General

Can invasion be justified?

Well, we knew it would happen - Robert Mugabe has somehow received a landslide mandate to govern Zimbabwe for another five years.

Amid the West's impotent hand-wringing today, there's what amounts to a call-to-arms from Bishop Desmond Tutu, who advocates international intervention, by force if necessary.

Compared to Tutu's words, Nelson Mandela's condemnation of the regime last week was distinctly mealy-mouthed. Still, it's not every day a man of the cloth advocates military action (not these days anyway) and Tutu's world status as a man of courage and conscience is second-to-none. So, the questions for your politics or ethics class are
1) would military intervention in Zimbabwe be justifiable and 2) is there such a thing as a just war?

It's interesting that the recent aid crisis in Burma (or Myanmar, if you prefer) prompted similar public calls for armed intervention as the only remaining option when faced with a corrupt regime. My first reaction to both calls-to-arms was "Yes!". In our frustration at being unable to change an evil world by diplomatic or economic means, we may be driven to think that 'violence is the only language they will understand'.On reflection though, there are ethical pitfalls. Don't get me wrong, I will dance in the streets the day Mugabe falls from power, but didn't Britain and the US invade Iraq in order to "liberate" its people from an evil dictator?

Sadaam may be gone, but British-made cluster bombs will be blowing up Iraqui children for years to come. What has Operation Iraqui Freedom given the Iraquis? Abu Ghraib prison!

How many invading forces in history have done so under the flag of "liberation"? From an ethical point of view, as soon as it's ok to invade a country if you're "liberating" it, then anything goes. The Generals can continue to "liberate" Burma, China can continue to "liberate" Tibet and the US can "liberate" just about any country where they'd like more influence.

Excuse me while I pop next door and liberate the silverware.

Prince Caspian - 57 Up

In the media excitement surrounding this week's cinema release of Prince Caspian (written 1951), I read that the third Narnia Chronicle, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is to be directed by Michael Apted. I thought the name sounded familiar, and, sure enough, it was Michael Apted who, since 1971, has directed the Up series.

Apted was a researcher on the original 1964 Seven Up! and chose the original children with Gordon McDougall. The premise of the film was taken from the scary Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." (As Jesuit mottos go, I prefer Roger McGough's ""It's like hitting your head against a brick wall," said Brother Ryan, hitting my head against a brick wall.")

Back to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I wonder what Apted will make of Eustace Scrubb, the unpleasant boy who is dragged to Narnia against his will. (Eustace is the loathsome cousin of the novel's heroes, and the parallels with J.K.Rowling's Dudley Dursley are striking!) The novel begins, "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." He is the only child of what C.S.Lewis describes as progressive parents, who send him to a progressive mixed school. Eustace calls his parents by their first names; his parents are vegetarians, nonsmokers, teetotallers (lifestyles which were almost unheard of in Britain during the 1950s), and wear a special kind of underclothes. At his school, the bullies are supported by the administration, and all the pupils address each other by surname only.

Several modern critics have bridled at Lewis' swipe at vegetarians, teetotallers and nonsmokers. Kathryn Lindskoog's 'Don't Let Your Children Go to Narnia' says of the Narnia Chronicles,
"They are revoltingly mean-minded books, written to corrupt the minds of the young with allegory, smugly denouncing anything that differs in the slightest respect from Lewis's creed of clean-living, muscular Christianity, pipe-smoking, misogyny, racism, and the most vulgar snobbery."

Lewis might almost have been anticipating future criticisms in his essay 'The Abolition of Man'. He complains that modern education is producing "men without chests" - people whose lives are divided between the purely cerebral and the purely visceral, without any middle ground of sentiment or imagination (i.e. Eustace). In the same essay, however, Lewis denies the suggestion that he is attacking intellect as such, and in his book on Miracles he even argues for the scholastic belief that the intellect is our participation in the supernatural world. Similarly, he was not against progress in the sense of objectively justifiable social improvement, but did oppose purely fashionable progressivism, and in particular what he called "chronological snobbery", the view that the superiority of modern values can always be assumed automatically and without investigation.

If Lewis came back and saw Britain's education system today, would he be impressed by SATs, league tables and "contextual value added scores"?

Dinner with Mugabe

I heard a great item on Radio 4's Woman's Hour a week or two ago. (Like the Little Girl in the nursery rhyme, when Woman's Hour is bad, it's really bad, but when it's good, it's very very good.) The item was an interview with journalist Heidi Holland, who met Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe 30 years ago, is the only foreign journalist to have been granted an interview in the last 3 years, and has just published 'Dinner with Mugabe', an account of her personal knowledge of the man.

I immediately stopped what I was doing and turned the volume up. A friend of mine is a Zimbabwean refugee in the UK, and we often meet for a beer and discuss the situation in the homeland he hopes, one day, to return to.

