understood as a majestic attempt to shake some sense out of an infinitely confusing and mysterious world


The poem has spawned countless PhDs as people have picked over its bones to find its hidden meanings, but perhaps the most important question is: what's it like to read? The answer for me is: quite extraordinary. Other words I could use might include: strange, mystical, obscure, magical, and deeply confusing. Above all though, is a sense of mysterious grandeur which is unique in my reading experience. My first resolution on completing was: I need to read this again, and again. And so I shall...


FILMS


INTERSTELLAR (2014) D- Christopher Nolan. In a world dying from environmental neglect, a freelance group resurrects a Saturn V launcher to send an astronaut (Matthew McConnaughey) to look into a worm hole in space which has been discovered in the vicinity of Saturn. Maybe on the other side of the worm hole there will be a world fit for humanity to live on...


Since I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 in Cinerama I've been waiting for a science fiction movie to match up to it. I'm still waiting. Apparently feeling the same way, Christopher Nolan decided to do the job himself. Unfortunately, despite some great production values and some very interesting ideas, he hasn't done it either. But he has managed to pay tribute to a number of other notable science fiction movies along the way. For instance:
a) an astronaut encounters predictable problems when he attempts to transfer from one space craft to another without functioning airlocks (2001)
b) another astronaut becomes emotionally attached to a robot (Silent Running)
c) a female astronaut gets in a bit of a tizz while experiencing problems in orbit (Gravity)
d) Benevolent super-intelligent aliens take a man on an unimaginable journey beyond the infinite (2001 again)


There are a number of plot devices which don't work for me in this film, best summed up by the American cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who asked why they didn't just try to fix the problems on Earth rather than going an improbable journey to find worlds which didn't seem too appetising either once they finally got there. However, as a modern piece of cinema I suppose this does work. Perhaps what I'm really saying is they don't make sci-fi movies like they used to. Maybe they never will...


GONE GIRL (2014) D- David Fincher. A middle class couple appear to be enjoying the perfect life when the wife (Rosamund Pyke) goes missing. Naturally the husband (Ben Affleck) is suspected of murdering her, but in the absence of a body or any evidence of an abduction, the police let him go. However they continue to harbour their suspicions; meanwhile the press has a field day...


With a highly articulate screenplay adapted from her own novel by Gillian Flynn and some highly skilled directing this is a pretty good film. The plot is almost byzantine in its complexity however, and I do not recommend going out to the loo or even so much as ceasing your concentration for a second. The players are just fine and the analysis of the press handling of the story is masterful. I do have some minor issues with the plotting, though when I voiced them to my brother he pointed out that you see the same sort of thing in every other Agatha Christie novel, so perhaps I shouldn't complain...


MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM (2014) D- Justin Chadwick. A man grows up in the injustice that is Apartheid South Africa and decides to dedicate his life to bringing the evil regime down. Soon he is imprisoned for 27 years for violent rebellion, but even that fails to dampen his ardour. In fact if anything it strengthens it...


Idris Elba's finest hour you might say. What an honour it must be to play the greatest man of his generation, and perhaps the greatest black man who ever lived. And he certainly does a fine job of playing the father of a nation. I do have some problems with this film despite that: in trying to portray his whole life in 2 1/2 hours, we are forced to watch an almost madcap romp through his exploits leaving little time for reflection and real insight into the mind of a man who doubtless had his contradictions and existential struggles, just like the rest of us. On the whole though, I did enjoy it and found it intensely moving at times. Remember, I was there, in spirit at least, through much of his struggle, going on many anti- apartheid demos (on one of which I was beaten by the police, the British police) and following the story as it developed from Reagan and Thatcher saying they were happy to do business with an apartheid government to Mandela's assumption of power as the nation's first black president. Amazing days...


THE PATIENCE STONE (2012) D- Atiq Rahimi. In a desert village in an unspecified middle Eastern country, a woman's husband is shot in the neck leaving him in a vegetative state. He is completely unresponsive, so she begins to use him as a "patience stone", a kind of receptacle into which she can pour out her innermost thoughts, hopes and fears. In Arab tradition the stone is then buried, though she can't do that 'cause he's still alive. Still, he'll do...


There are other problems too. Her husband was the bread winner, and now she has no way to make a living. Except one...


A deeply moving and beautiful film of great sensitivity and insight, demonstrating that the world of Arab film making has most definitely come of age. Brilliant.


THE ROAD TO CORINTH (1967) D- Claude Chabrol. An international arms dealer is killed, and his beautiful wife is followed in the hope she will lead his enemies to his haul of weapons. A really rather silly offering in the style of a post-Bond spoof which was quite popular in the late sixties, especially in France. The film is most notable for the performance of its female lead, Jean Seberg, who shines in every scene. Poor Jean Seberg! Hounded out of America for her left wing views by J Edgar Hoover and his FBI, they continued their harassment even after she moved to France, making up stories that her baby was not fathered by her husband. Finally she ended her life in 1981- a great career blighted by intimidation, prejudice and senseless hatred.


STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008) D- Errol Morris. Speaking of intimidation and senselss hatred, here it is updated to the Millennium. This is the story of Abu Graib prison in Iraq, where the CIA interrogated its detainees in any way they thought fit in their bid to keep the homeland safe. What happened there is now a matter of record, with prisoners being humiliated in all sorts of ways (you will recall the photographs of prisoners posed naked in bizarre human heaps). The title of the film refers to what was allowed (degradation, water boarding, "stress poses" and so on) and what was not (murder, breaking bones and, critically, photographing their activities) Hence the resulting prison terms handed down to a few of the guards, who in a living version of the famous Milgram experiments, simply did what their bosses told them to do without ever thinking to challenge the morality of their orders. Sobering stuff.


