A New Leader

Over this last week-end the Labour Party at its conference in Manchester elected its new leader. They chose Ed Miliband over his elder and more experienced brother David by just 1.5% after the four rounds of voting. The elder Miliband always looked to me like Mr Bean. The younger one looks more like Wallace from the plasticine characters Wallace & Gromit. But they are an odd couple. Here are two brothers who express undying love for each other yet they have fought each other for leadership of the party. It's not that there is some great policy divide between them. They say the same things via vague, ambiguous platitudes and cliches. It was always obvious that if David had won it would not have been too catastrophic for Ed but the other way around, the more experienced Milliband was doomed. So why does any brother want to junk his elder sibling's career. Usually, it is because he doesn't like him much. "But I love my brother very much. He is something special to me." You can feel the hypocrisy and insincerity dripping off the words. Like his lack of marriage and name on his child's birth certificate, everything comes after his job. Does the Labour Party seriously think that this out-of-touch geek will ever be Prime Minister? If so, they are even more deeply lost in Space than I thought.

During this latest, incredible party conference I was struck by the fact that to many of the apparatchiks that sit on front benches nowadays politics is an end in itself, not a means to an end. But look at the three party leaders. They are all the same. They went to school - at least the Millibands went to state comprehensives - then they went to Oxford or Cambridge universities, went to Harvard for a bit, then became party officers, engineered into safe parliamentary seats.

The Labour Party now has to construct a shadow cabinet from the biggest pile of well-educated dead wood that I have ever seen. Roy Hattersley writes about the wealth of talent in the party and Neil Kinnock is over-excited. Why? Where? Who? I can see no Aneurin Bevan, no Ernie Bevin, no Clement Attlee, no Jim Callaghan, no Roy Jenkins, no Dennis Healey. And where are the great thinkers like Michael Foot, Anthony Crosland, Richard Crossman, Tony Benn. We may not have agreed with some of these but they stood for something and most [all?] of them had done proper jobs and/or fought in wars.
Perhaps the fundamental cause of the problems is the abolition of the grammar schools. David Cameron is an Old Etonian - the first to be Prime Minister since Sir Alec Douglas Home. All those in between went to grammar or secondary schools and came from ordinary families. I wanted Ken Clarke [also a grammar school boy] to have lead the Tory Party because above everyone in the party now, he had experience. It matters to know how the system works, who does what and how. I was unimpressed with David Cameron at the start but so far he has done well as Prime Minister. In spite of his background and my continuing doubts about the lack of experience, at least he comes across as human.
We will have to see what happens but in all parties much needs to be done to re-introduce real people and to connect themselves with the electorate.
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Francis Drake

It was exactly 330 years ago today that Francis Drake sailed into Plymouth harbour having completed the first circumnavigation of the World by an Englishman. He had crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the coast of South America, proceeded up the west coast of America as far as Alaska, then crossed the Pacific Ocean, rounded the Cape of God Hope and sailed back to Britain. He had been away for 3½ years and much upset Spain with his attacks on their colonies and wealth. A few years later he cause even more consternation when he took such an important part in repelling the Spanish Armada. Although as the captain of a ship, Drake was probably little better than a state authorised pirate and slave trader - he gained considerable wealth from the latter activity - there seems little doubt that he was a sailor of the highest ability. To have sailed around the world in his tiny vessel - the Golden Hind weighed in at a mere 300 tons - was an impressive achievement. Nevertheless, he suffered considerable losses of men and ships on his voyage. His Golden Hind was the only one of six ships that returned to England. He was ruthless in the command of his men but showed great qualities of leadership. However, it has to be said that he executed mutineers on the basis of a dubious authority.

For a time he was a Member of Parliament, a Mayor of Plymouth and for 15 years lived at Buckland Abbey in Devon. He returned to the sea and on his final voyage in 1596 he contracted dysentery off the coast of Puerto Rica. He was buried at sea in a lead lined coffin.

A replica of his vessel [see above] is displayed at Southwark. This replica was launched in Devon in 1973 and has itself sailed around the world. It is now estimated to have sailed 140,000 miles - although I assume that the crew would have made use of modern sensible navigational aids which would remove a great deal of uncertainty from what they were doing.

Sir Francis Drake was one of those romantic heroes in English history whose life has, over the years, become a muddle of fact and fiction. He lived in a more robust age where little was decided by the niceties of international law or of political correctness. And, perhaps, that was its advantage.