Ms Holland has come in for a lot of stick for being a "Mugabe apologist", which she's not. When she met him 30 years ago, he was an idealistic freedom fighter. She'd offered her appartment as a location for Mugabe to meet a colleague, which is how she ended up cooking him dinner. Since then, she's seen his victory in the 1980 War of Independence, the creation of Zimbabwe as a model African state, and his degeneration into a tyrant who's prepared to terrorise and starve his own people, just to stay in power.

What Ms Holland offered was unique insight into Mugabe's psychology. For most of the world, the puzzle of the man is, how did such an idealist turn into such a despot? Ms Holland describes him as an emotionally immature man, completely unable to understand the emotions and points of view of others. This might explain, for example, his extraordinarily insensitive, even oblivious appearance at the Rome Food Summit the other week. Ms Holland also explained how Mugabe's personal immaturity makes him petulant and vindictive when faced with contrary opinions or failure. Armed  with this sort of insight, as she put it, "we may be able to outfox him".

It's certainly time the democratic world did something to outfox Mugabe, instead of just wringing their hands in despair. It's said Thabo Mbeki could close Mugabe down overnight if he wanted, but is afraid to do so because of ZANU-PF's legendary, historical status as freedom fighters. What incentive, carrot or stick, could the West offer Mbeki to do what is right?

You can listen to Ms Holland's interview again here.

Electropop: 1951-stylee!

A recording has surfaced in the BBC archives of a Ferranti Mark 1 computer at Manchester University playing "God Save The Queen," Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "In The Mood". The Australians reckon their CSIRAC computer successfully played "Colonel Bogie" months before the Manchester computer, but there are no known recordings. The BBC recording is therefore the oldest recorded example of computer music - and you can hear it here.

The recording happened as an afterthought: The BBC Outside Broadcast had gone to Manchester to record an edition of Children's Hour, and it was only mentioned in passing that the computer could also play music.

The computer's music program itself was also an afterthought. Christopher Strachey, a maths teacher at Harrow and friend of Ur-computer-whizz Alan Turing, had devised a program for playing draughts, and added "God Save The King" at the end of the program as a joke (BBC broadcasts at that time always signed off with the National Anthem.)

The 'steampunk' chic of the 1951 computer was reflected in the BBC OB's recording equipment. The digital ditties were cut onto acetate discs, and you can hear the presenter instructing the recording engineer to lift the cutter as the disc approached full capacity.

On the same site, there's a wonderful vintage 1948 BBC documentary, complete with cut-glass-voiced narration, about the Ferranti's predecessor computer at Manchester, the gargantuan 'Baby.'
We've come a long way, Baby.

Homo Cowleiensis

After last week's startling discoveries about Cowley, I decided to delve further into the history of this quiet Oxford suburb...

It was cold in Cowley 10,000 years ago. Very cold. The sunny, carefree Paleolithic era, when they'd discovered fire and sat around together making stone tools, seemed like a distant memory. Now Cowley (and coincidentally, most of the Northern hemisphere) was covered by several metres of ice. Luckily for Cowley Man (and Woman,) better times lay ahead and before they knew it, the Mesolithic Era had started.

The first thing they noticed was that they had flint tools and canoes. Living near the Thames, the canoes were a real bonus. And they took to flint-knapping like a hunter-gatherer to water. Later on, they discovered to their delight that they also had the bow and arrow and could finally throw away their old-fashioned atlatls (SO last ice-age.) (The atlatl is a hand-held spear-throwing device, and examples can still be seen in use in Cowley today, usually for throwing tennis balls for dogs.)

To his (and her) discredit, however, Homo Cowleiensis was not nearly as tidy as his (or her) modern counterpart. Unwanted and broken flint tools were simply left lying around outside Tescos, where they remained until archaeologists tidied up the mess in the 1920s.

Mesolithic public transport in Cowley was frankly inadequate. The initial novelty of canoeing soon wore off when it became apparent that you could only go where the Thames went. Day trips to Abingdon remained popular, but Wheatley was out of the question. The inhabitants of Cowley would have to wait patiently for the Neolithic era in another 4,000 years for the wheel to be invented. Today, by contrast, you rarely have to wait more than five minutes for a bus.

Cowley kept very quiet during the Roman occupation. True, the Romans built the imaginatively-named "Roman Way"  from Dorchester to Bicester, but the inhabitants of Cowley largely stayed indoors. This may be because of the noise of construction traffic or because they were worried about the adverse effect the increased traffic would have on the value of their property.

