Random Thoughts

I have written on this blog before what I think of the British Royal family.

Today marks the end of the four-day long jubilee to celebrate a woman, whose only achievement, insofar as I can see, is that she did not do the decent thing and died in time. She lives; she breathes; and has been doing it for the last 86 years, 60 as a queen.

Let me make this clear: I am not ideologically a Republican (anti-monarchist).  I do not have a principled view on the matter; indeed I believe that no principle is worth holding unless it is elastic enough to be bent any which way as the situation demands. I just don’t like the British Royal family. 

The kindest thing I can say about the queen is that she is not as irritating and stupid as her son and not as racially insensitive as her husband. 

Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, has a made a career out of making insulting, racist remarks about other cultures and races, which, we are urged to consider, somehow make him a quaint, eccentric man, instead of what he probably is: an arrogant, ignorant, unpleasant, racist man. 

Let me even not start on Charles. He is a meddlesome fool without a single intelligent idea in his head and tons of worthless opinion on matters he is incapable of understanding.  He is totally lacking in insight and will not take temperate advice from anyone.

Last weekend I went with some friends to a sea-side town where street parties were in full progress: fat people with collective IQ slightly above that of farmyard animals eating unhealthy food and getting drunk on cheap alcohol.

Mervyn King, the governor of Bank of England, I read somewhere, is not happy about the public holidays to celebrate the Jubilee, which, he apparently believes, is bad for the economy (presumably because the City of London will be closed). Great! We are in the middle of the worst recession since the last worst recession and we are closed for business for two days. That should help.

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Here is a joke. A woman buys a new Mercedes and drives off the show-room to her house. Halfway home she attempts to change radio stations, and is annoyed to discover that the radio is playing only one station. She drives back to the showroom where the salesman tells her that the car-radio is voice-activated and she needs to only state aloud what she wants, and the car will find it. The woman gets into her car and starts driving it back to her house. After a while she says ‘country’, and the radio changes to a station playing a Johny Cash song. The woman is happy. After some time she says ‘rock ‘n roll’, and, sure enough, the station is changed again and a Rolling Stone song comes from the speakers. The woman is very happy and carries on driving. After some time another driver suddenly joins the road from a side-lane forcing her to slam on her brakes to avoid a collision. ‘Idiot!’ the woman screams. Immediately the radio changes over to a David Cameron press conference.

What is the prime-minister of Britain like? We know already that he (through no fault of his own) was born in a multi-millionaire family and is married to a woman (who looks like a prize Shetland pony) who is also stinking rich (and, thanks to her family’s connection, does some Mickey Mouse job that pays her, like, half a million pounds a year). We also know that he does not read and his method of relaxing is watch inane American programmes and playing fruit-ninja on his mobile. And he is a hypocrite of the first order—so baroness Warsi (a thoroughly unpleasant woman) is promptly referred to the advisor on ministerial interests, but his mate Jeremy Hunt (a thoroughly unpleasant  man) is given a clean chit (probably because the inquiry into Hunt’s dealings with BSkyB will be too close for comfort). And he has friends who are facing criminal charges. And he talks as if he has taken elocution lessons in how to speak like a patronizing t**t.  Country is in safe hands.

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I shouldn't forget that this primarily a book blog. I am currently reading Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles, which could have been, going by what I have read so far, also titled: confessions of an incurable narcissist.  And it is all done with such mendacious humility it will turn all healthy stomachs. Fry seems to have been driven by a desire when he wrote his memoir to attract reviews that would describe it as ‘searingly honest’, ‘painfully candid’ etcetera. There is rather a lot in the first few pages about Fry’s so-called addictions, lying (like his so called mental illness) etcetera. (How do we know he is not lying now?) 

A few years ago Fry declared that he suffers from Bipolar Disorder.  Somebody should tell this overrated, overhyped man of meagre talents that he is just unstable, not bipolar. 

And now, at the Hay festival, Fry is whining about his ‘personal experience’ of depression and how he wanted to die while making QI (a thoroughly boring programme on British television). Good! Perhaps he can now empathize with the viewers who would have preferred painful death to watching Fry read out prepared witty remarks and inconsequential trivia on this programme.  