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The Road To Happiness

The question of wealth has been in the news again recently - apropos of the pay in the public sector. We learn that over 6,500 people in the NHS are paid more than the Prime Minister. This ridiculous. Apart from over-paid bureaucrats there are many GPs - now working shorter hours - being paid buckets of money; one is even collecting £½ million per year. Staggering. Still, as long as the DG of the BBC thinks he is worth £835,000 per year we know that we are in cloud-cuckooland.
All of us always feel that we need more money but how much more? I see very unhappy footballers earning millions of pounds each year wondering what to do with their wealth. Wayne Rooney apparently handed over £200 to a boy doing room service who delivered him a packet of cigarettes. Sir Alec, why is Wayne Rooney smoking as well as being out and about in night clubs in the middle of the night? I see things in newspapers, magazines and on TV which show some of the vast mansions occupied by the rich and famous and am I jealous? No! I would like a few hundred thousand pounds extra so that I could buy the house of my dreams and enjoy my twilight years. But my house would have a maximum of four or five bedrooms, a double garage, two bathrooms and set in beautiful countryside in Lancashire not too far from a major town - Bolton. It would cost less than £500,000; it would have a well laid out garden with a small, sheltered outdoor area for relaxing, eating and entertaining. I don't need a swimming pool - indoors or out. I don't need a Bentley or a Rolls Royce. A good medium size luxury car Jaguar, Mercedes or some such. I don't need a games room; or a bar; or a wine cellar.
If I had a huge house I would use very little of it; I would need to employ staff to look after it and would I be happier sitting out alongside my swimming pool? No! I think that if I did have some such useless luxury item I would be wondering what next to spend my money on and what I needed next to become happy. In my house, I would have my own bedroom, a guest bedroom, a library, an office and, if I had a fifth bedroom, a hobbies room for my painting, drawing and making things - and, of course it could be overspill storage. I could, at a pinch combine the office with the library in a four bedroom house.
The house above is in Firs Road, Bolton, only about 2 miles from where I was born, in a nice area and it would suit me well. It's up for sale; a snip at £370,000. I have no interest in the celebrity life style. My life would be more one of the recluse; cut off from neighbours, other peoples kids, and noise.
I suppose that I should consider myself very lucky when I look at my family history and find just what earlier generations lived through. The horror of the Great Famine in Ireland and my great-great-grandmother making her way across the country on foot, with four starving children, through overcrowd squalor in Liverpool until finally she got a job as a domestic servant in Atherton - yet still she survived into her mid-eighties. Her life must be rated as very successful in what she achieved but much of it was surrounded by suffering. All of my Victorian ancestors suffered in some way during the Industrial Revolution when the working classes were all but invisible as individuals. I went to a grammar school - still the only one of my family to do so in 300 years - and then I enjoyed a university education, have always been employed, have managed to travel to many parts of the world and to meet some wonderful people. I did all of this without obscene wealth and I find it sad that so many young people now want nothing more than fame [or infamy], great wealth - in simple money terms - and have no appreciation of the value of a proper education. The children sent by ambitious parents to private schools do understand and that is one of many reasons why the rich will continue to run the country while a few footballers wonder how to spend their own suddenly acquired wealth. Five luxury cards will not be enough to find your way along the road to happiness.
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Peace In Northern Ireland

Things have been getting worse in Northern Ireland for some time now. I don't just mean the economy; that is getting better. It's the undercurrent of terrorism. We have had the usual summer disturbances associated with Apprentice Boys and Orange Order marches and so on and there have been a few car bombs. The Chief Minister, Peter Robinson, has been involved in legal wranglings involving money making and money laundering. But this is Northern Ireland. Today we have been told that there is a much increased risk of terrorist attacks by breakaway republican organisations on mainland Britain. Maybe it will happen and the shaky power sharing agreement in Belfast will collapse. If it does it will be the final blot on Tony Blair's record as Prime Minister. I can't blame Blair for the problems of Northern Ireland. These have been around for hundreds of years and have their origins in British oppression of the Irish but, in spite of all his failings, it did look as thought Blair had achieved something in Northern Ireland. He had stopped the killing - and that is an enormous achievement. But if they go back to violence again, Blair will have his record finally wrecked. He will become one of many British Prime Ministers who did not solve the Irish Problem. And we can then add this to his record on Iraq, Afghanistan, Civil Liberties, ID cards, Financial Disaster, Government Debt, etc., etc.