LA CEREMONIE (1995) D- Claude Chabrol. A young woman is taken on as housekeeper to a wealthy family; she makes a good first impression even though she harbours a dark secret. Well, it's not that dark: she can't read. She knows enough, however, to realise she must hide her illiteracy if she is to keep her job. Then she finds a kindred spirit in the shape of a local post office employee (a terrific Isobel Huppert) who has one or two secrets of her own. As their bond strengthens they begin to feed on each other's resentment of how society has treated them. And they plot their revenge...


Chabrol sank into something of a low during the sixties (see above) but here we see him back at his best with a riveting story loosely based on real events in Paris of the 1930s, where a pair of twins taken into service exacted lethal retribution against their employers. The case became a cause celebre for left wing intellectuals at the time including Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre, who cited the case as an example of the evils of the capitalist system. Here Chabrol has adapted and altered the story for his own ends and come up with a minor masterpiece. Excellent.


THE GLASS KEY (1942) D- Stuart Heisler. A big-wheel political fixer (Brian Donlevy) claims he has the governor's ear to the point where he can twist him around his little finger. But his minder (Alan Ladd) warns him that his "key" to the governor's mansion could be made of glass- and snap off one day leaving him in the shit. Then the governor's son is found murdered and the police suspect the fixer of doing the deed. The kid was a loser, and interfering with the governor's chance of being re-elected. But is it as simple as that?


Of course it isn't. Nothing is as it first appears in this intriguing piece of film noir,  based on the Dashiel Hammett book of the same name. The plot twists come thick and fast, but what shines is the strength of the characters, particularly Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who had already shown how strong their on-screen chemistry was in This Gun for Hire, which had come out the previous year.
Definitive noir.


PANTANI:THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CYCLIST. (2014) D- James Erskine. Marco Pantani started winning road races when still a child, and by the age of 24 was the world's best. In 1998 he won both the Tour de France and the Giro D'Italia in the same year, an almost unprecedented feat. Then Lance Armstrong came on the scene. From then on it wasn't just a case of being a better cyclist, it was a case of who does the most drugs without being caught. And no one was better at that than Armstrong. Desperate to keep up with the American, Pantani resorted to pharmaceuticals too, but unlike his American nemesis was soon caught, and this marked a tragic downhill spiral which could only end one way...
Powerful piece of documentary film making.


MISTER TURNER (2014) D- Mike Leigh. Being the life and times of Britain's greatest painter, shown in all his artisan perfection. Here is the man in full, a man with little time for his fellow human beings, obsessed with light and colour as he was to the exclusion of almost everything else. Accepted by the establishment even though he was never really part of it, in this film Turner grunts and prumps his way through the early part of 19th century England with one burning desire: to be known as her greatest ever artist. That this ambition was achieved, and so magnificently, scarcely seems real . Yet everything in this film is real. I have taken an interest in Turner since my teens and confirm all the details depicted in Leigh's film are completely authentic.
As we were leaving the cinema I heard an elderly lady in front of me say:
"It was a good film, but I didn't enjoy it"
Perhaps she found Timothy Spall's enthralling performance a bit hard to swallow, with all his grunts and monosyllables. All I can say is that it was a good film and I did enjoy it. In fact this could be my film of the year. If you only see one film this year, see this one. Hrrumph.


LONE SURVIVOR (2014) D- Peter Berg. In Afghan a squad of American soldiers are tasked with taking out a Taliban commander and are assured he will only have a few men with him. But their intel is faulty- he has a whole company of heavily armed men at his side. They decide on a tactical withdrawal but are soon spotted and pursued. One by one the men are shot or blown to pieces with grenade launchers. Soon only Mark Wahlberg is left. His only hope is rescue, but helicopters are extremely vulnerable to attack with RPGs. With shrapnel wounds in his leg he can barely walk- but his survival instinct is still strong. But how can he get out of this alive?


Based apparently on a real incident in 2009, Peter Berg's film is one of the more gritty and realistic war movies I have seen in quite a while. The viewer thoroughly identifies with our hero's grim plight- we so want him to get out alive but how is it possible? (we suspend for the moment any question as to why he is there in the first place- that's not for now)
This movie was one of the weekly series of "Sky Premier" movies, which show movies seen for the first time on British television. Usually they are absolute dogs, straight to DVD fodder, but this (and to be fair, Mandela: long Walk to Freedom, which was also part of this series) is actually superior movie making. Recommended.

Nazis: alive and well in Jerusalem right now

You won't have heard about this on any of the standard media outlets; indeed it doesn't even seem to have made it to Al Jazeira for some reason, but yesterday in Jerusalem the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Bilingual school was subject to yet another arson attack, only the latest in a series of such attacks against the school which has been targeted by ultra-right wing Israeli groups. Nazis. They sought out all the bilingual books they could find and burnt them first. Does this remind you of anything?


What they don't like is that by promoting education as a means to achieving understanding and tolerance between Arabs and Jews in Israel, the school might actually bring about peace between the two groups. And they don't want that. They want the utter destruction of the Palestinian peoples. You  think I exaggerate perhaps? Then consider this graffito which was scrawled on one of the school's walls which was not destroyed:


                                    "There's no co-existing with cancer"


I don't know about you, but whenever I hear about books being burnt I feel a great cry of anger rise up from deep inside me. I first felt this when I was a teenager and learnt about the great Nazi book burnings in the 1930s. They didn't just burn anti-Nazi propaganda,  they burnt anything they didn't like: Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, many other works of literature now thought to represent the finest distillation of human thought ever put on paper. What they didn't understand, and what the latter-day Nazis in Jerusalem also fail to appreciate is:


                                           YOU CAN'T BURN AN IDEA


Hang in there you brave men and women who run that school. You are the future of Israel and I salute you.

