A sad case of schadenfreude
Andrew Gimson says Gerhard Schr.
Features
Saturday
Saturday
Forza Berlusconi!
It is twilight in Sardinia. The sun has vanished behind the beetling crags. The crickets have momentarily stopped. The machine-gun-toting guards face out into the maquis of myrtle and olive, and the richest man in Europe is gripping me by the upper arm. His voice is excited. ‘Look’ he says, pointing his flashlight. ‘Look at the strength of that tree.’ It is indeed a suggestive sight. An olive of seemingly Jurassic antiquity has grown from a crack in the rock, and like some patient wooden python it has split the huge grey boulder in two. ‘Extraordinary,’ I murmur. My host and I stand lost in awe at olive power. If Silvio Berlusconi, 67, Italian Prime Minister, is secretly hoping that a metaphor will form in my head, he is not disappointed.
The strange potency of bad music
A lesson is learnt. Good music, as we hear it, tends to be ours and ours alone. But bad music is everyone's: we all suffer together. Last month I related the harrowing tale of a recent family holiday in St Ives, where my girlfriend and I, while not buying beach balls in a tourist-tat emporium, happened to hear Neil Diamond's singular version of the Hollies' 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'. With customary lack of restraint, the old schlockmeister transforms a simple pop song into a full-blooded Broadway show-stopper. You have to hear it to believe it. It drips with goo and phoney sentiment. But it's so vile you can't ignore it. My girlfriend and I stood and listened all the way to the end, while our small children created havoc in the multicoloured-bucket-and-spade section.
Cat flap
We got word that our house in London was infested with fleas as we drove north on holiday in glorious weather through the borders into Scotland. Sid, who very kindly and conscientiously looks after our cats while we are away, sent a series of increasingly alarmed text messages, in which he informed us that he was suffering flea attacks of unbridled savagery on his ankles every time he went into the kitchen or sitting-room. He is not the kind of man to take that sort of thing lying down, and he requested an immediate transfer of funds so that he could buy a full suit of protective clothing and launch all-out chemical warfare.
Biological warfare
The moment has come for the long queue of diplomatic high-wire artists to bite the bullet: there is no immediate prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. No matter how much Tony Blair huffs and Jack Straw puffs, the painful reality is that the Middle East 'road-map' is destined to join the slew of failed peace plans in the garbage can marked 'Diplomatic Good Intentions'. True, both Israeli and Palestinian Prime Ministers have embraced the 'road-map', which provides a choreographed procession towards an independent Palestinian state. But their apparent accord ignores the reality on the ground.
The end of the affair
America is disengaging from Saudi Arabia. To many observers this seems shocking, to others it is unthinkable, but all the evidence points to a dramatic change in relations. A few weeks ago, the last of America's bases, Prince Sultan Air Base, was closed and the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing deactivated. This coincides with claims that there are direct links between the House of Saud and America's arch enemy, Osama bin Laden. The current issue of Time magazine says that Abu Zubaidah, the leading al-Qa'eda terrorist captured in Pakistan last year, was supported by members of the Saudi royal family. While it lasted, the alliance worked well for the two countries.
Catch me if you can
Will Osama and Saddam ever be found? If they fare as well as the Bosnian Serb mass murderers Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, perhaps not. In July the desperate duo celebrated eight years on the run from indictments by The Hague Tribunal, and the smart money has them at large a while longer. Mladic seems to have vanished, but the hunt for Karadzic goes on. It goes without saying that no one is quite sure where the bouffant-haired psychiatrist and cod poet is, but best guesses have him roving the remoter parts of Republika Srpska (the Serbian bit of Bosnia) and Montenegro.
The new imperial vision of Silvio Berlusconi
The Spectator began by asking Berlusconi whether he has mended fences with Chancellor Schröder, after he likened the German Social Democrat MEP, Martin Schulz, to a Nazi camp commandant? It was I who was offended, my government and my country. I replied with a joke. I wanted to be humorous. The whole of the parliament laughed. My reply was taken and exploited against me. But you know what? It was a reply that was virtually impossible for me to resist because I once broadcast 120 episodes of Hogan's Heroes in which there was this Sergeant Schulz. You remember? I didn't even think about it. Schulz was shouting at me – no? And it just came to me off the cuff. I always try to be ironical in my speeches.
Saturday
Don’t vote for us
Where next for the House of Lords? The debate has moved on a long way since that question raced up the agenda, after Labour's landslide victory in 1997. It was possible then for sensible people to regard the Lords as an archaic anomaly with no practical role and even less claim to legitimacy. There was, at that time, more than one reason for taking that view. First, the fact that a clear majority of the House (the hereditaries, 750 out of 1,270) were there only because of an accident of birth – scant justification for political power in a modern democracy. Second, because one party, the Conservatives, had a large and permanent majority in the House (200 more than Lab and Lib combined).
Class slobbery
Ordinary, old-fashioned snobbery and the class war are supposed to be as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Well, they're not. I learnt that in my first year at university – not from lectures but while cleaning halls of residence. There, for the first time in my life (having been thought one of the posh ones at home, 'up North'), I found myself on the receiving end of social snobbery. I had spent the previous year as a cleaner for a small hotel and several houses (while standing by my man as he screwed up his A-levels for a second time, in preparation for screwing up his degree).
The perils of Pauline Hanson
Sydney In his heart of hearts, everyone believes in long prison sentences; it is just that no one agrees about who should receive them. The three-year sentence handed out last week to Pauline Hanson, the former fish-and-chip shop owner who for a time was Australia's answer to Jean-Marie Le Pen, has excited a lively, if not always entirely lucid, debate in Australia. Political liberals who usually cannot wait to forgive criminals for the harm they do to others now crow in vindictive triumph, while the hanging-not-punishment-enough brigade, of whom Hanson herself was once a prominent member, are outraged by the severity of the sentence.