But what do these Republicans want? What is it that they hope to achieve? Are we back to a United Ireland - something which the government of the Irish Republic does not want; they have enough problems of their own, at present. Or is it just that Republicanism is no more than a cover for criminality? But, if it is, what have the IRA and their off-shoots done with the money they have taken over the years through smuggling, money laundering, diesel oil fiddles, etc? I have never seen any Republican from Northern Ireland that has looked particularly prosperous.

I don't think the people of Northern Ireland want a return to violence but they make little progress in eliminating religious divisions. I suspect it is still the case that companies there either employ Catholics or Protestants but not both. And as long as that goes on Northern Ireland will never be at peace with itself.

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Battle of Britain

Last night there was a very enjoyable 1½ hours on BBC 2 TV in which actor Ewen McGregor and his brother Colin related the story of the Battle of Britain and took the opportunity to fly in a Spitfire. Elder brother Colin is an RAF pilot who flies Tornados and has served in Iraq. He took Ewen for a high speed flight in his Tornado before he [Colin] took some lessons in flying old aeroplanes - starting with a Tiger Moth and then progressing to a Harvard trainer. After that his instructor was happy that he could have a go in a two seater Spitfire. Although even for an RAF pilot this was still a boyhood dream come true, I was slightly surprised that most of his problems in flying the Spitfire were on the ground. Of course the Spitfire has a tail wheel and a very long nose so it's almost impossible to see what you are doing while on the ground. Added to that steering on the ground is not easy. He had a very good take-off but his landing was a bit ropey. Later Ewen was given a flight in the Spitfire - with the instructor at the controls, not Colin - and he was like a child with a box of toys and sweets. He was gob-smacked and over-joyed at having the opportunity to fly in the most iconic aeroplane in British history. Then with an ex Hurricane pilot from 1940 they watched as his old aeroplane - the only Hurricane survivor from the Battle of Britain still flying - flew low across Kent. I do not generally feel any envy for the rich and famous or for their life-styles. But this was an exception. I was very envious of their having the opportunity to fly in a Spitfire. They enjoyed its a lot. I once made a control line flying model of a Spitfire, which was built with much loving care and attention. The Spitfire may have triumphantly survived from WW II but my Spitfire model could not survive my mother's cleaning jobs. Somehow she contrived to drop a door onto my Spitfire and it never flew again.

As background to this messing about in aeroplanes they recounted the days of August and September 1940 and did it very well, talking to some of the few veterans still alive and visiting the operations room, Biggin Hill and so on. One thing that struck me was a comment from one of the veterans when he responded to a question from Ewen - while Ewen & Colin were talking to two of them in a pub. Asked if they suffered from a loss of morale when their comrades were killed or did they just get on with the job, he said that they just got in with it. "After all," he said, " with only a few exceptions, we were not really close friends. We had only met them for the first time in July." I never thought of it like that before, but I suppose it had to be true of men who joined up, learned to fly and spent as little as 10 hours in a Spifire before being sent into dog-fights.

We seem to be giving very wide coverage of the anniversary of the Battle of Britain this year. I suppose it has to be that by the time the 80th anniversary comes around few, if any, of the veterans will still be alive - they would have to be at least 98 years old in 2020.

During last night's programme, I was also struck by the comments about how superior the Spitfire was to most [if not all] other fighter aircraft of the time. Nowadays, it is fashionable for the chattering classes, even the intelligent ones - you know, those with degrees in Politics, Philosophy & Economics - to tell us that we are no good at technology and that we have to buy everything from foreigners. Maybe we need to re-look at that idea and consider that perhaps we are not actually very good at financial and economic management.

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Tax Collecting?

It has been revealed, yesterday, that HM Revenue & Customs failed to collect £42 billion of taxes owed last year. This is another impressive best ever record. The last Labour government has managed to build up a massive accumulated debt of about £800 billion, which cost us £40 billion in annual interest payments and now it turns out that we have a similar amount in uncollected taxes. So more than half of the annual government spending debt is a result of building the debt up and up and failing to collect the taxes. How incompetent can government get? It is staggering. I have said for some time that much of our government's deficit could be eliminated if [a] they stopped legislating for no purpose - what Chris Mullins would have described as "moving the deck chairs," only this is on a monster scale - moving millions of deck chairs, year after year; and [b] get rid of the vast layers of bureaucracy. This last, I think the Coalition is trying to do.

