This again

Really that is enough enough about Twitter now. Something that is not an original idea (and which I have moaned about before) has become a vitally important piece of news content.

They identified high literature as a crucial pillar for any generation.

But they also latched on to Twitter, the website where users compress all of human experience into 140 characters. Twitter, they thought to themselves, epitomised the short attention span and info-deluge that defined the contemporary age.

So what if you put the two together? If great literature and Twitter were combined into one new form - Twitterature.

Oh sweet mother of fuck, protect us from these charlatans and bullshitters. If this is a cynical cash-in then fair play to them, I just don't see why it warrants free advertising. If it is in anyway serious then things are worse that I feared. To repeat myself, this is not an original idea, it is a fun parlour game that should not be repackaged and foisted upon the gullible nor used to appeal to the worst qualities of the verbally incontinent, the vapid and the self-obsessed.

One thing that worries is the fashionable delusion in all sorts of media circles that words, language and literature must now be reduced to mere "content" – a thing that has no intrinsic merit in itself, but which can be packaged, marketed and judged on its ad-generating powers. In other words, a triumph of the bullshitters which will seriously degrade culture, literature and thought.

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Add journalism to that list too. There are some people who give every impression that the most important thing about the Iranian revolution is that it's on Twitter. Well no it isn't actually, though it's one faddish way of getting some people's voices heard; after all, there are multiple ways in which the net has allowed information to leak out - Facebook and Fark (of all things) have got in on the act, so too YouTube.

The trouble with the tweets from Tehran is that the stew of rumour and misinformation can obscure as much as it can enlighten. (As illustrated here - note too the claim that Moldova's authorities used Twitter to sew confusion and misinformation among the protesters there). Oh and the fact that the death of the People's Pederast has overwhelmed Twitter (sorry Iranians, you're already last week's news). There is no substitute for having proper journalists, who know the territory and the people, on the ground trying to sift through the mass of claim and counter-claim and give an accurate reflection of what is really going on. (An impossible task, of course, but one can make a decent stab at it).

I wonder if this confusion between the means and ends doesn't date back to the Reformation and the role of the printing presses in spreading Protestant ideas. Without denying the importance of technology in spreading ideas, I don't think the existence of the printing press itself explains why the Lutherans succeeded where the Hussites or the Lollards (for example) failed.

In revolutions the means in which the message has been spread was never as important as the message itself. In other words, a printing press is no substitute for having a Luther, a Milton or a Jefferson to hand; or a Lenin for that matter. If the Iranian revolution doesn't have a clearer message that a random sequence of 140-character comments, I very much fear it will not succeed.

PS: The following rather illustrates the point.

British homewares retailer Habitat apologized on Wednesday after ads for the store appeared on Twitter tagged with words linked to the Iranian election crisis.

Some Twitter users became angry after the upmarket store's messages turned up in searches for topics such as "Iran" and "Mousavi," the name of Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Events, hijacked by bullshit merchants online.

Erik the Guardian Reader

I've lost count of the number of column inches devoted to the claim that the Vikings are a positive role model for the contemporary, multicultural era. But whenever I've read a report in which the reporter, with wide-eyed amazement tells us that there was more to Vikings than raping and pillaging, I've never been able to repress the thought "and this is news to whom exactly"?

(For instance, I don't think it was exactly a secret that Alfred the Great and Guthrun agreed to share England, the Danes converted to Christianity - thrilled by its love your neighbour sentiments we may be sure - and that was an end to the trouble. Well, we'll get back to that in a moment).

Multi-culturalism 11th century style. It is
probably preferable to modern-day Luton, however.

It's become fashionable to regard the Vikings as master tradesmen, seafarers (they were that too) and to downplay all that rapine and fighting. Possibly its apogee was reached in the decision to name the technology that allows electronic devices to communicate with each other after Harald Bluetooth on the slightly spurious grounds that he'd first united Denmark and Norway.

And yet this vogue for presenting the Vikings as role models for a globalised, multicultural world seems a bit too goody goody and shiny eyed. The Vikings lived during the middle ages, a brutal and terrifying age, and they survived and thrived in it thanks to their own courage and resourcefulness. However, the most important lessons that era offers for our own age have always been along the lines of: "don't do things like they did in the middle ages".

Consider for example what the Viking presence in England led to. After the raiders started coming across the sea again, Ethelred Unraed surpassed his previous ill-thought out responses with the St Brice's Day Massacre, an attempt to kill all the Danes in England (who had indeed become well established in the country). The response was predictably brutal, of course, and when it ended with Cnut on the throne there's a good case for regarding Engand as part of the Viking world.

Remember, too, how the Viking era in England ended. Harold Godwinson (himself of Danish extraction) seized the throne. The last of the Vikings, Harald Hardrada invaded and, along with most of his army, died at Stamford Bridge. But while all that was happening, the Normans - essentially a bunch of French-speaking Vikings (now there's an alarming combination) - were en route for England. Their arrival spelled the end for the old ways of the English and the Danes. (And caused a fair few problems from the Irish, Welsh and Scots, but that's another story).

Consider also that the Vikings were also greatly in demand as mercenaries - the famed Varangian guard - and their skills at navigation and trade made them among the more successful slavers of the era, selling their Slavic captives in the east, taking cheap labour back to Scandinavia and, at the other end of the Viking world, populating Iceland with the children fathered by their Irish slave girls. (Incidentally, if you're going to drag unwilling Irish girls across the sea and have your wicked way with them, you'd need to be every bit as tough as the stereotype suggests). The raping and pillaging was central to who they were, because that was the only way they could survive and thrive. If it won them sufficient land in England or Ireland to farm then, yes, they might calm down a bit. Until the next wave of violence swept over them.

I don't doubt that the actual academic conference that started this current wave of Viking revisionism in the press is taking a more nuanced and subtle view about how the Vikings interacted with the other peoples of the isles. Really my beef is with the more simplistic press converage and the idea that one corrects a historic stereotype by downplaying the brutal realities behind that stereotype.

But when you get reports with headlines like Vikings 'lived harmoniously with our ancestors' it's probably time for a reminder that they were our ancestors too, and the "harmony" was more a case of two bunches of tough, warlike people finding a balance that removed the need for endless conflict.

If more British and Irish people start to see themselves as descendants of the Vikings, it'll probably be a positive thing. Apart from the vague sense of unity it engenders, the Vikings were a pretty impressive bunch. Brave, formidable and master seamen. Just don't make the mistake of thinking of them as cuddly Guardian readers who might have got a bit too boisterous from time to time.

UPDATE: Why, yes, The Guardian did indeed respond with an editorial praising the ability of two culturally similar peoples to co-exist in a sparsely populatred country once one lot had adopted the other lot's religion. "Before long, the Vikings lived side by side with the people they invaded, leaving many of us with our own inner Viking. There's a lesson there."