It was the Anglo-Saxons who gave Cowley its name, which can mean either 'Cow-Meadow' or 'Cuffa's Meadow'. Cuffa also crops up in "Cuffa's Wood" so it's reasonable to assume that Cuffa was a local and therefore Cowley's first named inhabitant. (Not that the others didn't have names, you understand, that would have been highly impractical.) The word cuffa comes from the Old French coife, meaning 'hat', so it's reasonable also to assume that our Cuffa either had a conspicuous hat or possibly even owned a hat-making concern in Cowley. Either way, it paints a vivid picture of a sophisticated, colourful and fashion-conscious society living in Cowley twelve hundred years ago.

The Cowley Code

I finally saw The Da Vinci Code  last week. I know, I know, but then I still haven't seen Mary Poppins, so bear with me. Anyway, it made me realise how woefully ignorant I was about the Knights Templar, so I started surfing...

The Knights Templar  were a twelfth century travel-courier-and-private-security outfit. Think Group Four meets Thomas Cook, or Securicor meets Saga. The First Crusade in 1096 had opened up the Holy Land to tourism, but many of the early sightseers failed to read the small print: "Pilgryms maye in facte be massacred by heathen before they reach their holidaye destination." The Knights Templar quickly spotted a market opportunity, and set up shop in Jerusalem in 1129, offering "Bespoke Pilgramage Solutions for the Discerning Penitent." By the end of the twelfth century, they had grown the Templar © brand to an impressive degree and had branches all over Europe.

By 1307, the Templars had invented modern banking, and effectively controlled the financial infrastructure of Europe. Many people, including Philip IV of France owed them an awful lot of money. Philip's solution to his personal credit crunch was to order the destruction of the entire order, and thousands of Templars perished  (as you'll know if you've seen the film,) in a series of horrifying flashbacks. The overnight disappearance of Europe's entire fiscal infrastructure (and the ensuing chaos) have been put forward as an explanation for the extraordinary mystique which has since grown up around the Knights Templar.

Conspiracy theorists (and I'm not saying they're wrong) maintain that the architecture of present-day Cowley, Oxford is rich in Templar-and- Masonic symbolism. (Let's not quibble.) The outlines of many of Cowley's rooftops closely resemble the Masons' pyramid-with-its-top-cut-off, and apparently, the entrances to Templar's Square Shopping Centre were covered, until a few years ago, by parapets that incorporated not only the truncated pyramid but also the all-seeing eye. (You can find this symbol on the reverse of a one-dollar bill, where the unfinished pyramid symbolises the fact that the USA is still a nation in the process of being built. Maybe when it's finished, they'll stop flouting the Geneva Convention.)

Meanwhile, back in Cowley, it seems that all this Masonic/Templar symbolism has been left by the Illuminati , the ultra-secret society intent on establishing a New World Order. Now, you may well ask, "If the Illuminati are so secretive, why would they leave big eye-catching symbols all over Cowley?" You might also ask, "If the Illuminati are intent on imposing a New World Order, haven't they got more pressing matters to address than decorating shopping centres in East Oxford?" And you may have a point.

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

I went to a concert on Saturday - part of the Bath International Festival - to hear one of my favourite pieces, Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet I'd known the CD for years, but had never heard the piece live before. If you don't know the piece yet, I'd urge you to go and get a CD today. "It will change your life" is an over-used phrase, with unfortunate connotations of railway-station-bookshop-flavour-of-the-month-self-help-books, but this piece of music will change something in you forever. Guaranteed.

Here's the story: in 1971, Bryars was working on a documentary about people sleeping rough in South London. He recorded interviews with his subjects, during which several of them broke into song. In one interview, an un-named tramp (there's probably a more PC expression today, and it's probably very long) sang a sentimental religious ballad "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." Bryars discovered that the tramp's singing was both in tune and at concert pitch. Bryars looped the song and began to improvise a slowly-developing accompaniment.

At Saturday's concert, the tramp's solo singing was played back by a man who looked very like Gavin Bryars. If it was he, he must be very modest because he wasn't acknowledged. The accompaniment was provided by the orchestra and choir of Bath Spa University (stand up especially, string section and choir.) The tramp's song can be repeated as many times as the conductor sees fit. This performance lasted about 35 minutes. The CD version uses the format's full capacity of 74 minutes.

I first listened to the CD late one night in about 1997. I then had the impression that the music and song had continued throughout my 8 hours' sleep. I can't quite say what it changed, but it changed something in me, and there aren't many pieces of music which can do that. Do you know the piece? Were you similarly bowled over by it? What changed? Let me know.

Old and Stupid?