This is what Fry said, according to Daily Telegraph, in the festival:

‘It is unreasonable for me to be unhappy. I have had one of the luckiest careers of my generation. There is no one I have not met, nothing I have not done. I am overpraised and overpaid. I have no reason to be unsatisfied with my life and all it has given me, indeed most of the time I am happy – but there are times when I want to slash my throat.’

Do you see the faux-humility? Fry is overpaid (and overpraised). OK, I suppose he can’t do anything about being overpraised. If he really thinks he is overpaid, why does he accept the money? Fry’s statement above could be interpreted as follows:

Stephen Fry is an overrated (and overpaid and overpraised) British actor. Seems like he accepts these facts. Most of the time he is not bothered by them (because he is impervious to shame). Occasionally however he wants to slash his throat. Why doesn’t he do it then (slash his throat)? I shall tell you why. He doesn't (and won't ever) because he has no intention to. And he has no intention to because he is not f**king depressed in the first place. He is just a brazen publicity-hogger, who, like the ‘disease of depression’ he claims to be suffering from, just won’t go away. 

Random Thoughts

Beware: Niall Ferguson is Invading the Small Screen (again)

Niall Ferguson is a Glasgow born British historian who is professor of History at Harvard University as well as Harvard Business School.

In recent years Ferguson has popped up on British television to present series which are notable for his (by now customary) shtick of adopting a predetermined position on an issue (which usually flies in the face of what almost everyone else thinks) and doggedly going about looking for any scrap of evidence that might support it.

Last year Ferguson presented a four-part series entitled the decline of the Western Civilization (Civilization: is West A History?) and how the Eastern Civilizations, in particular Chinese, were going to take over the world. He spent all the four episodes hectoring (in a voice that is perpetually addressed to the back of the auditorium) about the superiority of the Western Civilization and how in the last 400 years the West, by dint of (what he described as) ‘killer aps’ overtook the Chinese and the Ottomans. So if you watched the series, fooled by its title, wanting to know whether the days of Western Civilization were indeed numbered, you would have been (depending on your disposition) disappointed (I thought Western Civilization was f**ked, but this guy is saying we still have all these ‘killer aps’) or relieved (I thought Western Civilization was f**ked, but this guy is saying we still have all these ‘killer aps’).

A word about Ferguson’s style of presentation. Irritating doesn’t even come close to describe it. He seems perpetually in the midst of desperately (but ineffectually) trying to control his excitement. Anything and everything he says is said in a manner of adolescent who is describing to his mates how he nailed the girl with the biggest t*ts in the class. Here is a man who fell head over heels in love with the sound of his own voice years ago, and the love affair shows no signs of fading. (Like most right wing historians the man is thick of skin, merciless of purpose, does not suffer from namby-pamby liberal sentiments, and certainly does not shy away from self-aggrandizing.)

Last week Channel 4 aired the first of yet another series on China by Ferguson, entitled China: Triumph and Turmoil. Ferguson spent the whole of the one hour of the episode wailing about how Mao Tse Tung is still revered in China even though the man was a monster and responsible for the deaths of more than 35 million people. (At least he killed his own people and didn’t go around invading other countries and killing civilians of those countries.) Mao, Ferguson informed, his lips quivering with excitement, killed far more people than Hitler and—a couple of seconds pause, here, with Ferguson’s eyes the size of a Frisbee—even Stalin. (My God! The man must be a real monster! One can just about stomach that he killed more people than Hitler, who was all said and done, responsible for the deaths of a mere 5-6 millions: Jews, travellers, mentally ill and mentally handicapped. But killing more people than Stalin? No!) However hard he tried Ferguson simply could not come to terms with this apparent paradox in  the Chinese society, which remains a Communist dictatorship yet has embraced free-market economy with the zeal of Lib Dems joining hands with the Tories to destroy what is left of the NHS.  He could not understand why, above all, the cult of Mao-worship continues in China when Mao heaped unspeakable misery on his people in the 1950s with his ‘Great Leap Forward’, which essentially resulted in a man-made famine; and the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (in the 1960s). Ferguson went round the country speaking to Chinese people—a bunch of old ladies gathering in a public garden and banging benches as they sang songs praising Mao; an entrepreneur (who seemed to have taken the tubercular look to its natural conclusion) who spent 9 months in jail during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ for his treasonous capitalist views (he got away lightly, if you ask me); a farmer—smiling broadly, his teeth arranged neatly like stacks of shelf inside his mouth—who, along with some other farmers, came out openly against the collective ownership of the farms (after Mao’s death, it should be noted)—asking them this question again and again.  And the Chinese, with beatific smiles, answered at length which threw absolutely no light on the matter. No wonder Ferguson looked madder than a hatter at the end of it all. I don’t think people like Ferguson will ever understand the Chinese mindset. This, after all, is a nation whose leader (Deng Xiaoping—yes the same one who dumped all of Mao’s Communist policies after his death and led his country towards a market economy, and who, in 1989, sent the army to the Tiananmen Square), when asked to comment on the French Revolution said that it was too early to tell.  