If Jeremy Hunt can't get it right, can we blame anyone else for getting it wrong?

Yesterday in the House of Commons health secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted that he had taken one of his children to A and E, rather than waiting until "later on" (sic) to attend the GP out-of-hours service.
Moreover it seems he has received a good measure of support for his actions in the social media. Clearly I am not in tune with the hive mind of the Twittersphere, because I think it stinks.


Jeremy Hunt himself has bemoaned the unacceptable waiting times at A and E, and warned of the imminent meltdown of the whole system when winter kicks in properly, yet he seems to have no problem encouraging the general population to abuse the service in exactly the way he has done. I am perfectly well aware of the deficiencies of GP out-of-hours services in parts of the country, though here in South Wales the system works extremely well, with waiting times well below what you will find if you take your sore throat or feverish child to the Casualty department.


I have said in the past that part of the congestion in A and E departments comes from an immigrant population who are insufficiently versed in how things work here- that and a cohort of people who do know perfectly well how it works but flagrantly ignore all the protocols in order to "save time"- exactly as Jeremy Hunt did. These people should be told how the system works and directed to the appropriate service, which in many cities, including Cardiff may be found right next door. Which is what they should have done to Jeremy Hunt:
"The relevant place to deal with your problem is right over there, sir. At the door marked "GP OUT OF HOURS SERVICE". Byee!"

The Big Muddy

Yesterday my wife and I embarked on a walk in the Vale of Glamorgan, the attractive rolling countryside to the west of Cardiff. Called the "Three Saints Walk" it featured three ancient churches dedicated to St Bride (Bridget), St Peter and St George. However by the third church we were so beside ourselves with exhaustion and drenching we barely paid it any attention at all.


Uploaded from the internet, the walk was measured at nine miles, but after various detours made necessary due to poor route description and also, I believe, alteration by local farmers who had either moved or removed altogether a number of stiles, it turned out to be more than eleven miles.


 As for the conditions, well, to be fair, the description did warn that some sections were liable to be muddy and "sometimes flooded"; this description was certainly apt in the event. Bogs, mud slides, paths which in the event were swollen streams and some areas that could only be described as full-on quagmire were the order of the day, which at least remained rainless. As it turned out we couldn't have got much wetter if there had been a cloudburst. At one point my wife recklessly attempted to ford a small river that wasn't even mentioned on the map and found herself thigh-deep in fast flowing water. "Give me a hand you idiot" she yelled while stranded half way across, while I simply looked on in a kind of paralysed horror. For a moment relations became a little strained.


These were repaired before long though. There's nothing like facing adversity together to enhance the bonding process...  And when we reached the occasional parts of the route that were on paved roads it was like walking the streets of Paradise.


I pronounce this one of our most difficult walks to date, and certainly the wettest and muddiest. Were we ever glad to get home at last and get under a hot shower and warm our hands around a cup of well deserved tomato soup! Yet this morning I do not find myself overly stiff, which says something about my general fitness level. Must be all the recycling...

Sure, Julian Blanc is a twat. But should we ban him?

You know the guy. He's made a large sum of cash explaining how men can best score with women.
"If you're a white male in Tokyo, you can do pretty much anything. Just grab 'em."
Another of his pronouncements gives tips on that most annoying scenario: when a woman has agreed to have sex but then most unreasonably removes her permission.


These and other obnoxious pieces of counselling have caused him to be banned from entering the U.K. Women's rights workers have said that if you are going to ban Islamic clerics because of their hate-filled rhetoric, then Julian Blanc falls into the same category. This is hard to argue against, though libertarians, of which I humbly count myself as one, counter that by banning him we are infringing on the right to free speech.


So I think he should be allowed in to preach his disgraceful credo, and that we in turn should be allowed to heckle him furiously, hurl jelly, rotten eggs and whatever else comes to hand at this disgusting little creep. While we're about it, how about mounting a twitter campaign against him.? Give him a taste of his own medicine, as it were.


Here's the news Julian. What works best with women in my experience is taking an interest in their lives, rather than going on and on about yourself like so many men do in the mistaken belief women give a toss. Give good eye contact, try not to go on about your work, and develop some interesting hobbies. I have always found that women find juggling sexy for some reason. Give that a try, and don't grope them unless they have indicated that that's what they actually want. Got it? Good. Now fuck off back where you came from.

Jerusalem attack: can you blame the Palestinians?

Damn right you can, if you're an Israeli, (Netenyahu has warned of dire consequences, and you can be sure they will not be long in coming) or come to that a Brit or a Yank. Around the world of Israel supporters, there has been a great cry of outrage at the murders in Jerusalem. Yet these voices were mute during the genocidal violence committed in Gaza just a few brief months ago. I am no supporter of violence, but I can at least go some way to understanding the circumstances which led to the attack.


