Is there any point to this Iraq inquiry?

I think I've answered my own question. Any testimony the government is comfortable with will be heard in open court. If there is anything the government (or Tony Blair) doesn't want us to know it will be heard in secret, or not at all. In time (at least a year we are now told) some anodyne report will be published that nproves nothing, exonerates everyone and promises to learn lessons from some of the minor cock-ups.

Heigh ho!

Making a killing

- What can we do about these Taleban wallahs? We're being killed by all these bad headlines. Soldiers dying, wounded ... Can't we put a stop to it?

- More soldiers, more equipment?

- Not on old boy! GB has spoken! We need to find a battle we can win.

- Well sir, there is the court option.

- The court option?

- Yes sir, two soldiers have been given an increased compensation award on a court ruling. We could appeal that. We're bound to win in a higher court if we put enough resources behind it.

- How much s involved?

- Not very much sir, but there is a principle at stake.

- Principle! Of course. Yes I like that. We need more principled action around here.

- So you approve sir.

- Absolutely. Get the legal boys on it right away. A battle we can win. That's cheered me up immensely.

No surprise

Guido reports today that MPs have surreptitiously increase their subsistence allowance from £400 a month to £500. As before no receipts are required. Expect then to see reports next year of increased allowances for MPs. Obviously they don't care about public opinion. Obviously they don't need to care about public opinion because the electoral machinery of our so-called democracy has been stitched up to keep out potential renegades.

The lesson that might be learned from Ian Gibson's defenestration is that what really doesn't pay is to question the policies of party leadership.

The Left and Islam

Martin Bright appears to be held in high regard in media circles. I am not sure why because what I have read of his writing appears to be long on dogma and short on thoughtful analysis. He used to be editor of the once highly respected New Statesman - a weekly I read regularly in the 1960s - until he was kicked out for being too critical of Gordon Brown's government. He now writes a blog for the Spectator's Coffee House - I assume amongst other activities.

His place at the New Statesman has been taken by one Mehdi Hasan who apparently has this to say:

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief - people of “no intelligence” - because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”

What is more dispiriting is Martin Bright's response:

What can I say? Nothing at all. I am speechless.

Fortunately most of Martin Bright's respondents are not speechless and most were able to provide good analyses of the state of affairs we have come to, whereby the left have unthinkingly embraced Islamic thinking because it is not Christian or not Jewish.

We have all grown up in ignorance of Islam. Most of us were taught about Christianity and Judaism as we were growing up and to a degree these religions have become thoroughly westernized. There were flirtations with Arabism 100 years ago by such as T E Lawrence but such interest never entered the mainstream, so now when we have to belatedly pay attention we are caught without any framework of knowledge to properly place Islam.

Most people on the left of politics in the 1960s could reassure themselves that the policies they were pursuing would make society a better place. There was an ideology worth fighting for. We may now look back on that period as the high water mark of state socialism. The inexorable trend to excessive central control, capture of programs by special interest groups has led to a gradual undermining of all those good intentions. Worse, many of these services are downright counterproductive. Almost everyone now realizes that, even at an unconscious level, and this has left many adherents to the left with an attachment that has been stripped of its core ideology.

Vacuums will always be filled and it is perhaps no surprise that those with highly defined viewpoints, like the IRA or militant Islam will fill open minds.

Hugh Stowell Brown

It is astonishing what you can find on the internet these days. I knew about Hugh Stowell Brown and his association with Wolverton but had hitherto been unable to access his memoirs. Fortunately someone has taken the trouble to put this online recently so I was able to read his account.

Brown was a Manxman and the son of a cleric. He came to England as a 16 year old, worked as a surveyor for a while and in August 1840 came to Wolverton as an apprentice fitter - for which he was paid 4s a week. He worked there for 3 and a half years before deciding to become a Methodist minister, eventually preaching in Liverpool and achieving a degree of fame.

His account of Wolverton is invaluable because he gives us a view from the shop floor. Other contemporary accounts that survive were from visitors who tended to be impressed by the wonder rather than the reality. Although the days were long the men found ways of slacking off when the foreman was not looking, therefore pacing their day within the unreasonable demands of the machine.

He is also highly critical of the incumbents of the local churches and poor church attendance - a view which contradicts our received picture of Victorian church attendance. He also notes, unsurprisingly, the amount of heavy drinking that went on.

One young man with whom he shared lodgings was Edward Hayes, who a few years later set up his own engineering company, first making agricultural machinery and then moving into the manufacture of yachts and tug boats. One of Hayes surviving boats is on display at the Milton Keynes Museum.

A spoonful of Sugar

I have no objection to “Suralan” Sugar as a businessman or even as a television entertainer. I have wayched and enjoyed the Apprentice series. I don’t even object to his appointment to the House of Lords - he wouldn’t be the first millionaire to be so rewarded for making suitable contributions in the right places.
But it does stick in my craw that the Son of the Manse should lecture us endlessly about his values and then appoint a man who is the avowed embodiment of the very opposite of these so-called values.
Once again the moral compass is spinning!

Reducing Shakespeare

My stock answer, when challenged as to the point of studying Shakespeare, went something like this. Reading is known to be a good way of developing one’s vocabulary and fluency with language. Shakespeare tells interesting stories and is generally acclaimed as one of the best writers in English of all time. So the study of Shakespeare can usually meet two or more objectives. Yes it is difficult and challenging but what do you think would be best for you - trying to climb a mountain or climbing three steps to your house so that you can flop on the couch?
It was with some surprise, even shock, when I was supply teaching at a school in Portsmouth some ten years ago, that I found they were teaching Macbeth to some weaker students by showing them a ten minute cartoon film of the story and asking them to write a paragraph about it. This apparently satisfied the demands of the National Curriculum to include Shakespeare at GCSE!
No dumbing down here!