Sometimes it really isn't the the thought that counts

There are those who are wondering why the press is making such a big deal about Gordon Brown's error strewn letter of condolence to the mother of a dead soldier. One angle worth considering this: it's something that is drummed into all journalists very early on (in some cases by bitter experience)

Getting someone's name wrong is one of the worst errors you can commit.

Put it this way, I know people who've been threatened with the sack for less; people understandably take that sort of thing very personally because it is, well, personal. More generally, it does look - at the very least - somewhat graceless and unempathetic to send such a shocking scrawl as a letter of condolence. (Realising you've misspelled the name, scrawling it out and then carrying on with the letter is thoughtlessness taken to a quite breathtaking level).

Still, given that Brown will be getting his P45 in a few months anyway, it would be best all round to accept this a dreadful, albeit unintentional blunder. That Brown somehow managed to compound the inadvertent insult by the more calculated refusal to apologise is sadly all to typical.

As someone with a fair amount of experience in editing other people's work, there's a rather obvious comment I could make about the importance here of getting other pairs of eyes to look over what's been written. I'm not entirely sure why this isn't the case at Number 10. I might, however, observe that it is always the prima donnas, louts, ego maniacs and bullies who kick up the most almighty fuss if anyone dares alter a single character they have written, and who take even the gentlest correction as a personal slight, that generally produce the most dangerous errors. I have no idea whether or not this applies in this instant.

UPDATE: What was it I was saying about getting names wrong? I'm told The Sun website's gone and done it. (No idea if it's genuine). Blood on the carpet at Wapping, I fear. (via Harry's Place).

Over-vexed and over there

I am back in Britain; you don't want me to bore you with I did on my holidays stories, do you? So I will not tell you about the bizarre roadside encounter with a Bangkok lady boy in what appeared a simple case of sexual battery turned out to be a an attempted robbery (luckily I was able to convince the little bugger to return my wallet forthwith); nor will I relate how, owing to a misplaced sense of politeness, I became complicit in the ongoing corruption of Cambodia's state institutions and saw a graphic illustration of the shambolic state of that country's military.

But permit me one observation that I think has immense geopolitical implications: as American power and influence wanes, the Chinese appear to effortlessly taken on the role as chief provider of coachloads full of overweight, overbearing, loud, badly dressed and unsympathetic tourists.*

* I am aware that other countries provide badly behaved tourists; luckily for me Britain's lager louts steer clear of the sort of places I was visiting.

The letter I

Here's a story that has virtually all the elements you could want: gambling, hookers, the mafia, royalty and – that rarest of things – an Italian sex and bribery scandal that does not involve Silvio Berlusconi. All that's missing is a few Nazis and you'd have the perfect newspaper story.

The son of Italy's last king is to stand trial on charges connected to the alleged recruitment of prostitutes for a casino and the rigging of slot machines.

The House of Savoy might well be equipped to lead Italy in the modern era, after all.

But here's the curious thing; every country that has a name that starts with the letter "i" has its banana-republic elements (at least, Iran and Iraq are worse). There's Ireland, the land of Haughey, a wide assortment of gombeens, sleveens, cute hoors and, well, Fianna Fáil (itself founded by a chap who managed to rip off a group of Irish Americans and the plain people of Ireland in setting up the family business). India's survival as democracy is something of a triumph - but one in four members of parliament is facing criminal charges.

Then there is Israel. A couple of former cabinet ministers were jailed last month, the former president is accused of rape, the foreign minister is under investigation for suspected tax evasion and money laundering. Oh, and the former PM is going on trial for fraud tomorrow.

This detail struck me.

Among charities [Ehud Olmert] is accused of double-billing were the Simon Weisenthal Centre, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and the World Jewish Congress, according to the Ha'aretz newspaper.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert in Israeli society and politics, but I would have thought that defrauding the national Holocaust memorial charity was thought of thing Israeli society would take an especially dim view of, especially if you are PM.

Anyway, what it is about countries beginning with "i"? In all these cases it's hard to avoid the view that the Scandinavians might have managed things in a better (if less flamboyantly entertaining) manner. Expect some stonking great scandal from the Isle of Man some day.