Having recently spent some time with my parents, it made me think about the impact of technology.  My father has just past his 85^th birthday and is on the outside of the digital revolution.  I feel this is a real shame as he has a huge curiosity about life and the world around him.  Unfortunately dealing with computers and the web is not something that comes naturally to him.  It is often thought by younger generations that the old are slow and backward, caused by the fact that the technology around today , by its very essence is beyond their capabilities because it wasn’t present when they were younger.  This has to be a fallacy, one look at the complexity of a Roll Royce Merlin engine or ingenuity required to discover the workings of our solar system should put that idea beyond doubt.  Unfortunately the slowness of older people is not unique to the present age; this is due to the ageing process and something that potentially affects us all, unless medical science can make the kinds of breakthroughs for the brain that have been achieved with the body.  With this in mind it came as a bit of a surprise and disappointment that one of my favourite commentators Richard Ingrams of the ‘Independent’ was rather scathing about some of the changes that technology has brought to our society.  I appreciate that Mr Ingrams makes a living out of being an oldie but he has more often than not stuck me as one of the few commentators today that manages to bring something to modern debate which is beyond the obvious and  hackneyed remarks which everybody else in the media is saying.  Because of this it came as even more of a surprise when he was bemoaning the end of cheques and coin accepting phone boxes.  No doubt people were uncomfortable when cheques first arrived or perhaps when note were first introduced or when coins were introduced having symbolic value and people no longer exchanged usable commodities.  Would he have been up in arms when William Caxton introduced the printing press into this country and put all the scribes out of work, maybe he would have written a similar piece in his paper like the one he wrote in January but on reflection perhaps not.

Taxing changes

You may well have noticed that the budget is due soon.  As usual, businesses are trying to persuade the chancellor that they are so overtaxed they can hardly make ends meet and could he please reduce taxes so they don't have to go abroad.

Except that businesses are taxed far more lightly than we mere mortals are.  For a start, businesses are taxed on their profit; we are taxed on our turnover.  Businesses can have a turnover of billions, yet only pay tax on the few millions they make in profit.

Individuals don't get that luxury.  We pay our tax on our turnover, that is, our income.  We cannot take legitimate expenses out, such as the utility bills, that businesses take out.  Neither is our rent/mortgage taken into account, unlike a business.

We have to pay the full running costs of our vehicles and, to add insult to injury, whilst businesses can write off car depreciation against tax, the company car holders pay tax on the 'benefit' of having a car for business purposes.

So I have an idea that will save the Inland Revenue (IR) a fortune in tax collecting and administration and even out the imbalance.

Both businesses and individuals should pay a flat rate tax on their turnover, say 10%.  There will be no expenses to put against a tax payment in order to reduce it, saving the IR heaps of money in processing claims and the fights over what can be claimed and what can't be claimed.  The rule book can then be simplified and this would cut down on accountants fees saving the IR and businesses a truckload of cash.

We'd still need a tax free amount for people and businesses (say the first 10% of wages/turnover or £10,000 whichever is greater), to help the help those on low pay and small businesses, but on the whole it would be far easier to administrate than the system we have now. 

Of course it may put a few accountants out of business and mean that businesses and the wealthy suffer a bit more, but it would mean that everyone is taxed in the same way.  Or am I being too socialist in my desire for equality?

Are footballers overpaid?

Ask anyone in the street about footballer's pay and most will tell you that they are paid too much.  The same applies to actors, singers and anyone involved in entertainment or the media.

But are they overpaid?  It all depends on the direction you look at it from.  If you look at it from the direction of a club chairman, paying a player £100,000 per week is a good deal if that player ensures Champions league football and the revenue that competition brings in.  Also what about shirt sales.  David Beckham's arrival at Real Madrid increased the shirt sales exponentially, not to mention their global commercial footprint so the wage they paid him was more than compensated for by the increase in commercial traffic.

If you look at it from the fans perspective, and they are the ones who are ultimately paying the player, as most of them won't be earning more than £30,000 per year, footballers can seem grossly overpaid for what they do.

The same is true for actors or musicians or models.  If an actor can guarantee a film will make a large profit, then it's worth paying them millions per film. 

In both cases, it could be argued, it's also worth the while of the club chairman, movie studio record executive etc to 'overlook' what can politely be called eccentricities in the pursuit of profits.  Fans will still pay for season tickets, movie goers will still pay to watch the films and buy the DVDs and fans will still buy the CDs, despite the bad behaviour that the fans and moviegoers complain about.

The other factor to be taken into account is this:  If the money wasn't going to footballers, where would it go?  The romantics may believe that it would lower ticket prices or the price of shirts and other merchandise, but I doubt it.  The chances are that the excess money would go into the pockets of chairman or, in some cases, shareholders. 

The basic principle of business is that if someone is willing to pay a price, then someone else will charge it. As long as football fans are willing to pay for overpriced season tickets then the prices will remain high.  As long as they remain high, then someone has to get the money generated.  If it's not the footballers, who will it be?  Who would you prefer?