After a while it just got boring and repetitive; and even the inadvertent comic relief Ferguson provided, by attempting Chinese greetings when he met his interviewees, making a noise that sounded like the braying of a fatally injured donkey, was not enough to relieve the monotony.

The programme had no depth; nothing interesting or insightful was provided by way of information about the most populous nation on earth. Admittedly it is not easy to impart great wisdom and knowledge in the form of bite-size information for the consumption of the attentionally challenged; but Ferguson did not even try. Disappointing? Not really, you don’t really expect anything else from him.

Will China Save the World’s Economic Woes?

I don’t know about you, but from my cubby hole I am closely following the global markets and how they are ‘behaving’.

There are many experts (none of whom saw the 2008 crash coming) who seem to have pinned their hopes on China. They have convinced themselves with the fervour of a zealot that Chinese economy is going to grow and grow.

These experts go on and on about the miracle of Chinese economy in the last 30 years. That is as may be, but the fact remains that the Chinese institutions haven’t kept pace with the economic reforms and haven’t positioned themselves accordingly. It might not have made much difference in the 1980s when China was recovering from Mao’s disastrous policies and taking tiny steps towards market economy, but as China is getting richer (but still not as rich as America, based on which indices you follow) these things will bite. Let’s not also forget that this is still a country with one party Communist dictatorship. The state holds almost all of China’s industry.

An inevitable consequence of totalitarian dictatorship is that the regime cooks up figures to avoid any unrest within its population, and one way to keep everyone in line is to tell them again and again that things are rosy when they aren’t.

Therefore, when the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao cut the growth forecast to 7.5%, one wondered how low it actually was. It is also clear that Chinese exports will suffer as the demand for low-cost Chinese trinkets in Europe and America will reduce.

The reduction in China’s growth will have a direct impact on the commodity market. In the last few years China alone was responsible for 40% of the consumption of raw metals like copper and aluminium. The demand for the raw metals (and other metals such as iron ore) will go down. (The mining giant BHP Bilton has announced a fall in its profits due to the anticipated reduction in the demand for copper from China). Which means (and I admit to a feeling of schadenfreude as I type this) that the Australians, who have so far avoided the economic downturn by piggy-backing China, will face the heat. (Their problems will most probably be compounded  by the housing bubble the country still seems to be in the midst of, and which is sure to burst in the next 2-3 years.)

The more worrying is that China’s politics has not really moved at all, which means that with the economic slowdown there is a risk that China’s politics will become repressive at home and aggressive away from it. Already China has massively upscaled its defence budget and I can’t imagine China’s giant neighbour India being too chuffed about it. China continues to invest in Iran, which is calculated to make the Western sanctions ineffectual. There is a risk that Israel (with her semi-deranged prime-minister) will increasingly turn to military means with (outwardly) reluctant backing of America. China’s disruptive meddling in the Middle East is (at least partially) to be blamed for the high oil prices.

What China (and the world) really needs is political reform that would enable changes in its banking system, removal of unproductive state investments, and, eventually, a smooth transition to consumer-influenced economy.

But that is not going to happen any time soon. China, as the cliché goes, is heading for a hard landing.

India’s Sachin Tendulkar Creates History

An American friend of mine does not get cricket. He thinks it is too long and too complicated. No game, he says to me, should be this complicated and long.