EDW: Lord Palmerston

Shall we stop whining about the fact that Barack Obama has returned the bust of Winston Churchill that his predecessor had installed in the Oval Office?

(Was this some grudge on behalf of his grandfather's treatment during the Mau Mau rebellion? Does he not care about Britain? Personally I reckon that whereas Bush wanted to be Churchill, he wants to be Lincoln.)

The Mau Mau theory might have something to it, I suppose, so Gordon Brown's decision to give Obama a biography of Churchill might not have been the wisest gift (the pen holder made from the timbers of a 19th century warship, on the other hand, is a fine choice; I'd be very glad to receive something like that myself).

However, were I in Brown's shoes I'd have given him a bust of Lord Palmerston, the last Edinburgh University educated PM until our own dear leader's accession. (Admittedly, Tom Paine would be the ideal Brit for the current president's office, but I've EDW'd him already).

Henry Temple might seem an eccentric choice. If "dear old Pam" is remembered at all these days it's for the fact that he was, in the face of some pretty stiff competition, the most sly and cynical of all British PMs, for gunboat diplomacy, a colourful private life and genial populism. (Oh, and the story that he died having sex with a parlour maid on a billiard table. In his eighties. Sadly, it appears he died while going through his ministerial papers; a half-written letter was found by his side. Still, it's a fitting tribute to him that people prefer the former story. After all, he did refuse to move into Downing Street because his house in Piccadilly gave him much better opportunities to eye up passing fillies). Florence Nightingale gave him a rather handsome epitaph: "Though he made a joke when asked to do the right thing he always did it."

But he was not, please note, entirely devoid of principle. His zeal to curb the transatlantic slave trade managed to inflame the Americans to the brink of war (at this point we'll gloss over his sympathy for the Confederacy in the US civil war, eh?) He would support liberal, progressive causes abroad - if possible; balanced against that you have things like the Don Pacifico Affair - you know the Civis Romanus Sum speech - and the manner in which he masked naked self-interest behind an appeal to high ideals. Which is not to say the ideals were absent.

Palmerston's highest statement with regards to international affairs was:

"I hold that the real policy of England... is to be the champion of justice and right, pursuing that course with moderation and prudence, not becoming the Quixote of the world, but giving the weight of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks that justice is, and whenever she thinks that wrong has been done."

It's somewhat reminiscent of Tony Blair, isn't it? And you might wish to compare this rhetoric with the frequently sordid and self-interested reality. Nevertheless, many politicians have juggled principle and pragmatism in this manner. It is the peculiar genius of Lincoln, Obama's hero, that he made the latter the servant of the former.

Still, at this point it is worth noting that Obama seemed far keener to meet Blair than he was Brown (who wouldn't be?). Consider also the president's approach to foreign affairs (get the clearly doomed British and Japanese PMs in and out of the White House as quickly as possible; offer the Russians a quid pro quo to stamp down the Iranians - oh and do it in a way that subtly enhances the division between Putin and Medvedev - and make it clear to your allies that you are mainly interested in what they can do to help in Pakistan/Afghanistan) in the light of Palmerston's view that a country has no eternal allies, only eternal interests.

The conflict against the Taliban/al-Qaida/militant Islam is, after all, one where America's national interest and the support of justice and right neatly dovetail. One wonders if the track record of the prime minister at the time of the Indian mutiny would have anything to offer the 44th President of the United States in that regard. It strikes me that Obama is someone who would appreciate his qualities more than many people could imagine.

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

The debate about whether you call India's commercial capital Bombay or Mumbai is, in the scheme of things, not that important. Moreover, it's something of a minefield and you can't really blame the many news organisations that have just decided to do what everyone else is doing and follow the desires of the city's rulers and call it Mumbai.

Sticking to Bombay, though, isn't necessarily a sign of a hopelessly colonial and archaic mindset. Here's Christopher Hitchens on the topic:

When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh in 1995, that "those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay," he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")

Anyway, as long as you avoid something ridiculous, like the Telegraph's policy of calling it Bombay (Mumbai) at first mention in print and, it appears, Mumbai on the web - it seems that Sir Heffer's desire to stick to traditional proprieties and the management's desire to maximise web traffic are in conflict – it's just a question of making a choice.

An aside in the Bomaby/Mumbai debate set of a more parochial train of thoughts, though. There is the argument that a city's name dates back to its colonial founders is not necessarily a bad thing. Consider this, from Kevin Myers:

You can equally give London some fancy cod-Anglo-Saxon name that does not derive from the Latin 'Londinium' -- yet it remains a city founded by the Roman empire.

Actually he is not quite right there. The name is probably Brythonic in origin (though there's no consensus there) and a cod-Welsh name would be more authentic still. Then again, Bombay is probably an English corruption of a local name so the general point still stands.

Anyway, I mention this simply because its been a while since there was any debate about renaming London. However, in the late Middle Ages and the Tudor era there was a serious discussion about whether the capital should be renamed Troy-Novant. Like the renaming of Mumbai the suggestion was motivated by over-romanticised myth-making: in this case the belief that the Britons were descendants of the Trojans and that the island itself owed its name to one Brutus.

It's all in Geoffrey of Monmouth if you want the full story and - one may reasonably infer - it's also mixed up with the actual history of the area and the Trinovantes. The trick of claiming descent from the Trojans was one the Romans themselves had developed (you don't need to tell me that it's in Vergil, do you?) – it's possible the ancient Britons pinched it for themselves.

Personally, I find this antiquarian stuff pretty entertaining – if you're interested Peter Ackroyd has plenty in his London: the Biography – and like the idea of a dreamy otherworld of Troy-Novant, a city watched over by Celtic gods, a repository of ancient lore in which myth becomes reality. But renaming London Troy-Novant, even in an age in which the belief in witches and magic remained dominant, would have given it all far more potency that it would have warranted.

For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold,
And Troy-novant was built of old Troyes ashes cold.

Events, dear boy, events

A post that resonates from Norm Geras in which he argues, I crudely paraphrase, that if you owe the circumstances of your birth to malign events (an example of someone whose parents met in a Nazi concentration camp is quoted) that that is no reason to regret your own existence.

He's right about that, I think (he gets quite a few things right), but the reason it resonates is that I owe my own existence to Britain's rather tangled history in Malaysia. My parents, you see, met in a British military hospital sometime in the Sixties. (It seems there was a jammed window which none of the nurses could open, my father attempted to fix it and managed to break it. Endearing uselessness, it's one way to get chicks I suppose).

Anyway, anecdotage aside, they were both there in their capacity as British army medics. The history of the time is somewhat complex - I'm not really best placed to give a proper overview of what the Brits were doing post Malaysian independence – but there were various conflicts with the Indonesians, with communist agitators and sundry other bits of unpleasantness.