Have you wondered what's been happening in Gaza since the bombing stopped? The answer is absolutely nothing. The blockade remains in place, meaning that no new building materials have been permitted to enter that stricken area. So those parts of Gaza which by the end of August resembled nothing so much as Berlin at the end of World War II, remain in exactly the same condition as they were when the Israelis decided they had achieved their ends and ceased their bombing campaign. In the West Bank the illegal settlement building programme goes on unabated, despite the agonised protest of the Palestinians who are being pushed aside to make way for them.
 In Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities continue their extremely provocative posture of claiming the right to worship on what they call the Temple Mount, despite this area being for many centuries the domain of Islam. Anyone with any knowledge of the situation there will tell you that this is a deliberate and cynical provocation on the part of the Israelis. They want to goad the Palestinians into a response, and look at that! They got one. Now they can use that good old argument of "See?  We're dealing with a bunch of murderous terrorists here. Now let us handle the situation in whatever way we see fit, to keep our people safe."


The defence of "extreme provocation" is rightly seen as exculpatory in the judicial systems of many civilised countries. Hence we should use extreme caution before condemning the actions of some angry and desperate Palestinians, determined to strike back against a regime which has dominated and subjugated their people for over sixty years.

Bravo Rosetta!

The success of the Rosetta mission has demonstrated, and quite marvellously so, that ESA (the European Space Agency) has finally come of age. In soft-landing a probe on the surface of a speeding comet they have achieved a feat equal to, or even greater than, say, NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. After all Mars is a rather larger target (by a factor of several billion) as well as being a helluva lot closer. The most recent reports do suggest problems have arisen, which is scarcely surprising. First, its anchoring hooks failed to deploy, causing the probe to bounce more than a kilometre back into space. And when it finally fell back down it was in the lee of a steep cliff which shaded it from the sunlight it needs to keep its batteries charged.


You might be wondering why it bounced so high when it landed the first time, but the answer is simple. The escape velocity on Comet 67P Churimov-Gerasimenko, as it is charmingly named (after the Russian astronomers who discovered it in 1969), is just 3 feet per second. (compare that with the escape velocity here on Earth, which is 7 miles a second), which means a man standing on it could easily jump off it and head out into space. Another problem is the extraordinary topography of the "dirty snowball" in question, which by the way remains as good a definition of what a comet is made up of as anything else. It is riven with deep canyons and vertiginous mesas and pinnacles; indeed, the astounding photographs already sent back from Rosetta show a world remarkably similar in appearance to the comet visited by messrs. Willis, Affleck et al in the film Armageddon. Made in 1996, that film, which amongst other things featured cinema's most improbable astronaut in the shape of Steve Buscemi, seemed at the time to lack authenticity in a number of aspects. Strange then, that one of the unexpected results of the Rosetta mission has been to vindicate that film's (at the time) absurd vision of what the surface of a comet might look like.


It seems Rosetta has now gone into hibernation, though ESA mission control say it might rejuvenate when the comet draws nearer to the Sun. But even if we never hear another word from it, the mission will to me still have been a resounding success.


In  his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke looked forward to a world where the people of the World had finally found something as interesting and exciting as war: space exploration. We aren't there yet, by a long way unfortunately. But we are allowed to dream. One day I can envisage a world where the wealthy nations come together to build a permanent colony on the Moon, send men and women to Mars, and one day even search for life on places like Europa and Enceladus. The technology to do things like this exists already, but we are too busy trying to screw each other every chance we get to devote the energy and will to mount such ambitious projects. But in the future... None of this will happen in my lifetime but it is coming, and children born today will, with any luck, see the first two of these great projects get under way. And their grandchildren could even see the human race reaching for the stars...

Leave Ed alone!

Poor Ed Miliband has been having a hard time of late. The right wing press have been going after him in a campaign of almost unprecedented hatred for some time, and it may be working. There was the incident of him "forgetting" to mention the deficit in his speech to the labour party conference. Then there was the shot of him giving money to a beggar, though the way it was photographed made him look like he wished he was a thousand miles away. Then that shot of him going in for a kiss with his wife, who was clearly not up for it. All this is to say nothing of the disgraceful piece in the Daily Mail filled with irrational vitriol, not about him, but his father! Then of course, there was the embarrassment of that teeshirt...


Fact is, there are issues about his presentation. He looks a little, well, odd; he speaks a little, well, oddly, and perhaps most importantly, the way politics has shifted in the last 20 years means his policies often look not wholly dissimilar to his opponents. In short, he comes over as awkward, louche and wholly unsuited for the high office he already holds, and even less worthy of the even higher office to which he aspires. All this, and more, has conspired to make him the most unpopular labour leader since Neil Kinnock on a bad day. Worse, we are told, he is seen as electoral cyanide to Labour's hopes of winning the next election.


But is it really true? I can't help feeling that much of this is indeed down to the right-wing gutter press, who don't want to see him, or any other labour figure, lead Labour into power next year. And thus they have mounted a highly successful hatchet job on someone who is actually a highly skilled operator whose heart is actually in the right place.


Today's politics is all about soundbites. But I have to say I liked his latest pronouncement. He said he wanted to see the end of zero hours contracts at one end of the economic spectrum, and the end of zero taxes at the other. If he and his mates really are going to do something substantive about those worst excesses of capitalism if they get into power next year, they'd have my vote, right there.

Grief: worse- and stranger, than you can imagine

I was watching the American series Hoarders today. One of the cases featured a woman who had filled her house with all the usual clutter, but among the wall-to-ceiling piles of unusable rubbish that she was nonetheless unable to throw away was a vast collection of dead things: dead rats, dead cats, a dead owl she had found in the street. All had been carefully wrapped in cling film, many had been consigned to a huge freezer. One drawer was found to be stuffed with the husks of dead cicadas, thousands of them. The resident  psychologist dared to ask her why she saved these things, and she replied "to make their deaths less meaningless".