A few years ago, I gave my friend a novel entitled Netherlands by the American author Joseph O’Neill, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (and was described as a masterpiece in some American reviews). The novel tells the story of a Caribbean man of Asian descent wanting to revive cricket in America. The novel informed that baseball really took off in America in the first two decades of the 20^th century. Before that, apparently, cricket was played widely. (I don’t know whether this is true; I am not a baseball fan.) My American friend read the book and his comment was he was glad that he did not live in the 19^th century being forced to watch cricket. His theory is Americans being the clever entrepreneurs removed all the boring aspects of cricket and invented a game that was more entertaining and finished quickly (but not so quickly that they didn’t have time to eat popcorns from packets the size of single storey houses and drink coke in quantities that would flood Wales) . ‘Who has the time,’ he asks me, ‘to watch a game that goes on for days?’ Obviously not the Americans.

In one of his travel books (I forget which) American writer Bill Bryson (who is very popular in the UK) remarked that if he were to develop serious physical illness and the doctors advised rest and strictly no excitement, he would immediately take up cricket. 

I used to be interested in cricket many moons ago; then, as I grew older, I lost my interest in the game (and decided to focus my dwindling powers of concentration on women's tennis). Last year, thanks to an Indian friend, I started watching cricket again. I watched the Cricket World Cup, which, much to the delight of my friend, India won. Since then my liking for the game is rekindled, and I have been following the game with a modicum of interest.

This brings me to Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar is a diminutive Indian batsman with a baby face and a mop of curly hair who has broken every possible batting record in cricket’s history. This guy is quite a phenomenon. He was picked up to play for his country when he was still in his nappies and has been playing international cricket for more than two decades. I think that is really remarkable: it is not easy to keep your fitness and motivation, and above all, perform consistently for such a long period of time.

And now Tendulkar has broken yet another record. Rather he has created it, as no one before him has managed to reach this milestone. He has scored a century of international hundreds. In cricketing terms that is absolutely stupendous. It is the tennis equivalent of a player winning grandslams 20 times. (The player who has scored the highest number of international hundreds for England is Graham Gooch—an ugly player to watch; he had no grace— and he has scored 28 international hundreds. This gives some idea of the sheer scale of Sachin Tendulkar’s achievement.

Tendulkar may even be the most popular sportsman in the history of sports. Apparently he is number one sportsman in India for several years (that is almost a billion people). Add to this his fans in other cricket playing countries (save England, of course; if the articles in the British broadsheets, full of vinegary prose, poisonous asides and mischievous innuendoes about Tendulkar’s feat, are anything to go by, he does not have many fans in England other than those amongst the Indian Diaspora, although I don't see Tendulkar losing much sleep over it; also we are a football-mad nation, not that we have done anything of note for decades), and he can easily boast of a fan-following of more than a billion. I can’t imagine any other sportsman having this huge a fan-following.

Tendulkar’s feat of hundred international hundred is an astounding feat, and don’t think it will ever be matched. He seems to be one of those players who come along once in several generations. Three cheers for Sachin Tendulkar.

Random Thoughts

                               Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Consensual (but hurried) Sex

The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is dismissed. DSK, as Strauss-Kahn is widely known in his native France, is let out of jail, literally and figuratively. The Manhattan prosecutors did not feel comfortable about going ahead with the prosecution as they had serious concerns about the credibility of Nafissatou Diallo, the woman at the centre of the sex scandal that cost Stauss-Kahn his job as the head of the IMF.

‘Our inability to believe the complainant beyond a reasonable doubt,’ said the Assistant District Attorney, the exotically named Joan (this is not the exotic part) Illuzzi-Orbon, as she formally recommended that the case be dismissed, ‘means, in good faith, that we could not ask the jury to do that.’

The much talked about DNA evidence, in the end, was ‘simply inconclusive’ according to prosecution lawyers, as all it confirmed was that ‘a hurried sexual encounter’ took place between Strauss-Kahn and Diallo.

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer did not deny that he had had sex with the hotel maid (but maintained that it was consensual), which may well have been hurried sandwiched as it was between Strauss-Kahn phoning his millionaire wife (probably telling her how he missed her) and meeting with his daughter before he flew off to Europe to solve the weightier problems of world economy (where one hoped his brain and not his penis would do the thinking).