I mention all this because, in the context of Norm's question (it's not his initially, but you know what I mean), I would struggle to even answer the basic premise on which it is based: was the British presence (to which I owe my existence) in Malaysia a good or a bad thing?

The full question of Britain's own colonial legacy is probably too recent, too contentious to give assess objectively. Let's just say, at least, that there were some pretty unpleasant aspects to the Empire that we would not want to see repeated, including this interesting claim from Kenya. (If you really want to over-complicate matters, I might add my parents' own presence in the British forces is not without its historic paradoxes: both were of Irish stock - one Ulster Proddy, one Southern Catholic, but that's enough of that). Then there were the specific acts of violence and conflict in south-east Asia in which the British were entangled.

So far, so bleak. But then there are many who will argue that the British empire brought benefits and virtues to the world too. It might also be argued that the British in helping to suppress communism in a more benign and effective way than the Americans did in Vietnam and helping to support the newly independent states and to stabilise the region deserve some credit, a paying off of the colonial debt if you like.

Plus, of course, it has given me one fine anecdote about the mess boy in my mother's hospital who doubled up as the local communist agitator. He was never sacked because he was too good and his job and always tipped the Brits off whenever he was planning an anti-British riot in the town.

Anyway, the point is: what is the point?

To say that most things in history are morally ambiguous to some degree is stating the bleeding obvious, a bit. (So too would the observation that I am not especially well-informed about Malaysian history).

And yet, combine the two factors together. Does it really matter that I can't even say whether or not the circumstances to which I owe my existence are a good thing or not? Should we not all attempt to discover more about the historic cross currents, the events and ambiguities that contribute to our making? Besides that question, there's a certain pleasure to be had from random events such as my parents' meeting and learning more about somewhat obscure events is not a bad thing (I think I might read up on Malaysia a bit). And at least asking the question about whether or not the context behind our personal and family histories is benign or malign is, I think, a good starting point to understanding the world in which we now inhabit and, possibly, what things from the past we should seek to avoid and learn from. (For one thing, if ever I learn of a group of nurses having trouble with their windows, I'll know what to do).

But I think also its worth remembering that if random events can bring about our existence, they can also shape the course of history in more profound ways. I like the line from Flashman: "In my experience the course of history is as often settled by someone having a belly-ache, or not sleeping well, or a sailor getting drunk or some aristocratic harlot waggling her backside."

So all that questioning and story-telling and you end up with a why history matters post. Sorry about that. Still, one thing I can say for certain. I do wish I had been born in Singapore rather than in Sheffield. It would add, unfairly no doubt, a certain air of exoticism.

Historic errors

John McCain would appear to be another one who isn't so good at learning lessons from history. You can see what he was thinking off when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate: a feisty, independent-minded woman who appeals to the religious nutt... that is to say conservatives he needs to turn out en masse if is to have any chance of winning.

No matter that she wasn't his first choice, no matter that it blunts any attacks on Obama for being inexperienced, the real mistake was ignoring the golden rule of selecting a running mate: make damn sure they've been thoroughly vetted.

Republican presidents before him have lived to regret selecting the likes of Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew on a whim and, with Palin, turning out to be someone who makes Obama look massively experienced and presidential by comparison, the McCain camp looks singularly unprepared to deal with it all.

As one grateful hack puts it: Thanks to McCain's miscue, everything the press touches about Palin turns into a scoop: her earmark flip-flops, her political inexperience, her Alaska Independence Party connection, her views on teaching "creationism," her book-banning phase, plus the "troopergate" scandal, her husband's ancient DUI, and her pregnant teenage daughter. And the press rampage has only just begun.

How bad could it get? After most of his original choices turned him down, George McGovern finally announced Tom Eagleton as his running mate.

Twelve days later Eagleton stepped down after news he'd received treatment for depression. A lot of the consequent speculation about his mental state was deeply personal and deeply unfair - just like some of the stuff about Palin's family - the problem was that people began to wonder what else the campaign didn't know and why the campaign hadn't been prepared to deal with the questions.

If your own campaign reeks of bumbling incompetence, you're going to have a hard time convincing people to let you run the country. I would that the other question is why a man with McCain's long years in politics didn't remember all these precedents.

The real danger is the Troopergate case. Of course this was known about when she was selected - though possibly not the rather disturbing pattern of her firing state employees who cross her - but there are a couple of factors which make it especially risky. Firstly the Alaskan state legislature is releasing a report on October 31 - right before the election. Secondly, she's relying on a combination of Democrats and Republicans - many of whom have cause to despise her - to get her off the hook with that. Good luck, I'd have said, but there appears to have a masterplan to neutralise the isse: ask said Democrats and Republicans really nicely if they could wait a bit and, if that doesn't work, make a formal complaint about your own behaviour. You're bound to look good one way or another.

It probably won't get to the Eagleton level but there is another historical precendent that people will remember. William Henry Harrison shows the danger of selecting an elderly war heroes to beat the Democrats: they might die suddenly. Harrison keeled over a few weeks into taking office and his VP John Tyler- picked to balance the ticket - was not an unqualified success. (One thing he did achieve, though, was setting a precedent that when the President dies, the VP takes over for the rest of the term.) It's bad enough that the doubts about Palin make people question McCain's judgment, but for those doubts to then remind voters of their doubts about McCain's health and age makes it an especially spectacular own goal.

Probably. She's addressing the Republican convention tonight and one has no doubt that she'll get a massive ovation from her fanbase. She could turn it around with a great performance, but her first speech after receiving the nomination doesn't inspire much confidence in her abilities. Others may disagree, but I thought immediately of Jacqui Smith and the general air of an over-anxious, earnest sixth former being completely overwhelmed by the situation - and that's before it emerged she'd told an easily detected lie. Amateurish and foolish to an incredible degree.

But she still has a slim chance (I put it at about 3/1 at the moment) to avoided becoming joining the list of historic exemplars of what not to do. Because history also gives us a model what Sarah Palin needs to do. Here was a Republican VP candidate who survived an ethics scandal with a masterly performance.

In 1952 Richard Nixon was facing all sorts of questions about his financial dealings, which he addressed in the speech here. The most famous bit comes about six minutes in with the sentimental hokum about Checkers the spaniel and managed to get people feeling sorry for him. Note, though, how he transformed himself from a ruthless political operator into a poor misunderstood family man being bullied by the big nasty media and note how the seeming candour and directness helped him turn move from a desperate defence into an all-out attack.

We all know how well things worked out for him subsequently. Sarah Palin has already fluffed her introduction to the big stage so badly that she needs to follow Nixon's example and make people feel sorry for her. Because otherwise she'll be on the fateful path that Dan Quayle, Gordon Brown and other over-promoted deputies have followed: ridicule, pity and oblivion.