The failure to collect taxes is due to incompetence, the black economy - and nobody is quite sure how much this amounts to, tax evasion, delayed payments and so on. The HMR&C is in a mess anyway and is now trying to collect tax from individuals whose PAYE calculations were wrong. If they can't get this right, it is not surprising that they are failing to collect all taxes.

If the government can simplify things they may be able to reduce the pointless costs of running the system but they may never reduce the staff because the unions will insist that we employ armies of people doing absolutely nothing.

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Supermac

I was reading in The Daily Mail yesterday of the publication of a considerable tome on the life of Harold Macmillan - Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan. I don't know how big the book is but we are told that the notes at the end stretch to 150 pages. Phew! The writer, D.R. Thorpe must have been thorough. Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister during my formative years. He achieved the job after Anthony Eden's disastrous Suez campaign in 1956 and Eden's resultant ill health. When I went to Leeds University in the autumn of 1959, I remember being a member of the University's Conservative Association for a while. I am not quite sure why I did this. The Labour Party at the time was lead by Hugh Gaitskill, a man for whom I always had the greatest respect. I do remember attending meetings at the beginning of that autumn term and discussing the likely outcome of the General Election which was to take place on 8th October. In those days polls were few and far between and so we had to judge form on gut feelings. The general consensus at those meetings was that the Tories would win but with a much reduced majority. In the event, they increased their majority by 20 seats to over 100. It was then that the image of Supemac had been generated with his 1959 election slogan of "You have never had it so good!" For those of us growing up after the Second World War and those who had survived the Great Depression, it was probably true. As usual the Labour Party had been divided with many of the Left Wing opposed to the leadership of Old Wykhamist Hugh Gaitskill.

I always think that Macmillan was a better Prime Minister than many have been prepared to give him credit for. He was only in office for 6½ years and he did lose touch at the end with the Profumo Scandal and his famous cabinet re-shuffle when he sacked seven of his ministers at one go and prompted the Liberal MP, Jeremy Thorpe to utter that memorable comment in the House of Commons that "Greater love hath no man than he should give his friends to save his life."

Above all things Harold Macmillan had a knowledge and a sense of history. He had a distinguished service record in WW I and like all men who served - as well as many who did not - he had a horror of war. Nevertheless, during the 1930s he supported Winston Churchill in his complete opposition to Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain with their policies of Appeasement. Macmillan was a strange amalgam of the Edwardian gentleman and the political moderniser who developed a rather sharp wit. I remember reading chunks of his memoirs - quite a task, when the books came along in six volumes, each of about 750 pages - and, in spite of their great length, found them quite readable and entertaining. I still remember a paragraph where, writing about a man who was to be put in charge of National Savings - an appointment being criticized by some - Macmillan told us that his appointee was a man of honour and above all suspicion. "After all," he told us, "the man is a member of the Bach Choir." And you can't get a more ringing endorsement than that.

Harold Macmillan was the last retiring Prime Minister to be offered and to accept an earldom. He became the Earl of Stockton - an industrial town that was his first parliamentary seat. He did not go to the House of Lords all that often but he did go there when he was in his 90s to criticise the privatisation policies of Margaret Thatcher, likening it to "Selling off the family silver." He was probably right about that.

His new biographer will, I am sure have a high regard for his subject and will point to the accuracy of his insight on many problems that plague us today. In a list of Do's and Don'ts for politicians that he set out in his later years he had as No.1 "Never invade Afghanistan." I think we will all agree with him on that one.

So many of our leaders from the past show us how we have in recent times been lead by some little men. Many seem to regard Tony Blair as a great leader. He may have lead the Labour Party from electoral oblivion but he was still the worst Prime Minister in my life time.

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Making Things

It was revealed at the end of last week that Britain had a trade deficit in goods in July 2010 of £8.7 billion. The surplus on trade in services was £3.8 billion giving us an overall deficit of £4.9 billion. Over the three months to end of July we had a net deficit on goods and services of £13.2 billion - which is the highest figure since we started keeping statistics in 1700. Impressive, isn't it. If we continue in this way for a year we will have an annual total deficit for goods above £100 billion. The value of the pound sterling has dropped by 25% and this was supposed to make our exports more competitive. The trouble is that it makes imports more expensive and because of the dire state of our manufacturing industries we have to import almost everything. And that stokes up inflation which devalues the pound even more unless we put up interest rates to attract foreign investment. It's a mess and a desperate mess at that. How we are going to get out of it, I have no idea. For starters, we need government ministers to tell us that they really do understand the problem and then to say how they are going to re-build manufacturing so that we have something to sell.