Making a mountain out of a Mo-hill

The news that the name Mohammed is now one of the most popular boys names in England and Wales - if you include all the variant spellings as one - has been greeted with predictable shrieks of alarm in some quarters.

Max Hastings in the Mail being as good an example of predictability as any I suppose, fulminates against a "shabby conspiracy" to compile statistics one way rather than another. But then we get to the meat of the argument:

The Muslim population is now close to two million, over 3 per cent, and rising fast because Muslim families have more children than most of the rest of us, many of them named Mohammed or Muhammed.

I think he's alarmed. You know what is alarming about all this? It does suggest an astonishing lack of imagination on the part of one small subsection of British society. As for Muslims having more children than me, that is far less of a problem than the fact they may be having more sex than me.

If one were to be consistent, then all the Jacks (still the most popular boys' name) and Johns should really be counted as the same thing. But that would just push it further up the chart.

Cyclists' eye view of London

My Sunday morning cycle ride into Victoria would have been ideal, only I was delayed at Buckingham Palace by the crowds gawping at the changing of the guard or some such flummery. An officious little police community support officer forced me to take a detour.

On the way back two delays: the crowds at Speakers' Corner (please reassure me that most people go there to laugh at the cranks and fanatics) and then the gridlocked roads around Lord's in the wake of the world Twenty20 final. Jubilant Pakistan fans mingled with the eternal jackass in a large car doing his damnedest to knock me off my bike.

These little vignettes of London life doubtless reveal something about the nature of the country today. It is damnably inconvenient.

No member is a hero to his valet

MPs' expenses part whatever it is now. A second Tory MP claims for his servants (sorry, staff).

Charles Hendry, a shadow minister, claimed more than £7,300 in taxpayer-funded expenses to pay for domestic staff at his second home.

Amusing, certainly. Bad for the Tories, sure. But should he (and Sir John Butterfill) not have tried to claim these as a legitimate political expense? Remember Balfour's wise words that he would sooner take political advice from his valet than the Tory Party Conference.

The worst thing about the political parties - all of them* - is their rank and file membership.

* Okay, Ed Balls for Labour then.

Waiting for the Balls to drop

Politically there's very little to comment on at the moment. While we wait for Gordon Brown to be put out of our misery, it's becoming dull to point out how Majorishly hapless he is.

(For all that, this is pure cones hotline stuff; if I were planning to rob a bank - or some such crime - I'd make damned sure my accomplices were busy getting the cops to walk them home. On the other hand it might be a master stroke; think of all the lonely women or homosexuals who would love to be escorted home by a chap in uniform.)

As for MPs' expenses, there is nothing to be said that it is not a statement of the crashingly obvious: nothing can really top the comic perfection of claiming to get one's moat cleaned. It will be interesting to see what venality remains: the married couples have yet to been gone over. Until such time, may I urge you to consider this iron rule of politics:

If two Members of Parliament are married to each other, they will embody the most unspeakably ghastly aspects of their party.

Taboos

The news that a couple was arrested for getting drunk and shagging in front of Windsor Castle (and an audience of camera clicking Japanese tourists) prompts more amusement rather than disgust. I was struck though by this:

Witness Mark Robinson, 44, said: “One window from the guardroom opened up and when a soldier saw what was going on he told his mates — and lots of windows opened.

“The couple did not care who was looking and just kept going as if they were in their own bedroom.

“They even ignored the Please Keep Off The Grass signs. [Italics as published]

Could there be a more damning indictment of their behaviour?

Kids: not as bright as adults

A not very difficult moral dilemma from the BBC. Would you let a child saw through a plank he's standing on? Well, of course you would; the talking heads in the article point out that it's a way kids learn not to do silly things. But it overlooks another important question: what is the purpose of kids if we can't a laugh at their expense from time to time? By not thinking about the children all the time we might teach them about their monumental insignificance in the overall scheme of things.

Lets have more of this: Children Admit to Being Little Shits.

Do you think...