NB: I've been trying to embed Nixon's speech into this thing. But it doesn't appear to be working. I don't know why, but I suspect George Bush is to blame in some fashion.

Trollied Tuesday: history viewed through a glass

I've been reading a most entertaining and enlightening little volume called An Inebriated History of Britain by Peter Haydon.

Sadly it is not an actually history of Britain written solely whilst sloshed, but it's hard not to warm to a volume which opens with an attack on the Daily Mail and those sections of the Conservative party which opposed the plans to liberalise the licensing laws as an attack on civilisation as we know it.

As Haydon argues, the truth is that for the past 2,000 years, drinking has been one of the great British traditions. However, there is more to this tradition than simple excess, because every age has had it's own form of sterile and joyless puritanism which has sought to use the force of the law to force people to conform to their own standards.

What this book ably demonstrates is that such behaviour is almost always counterproductive. One early example will suffice. King Edgar decided to regulate people's consumption be decreeing that all drinking vessels should be a standard size - about four pints - and that these should be further subdivided by eight pegs, the idea being that the drinker could not consume more than one peg's worth at a time.

One problem was that it's pretty hard to judge exactly how much you were drinking so that if you overshot the peg, simple manners dictated that you drink down the next peg so that you did not shortchange your fellow drinkers. More than that, though, all self-respecting Englishmen regarded this heavy-handed attempt to regulate their behaviour as a challenge and, as later Medieval accounts make clear, used the measurements as a way of keeping score in drinking contests. The idea being to take your opponent down a peg or two, see.

There's plenty more in that vein throughout the book including the apogee of puritanism during the reign of Oliver Cromwell. As the subsequent excesses of the Restoration era demonstrated, the various attempts to curb people's enjoyments did not go down so well.

And here's the point that a real inebriated historian of Britain should make. Puritanism has poisoned many a worthy cause by hijacking it for its self-righteous moralising and controlling behaviour. It wasn't just the movement to curb the sovereign's powers in favour of a representative parliament that suffered, contemporary issues such the fight for equal rights for women, to give one examples, are in danger of being hijacked by joyless, sterile moralisers.

But let's not digress too far down this path for now. Instead let's remind ourselves than while the bores are always with us, in Britain the rolling, rowdy drunkard has traditionally stood in opposition to the puritan - and has generally won out in the end.

Consider for moment just how sinister the desire to control people's actions in order that they act according to one's own standards and morals really is and then be glad of these drunkards. They are one of the first and best defences of humanity, liberty and freedom of conscience. Raise a glass to them. Waes hael.

One man's freedom fighter is another's memoirist

Britain's 'youngest terrorist' jailed.

Not really, though.

Hammaad Munshi, the 18-year-old in question was 16 when he was arrested. He might be the youngest person convicted under the Terrorism Act, as the BBC claims, but to call him Britain's youngest terrorist (sorry 'youngest terrorist') is pushing it a bit.

Brendan Behan was also 16 when he was arrested, and convicted, of trying to blow up British war ships in Liverpool on an IRA mission. He even wrote an entertaining and heavily fictionalised memoir about his experience: Borstal Boy. His is an example these young jihadis would do well to follow.

Trollied Tuesday: Scultheen

You remember my search for a suitably tigerish drink? No, well I'm still looking.

Here's one worthy contender: scultheen. It was a favourite of the Irish Hellfire Club and consisted of whiskey, buttermilk and, for a suitably diabolic touch a dash of brimstone.

Milk can be surprising effective with spirits like brandy, whiskey and – especially – spiced rum, so why not this variant? I like to think of it as a far superior version of Bailey's Irish Cream.

The lurid tales surrounding the hellfire clubs are legion, and most of the occult stuff is greatly exaggerated. Still the stories about figures such as Buck Whaley - who was reputed to have met the Devil in St Audoen's church in Dublin and who certainly did travel to Jerusalem for a bet and played handball against the Wailing Wall – are all highly entertaining. It's certainly an advertisement of sorts for the benefits of scultheen. and Whaley's memoirs look like something that would well repay the time spent reading them.

As for the Hellfire Clubs themselves, this is a good brief guide to the facts and fictions surrounding them. Remember that their primary purpose was to satirise the religious and moral views of the day (it was somewhat underminded by the conventionally aristocratic anti-Catholic strand to much of the thinking, but then the Roman church as always been a worthy adversary). Nonetheless, if even aspire to go against the grain a suitable drink is needed to toast your endeavours – so scultheen it is. Truly the Devil's Buttermilk.

Old jokes revisited

Everytime the English thought they'd found an answer to the Irish Question, the Irish changed the question, as Sellars and Yeatman put it.

Now, with the referendum results in (Yerra, Sure, Go On: 46.6% but Down With This Sort of Thing on 53.4%). The Irish present us with a new European Question in which the correct answer changes according to whatever answer has been given previously.

Soon the European Question will become like the Schleswig-Holstein Question which, as Palmerston said:

"Only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein Question. The first was Albert, the Prince consort and he is dead; the second is a German professor, and he is in an asylum: and the third was myself - and I have forgotten it."

Curiously, the problem was solved quite easily when the people were allowed the final say and it was accepted as binding by the great powers of the day.

The impurity of the turf

In honour of tomorrow's Derby, here's one of the more agreeably louche openings of a novel.

"I'll take the odds against Caravan."
"In poneys?"
"Done."
And Lord Milford , a young noble , entered in his book the bet which he had just made with Mr. Latour , a grey-headed member of the Jockey Club.
It was the eve of the Derby of 1837. In a vast and golden saloon , that in its decorations would have become , and in its splendour would not have disgraced , Versailles in the days of the grand monarch , were assembled many whose hearts beat at the thought of the morrow , and whose brains still laboured to control its fortunes to their advantage.
"They say that Caravan looks puffy," lisped in a low voice a young man, lounging on the edge of a buhl table that had once belonged to a Mortemart, and dangling a rich cane with affectad indifference in order to conceal his anxiety from all , except the person whom he addressed.
"They are taking seven to two against him freely over the way," was the reply. " I believe it 's all right."

Okay, the Derby doesn't enjoy the prestige - or the sense of being a great national occasion - that it enjoyed in the 19th century. Until recently it was run on a Wednesday, giving it a natural appeal to idlers, skivers, aristocrats, dandies and other ne'er do wells. The pity is that there were not enough of them to sustain it as a weekday event in the modern era.

Then again, our current crop of statesmen don't seem the sort to knock out a novel or two as a sideline. Disraeli was no more an aristocrat than our current Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown does not strike one as the sort to enjoy anything to do with the racing world.

My Derby tip is don't listen to me, listen to people who really know what they're talking about. That said, I like the look of Doctor Freemantle as an each way bet (currently available at around 10/1).