Throughout the years of the Labour government manufacturing has declined very considerably and we have kept the economy afloat on borrowed cash. Now the debts, like chickens, have come home to roost and they have to be fed with massive interest payments. Manufacturing declined under Mrs Thatcher's government - less so under John Major - but when the Tories left office in 1997 there was a small surplus on our annual trade figures. Manufacturing may have fallen from 27% of GDP to 22% during 18 years of the Tories but Labour managed a cut of 50% [from 22% to 11%] in 12 years.

We are repeatedly told by accountants, financial wizards [you know - the people who buggered up the World's economy in 2007/2008] and by politicians that we are no good at manufacturing. It's not true and it never has been. What we are not good at is investing in education [proper education], in technology and in large scale manufacturing. Until 1983 we never had a trade deficit at all [except during wars] but since then we have been going further and further into the red and our currency goes down and down. I can remember when we had about SFr 5.0 to £1.00; now there are SFr 1.57 to £1.00. Buying a box of Swiss chocolates is three times as expensive as it was then Even more unbelievable is the total decline since WWII; in 1948 there were US$ 4.00 to £1.00 and SFr 17.5 to £1.00. USA has gone down as well, of course, because they have been managed by the same economic and financial experts who have guided us towards ruin. Now US$ 1.00 is about SFr 1.00. The only group in both countries [UK and USA] that have done well have been the financiers

I was never impressed by the privatisation policies of Thatcher. She was wrong then and the 20 years since her demise have proved it. Selling off our essential services - water, gas and electricity have blighted these industries. Privatisation of the railways - John Major's only big sell off was crackers and, brilliantly, we now provide much bigger subsidies than we ever did when it was publicly owned. Only a banker could come up with a scheme like that. If we make a profit, it's ours; if we make a loss, it's yours.

These days our oil and gas outputs are declining and this will make the figures steadily worse unless something is done. The Coalition Government is intent on cutting government debts and in that, I am sure it is right - we can't carry on lashing out £40 billion per year on interest payments on the debt. But they have to do something positive so that we can make products that people want to buy.

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Boozy Footballers

So, at last a top manager in the English Premier League has commented on the problems of boozy players. He has said that booze is a major contributor to so many of the problems with young British footballers. At the same time he urges them to behave like foreign players, who, on the whole do not behave like British players. After the sad England performance at the World Cup - which was so embarrassing for our country - it is vital to get players behaving as professional sportsmen. In addition it is pointed out that the careers of many Italian players [for example] go on for far longer, since they are still fit enough to play at the top level at 40 years of age. Harry Redknapp does not look like a man who has kept well clear of booze and he admits that in his playing days he, too, was a regular drinker. Now he is firmly fixed in the abstinence camp. I hope he will enforce his beliefs at Tottenham and try to prove that abstemious players performer better than the boozers. As I have said before, I am amazed that people like Alex Ferguson do not come down like a few tons of bricks on the social and night-life activities of many of their players.

Amazingly - at least to me - the Football Correspondent of The Independent defended the players on the grounds that manufacturers of alcoholic drinks were much tied up with endorsing football. Booze, he tells us, has always been part of British football for decades and he points to greats from the past who were prodigious drinkers. He cites George Best and Jimmy Greaves. They were heavy drinkers even when they were playing but I suspect that in 2010 playing against or alongside fit and sober European players they would not perform quite so well. One of them died as a result of his drinking and the other needed a lot of drying out before he could carry on with his life. In a culture where so many young people drink to excess, why, The Independent asks, should we expect young footballers to be different. That's easy! We should expect them to be different because they are paid £100,000 per week to be different. At least we can point to some exceptions. Players like Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and a few others who are still performing well in their mid-thirties and are at the top level as well. They behave responsibly, soberly and professionally. England Manager Fabio Capello tried to talk Paul Scholes back into the England team; he was right to try to do so. At least we would have known that he had a player who was playing without gallons of alcohol circulating around in his system.