Diallo’s accusation that she was held hostage and was forced to have sex by the about-to-be-ex chief of the IMF suffered a serious blow when it was revealed that she had lied in her asylum application about being raped by soldiers in her native Guinea. She also changed her account of her activities after her encounter with Strauss-Kahn: initially she said that she ran out of the room and hid in the stair-well until the (alleged) rapist left. She changed this account subsequently and claimed that she went to the next room, cleaned it, and after that actually returned to Strauss-Kahn's room (where she claimed to have been held hostage and forced to perform sexual acts against her will, which made her cry non-stop for the next one month and gave nightmares) and cleaned it as well!. While one may applaud the maid's courage in returning to the scene of crime (as it were) as also her work ethics (not letting anything come in the way of her job), one doesn't have to be a hot-shot lawyer to figure out that this somewhat weakened her case. Finally, Diallo was also captured on tape, talking to a friend (who has had more jail sentences than you and I have had hot meals), and saying, ‘he [Strauss-Kahn] has a lot of money and I know what to do.’ This was refuted by Diallo’s lawyer, one Kenneth Thompson, who was mightily pissed off that the prosecution decided to drop all the charges against the Frenchman, although whether that was on account of the maid being denied justice (or his version of it) or he being denied fifteen minutes of fame (had the charges been pressed) was unclear. What was Thompson’s explanation? It was an error in translating the taped conversation. Diallo spoke in her native dialect called Fulani, which, we were invited to believe, is ‘one of the most complex in the world’. So what was Diallo saying to the jailbird? Thompson would have us believe that what the maid said was: ‘A man tried to rape me at my job. I did not know who he was.’ Quite how this sentence, even when spoken in one of the ‘most complex’ dialects in the world can be translated as ‘he [Strauss-Kahn] has a lot of money and I know what to do’ is beyond me (although on occasions I have come across instances when similar mistakes have been made even when both parties are speaking English, as in case of an erstwhile friend from my university days who was convinced that any woman who smiled at him and wished him  good morning (or afternoon of evening) was inviting him for a session of hot sex). If you believe that then (paraphrasing Harry S Truman) I am Hottentot. 

The truth of what really happened between Strauss-Kahn and Diallo in the luxury suit of the Manhattan hotel will never be known, as, at the end of the day, it is one person’s word against another’s. When Diallo claimed that Strauss-Kahn forced her to give him a blow-job she might have been telling the truth, or she might not. The point is: when you have a history of repeated lying for personal gains you are less likely to be believed when you make these accusations.  

It was also interesting to see the battle-lines being drawn along the racial lines. When Diallo decided to go public with her story (an indication, if any, that the case was going to be dismissed and her team had advised her—ill-advisedly—that she should come out all guns blazing, as it were, to destroy what remained of Strauss-Kahn’s reputation), she was flanked by an assortment of Blacks—the self proclaimed leaders, activists, lawyers, they all came out of the woodwork and flanked Diallo as she gave a public account of her side of the story, throwing, for good measure, accusations about race and politics. That was—as I told an ex after she broke three of my Queens CDs when we broke up—unnecessary.

So Strauss-Kahn has walked free, but it would be fair to assume that his political career is over. The man who was widely tipped to beat Nicholas Sarcozy in the French presidential election next year before the sex scandal exploded in his face, will wonder where it went wrong for him. He may even wonder whether it was the conspiracy of his political opponents (was it Sarcozy?. .  . no it must have been Putin, . . . wait a minute, it must be right wing nutters in the USA, and so on and so forth). However, if he is honest to himself—and he might not dare to be—he would realise that the thing that put paid to his presidential ambition was his insatiable libido. In vulgate:  if you take your d**k out when it should be in the trousers, sooner or later you will land in merde.

As for Diallo, she should take heart from at least one comment of the prosecution. ‘Diallo,’ the prosecution said had ‘ability to present fiction as fact with complete conviction.’ How about a career as a novelist (although, if she is going to write in her native Fulani she should hire a better translator)?

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                                  Eurozone Debt Crisis: We haven't See the Worst

I heard a stand-up comedian, a German stand-up comedian, no less, who makes a living in the UK, on Radio 4 the other day. He said that many Brits were going to Greece for holidays, purportedly to help the Greek economy. His advice? It is pointless going to Greece; the tourists should go to Germany as it is the Germans who are pouring money into what everyone knows is a lost cause. 

Trying to bring moribund economies of countries like Greece and Ireland is like bringing a corpse back to life. It has not been known to happen. Surely, the sensible thing to do is to accept that the case is hopeless, declare that the patient is dead, make funeral arrangements, and pick up the pieces of what is left of your life.