It could be worse, Gordon

It would be superfluous for me to observe that Gordon Brown is not terribly popular. Every other day seemingly brings another story charting his continued descent from trough to pit to slough of despond to nadir; he is less popular the Neville Chamberlain after the invasion of Norway, his party openly debates his removal, he is at an 'all-time' low - and it's only likely to get worse. Once a prime minister becomes an object of pity, he is finished.

I do not intend to join the pack. Instead, in the, admittedly, remote contingency anyone from Downing Street is reading this, let me offer the following words of comfort and support. Gordon is a long-way from being the most unpopular man in English history, as a few examples will easily demonstrate.

Admittedly the art of polling was not so developed a few centuries ago, so we can't make exact parallels. However, even the worst aspects of Brown's government seem light in comparison with the outright tyranny some of these characters managed. However, note well that these are people who became hated because of their continued encroachment upon the rights and liberties of the people (so stop doing things like trying to bring in ID cards, extend detention without trial and end the flirtation with insane authoritarian bullying such as the suggestion that children whose parents are idiots should be punished by being kicked out of school.)

The Marquis of Bute: Gordon is not even the most unpopular Scotsman to become Prime Minister. (See, already things are looking better). I'm focusing on England here (there are plenty of disastrous Scottish leaders), partly because, like Brown, Bute was unpopular partly on account of anti-Scottish sentiment. However, this prejudice was dwarfed by the man's personal failings.

Bute's unpopularity can more precisely be attributed to the fact that he had been imposed on the people of England (by George III rather than the Labour party) without their consent, that his administration was characterised by financial incompetence (including new taxes, the implications of which had not been properly thought through, including - a small, but telling detail - unpopular taxes on alcohol.) Given all this, it's little surprise Bute only lasted a year in the job before the constant personal attacks forced him out of the job.

The hostility towards Bute was best expressed by John Wilkes in the North Briton. My analogy falls down somewhat in that there are no Wilkes-like figures in contemporary politics (there are some similarities with Ken Livingston, I suppose; Wilkes was something of a scoundrel too and held his supporters in contempt) but that's beside the point here. Bute still provides a cautionary tale against high-handed, arbitrary and capricious government and perceived contempt for the views of the electorate.

King John: He spent years plotting and scheming to undermine his predecessor, a charismatic leader with a propensity for causing trouble in the Middle East. When he finally achieved the top job he turned out to be a total disaster. His capricious nature, constant meddling in people's affairs, his high-handed treatment of his underlings and his unpleasant personality alienated pretty much everyone. John made a fool of himself on the continent, England was placed under a papal interdict (effectively casting the land out of the Christian communion), he carelessly lost vast amounts of gold and at the time of his death he had effectively been deposed (the barons had offered the throne to the French heir). His attempts to undermine people's civil rights led, of course, to Magna Carta. (I don't need to labour the point about civil liberties any further, do I?)

There have been other disastrous rulers, some of whom lost their thrones and some of whom made violent ends - Edward II, Richard II and Charles I. However, there was a residual deference surrounding the monarch (still is, to be honest) and more often that not the popular venom was reserved for unpopular ministers. The last even-less-popular-than-Gordon is drawn from their ranks.

Hugh Despenser the Younger: these historical comparisons should not be take too far, of course. Whatever Brown's flaws, he is never going to be as vile, nor as hated, as Despenser. Apart from his sidelines in piracy and torture (there is a story that he imprisoned one noble woman and repeatedly broke her limbs until she was drive insane), he became despised through his association with Edward II and its attendant maladministration, corruption and ruthlessness. He eventually received his comeuppance and was hanged drawn and quartered. His end makes gruesome, yet instructive reading.

He was stripped naked, and biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil were written on his skin. He was then hanged from a gallows 50 ft (15 m) high, but cut down before he could choke to death, and was tied to a ladder, in full view of the crowd. The executioner climbed up beside him, and sliced off his penis and testicles which were then burnt before him, while he was still alive and conscious. [Actually, accounts vary on this. Some say they were shoved into his mouth as a gag.] Subsequently, the executioner plunged his knife into his abdomen, and slowly pulled out, and cut out, his entrails and heart, which were likewise burnt before the ecstatic crowd. Just before he died, it is recorded that he let out a "low inhuman howl," much to the delight and merriment of the spectators. Finally, his corpse was beheaded, and his body cut into four pieces, and his head was mounted on the gates of London.

Note the delight of the watching crowd. The reason I dwell on this is that I very much fear that Gordon Brown will undergo a political version of this protracted and very public agony - all to the delight of the baying mob.

It would be kinder for Brown, and much better for the country and the Labour party, if he was instead given a quick and ruthless exit: the political equivalent of Edward II's (reputed) exit, in fact. Get the pokers heated up in time for the party conference.

Trollied Tuesday: responsibly and in moderation

A recently published book moves to the top of my 'to buy' list. Drinking for England: The Great English Drinkers and Their Times by Fergus Linnane. I've had a browse through it in bookshops and - so far as this great English drinker's memory recalls - it opens with an account of how various worthies such as King Edgar and St Dunstan tried a mixture of finger-wagging, regulation and guilt to get people to regulate their drinking.

And guess what? It didn't work at all. One of the measures tried before the Norman Conquest (something greatly aided, so tradition has it, by the English turning up to Senlac Hill with raging hangovers) was, well, measures. Edgar, besides trying to limit the number of ale houses, tried an early version of alcohol units by mandating that drinking horns be fitted with pegs in an attempt to encourage people to enjoy alcohol responsibly and in moderation by only drinking to the next peg before passing on the drinking horn. Pleasingly, for future generations who resent this sort of nannying, the measurements instead became an invaluable tool for drinking contests with thegns and the like competing to see how many pegs' worth they could down.

Moving back into the present day (and let me guess that Linnane draws similar parallels in his book) the English are as reliably thirsty as ever. And, in time-honoured fashion, the desire to force the people to change their ways has remained as constant.

The villain of much of previous week's press coverage has been our old friend – cheap drink. More precisely, the BMA has joined the chorus saying that drink must be made more expensive to stop people drinking "too much". As the Times puts it, the doctors' union "statutory controls on price and labelling, lower drink-drive limits, higher alcohol taxes and better police enforcement". Something tells me this won't really reduce alcohol specialists' workload, but no matter, it's a nice easy headline.

Never mind the fact that the price of drink, like pretty much everything else is rising due to higher commodities prices; forget the BMA's hypocrisy in trying to make it easier for its members to enjoy a drink and let's focus on the infuriating implication that everyone must be punished because some people drink more than they ought to.

Statistically, I'm sure that draconian controls that make it harder for people to do what they want to will deter them. But it's a rather crude and unpleasant instrument. Just because some people are doing something to excess, it doesn't mean everyone is. Put it this way, if Russell Brand were to go on an especially priapic rampage, statistics (should you be able to measure these things) would suggest that I too would be having more sex. However, if you were to impose draconian controls on sex (I imagine that many of modern-day puritans would love to be able to pull it off), I imagine there would be altogether less shagging going on. Doubt it would stop Brand, though (and I won't mention him again, I hope) but it might not make everyone happier. You may consider how this would affect you, if you like.