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Religious Delusions

I am sure that during the last few days Richard Dawkins has been tearing his hair out while running around saying to everyone "I told you so!" Religion has been indulging in another rush of madness that we are supposed to take seriously, while nobody has the guts to say "Bollocks" to the lot of them. I don't know where to start. We seem to have a collection of stories that just prove that much of what Dawkins says to us is right. Although it is belief in religion that is the problem rather than belief in God.
Perhaps I will start with Stephen Hawking who has suggested in a book to be published this week that God did not create the Universe. This may or may not be true and frankly I would not have thought that 150 years after Charles Darwin it made much difference to religious beliefs - except to fundamentalists - but then fundamentalists are coming more and more to the fore in every variation of the God Delusion. Hawking says that it is possible to conceive of multiple Universes that can co-exist and continue to co-exist. This has been widely condemned by religious leaders here, there and everywhere.
At the same time a small fundamentalist Christian Evangelical group in Florida is suggesting that on 11th September we should have a Burn the Koran day to commemorate the destruction of the twin towers in 2001. Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Centre - that was, until yesterday, unknown to all of us - believes that the Koran is an evil book and we should demonstrate our opposition to its existence. His proposed action has been condemned around the world and by President Obama. Of course, various noddy governments in the Middle East and other areas have publicised Pastor Jones's mini-group and encouraged their brain-washed masses to take to the streets and burn American flags, etc. Pastor Jones is an odd character and like most fundamentalists, ever so slightly mad. His version of Christianity requires him to go around with an armed escort and to sit at his desk with a gun at the ready. He is a nutter and he should have been ignored. As it is, his infamy has gone round the world. Of course everybody is screaming about insults to Islam, etc. etc. A nutter wants us to burn a book. Please, please, just print some more and carry on.
As this Koran story was doing the rounds, we received some helpful advice from the Vatican. For years it has been clear that the Islamists have been encouraging Muslims everywhere to breed to help in their plans to overwhelm the world. The Catholics have been at it for years as well. Now, a spokesman for the Vatican has suggested that Catholics should get to work breeding even more to counter the Islamist surge and catch up. This is particularly important in Catholic countries where, mysteriously, the birth rate in the indigenous population is static or has been falling. Now at a time when the world is struggling with economic problems, where 65% live on the bread-line, the last thing we want is for religious loonies to invite us to increase world population as fast as possible. Still, I suppose we have to remember that in 1994 is was an unholy alliance of Muslims and Catholics that in Egypt scuppered the UN conference on population control. These fundamentalists are still living so far in the past that population control does not matter. Has any of them got a clue as to how we will control climate change and feed everyone while they knock out more and more babies to exacerbate all our problems.
Richard Dawkins suggests that God does not exist. It may or may not be true. What is true, however, is that religionists exist everywhere and never will they see the error of their ways. A long time ago, I suggested that the 21st century was going to be one when Islam spread like a disease around the world and Islamic fundamentalism would be at the root of almost all the wars that were fought in every region of our planet. It is more than 800 years since the Crusades took place, when Christians were pitted against Muslims. Have we learned nothing in those intervening years? It certainly seems that we have not.
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The Popularity of Tony Blair

Good news from Dublin. The blessed Tony Blair turned up at a bookshop in the Irish capital to sign copies of his newly published, self-serving, self-righteous, unapologetic autobiography published on Thursday and he was pelted with eggs and tomatoes by well-wishers. Ahhhhhhh! The pleasures of democracy. It's the simple things that provide the strongest images.

Hopefully, he will be similarly treated when he comes to the UK to push sales of the blessed book. Won't be long before the thing appears stacked up in charity shops. And still I will not buy it - not even for 10p. I am tempted to send money to charity - any charity - rather than think that he could make one penny out of his exercise in vomit inducing kitsch and self-appreciation. It is surely unacceptable to say that he feels he was right to engage in an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and gloss over the piles of dead bodies - Allied Soldiers and Iraqi and Afghan civilians - for wars that have achieved nothing - at best. It is interesting that the wars were started by Bush and Blair, two leaders who tell us that every ridiculous decision they took was with the help of God. I am sure that Richard Dawkins will see it as more evidence of the destructive powers of religion and the God Delusion.

I will not change my view that this obnoxious man has been the worst Prime Minister in my life time - and by quite a margin. He has slagged off Gordon Brown in this book to the point of ridicule. Does he not realise that his demented tirades against a man who was his Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years makes Blair look ridiculous. It seems that Brown will keep a dignified silence.