It then emerged that she had been widowed some years before, losing her husband aged 41 to a massive coronary. Ah so! The psychologist, bless her, again dared to go there and invite her to consider that her bereavement and her bizarre practices with dead things might in fact be related. And more kudos to the lady, she eventually got to the point where she was able to acknowledge this.


When my son died suddenly in 2006, my own life began to fall apart. I started to indulge in a series of self destructive behaviours, some of which got me in very serious trouble  With agonising guilt dominating my life, it was almost as if I needed to punish myself for my failures in parenting- surely if I had done my job as a parent properly; if I had simply loved him more, he would be alive today. And I have held to this view despite the best efforts of my wife, my friends and my psychiatrist. Don't try to take my guilt away! I cry- it keeps me warm at night.


I know some people resolve their grief in a meaningful way and go forward to lead useful lives in a reasonably well adjusted way. Good for them. For me, I remain damaged goods, leading a quiet, almost reclusive life where I rarely go out, see my friends seldom and spend the majority of my time reading, recycling and watching the TV. Occasionally I try to write but it is an excruciatingly difficult effort. At least I am now avoiding self-harming behaviour except in minor ways like cigarette smoking and drinking whisky. I expect to continue living this way until my dying day. It isn't so bad, really. But I will never be a whole man again. Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. Compared to some my life has a lot going for it. Many, many people have a much worse life than I do. The people of Gaza, the people of West Africa and indeed not a few people right here in Britain would doubtless exchange their miserable lives for mine in a heartbeat.

30,000 research papers show global warming is real: happy now?

You should be. The UN having announced that a meta-analysis of no less than 30,000 research papers confirms that global warming is real and that human activity is contributing to it should be proof enough for anyone with half a brain. Unless of course that brain is under the influence of the vested interests of the fossil fuel business.
The rest of us, hopefully, now see what an enormous problem the Erath is dealing with. Unless CO2 emissions are virtually eliminated by 2100 it seems we will be more or less fucked.


I hear you muttering, if Britain gets a bit warmer that ain't such a bad thing, right? I mean, we could have vineyards like France has now- that's a good thing surely. I wouldn't be too sure. Yes, Britain might get warmer, but it will also get wetter and windier (last winter should serve as an example of how that will work). Far worse is the strong possibility that it could actually get a lot colder in north-western Europe. At the moment we enjoy a far balmier climate than we have any right to considering our high latitude, courtesy of the Gulf Stream, or Atlantic Conveyor as scientists like to call it these days. But as the Greenland icecap melts, which it is already doing at an alarming rate, cool water will flood down from the far north, and this could easily disrupt or even destroy the Gulf Stream. Then we could find ourselves no warmer than say, Newfoundland. FYI, Newfoundland has the same sort of climate as central Norway. So don't start planting those vineyards just yet.


For me, the first thing to do is to completely abandon ALL plans for fracking- not just in the UK but around the world. Instead, let's start looking at sustainable energy sources on the kind of scale which will be needed when oil and gas become anathema. There are plenty out there already, but using some of the massive resources we would have sunk into fracking could bring about revolutionary developments hitherto undreamed of. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and boy, do we ever have a necessity right now...

October 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


EDWARD WILSON'S ANTARCTIC NOTEBOOKS, edited by D.M. and C.J. Wilson.
After Captain Scott himself, the most revered man to have died on the return from the South Pole in 1912 was undoubtedly Dr Edward Wilson. Described by Scott as the finest man he had ever known, Wilson was a talented naturalist and highly skilled watercolourist, as well has having endless stores of energy and strength, which is why Scott included him in the last party. He was also a devout Christian, literally devoting his life to living according to Christ's teachings.


This beautifully produced book contains many of Wilson's watercolours which show, inter alia, the extraordinary subtlety of colours in the Antarctic sky as the sun slowly rose over, or sank below, the horizon. Most of his pictures are tucked away in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute because they deteriorate rapidly on exposure to light. But here they are reproduced with loving attention to detail, the new advances in digital printing having enabled remarkable authenticity to be achieved. Reading the book and looking at these pictures was deeply moving, cataloguing as they do a great man's final days, engaged in a grand scheme of scientific discovery that would ultimately cost him his life.


THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH.
Can you imagine a world 6000 years in the future? 16,000 years? That's what Cordwainer Smith did in the late 40s and 50s, inhabiting it with genetically engineered cats that can talk, robots that can read minds, and humans with such powerful minds they can fold space.
Cordwainer Smith (his real name was a scarcely more plausible Dr Cornelius Linebarger) imagined all this and more. His stories come down to us as if transported direct from the future in some sort of time capsule. The concepts he introduces are so strange, even the words used are unfamiliar sometimes, and the characters so exotic that we find ourselves strangely involved in his uniquely realised Universe.
Rather special.


IN TRANSIT, by Anna Seghers. As France falls before the Nazis, a young German man escapes from a concentration camp, swimming across the Rhine before finding his way to Paris. He adopts the identity of a writer who has killed himself and, holding his papers, makes his way to Marseille where he launches a campaign to flee his oppressors and make a new life in the New World. He soon finds this is the hardest job in the world, doubly so as half the time he is pretending to be someone else. He meets a handsome woman who is also trying to escape, but won't leave until she finds her husband- and guess who that is: the very man whose identity our hero has adopted. Can he keep the secret from her and still achieve his aim of leaving Europe with her? It seems an impossibly difficult task, which doesn't stop him trying. And trying...