In Washington DC are the tramps and pandhandlers (and there are many) asking the crowds if they can 'spare some change you can believe in'?

John Bunyan on the 238

For a long while, I will concede, I had decided the atheist bus campaign - you know the one, There's Probably No God – was unworthy of attention. The slogan was feeble (albeit at the insistence of the Advertising Standards Authority), trite and unlikely to provoke much in the way of thought or debate. The outraged whining by certain Christian groups, who have no problem with Biblical slogans on buses, was beyond pathetic. Another one to file under the heading of "You're Offended? So what?"

But the recent news that a driver had refused to drive a bus with the slogan collided with my consciousness with another piece of news and, amazingly, it actually did provoke thought. The other thing you see, was a string of old television programmes being remade - Minder, the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin etc etc etc.

It occurred to me that the atheist buses would be the ideal hook on which to hang a remake of the On the Buses. Admittedly, a plot line in which the Reg Varney character was a Bible-basher with an extremely thin skin would not make for a very funny programme (quite in keeping with the spirit of the original I should add. I only know one person who finds that show funny, he is quite insane).

But why not aspire to that rarest of things, a superior remake. We'd have to reverse the real-life situation somewhat. We could make Butler a secular everyman - the embodiment of the independent minded man, striving for the right to live and think as he sees best. Opposed to this would be the petty authoritarianism and self aggrandising nature of the religious authorities, as embodied by Blakey, who is constantly trying to bring him back under control. Okay, it would be something of an allegory but Christians have always liked those.

We could even bring the thing bang up to date by transforming poor, frowsty Olive into a convert to the puritanical, hijab-wearing form of Islam. (Offensive? Only if done properly. Besides, as I already said, there's far too much taking of offence already).

Man must strive and striving he must, er...

What a couple of demotivaters from the past week of course you do.

First up: twitchers spend hours lying in the mud waiting for a view a rare bird. Eventually it appears, just in time to be eaten by a buzzard.

“The funny thing is, neither of us had seen a buzzard make a kill before either, so from a bird-spotting point of view it was two birds with one stone.” That's the spirit.

Second: man spends 26 years trying to solve a Rubik's cube. Graham Parker said:

I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lie awake at night thinking about it. I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it.

Persistence is often claimed as a virtue; oftentimes it is one of the deadly virtues however. It can all to easily become a form of mania. Literary characters as varied as Widmerpool, Mr Pooter and Captain Ahab were all persistent after all. I am beginning to think that learning when to give up is an essential quality, an inability to admit defeat in the face of overwhelming odds is a form of madness, after all.

Remember: The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.

Economics

Finally. Someone speaks sense.

Sometimes you really do have to tell the customer he is wrong

Someday, if I can formulate a suitably entertaining way of expressing it, I might offer my thoughts on why the old print media's desperate rush to embrace all manner of interactivity with their readers – even the comments that, in the past, would have been binned and then burned by the letters editor – is such arrant folly.

In the meantime, let's amuse ourselves with a practical demonstration from an online publication (Yank of course) that knows how to produce something readable and financially viable from the web. It's Slate's "questions we never answered". Quite apart from their inherent comedy value you can discern the subtlety of Slate's own editorial policy. Whereas, say, Comment is Free, or the Telegraph's own web mnokeys (semi-in joke, sorry) would rush over themselves to encourage this degree of reader interactivity, you may spot a certain discernment in Slate's own policy. It's the difference between spotting the friendly cove who wants a chat at the bar and the dangerous nutter whom one should back away from at all costs.

Admittedly, Slate sugar-coats the laughing at our loopiest readers game that all journalists enjoy by asking which of the questions are most deserving of an answer. So in that spirit, here are my favourites (with added comment):

Why don't humans have a mating season?
(I believe there is an actual biological answer to this. Never mind that: we have a wonderful capacity for prolonging our own misery and frustration).

If one gets a personal e-mail from a very famous or important person, such as the president, or the queen of England, or the Pope, or Paul McCartney, can that e-mail have monetary value? I guess not. It's just an electronic transmission on a screen. There's no original. There's no way to buy or sell it. Seems a shame tho.
Note the use of capitals there. And the order of precedence. Whoever asked that question really ought to be living in Liverpool, willingly or not.