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Placido Domingo

I have just been watching on BBC2 a live filming of Verdi's Rigoletto with Placido Domingo in the title role. This is a massive part for the singer who turns 70 in January - or at least he does if you accept the official version of his age. Others tell us that he is even older. Whatever, it is a remarkable performance. He seems to have tremendous stamina to keep flitting around the world singing - as a tenor a or a baritone - as well as conducting and making his efforts for various charities. So what was he like as Rigoletto? We have only seen Act One so far. The remainder of the opera will be broadcast tomorrow. At the back of my mind all the time is the image of Tito Gobbi - surely the best Rigoletto of them all. Domingo has a lighter voice than Gobbi - he is a tenor turned baritone and he does not have the thunder in the depths that Gobbi had and Gobbi had sung the role over 200 times. Domingo was at his best in this production when singing the duets with his daughter Gilda. Here he sang with great passion, legato and tenderness. However, he was getting better as the opera progressed and we may see the best of him in Acts Two and Three.

Placido Domingo has been at the top of his profession now for nearly forty years. At his age most tenors have already stopped - or should have - but he seems incredibly ageless. Whatever I say about him I can never say that he sounds like an old man singing. It is other singers who have to match his stature as a performer and a professional. And what is more surprising, he does not seem to plague others with the tantrums and tempers of a top operatic singer. Everyone seems to find him wonderful to work with. I suppose that is as it should be but there is many a performer who has such an inflated ego and opinion of their own self-worth that they are impossible to tolerate.

I used to have a dream that one day I could sing Offenbach's Gendarmes Duet with Placido Domingo. Exactly how the circumstances could arise that might make this possible never seemed to appear in the memories of my dream. "We're public guardians bold yet wary and of ourselves we take good care.............." Yes, I can still picture it even now.

It is a pleasure to see and hear Placido Domingo and long may he continue to astound us.

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Problems At The Wicket

I have been quiet the last couple of weeks. It was not the lack of things to interest me; it was just that I have been away in the North of England staying with the family and investigating my family history. But it is the silly season. And there are lots of daft stories around.

We are assaulted by stories that suggest that Foreign Secretary William Hague is gay. Did he sleep with his 25 year old adviser? Who cares - except his wife? Why do we need to know? Is there a risk of a Profumo scandal when he is blackmailed into give information to a foreign power? Which foreign power? What information? I tend to take the "Yes Minister" approach. Whatever William Hague knows, the Russians know already.

More serious is the Pakistani cricket bribery and match fixing scandal. The story, as everyone knows now, originated rom a News of the World set-up, where, on camera an agent was given £150,000 to prove that he could bribe Pakistani cricketers to fix some aspects of a match. In this case, it was agreed that there would be spot fixes - ie certain things would be pre-ordained. In this case two fast bowlers would bowl no-balls with three specific balls in specific overs. This then occurred in the following test against England - where the no-balls were so blatant that the TV commentators were amazed at just how far over the crease line the bowlers went. It did not in any way affect the result of the match but was there anything else = that we don't know about - that did affect the result? Captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir have been withdrawn from the team. Latest news this morning is an allegation that the police have found marked currency notes in the hotel room and the locker of Butt. If this is the case, then it is difficult to see a defence. The evidence of a fix is quite powerful. But I think we need to wait until we have the full story. I feel quite sorry for the two bowlers. None of us yet knows the truth but it is unbelievable that the bowlers contrived the no-balls without the specific instructions or agreement of the captain. I think the case of Mohammad Amir is particularly sad. He comes from a very poor Pakistani family and I am sure that he wanted to earn as much as possible to help raise their standards of living. He is only 18 years old, with an enormous talent - last week he became the youngest ever bowler to take 50 test wickets. But on top of this there is the problem of pay. Pakistani cricketers are badly paid. The average pay for a test cricketer is less than £25,000 per year. While officials swan around in luxury the players are the lowest earners in test cricket. There have been many sanctimonious comments from England and Australian players getting about £1 million per year. The disparity in pay is ridiculous. This does not excuse fixing play but it does become an issue. What is a little bit more corruption in a country riddled with corruption? It may be that the bowlers have been threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they did not comply. The big problem for the game is that if there is deliberate bowling of no-balls, what else is not what it appears to be? There have been allegations that one of the matches against Australia last year was fixed - when Pakistan contrived to lose from a seemingly unassailable position. Who knows?

More comments on other silly stories later.

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