There's also the practical objection: you could raise prices, restrict the hours and terms of sale all you like, but you still won't stop drunks smashing things up, you won't stop fighting in the streets and you won't stop people being addicted to the stuff. It might put pubs out of business (they're already suffering thanks to the smoking ban) but I'd have thought shutting down pubs is the surest way of ensuring people don't drink in a convivial but restrained manner.

Rich people will still be free to get sloshed as they please, of course. but everyone else will have drink at home and go for the cheaper lagers and wines. If you took this to its logical conclusion, we'd end up like Finland. And we'd probably have a suicide rate to match.

Not that the cheap lagers on sale in the supermarkets will be quite so cheap. Tesco made a half-hearted attempt this week at pandering to the hysteria about drink by suggesting it might be time for the government to raise the price of its discounted beers. (Translation: prices are rising, we're stuck in a price war, please help us find a way out of selling a loss loser).

I've said before that I doubt the cheap lagers which, according to the Mail have been "associated (by whom? how?) with drunkenness, violence and disorder" are the real villains here. The dirt cheap ones are very low alcohol and I would have thought that the sight of a bunch of teenagers trying to buy them would set off alarm bells in even the dimmest check out operative that they ought to think about applying the laws which already exist.

However, suspicions are not enough. As part of my public service remit I've gone out and bought a four-pack of the cheapest supermarket own-brand lager I could find. Think of it as a protest against the hysteria and simplistic nonsense about an age-old phenomenon. I will report back shortly on whether it makes me smash up a phone box, buy more because it's so cheap or do anything else I might later regret.

Traditions Under Threat

Shrove Tuesday isn't what it used to be. You may have spotted several hundred media outlets lamenting the fact that people aren't so bothered with making pancakes these days. It seems that the fact no one is making a cheap but enjoyable snack is a sad mark of a country in irretrivable decline.

Since the story is based on a poll conducted by a flour manufacturer (and what's their methodology, hey? Does it use the proper psephological techniques? I rather doubt it) we might just dismiss it as a PR puff lazily lifted by news desks trying to fill their pages on the cheap. The trouble is that the pancake is just about last the last vestige of what was once a rich tradition of Shrove Tuesday festivities – mostly revolving around random acts of violence and cruelty to vulnerable people or animals.

Some villages do still enjoy the traditional football matches – the sort of violent, disorganised mêlée in which scoring a goal is regarded as unsporting and which even people who have an enduring hatred of all team sports would pay good money to see David Beckham pitched into.
The villagers of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, for instance, still enjoy nothing better than hours of wrestling and stamping each other into the mire but there is now an aura of quaintness about these events.

For in the past

Shrove Tuesday, or as we know it to-day, "Pancake Tuesday" seems in the olden times to have been a season of merriment, horseplay, and cruelty, as if the participants were determined to have their fling ere Lent set in with its sombre feelings and proscription of joy. Prostitutes were hounded out of their dwellings with a view to segregation during the Lenten term; "cock-throwing" was indulged in, a cock being tied to a stake and pelted by the onlookers; and all kinds of rough games were played, the women and the men joining in the "fun."

The Cornish used to enjoy a more utilitarian form of cruelty.

It was customary in Cornwall to take any one which had not laid eggs before Shrove-Tuesday, and lay it on a barn-floor to be thrashed to death. A man hit at her with a flail; and if he succeeded in killing her therewith, he got her for his pains. It was customary for a fellow to get a hen tied to his back, with some horse-bells hung beside it.

Of course, the true devotee of pointless acts of violence dressed in a veneer of tradition will always look to the oldest public schools of England to set the tone. The young gentlemen of Westminster School, for instance, have elevated the of tossing the pancake into an excuse for a good bit of character-building violence by fighting over a pancake which is hurled into a mass of boys. Wimpishly, the ritual has been sanitised somewhat "Due to the number of deaths, the ritual now only involves boys (and girls) selected from each house."

Other schools preferred to concentrate on the aforementioned cock throwing and were one of the last places to mark the start of day by ritually stoning a tethered fowl to death. As the Gentleman's Magazine noted, killing the bird with a carefully aimed broomstick is not as easy as it sounds and it could be dangerous to get too close to the bird. Lord Tebbit would, I'm sure, approve of the discipline and skill a revival of this custom would instill in youngsters.

But these Shrove Tuesday traditions are properly brought together by, inevitably, Eton College where a crow was wrapped in a pancake and nailed to the college door.

"The manuscript in the British Museum, 'Status Scholae Etonensis, A.D. 1560,' mentions a custom of that school on Shrove Tuesday, of the boys being allowed to play from eight o'clock for the whole day; and of the cook's coming in and fastening a pancake to a crow, which the young crows are calling upon, near it, at the school door. 'Die Martis Carnis-privii luditur ad horam octavam in totum diem: venit Coquus, affigit laganum Cornici, juxta illud pullis Corvorum invocantibus eum, ad ostium scholae.' The crows generally have hatched their young at this season."

If those lamenting the loss of ancient traditions are sincere in their concerns, I hope they will be agitating to revive these, and other related customs. After all, the start of Lent is far too solemn a matter to be given over solely to cheap and tasty snacks.

Comparisons

I'm happy to take the credit for my foresight in comparing Gordon Brown with (and indeed to) John Major. But here's a new one via the Mail on Sunday.

One rebellious Labour MP even compared Mr Brown to Anthony Eden, the Conservative Prime Minister of the Fifties who resigned after less than two years in the job without fighting a single General Election.

This is somewhat unfair to Eden by dint of being untrue. Eden fought an election within weeks of succeeding Churchill (you can find the full results here if you are so minded. Not even I am sad enough to go through them all; but it's vaguely interesting to flick through them and note such historic details as the fact that many seats only had Labour and Tory candidates or that Belfast West was an Ulster Unionist gain).

One thing Eden did not do was spend weeks talking up the prospect of an election, publicly and visibly dither about it and then make some laughable claims about why he had called it off. If Eden really had been Brown-like, I suppose he would have tried to pretend he hadn't invaded Suez by sending in the troops after the French and Israelis had already done so, then tried to give the impression they were just passing through rather than invading the place properly and finished off by making a laughably unconvincing case that there was some pressing reason which prevented them from invading Suez at the same time as everyone else.

However, if we making comparions, it is worth remembering the following story about Churchill – who hung on for years to keep his heir-apparent out of Downing Street. Here's an account of his valedictory dinner which, it being in the Telegraph, is mainly intended to highlight Blair's disgraceful disrepect towards Her Maj. It does show some foresight, however.