Render unto the Pope…
This realm of England is an Empire ...governed by one Supreme Head and King.' So proclaimed Thomas Cromwell in his most critical piece of legislation, the Act in Restraint of Appeals in 1533. By calling England an empire, he designated it a sovereign state, with a king who owed no submission to any other human ruler and who was invested with plenary power to give his people justice in all causes. Interestingly, the Act's critics in Parliament were not so much concerned by its doctrinal corollaries, as by the fear that the Pope might retaliate by organising a European trade embargo against England. The Pope, of course, laid claim to the ultimate divine right.
The hand of history is pointing to the door
The government brought the Hutton inquiry into being by its own shoddy actions. The lying and dissembling of No. 10 has so eroded public trust that, says Rod Liddle, the man responsible – Tony Blair – must go It seems as if we have another thing for which to thank the beleaguered BBC journalist, Mr Andrew Gilligan. According to Britain in Europe, that tautologically entitled pro-euro pressure group, there is no longer even the slenderest chance that the Prime Minister will attempt to drag us all into the single European currency before the next election. Ian Taylor, a Conservative MP and a board member of BiE, told the Daily Telegraph, 'Earlier in the summer they [the government] were holding to the line that we could have a referendum in this parliament.
Saturday
Paying the penance for Culture
Impossible to estimate how much the Scots have enriched the Life of Man. They gave us the Telephone (sorry, wrong number), Penicillin (much better today, thank you, doctor), the Television (but there's nothing good on any more), and the Wandering Dipso (K'you spear us fufty peents, pal?). To this we must add their latest innovation: the weather-proof, bomb-proof, completion-proof building. The new Scottish Parliament is emerging, with Darwinian slowness, at the base of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. A pair of Y-shaped cranes stand over the scattered rubble, their huge limbs ladylike and prim, like fantastical herons dipping and pecking at the concrete. The award-winning architect, Enric Miralles, is as Scottish as they come, by the way, as long as they come from Spain.
Sorry, traditional fare’s off
Nobody I know goes to the Savoy Grill any more. It used to be a place to be seen – probably the most important such restaurant in the business community. The staff were dressed formally, delivering a discreet and respectful service. Customers were addressed by their titles, where such existed. The food was reminiscent of country-house cooking – or, sometimes, school dinners – and seldom surprised the palate. The wine list was deeply traditional, with, of course, a heavy emphasis on claret. No one snapped their fingers at waiters, because a politely raised eyebrow would do the job. No one turned up in T-shirts and shorts, and no one brought young children.
The all-purpose bogeyman
One has to be careful of saying anything nice about people like Idi Amin, even when they are dead and gone. It is easy to get a reputation for being deliberately provocative, or for seeking compassion kudos like the late Lord Longford, who befriended convicts for the sheer magnitude of their infamy. For many years, Idi Amin was the civilised world's stock example of 'pure evil'. Nearly a quarter of a century after the end of his outrageous tyranny, everybody still knows about him. Not so long ago, after spending a long weekend in Idi's company in seaside Jeddah, I was collecting a roll of developed film from Happy Snaps in Notting Hill Gate. When the man behind the counter awoke to the subject of my happy snaps, he was agog with a tremulous awe.
Can we liberate Zimbabwe?
As Mr Mugabe continues to flout international opinion, suppress democratic opposition to his regime, and reduce this once rich nation to abject poverty, some commentators are asking if it might not be desirable to remove this despot by means of military intervention. I leave it to others better qualified than I am to debate the legality in international law of such an action. And, of course, whether or not the United Nations would sanction military intervention is a big question. But leaving aside these enormous issues, is it militarily practicable to mount such an operation? Zimbabwe is bordered by Zambia in the north, Botswana in the west, Mozambique in the east and South Africa in the south.
Bark, don’t bite
Modern life is full of terror. We quake at global warming, Arab terrorists, gene-tinkered foods and rogue vaccines. New plagues from the East, our mobile phones and our railways all have the ability to induce panic. These are all new fears of new things. And all, to a greater or lesser extent, are irrational. But there is another, and I would argue even greater and more insidious, fear that has crept up on us in the past 20 years or so. The object of this fear is not new; but the fear itself is. And it is making life for a significant number of us quite miserable. What is it that we are frightened of? Children – especially other people's.
Sick, thick and dangerous
As a conservative, I am against all unnecessary change, of course, but I welcome innovation that improves the quality of life. Thus I rejoice to learn that certain doctors in my neck of the woods are now conducting clinics for difficult and challenging (i.e., violent and dangerous) patients in local police stations. This will improve the quality of clinical care no end. Naturally, the principal beneficiaries of this innovation will be the doctors themselves. They will no longer sit in fear and trembling behind their desks as their young male patients, decked out in the uniform of modern British savagery, make their unreasonable demands, compliance with which they are prepared to enforce by using their full and extensive repertoire of vileness.
The Gospel according to Braveheart
Washington, DC We were an odd sight to the young crowd in the pool hall late on a Sunday night. A couple of middle-aged family guys don't exactly blend in, at least not in Adams Morgan, a hip young neighbourhood in Washington, DC – especially when one of them is Mel Gibson. It was the night before the screening of Gibson's controversial film about the Passion of Christ. The man better known as Mad Max, or William Wallace, was relaxing in the pool hall after his long flight from Los Angeles. There was little relaxing elsewhere in the room, however. Women hoping for an autograph, a game of darts or simply to catch the star's eye began a slow migration towards us.