If someone with DNA from the Stone Age were born today, would they be normal?
In Somerset, yes.

Context is everything

Lost your job, lost your home? Life becoming intolerable? Well there's always the option of joining the French Foreign Legion. Neil Tweedie, writing in the Telegraph, has the run down of what you need to know if you're considering taking this option. (You'd best learn to swear in French, you've got to be physically fit and not too worried about the fact that an inordinate number of Germans want to join to do proper military stuff.)

The article concludes:

Improved conditions and greater professionalism have in recent years resulted in more middle-class recruits.

Cpl Buys Francois, 43, a South African legionnaire who joined 11 years ago, says: "We call the new entrants Generation PlayStation because they’re so soft. Now we’re taking the ex-husbands running from alimony, and all these guys with university degrees."

Which is just as well. As it looks like some of the people most likely to be thinking about joining up are the Telegraph's current and former employees. They'd probably be treated better in the legion. Personally speaking, the German army sounds more like my sort of thing. Is it possible for foreigners to join that?

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.

Government annouces plans to close lap-dancing club by wrecking economy

The Government has announced plans to close "the vast majority" of lap-dancing clubs in the country by ensuring no one can afford to visit them any more.

Ministers believe that the forthcoming economic wipe-out will leave people with so little spare cash that the vast majority of lap dancing clubs will attract so few customers that they will be forced to close.

Minister for telling people what to do Harriet Harman said in a speech to the Women's Institute: "Let's face it, lap-dancing clubs are primarily for City boys and others with far too much spare cash to flash around."

Ms Harman also told the conference that she believed that throwing the majority of lap dancers on the dole would allow them to develop a proper sense of self-worth and a correct their misunderstandings about the right way to conduct themselves with regards to men.

The government also hopes that its plans to ensure that men do not mis-use their disposable income will effect massage parlours, saunas and other establishments were it believes prostitution might take place.

Campaigners have expressed concern a the numbers of foreign women working as prostitutes, warning that many are effectively lured to the country on false pretences. "Typically, they will be told that the economy is in great shape and that there are plenty of jobs. It's only when they get here that the horrible truth dawns on them and they find themselves trapped," warned the Rev Harold Davidson, a clergyman who has made it his lives work to visit every "house of vice" in the country to discover first-hand what goes on in such places.

However, groups representing lap-dancers, prostitutes and other sex workers have warned that the government plans are likely to cause significant harm to them, by hitting their incomes and placing them in greater danger by forcing them underground.

"Who cares what these filthy harlots think?" responded Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "What's really important is making a counterproductive moral gesture that makes us feel good."

All the signs were there

Never mind the meetings with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the really significant things about Barack Obama are as follows: the embarrassing attempts at 10-pin bowling; the enthusiasm for technology and his large collection of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

It's the comics that are conclusive.* The White House has been occupied by, among others, cowboys, crooks, actors, attorneys, academics, soldiers, slave-owners, sportsmen, businessmen and a true bad-ass or two. But, come January, Barack Obama will be the first nerd to occupy the Oval Office.

*PS: In that link Tony Norman refers to Obama's belief that Moby Dick is the greatest of American novels. Not that it matters, but I'd have said the Great Gatsby; at the very least one would hope that a book about the intoxication of money, the pursuit of impossible dreams and the shady side of the American dream – its people who "smashed up things and creatures and then they retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" – would have a particular resonance.

A pity that yacht didn't sink in shark-infested waters

Conventional wisdom seems to have it that Lord Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham is some sort of Machiavellian genius. That latest manifestation, apparently, is the way in which he made George Osborne look like an utter prat – surely not the most difficult thing to accomplish?

And yet, look at today's headlines: by shafting Osborne, Mandelson has brought on himself a constant drip of questions about his own dealings with Oleg Deripaska. The press scents blood and the pack probably won't be called off anytime soon. Both Mandelson and Osborne will probably survive, but will be weakened and, in turn, more of a liability to their parties. A pleasing symmetry that.