Anyone with more than a dozen functioning neurones would have seen that the Greeks and the Irish couldn't possibly live with the same currency as the Germans; they were never going to make up the yawning productivity gaps between them and the Germans. The Greeks probably managed to gain entry to Euro in the first place by fiddling their accounts.

The pillars that supported the Eurozone as a monetary entity were made of clay, and it should come as no surprise to anyone with a modicum of interest in the financial affairs of the world that it is all collapsing.

The Greeks (and the Irish and the Portuguese and the Italians and the Spanish) either don’t earn enough or they spend too much. Either way they are a burden which the Germans—by that I mean the German public and not the politicians—may not be prepared to bear for much longer.  (And before we Brits wrinkle our uppity noses at the Greeks, we would be well advised to take notice of what Ratan Tata, the chairman of the India-based Tata Group, which now owns the Jaguar and Land Rover, thought of the British work ethics. Tata, who flew to Britain for meetings, was unimpressed by the British managers who, he felt, did not compare favourably with their Indian counterparts. ‘It’s a work ethics issue,’ Tata was reported as saying, ‘no body is willing to go the extra mile, nobody.’ He was unhappy to see the employees leaving the work place even before their bosses; he felt they were lazy. We might make snide remarks about how Europe is different from India and how we work here differently from the sweat shops of India, but the truth is Tata is proposing to close some of the plants in Britain, which means thousands of jobs will go. And can you blame him? As Tata remarked, ‘When you are in crisis, if it means working till midnight, you’ll do it’, not clock off at 4.30 on a Friday to meet with your mates for a pint.)

The German (and the French) politicians have characteristically opted for the fudgy approach which, one might argue, is not dissimilar to how the Americans deal with the Indian reservations or the Australians with the Aboriginals—bunch of people that is never going to be productive and forever going to be dependent on the state largesse for survival.

This may be an acceptable solution to the politicians but it may not be acceptable to the German public. A time will come when the Germans will be faced with another decision time—are they going to bail out the Italians and the Spanish? Given the eye-watering levels of Italy’s public debt and the impossible demands it will put on the budget simply to refinance the debt, that day won’t be far.

It would be erroneous to dismiss the recent plummeting of the stock-markets (all the shares in my virtual portfolio have taken a hammering—what more proof do I need that times— they are a-changing, and not in a way I approve?) as the irrational behaviour of the markets. If one goes by the historical behaviours of the markets and their links to world economies, then one would have to conclude that stock-markets antedate the changes in the economies; in which case what is in store six to eight months down the line is not nice.

The world went into recession three years ago (in defiance of Gordon Brown’s assertion that he had personally abolished the boom and bust cycles). The hope that the recovery would be V shaped (rapid ascent out of recession) soon gave way to the realisation that it may be W shaped. Now, even the prediction of W shaped recovery seems overoptimistic and looks like the recovery is going to be L shaped—we are going to spend prolonged period in the trough.

The Eurozone crisis will not go away. We did not really sort out all that crap the first time round; we just kicked it high up in the air; and now it’s falling again on our heads.

Posterity may well mark this as the period when the balance of power began to shift away from the West tot the East.      

Random Thoughts

Decline of Western Civilization

I have been watching the Channel Four four-part series, which addresses the question that is surely keeping many of us awake at night: are the days of Western dominance over; are we history, and not just history but also chemistry and biology?

The series is presented by the right wing historian Niall Ferguson, who, at his calmest, sounds like a woman forced to sing opera while trapped inside a burning tower.

Don’t get me wrong; I have time of Niall Ferguson (not a lot, though). I began reading his The Ascent of Money in the spirit of experiment, wanting to find out whether it is possible to die of boredom. I worked my way through a third of the book before I stopped, having been satisfied that reading the remainder of the book was unlikely to kill me.

The two episodes I have watched so far made me no wiser as to whether the Western civilization is about to be taken over by the Orientals and the Koran-mutterers. That is because Ferguson spent both the episodes waffling about what he chose to describe as the killer aps of the West, which, in the past 400 years enabled us to overtake China and the Ottomans: competition and science. The long and short of it was that the West got on with the clever innovations while the Turkish Sultan was busy working out when he last fucked the concubine he was fucking now (he had so many of them). I forget what the Chinese emperor was doing while the competing kingdoms in Europe were busy conquering the New World: probably building palaces with highly ornate architecture, which, as we know, is a complete waste of time and money, except when it is done in Europe.