When the Queen and guests had departed Number 10, the diarist Colville went upstairs with Winston. "He sat on his bed, still wearing his garter, order of merit and knee breeches. For several minutes he did not speak. Then suddenly he stared at me with vehemence: 'I don't believe Anthony can do it.' His prophecies have often tended to be borne out by events."

I think Gordon Brown will be Prime Minister for a shade under three years against Eden's a shade under two, however.

Trollied Tuesday: the dry martini, FDR and other high points of American culture

Ever since the introduction of Trollied Tuesday I had intended to discuss the dry martini. The popular clamour that followed convinced me that nothing less than a full discussion of that noblest of quests – the search for the perfect version of the drink – would do. So it was that I sat down intended to consider whether the construction of the drink is an art or a science, or even a form of alchemy which transcends these disciplines.

I still may do so yet, but it would be remiss of me not to deviate from my good intentions and launch into a spontaneous wassail in honour of something that is well worth remembering.

Tomorrow is Repeal Day: the anniversary of the end of the 18th Amendment: America's ill-fated attempt to ban the sale and manufacture of alcohol. This wretched measure, which brought nothing but crime and misery to the States, ought to be a salutary warning to all those who believe that the full weight of the law and the moral force of the government are a good, or successful, way of altering human behaviour in the way that those in power see fit.

Of course, some canny drinks manufacturers have seen fit to use it as a marketing opportunity but, since I'm the last one to complain about people trying to get me to buy their drinks, I don't think we need dwell on the commercial aspects (though I've no doubt they helped convince the US Congress come to its senses; it's worth noting in this context that the egregious Joe Kennedy was one of the main beneficiaries). Rather let us see Repeal Day for what it really is: a blow for liberty, freedom of conscience and a damn good excuse for a drink.

In any case, this deviation from my original intention is no bad thing. Had I stuck to the issue of what makes the perfect martini, I might well have found myself teetering along that line between aestheticism and anal retentiveness. And, intoxicated as I would have been by the subject, it might have been all too easy to stagger over that line.

I don't mean to belittle discussions about what ingredients should be used– very cold gin and a splash of vermouth, basically; and I've nothing against vodka-based variants, though I abhor the pretension that the vodka martini is the same as the real thing (sex and love are both fine too, but it's equally wrong to confuse them) – and I'll doubtless return to the matter. However, no matter what care you make in choosing the ingredients, no matter how scientifically you chill them and no matter how fastidious you are in your measurements; you may never enjoy a martini quite so sublime as the first one enjoyed by President Franklin D Roosevelt after the end of prohibition.

I've long believed that FDR's first drink after the repeal of prohibition and, since my desultory attempts to verify that have fact drawn a blank, we'll remain true to this belief for now. The 32nd President was certainly a fan of the gin and vermouth combination – although this article does suggest he liked them rather vermouth-y, weak and sweet; the sort of thing you'd give to a girl who isn't overly accustomed to strong drink when you were trying to lower her defences.

I think we'll overlook this small fault in a great man. If you were sat in the White House in late 1933 faced with a crippling recession, uncertain health, the vagaries of political life and – if you were prescient about these things – an alarming new government in Germany, your first unimpeachable martini would be all the more sublime for the knowledge that you had, at least, managed to increase the sum of human happiness by signing the 21st Amendment. What celebratory drink could ever taste sweeter? One day, perhaps, they might even raise a statue of you for that.

EDW: Theodore Roosevelt

If only the unfortunate British teacher who decided to let her Sudanese pupils to pick a name for the class teddy bear had stopped to think for one moment. She probably can't be blamed for the fact that the vicious and squalid regime in Khartoum would be able to conjure up such contrived religious outrage. She might, however, have realised that there is no need to name a teddy bear because they are already named after someone: President Theodore Roosevelt.

Other presidents might have such achievements as US independence, the Louisiania purchase, victory in the civil war and the emancipation proclamation, the New Deal and shagging Marilyn Monroe to their credit, but none has had a cuddly, much-loved children's toy named after them.

Essentially, an enterprising toy seller decided to name a couple of stuffed bears after the president following reports that he had refused to shoot a bear cub whilst out hunting only for the name, as these things often do, to stick. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, there's a full account here (warning, if you're easily embarrassed and other people have access to your web browsing, you might want to be cautious about that link).

It's a strange form of immortality, to go along with TR's place on Mount Rushmore along with Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington, but he probably deserves the allocades. He was one of the more fascinating characters to have occupied the White House – and probably the most effective apart from the ones who faced wars or other major crises.

The portrait here gives the measure of the man rather well: the splendid moustache, the what-d'ye-make-of-that gaze and the assured fashion in which he wears his tailcoat slightly askew. Without making this post into a long biographical account of a fascinating life as military leader, outdoorsman, politician and so forth (for all that I'm rude about it, his Wikipedia entry does the job pretty well) here are a few things to consider.

He was the youngest occupant of the White House (following the assasination of President McKinley), was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts in ending the war between Russia and Japan and anyone who, like me, has enjoyed any of the sites maintained by the US National Parks Service owes him an enormous debt of gratitude; but the really interesting thing about his career is the what-might-have-beens.

The easy distinction of Republican = right wing; Democrat = left wing doesn't always work too well today. In TR's time it's an almost meaningless division (a look at the Southern Democrats of the day should convince you of that). It would be a ludicrous stretch to try and paint Roosevelt as a 21st century type of liberal and social democrat; but in the context of America of 100 years ago he was part of the broadly progressive forces of the day; at the very least you can say that he didn't see his role as letting big business do whatever it wanted.

TR characterised his policies as seeking a Square Deal for the ordinary man in his relations with capital; he set up various regulatory bodies to keep a check on the power of large corporations; implicitly backed striking miners in a dispute with their employers and was an enthusiastic trust buster, launching 44 legal actions to break up monopoly power.

That all this would be more what you expect from the contemporary Democrats would suggest that this political vision didn't endure in the Republican party once TR left office. And, sure enough, his successor William Howard Taft (I feel it would be remiss not to alert you to the fact that he was the fattest ever president) pretty much realigned the Republicans as the friends of big business, which is where they've stayed ever since. But here's where the second what-if comes in.

Roosevelt was so disappointed in Taft that he challenged him the the 1912 presidential nomination, was denied by a bit of chicanery at the convention and then contested the election on a third party Progessive (or Bull Moose) ticket. He picked enough support to finish second, pushing Taft into third, and letting the dramatically over-rated Woodrow Wilson into the White House. It's still the closest anyone's come to breaking the Democrat-Republican duopoly since the Civil War and, to state the bleeding obvious, had TR succeeded in regaining the White House in 1912, US – and probably world politics would have looked very different today.

Still, millions of children like to dribble and puke on a toy named after him. We can't take that away from him.