It's hard to take them all too seriously:

The others picked on him. He hadn’t gone to Eton, he wasn’t really one of them. He didn’t have blue blood, that’s why he didn’t quite fit in. They were all snobs. They called his dad a ‘curtain maker’. Because he was overweight they called him Jelly Belly and Georgie Porgy. He used to wear baggy jumpers to hide the flab.

But he’s always been ambitious and he tolerated that bunch because he used them as a stepping-stone. He knew he had to hang around in the right circles to get where he wanted.

Until you realise that this is the very type of person that enters politics these days: Widmerpoolian figures have always been with us - but it is troubling that he seems a role-model for so many leading political figures in both major parties today.

That politicians should seek to curry favour with the very rich is unfortunate, but not really much of a surprise. What's far more worrying is the fact that ones doing that currying seem to be people who have lived their lives entirely in the bubble of politicking, scheming, todaying without ever having anything to do with everyday life as it is lived by most people. American politics may be a vile, stinking snakepit but at least it throws up the likes of Obama and McCain: where are the British politcos with such varied life stories?

Brown pledges porn for all

Gordon Brown will today attempt to launch his political fightback by pledging to ensure equal access to internet pornography for all teenage boys in the country.

"For too long there has been a wanking gap in this country," the Prime Minister will tell the Labour conference in Manchester. "Whereas public school boys like George Osborne and David Cameron have been able to download hot girl-on-girl videos in the privacy of their studies in Eton, millions of teenagers on council estates have had to make do with a third hand copy of Razzle of which half the pages are stuck together or a five-second clip of their mate's girlfriend showing her breasts at a party only you can't really see them properly on a mobile phone.

"My plan for equality of opportunity in porn will lead to an equality of outcome by 2020. It will help all Britons, no matter what their background, to get on with the job."

The Prime Minister's plan to hand out various sums of cash to allow poorer families who manage to fill out six different sets of forms on condition they "spent it all on the internet" is the centrepiece of his fightback plan as polls show that 60% of Britons now believe that if you dug up Ramsay MacDonald's corpse and stuck the remains in a heap in the corner it would do a better job of leading the country than Mr Brown.

"There were some who urged me to follow a cheaper, simpler policy of encouraging more local authorities to offer free wifi access and to find ways of giving families access to cheap computer equipment - but who would want to surf the web for smut in a public place or on a cheap internet connection?" his speech will say. "There were some who pointed out that it wouldn't be much more expensive just to give everyone a computer whether or not they needed it, but most voters trust Labour will find a way of adding layers of labyrinthine and expensive bureaucracy to our internet access scheme, and that is what we intend to do."

The Government hopes that the Prime Minister's internet plan will also make it easier poorer families to spend millions of pounds they do not have buying DVDs, CDs, holidays and bits of junk off eBay in a bid to revive a faltering economy. Commentators are already comparing the plan to John Major's famous cones hotline initiative. "That was the last time a struggling prime minister really came out and announced a plan that just made your jaw drop and stunned his critics into silence," explained political commentator Francis Dashwood.

The Prime Minister is also set to announce a range of other key policy measures on the economy and foreign affairs in his speech. They include:

• A joint strategy agreed with Foreign Secretary David Miliband that Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, Pakistan, Africa, the EU and Russia are all issues that can wait a couple of years until we've sorted out this leadership thing.
  
  
• The claim that "since I am the man who sat back at watched it all happen", Mr Brown is uniquely well placed to tackle the worldwide financial meltdown and economic downturn.
  
  
• A pledge that tomorrow when he flies to New York, Mr Brown will urge other world leaders to adopt his strategy of working 18 hours a day sending emails to people telling them they must do something to sort out this economic mess.
  
  
• A £20m recycling enforcement officers for Africa scheme, under which many of the world's poorest countries will be given help in training officials to develop ways of ensuring their citizens do not put out inappropriate materials with the rubbish.

Insiders were today predicting that Mr Brown's speech could break all sorts of records. "He'll probably get a longer ovation that Iain Duncan Smith did for his Quiet Man speech," said one Labour insider.