On the evidence of the two episodes I have watched, I feel obliged to point out that the title is a misnomer. Instead of Civilization: is the West History, it should be Civilization: Weren’t We Clever Sausages.

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 Cricket World Cup

I have been watching the highlights of the Cricket World Cup being played in the subcontinent. We have done well to progress as far as we have, given that our only player of international class (Kevin Pierterson) has returned home to have his hernia operated on.

Our bowling attack is below par and has been further dealt the devastating blow by off spinner Yardy’s withdrawal due to depression (remind me who he is, again?)

Geoff Boycott has come in for some stick for his blunt assessment that Yardy is probably upset because he has discovered that he can’t cut the mustard at the top level. That, as my old teacher used to say, is a view. I had a friend (in the sense he thought I was his friend on the dubious grounds that I tolerated him). He was a pretentious ass, prone to slip pointlessly into stock French or Latin phrases while speaking. He became depressed and suicidal a few years ago. The ostensible reason for his depression was his wife, after ten years of marriage, informed him over the morning cup of tea that she had fallen out of love with him and was moving out. But I thought that the wife’s desertion merely served to confirm what must have been suspicion lurking at the periphery of his consciousness for all those years: he was a tosser and a talentless bore and a total loser. It was this (belated) realization, rooted in reality, that brought on the depression in my view. (I don’t know whether he got over it because he hanged himself after a month). That said it was hasty of Geoff Boycott, who is equipped with the world’s most perfect mind (which also made him the most selfish cricketer of his generation), to suggest that spinner Yardy’s depression was linked to his lack of talent. Maybe Yardy has some deep-seated issues. Maybe his mother did not breast-feed long enough. The man needs counselling.

As I type this, New Zeeland have pulled off a sensational victory over the South Africans. When they batted the New Zealanders did a good job of making the batting look extremely difficult. I suspected that the demons in the pitch would disappear when South Africa batted and Hashim Amla began dispatching the Kiwis to all parts of the park. I was wrong: Amla was out in the first over and the South Africans choked under pressure. New Zealand is a mediocre team and I can’t believe they have progressed to the semi-finals.

Pakistan demolished West Indies in the quarter-finals. It was painful to watch the West Indies crumble (yet again). As I watched the woeful West Indians, my view of their team was reaffirmed: Chris Gayle is over-rated; and Chanderpaul is the only really world-class player they have got.

India disposed off the reigning champions, Australia, in a clinical fashion. It would be nice to see a different name on the World Cup this time. Also, it is always a pleasure to see the Australians lose, no matter to whom. If the Australians’ swagger comes down a notch or two, that would be no bad thing. The problem with the current Australian team is that they have attitude aplenty but not much talent to back it. I can’t see the Indians lifting the cup, though. Their bowling is dreadful; which means that if they have to have any chance of winning, their batsmen have to score 300 plus runs every time; and even then, as the match against England showed, they can’t defend it.

Who will win the cup? If I were a betting man I would have lost my money as I would have backed South Africa. Now I think it will be either Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Pakistan have very good bowling attacks—the life the Pakistani spinners extracted out of the dead wicket (in their match against West Indies) would have made an IVF consultant envious; but their batting is unpredictable and that is where I think Sri Lanka has an edge. 

If I am backing Sri Lanka to win it also means that I expect them to beat England tomorrow. Before you call me unpatriotic let me remind you that we lost to Ireland and they probably had to send search parties to find people to complete their world cup squad.

We shall see. I shall of course be overjoyed to be proven wrong.

                                    ***********************************

Libya 

Old Muammar is having a spot of bother. Have the matters come to such a sorry state that a man can’t kill his own people? Lest we forget Gaddafi is fighting for his dictatorial (I was going to say political) life, and it would be fair to say that his opponents will show him no fairness should they defeat him.

Isn’t it interesting that France, England, and America were not concerned about the loss of human lives in the initial days of what I am prepared to call an uprising against Gaddafi’s regime when it looked like the rebels were winning? They started bleating about the humanitarian crisis only when Gaddafi’s forces started pounding the opposition. 