Described by some as one of the greatest short novels of the 20th century, Anna Seghers has produced a multi-layered work of great depth and subtlety, but one which also captures the attention at the most basic level. It is exciting, gripping even, in its  depiction of a whole army of displaced people who are desperate to escape the tyranny of the Nazis, but as in a book previously reviewed here, B Traven's The Death Ship, they are up against foes almost worse than storm troopers with machine guns: the implacable forces of bureaucracy and indifference. Terrific.


FILMS


GROSSE POINT BLANK (1997) D- George Armitage. A freelance hitman (an excellent John Cusack) takes a commission in his home town, where by sheer coincidence his old high school reunion is also taking place. He'd like to reconnect with an old flame (Minnie Driver), but he has a job to do. There are other small complications too, like another hitman who has been paid to kill him. It's all a bit too complicated for our hero, who just wants to score with his old GF.
Superior "hitman with a heart" movie with splendid performances all round, especially from John Cusack, who could put this film along with The Grifters in his claim to be placed in the front rank of  Hollywood actors.


THE FROZEN GROUND (2013) D- Scott Walker. A hooker bursts into an Alaska police station claiming to have been abducted at gunpoint. Her story sounds plausible until she names her assailant, a local baker with strong ties to the community who surely couldn't be capable of such a terrible act. Could he? Only one detective believes her story (Nick Cage) and it seems he's up against the whole town when he insists he's onto the right guy.


Based on the true story of Robert Hansen, who in the 1970s kidnapped a series of young women, flying them into the icy wastes of Alaska, where he let them go- and hunted them down like game. I admired this film, with John Cusack (yep, him again) playing the super-respectable Hansen with ice-cool menace, and Vanessa Hudgens as the hooker with guts enough to help bring her kidnapper down despite the odds.


THIS IS NOT A FILM (2011) D-  Jafar Pamali and Mojtaba Mirtakmash. An Iranian film maker is under house arrest for speaking against the government. He's desperate to continue working at his art, so he begins to make a film of his life within the prison of his home. As he doesn't do much, the film threatens to be a bit dull, but what emerges is an absorbing study of artistic frustration: what we see is a subtle and moving portrait of a man determined to fulfil his creative destiny. Scenes like the one where he simply observes the bin man going from floor to floor in his apartment block picking up the rubbish become somehow transformed into an epic tale. An extraordinary effort.


BRANDED TO KILL (1967) D- Seijun Suzuki. The number three ranked hitman in Japan botches his latest job and finds himself targeted by the number one guy. Add to this some very complex relationships with a girlfriend with a death wish and a wife who would also like to kill him and you have one very strange movie. You could call it a sort of Japanese noir, or you could call it an amazing piece of existentialist cinema. Whatever you call it, this is as revolutionary a film as you could wish to find: certainly as bold as say, Breathless or Les Enfants Terrible.
To summarise, wow!


MUD (2012) W/D- Jeff Nichols. While fooling about on a small island in the middle of the Arkansas river, two twelve year old boys come across an odd fellow living there. They rapidly fall under the spell of his downhome charisma and start to help him out in small ways: bringing him food, procuring tools to help him repair a small boat and passing messages to his girlfriend (a sultry, trailer-trash Reese Witherspoon). Then they hear the state police are searching for a man accused of murder. Could it be their guy?
This movie flows slowly, rather like the great river around which is centred, but a denouement is just around the next bend and we just know it ain't gonna be pretty. Well written and skilfully directed, this is another example of how Matthew McConnaughey, who plays the eponymous lead, has come of age, placing him now at the forefront of Hollywood acting talent.


PUSHOVER (1954) D- Richard Quine. A hard bitten detective (Fred McMurray) is given the job of surveilling a gangster's moll in the hope it will lead to him plus the 200 grand which was stolen in a recent bank robbery. Unfortunately he falls for her almost immediately (understandable: she is played by Kim Novak in her movie debut, with the kind of face and body anybody would wreck their career for) and teams up with her to get the girl, and the money for himself. But as in all the best Hollywood noirs, things soon begin to go horribly wrong.
Accomplished piece of movie making, with some rather strange parallels with Double Indemnity: a femme fatale, a grand plan which falls apart very quickly leaving a bloody conclusion. It doesn't have the sheer class of that classic, but it's still highly watchable.


THE EXILES (1961) D- Kent McKenzie. In the run down area of Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, a group of Navajo Indians have left their reservation in Colorado and are trying to make new lives in the big city. In a way, not much happens. The men hang around the house for most of the day, getting over their hangovers while their women clean around them. When night comes they're out on the thrash again. At one point one of the men molests another Indian girl. He is quite brutish about it, and she slaps him. Annoyed and frustrated at her rejection he knocks her down. Yet only a few minutes later all seems forgiven and forgotten and the lads continue their partying until dawn. Finally they return home, where their women have been waiting for them all night long.
This film reminded me strongly of a Roberto Bolano novel: at one level it's just a group of people interacting and trying to have a good time. But it is far more than that: what emerges is for me a crucial piece of cinema- deeply insightful, compassionate and tragic in its portrayal of the disastrous consequences of the collision of two disparate cultures, the one far more powerful than the other. It was considered to close to the bone for American cinema distributors: they denied it a showing in the States for nearly forty years- thereby depriving American audiences of one of the finest films made throughout the 1960s And that is the real tragedy of this movie. It told a truth that Americans weren't ready to hear. Are they yet?


AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013) D- David O Russell. A couple attempting a financial scam are collared by the FBI and recruited to front up an even bigger scam to entrap a major league bad guy.
This film went down well in the States, where it received an Oscar nomination and there is a sustained energy about it which is highly seductive. But Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent was not believable to me. He was too excitable, too neurotic and far too erratic to be what I would consider to be FBI material. I could be wrong though. Christian Bale, however, is much more convincing as the scammer turned FBI narc, and Amy Adams who plays his wife is also good. Her gowns certainly won my approval. She wears many different ones in the course of the movie, and they all give a new meaning to the word cleavage. Apologies. As my wife would say, down boy...


THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) D- Martin Scorsese. Being the life and times of Jordan Bellfort, Wall Street rogue trader and general larger than life diamond geyser. In the course of three long hours, we get to the heart of the man, and what lies at his heart, apparently, is a neatly folded $100 bill, which is waiting to be turned into more of the same. It's all about the money, stupid, and nothing else matters, not trust, not loyalty, not a moral framework, unless that moral framework is screw the other guy before he screws you. Jordan Bellfort is a real person, who was finally taken down by the FBI for insider trading, but not before he had made millions for himself and several other unscrupulous associates.
But is it a good film? I'm afraid the answer is no. For me it was a good hour too long, and lacked the polish we have come to hope for from one of America's leading auteurs. Scorsese has made, in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, three of the best films to come out of America in the last forty years. He has also made some appalling dogs, notably Gangs of New York and Casino. I am sorry to have to report that, despite a rapturous reception on his home turf, in Wolf  he has made another in the latter category. Leo di Caprio is a fine actor, but here he is only asked to rant and rave for three hours and that just isn't good enough. Shame, I wanted to like it.


ALL IS LOST (2013) D- J.C. Chandor. A lone yachtsman in the middle of the Indian Ocean wakes from a deep sleep to find his boat has snagged a half-submerged container and been holed above the water line. Demonstrating the truth that you can fix absolutely anything with gaffer tape, he effects a repair. All seems well, but our ancient mariner (a gnarled but still beautiful Robert Redford) knows that all he has to do is hit some rough water and the whole thing could fail. Then he espies storm clouds off the port bough. Oh, shit...
This is a very unusual film: There is only one cast member, and there is scarcely any dialogue. In fact about the only thing you do hear him saying is an occasional  "Oh, shit". The rest is one man's struggle against the elements, elements that seem to be conspiring to kill him. Remind me not to go ocean sailing in a small boat any time soon.
Despite its unusual nature, this film works surprisingly well. Redford completely captures the attention as he uses his intelligence and manual dexterity to keep death by drowning at arm's length for long enough for another boat to find him.
Some have criticised the ending, which I shall not spoil for you. Endings are hard, I know. But you judge for yourself. It's well worth it.


BARBARA (2012) D- Christian Petzold An attractive East German doctor (Nina Hoss) has fallen out with the authorities by having had the temerity to ask for an exit visa, and is sent to a provincial town near the Baltic coast to cool her heels. Knowing the Stasi are watching her every move, she still contrives to have a life of her own- albeit a rather dangerous one. Every month or so her apartment is raided and she is subjected to a full (and I mean full) strip search. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, she spends much of her mental energy working on ways to get the hell out of there. Finally a chance arrives, but by now she has befriended a young girl who was admitted to her hospital with an overdose. Will she run regardless or will her new friend keep her confined in her little hell?
Made to high professional standards and with great human warmth and compassion, this languid tale of fear and loathing in the East Germany of the 70s creeps into the soul, leaving this viewer not a little moved. Excellent work.

You think ISIL is extreme?

Try the right of the Israeli Zionist faction. One of their number, a rabbi Glick, was shot yesterday, probably by agents of Hamas. And you can hardly blame them. Rabbi Glick was one of a group of Israeli extremists who want to cast the Muslims out of "Temple Mount" as they call it, bulldoze the two mosques that currently occupy it and rebuild the great Jewish Temple, just like it was before the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. As the site is considered the third holiest place in the Muslim world, you can imagine they are not overly enthusiastic about the idea.


In a way the Muslims are fortunate it hasn't happened already. In 1967, at the height of the Six Day War, a heavily armed Israeli platoon was advancing on the Dome of the Rock. With them, acting as "spiritual advisor" was another one of those ultra-Zionist rabbis. He launched into a passionate plea to the soldiers to blow up the mosques once they had gained control of the site. According to stories I have heard, they drew back from this Armageddon-inducing act only at the very last moment. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more than a few Zionists around right now who wish that rabbi had got his way.


But it isn't all bad news out in the West Bank. I hear Sodastream, shaken by a 10% fall-off in its sales, has decided to close its plant in one of the illegal Israeli settlements. Boycotts do work sometimes, it seems. And poor old Scarlett Johanssen! Must be a bit of a blow to the ego when a company takes you on as its poster girl and its sales fall by 10%. Never mind darls. You can still cry all the way to the bank.

How are your teeth?

Mine are crap. At least they were. But in 2011 I started spending money on them. Now when I flash my smile, you see thousands and thousands of pounds worth of porcelain venirs and titanium implants. And they look good. As I quip, most people get only two sets of teeth, but I bought a third set.


Most people aren't that lucky. They haven't got that sort of disposable income to lay out on their teeth. So they rot. Why are (or were) my teeth crap? Because my parents, well meaning middle class folk that they were, taught me brush every day, but didn't tell me how. Consequently my yummers were deteriorating badly even before I hit my teens. And there's your problem.


A plan was proposed this week to get teachers to supervise their pupil's dental hygiene. This has come about because despite the interim of nearly 50 years since I was a school kid, parents are no better at teaching their kids how to look after their teeth than they were in 1960. Sweet drinks and chewy sweets are dissolving young people's teeth at a frightening rate, not just here but around the world.