EDW: Countess Elizabeth Bathory

Since it's Hallowe'en, I had toyed with the idea of doing a fictitious vampire (Nosferatu perhaps?) a succubus or demon. Maybe even this enterprising fellow from Germany.

But real life affords horrors enough, some of them rather well-dressed too. Few people have taken vanity to the extremes that Countess Elizabeth Bathory (or Bathory Erzsébet, if you prefer) did. You will note that her outfit is quite the thing for a 17th century Hungarian aristocrat to wear, understanded but elegant and flattering to the figure – but what good is the outfit if you don't have the milky white complexion to match? Fortunately, the countess didn't have to spend a fortune on lotions and creams and make up and all the rest when she had a cheap and effective alternative: the blood of young girls.

There are so many legends, exaggerations and lurid accounts that it's difficult to say how many people she killed in her castle at Cachite, in what is now Slovakia. (I've been there, if you care about these sorts of details, well worth a visit). The higher estimates list more than six hundred victims. To slightly spoil my own story, too, the bit about bathing in blood is probably a legend (for what it's worth, that's what Wikipedia says).

But the basic facts are still sensational enough: dozens of girls were lured to the castle, often they were hired to work as maids, where Bathory and her associates tortured, murdered and mutilated them.

Now since she was a Hungarian aristocrat who was offing a load of Slovak peasant girls no one paid her too much attention at first. But she did take things a bit too far – people were starting to notice the lack of peasant girls in her part of the world and, a mistake this, she'd moved on to the daughters of the minor nobility. All of which eventually prompted the authorities to act. Following a trial, two of the countess's associates were burned alive, the dwarf (really, it's no wonder this is going to be a film) was beheaded and another women jailed for life.

As for the countess herself, her exulted position and family's status (they ruled large chunks of – inevitably – Transylvania) meant that it would be far too embarrassing to execute her, so the authorities fell back on the tried and tested method of putting an embarrassing problem out of sight. Bathory was imprisoned for a life in a sealed room of her castle and – a final, pleasingly macabre bit this – fed only on scraps that could be pushed under the door. At least she wasn't going to lose her figure.

Language and its meaning II

Plenty of political stories will refer to a rough division in Gordon Brown's cabinet between the 'grey beards' and 'young Turks'. It's pretty obvious what this means, isn't it? – why, here's the youthful chief secretary to the treasury making this very point.

It's just that the phrase doesn't just mean what he seems to think it means. If I were a member of the cabinet (and you just don't know what you're missing out on) I'd be a tad wary about comparing myself to the perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century.

If the headline is a question, is the answer automatically no?

Or in the case of this video, is asking whether George Bush will be the most unpopular president ever, a reliable guide to his future reputation?

Still, it's a good overview of presidential reputations, and a good warning against making snap judgements. For instance, Harry Truman left office with even lower approval ratings than the current incumbent, but I doubt many people will bracket the two together in years to come.

It's quite the intellectual parlour game, this business of presidential reputation. There's a few surveys (here's a summary, with the usual caveats, from Wikipedia) in which there is a broad agreement on the worst presidents (Buchanan, Harding, Pierce). And there's an even bigger consensus on the top of the list: Lincoln, Washington and FDR as the three best, Jefferson next and Teddy Roosevelt the best of the rest.

There are those who get widely different ratings (eg LBJ and Nixon), while some of those who usually make the top ten: Truman and Andrew Johnson have some pretty big controversies: Hiroshima, the start of the Cold War and Indian Removal (okay, that isn't really a controversy these days). Still, both score highly in other regards: in the case of Truman, few would argue Marshall Aid was a bad idea and there was a growing awareness of the near-impossible circumstances he faced which put his decisions in a more favourable light.

Symptomatic of this shift was Henry Wallace, the vice president who was bumped off the 1944 Democratic ticket (he'd managed to piss off half of Washington and was thought too likely to take a soft line with Stalin.). In 1948, he stood against Truman on the Progressive ticket (the Democrats had splintered three ways, with Strom Thurmond standing for the white, Southern Dixiecrats, no wonder Truman was expected to lose). However, in later life, Wallace decided he had, indeed, taken a far too emollient line towards the Soviets and produced the political memoir with the best title of the genre: Where I Was Wrong. I'd like to see more like this, but somehow I suspect Tony Blair may take the opposite path. Still, you may wish to draw contemporary parallels if you like that sort of thing.

Personally, I'd like to inject a note of sneering negativity – or honesty, as some call it – to these historic debates. In this case: my list of the most over-rated presidents. It's tempting to start with Clinton and Reagan as both are bathed in a rosy glow of nostalgia given the style and troubles of the current administration. As a corrective I could cite such things as Iran-Contra; voodoo economics; the failure to deal with al-Qaida, get Kyoto passed and fatal dithering in Rwanda and Bosnia – plus it's arguable that others deserve the credit for such achievements ending the Cold War and keeping the economy ticking over.

But for now I'll stick to Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom instigated policies which have pissed substantially in the soup of posterity.

In the case of Eisenhower, his bid to take to the heat out of the Cold War (which evokes wistful comparisons to today's hands-on school of Republican foreign policy), involved some pretty questionable tactics. Under him, the CIA developed the practice of covert operations – events such as the overthrow of Mossadeq (look how well Iran has turned out since the Shah got back into power); of Lumumba (ditto with Congo); plus the organisation of the Bay of Pigs operation, a fiasco which Kennedy didn't have the confidence to veto (I don't need to labour the point, do I?). The problem is, this policy trend continued throughout the Cold War (hello, Dr Kissinger) – nor has it entirely gone away – and has left a legacy of mistrust, if not hatred, of America in large chunks of the world, plus an institutionalised and cynical fondness for house-trained tyrants and fanatics and under-hand, morally questionable actions. The current utter fucked-up-ness of the Middle East is just one of many consequences of this.

As for Wilson you can sum up his presidency thusly: "only a naive white person would ever claim he was a great president". The reason is that this icon of liberalism oversaw the extension and defence of segregation at a Federal level. I won't insult your intelligence by outlining all the political and cultural implications, save to add that the federal government was one of the best means of Black advancement at the time, but I think we can agree this isn't an ideal form of liberalism?*

Worst, Wilson's greatest achievement – the League of Nations – didn't involve your actual achievement of something of lasting worth. The fact that league became a useless talking shop is partly attributable to Wilson's failure to get the US to join the damn thing. (The fact the at the end of the presidency he was utterly incapacitated, but hadn't really told anyone and was letting his wife run the show on the quiet, probably didn't help him rectify the problem.)

Racism and a totally worthless international talking shop: it's not the best of legacies, is it? For all his faults, I'd say Truman did rather better.

*NB: I know Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. (And, gosh, didn't they feel guilty about it?) We all know this isn't great, but they didn't put the clock back on this issue.