I am also amazed by the haste with which France and some other European nations have acknowledged the rebels as the official government in Libya. Do these people not learn anything from their past mistakes? They supplied the religious nutters in Afghanistan with all sorts of weapons and money when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. What a wise decision that proved to be! And now they are supporting the rebels—a ragtag army of loafers, malcontents and (very likely) Islamists (who probably hate the West more than they hate Gaddafi) simply because they are opposing Gaddafi whom the West hates? Muammar has been in control of Libya for four decades; he has (as dictators do) not allowed any opposition. Also, whatever else he is Muammar Gaddafi  (like Saddam Hussain) is not a religious fanatic, which, you will agree with me, is something of rarity in the Islamic world. If Gaddafi  goes, there will be no democracy in Libya, there will be utter anarchy. Also, the last time I checked there was no democracy in China. What are Cameron (who exudes vanity and complacency in equal measure like pus oozing from an infected wound) and Sarcozy (who is really a monkey) going to do about it?

Is Gaddafi really a threat to the West as he once was perceived to be? Gaddafi’s image in the West is that of slightly unhinged, cartoonishly evil character. Ronald Regan described Gaddafi in the 1980s as the mad dog of Africa, no doubt because of Gaddafi’s mad policy of supporting the PLO and supplying them with weapons (as opposed to America’s sane policy of supporting Israel and supplying it with nuclear weapons). I once heard the BBC journalist John Simpson (he is one of those self-important cocks who believe, every time they open their mouths, that the world must listen; he gets on my nerves) recounting the story of how he interviewed Gaddafi during the entire course of which the colonel broke wind every few minutes and no one was allowed to make a comment. What comment you can make if someone breaks wind repeatedly in front of you? Is there a protocol about these matters? Should we wag an admonishing finger at the guilty party and tell him he has been very rude? Of course Gaddafi was being rude. That was the whole point. Did Simpson think Gaddafi had no manners; that it was OK in Libyan culture to break wind in front of others? Anyone who wasn’t up his own ass would have seen that Gaddafi did it deliberately; showing via repeated, forceful, noisy (and very probably) smelly rectal emission of gas, to the smug, sanctimonious, self-important BBC twerp that he did not matter.

What about the British ‘mission’ which entered Libya illegally, in the middle of the night, in a military helicopter, carrying, false passports and several currencies among other things? William Hague in the parliament (with Theresa May sitting next to him dressed up like a prostitute in Moulin Rouge) described this as a ‘diplomatic mission’. The ‘diplomats’ were arrested immediately upon their arrival—irony of ironies—by the rebel forces whom they wanted to help. After being held for a couple of days they were asked to get out of Libya. Hague was pretty bellicose about the whole thing and declared that the diplomatic mission had achieved what it set out to do (presumably get arrested and be made a laughing stock). Hague is unbelievable: he stares humiliation in the face and says, ‘Do I know you?’

If there is one thing that is common to all British politicians irrespective of their party allegiance, especially with regard to foreign matters—no, make that two—it is their regrettable busybody tendencies and relentless hypocrisy. The empire these days exists only in their heads. Some Tory backbenchers were apparently demanding Hague’s resignation because of his inept handling of the Libyan crisis. Now let me make it clear at the outset: I am economical with my sympathy for Hague: he has a head like a golf ball and is either not very bright or else makes no effort to appear so (and I know that he has written some unreadable books and earned a packet as a dinner party speaker, although why anyone would want to listen to this man unless it is for amusement—but surely there are more sophisticated ways of amusing yourself than listening to the witless right wing rant of Mister Potatohead—is unfathomable to me). Of course the guy is not fit to be the foreign secretary; I wouldn’t trust him to fetch a cup of coffee without spilling it, let alone weightier matter like the foreign policy. But that is not the point. The point is: the world is not exactly looking to us to handle Libya. For Christ’s sake we can’t even manage our public finances, why are we poking our noses in others' business?   

Hague is of course the missing link between the apatosaurus and rhinoceros; but I am afraid another man, say from Labour, would have behaved no differently in the circumstances. True, he might not have done the stupid thing Hague did, but he would have thought of some other equally risible way of making a fool of himself. That is because our politicians have prodigiously inflated view of their position in the big scheme of things, and make lordly assumptions about the world when they have no idea.