But teachers say: whoa! I got paid to educate, I didn't sign up to be an unpaid dental hygienist.
And they've got a point. But how's this for a plan? Also this week a plan was rolled out to pay GPs £55 to diagnose someone with Alzheimer's- something they're already paid to do in their exceedingly generous contracts. So I suggest that this money be set aside, not to make wealthy GPs even wealthier by paying them to do something they should be doing already, but to pay distinctly unwealthy teachers bonuses for helping their charges look after their teeth. After all it is education, and that is in their job description, but if it's additional work they should be rewarded accordingly.

Who says good news isn't sexy?

PARALYSED MAN WALKS AGAIN


"You'll never walk again" is probably what the poor guy with the severed spinal cord was told. Yet due to the cleverness of a Polish stem cell research unit combined with the dexterity of the neurosurgical team at UCL, that may turn out to be wrong.
Throughout my medical career a severed spinal cord has been accepted as the end of the story for those patients unlucky enough to experience such a terrible injury. But what was impossible only a few years ago is more than possible: it has actually happened.


"Maybe more important than a man walking on the Moon" is how the chief surgeon at UCL described it and I honestly believe this is no hyperbole. This development in medical science is little short of earth shattering, and should give pause for thought to those around the world, especially in the U.S. who continue to oppose stem cell research. It now seems there may be no limit to the miracles that may come to be over the next few years if the research is encouraged, rather than buried, as certain people on the "religious right" still call for.


PISTORIUS: THE SENTENCE


Some months ago I said in this blog that I didn't believe OP was guilty of deliberate murder, but that he had acted like a gung-ho, trigger happy gun nut. And after a long, but continuously fascinating trial, that was the conclusion of the court. Judge Masipa (and how strange is it for people of our age to see a black woman in South Africa exerting the power of the state over a wealthy, well connected white man?) gauged public opinion with enormous care before delivering her sentence and has, as I see it, gauged it to perfection. Even Reeva's family approved; there has been no appeal from OP's legal team and I suspect around the world people are saying: "That's about right".


 He had to go to jail for recklessly causing the death of an innocent human being, but the fact that he will only serve about 10 months inside (as long as he doesn't shoot anyone else in the meantime) seems absolutely appropriate. Justice has been done, and seen to be done. Well done South Africa! At last, you have something to teach the world about fairness.

Attack of the Green Blobs

Are you a green blob? I suspect I am. In fact I'm sure I'm one of those execrable humans Owen Patterson has targeted as being what's wrong with the world today. Here follows a quick guide to see if you too are part of the green menace:
1. If you believe the science behind global warming has some basis in reality.
2. If you believe in preserving little creatures like newts and voles. Even if you kinda like preserving larger ones, like badgers and otters.
3. If you have reservations about pumping water into the earth under such pressure that it fractures the rock, allowing gas to seep up, where it is garnered by oil companies to increase their profits.
4. If you think solar farms and wind turbines might have something to contribute to energy production.


There are more, but I think you get the picture. That's right: you're part of the problem, not the solution. You're the one standing in the way of continuous economic growth, especially that of the major players in the military/industrial/oil complex. Put another way, your views are about as valuable to Owen Patterson as the gobbet of phlegm he coughed up this  morning- a green blob, a minor nuisance to be discarded and forgotten as quickly as possible. So why, he would say, don't you shut up and stop getting in the way of the multinationals who are only trying to do their job: turning a decent profit for their shareholders. Because that's the only thing that matters today, right Owen?

Which is worse: Ebola or IS?

All right, it's a pretty stupid question. I pose it because it is easy to see IS as a kind of force of nature, like a hurricane, tsunami or, a plague. I had a whimsical thought earlier this week when it was announced there would indeed be boots on the ground, and British ones at that, in the fight against Ebola, while we and the Americans are fighting shy of putting troops in to fight the fundamentalist threat. Fair enough at one level: the boots on the ground should be from the vastly wealthy Arab nations that are under direct threat: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states. They have more than enough resources to counter IS, but will they act? I doubt it. They're more concerned with amassing wealth and maintaining their own power bases to organise a really meaningful opposition to the threat on their own doorsteps. In other words, they are weak, and I suspect they will actually fall when faced with the ultimate test. Their leaders will flee with their gold, leaving their people to their fates.


I like to think the Human Race should be constantly looking forward to improve itself; to live up to their name: Homo Sapiens- "Wise Man". This should involve working towards everyone achieving their full potential as well as learning to live in harmony with the environment. Therefore few things make me more angry than seeing human beings going in the opposite direction. The Amish people decided to stop moving forward at a time midway through the 18th century. So horses and carts and some tools and farm implements were allowed, but nothing new, no innovations were permitted. IS is worse: they want to hark back to a pre-medieval period- the 7th century AD to be precise, when Mohammed, peace be upon him, wrote down the Koran.


And UKIP, God bless them, they also want to turn the clock back to a mythical time when Britain didn't need Europe, when we were the most powerful nation on Earth and everyone did our bidding (even China) and God help them if they didn't. Someone should tell them, and the misguided people who support them, that that time disappeared long ago and we are now living in a much more complex, inter-dependent world. A world where a virus formerly confined to the forest primeval of the Dark Continent can now cross the world in a matter of hours and with the potential to cause mayhem just as effectively as any suicide bomber. It won't take boots on the ground to defeat it. It will take the combined efforts of all the world's cleverest immunologists and physicians to create a vaccine. We eradicated smallpox- we can eradicate Ebola too- but only if there is sufficient will out there to do it.