My Heroes

Yesterday my favorite football team, (soccer for my American friends) Manchester United, qualified for the final of the European Champions League. They did so by beating Spain’s champions, Barcelona in the semi-final. In the final, set for Moscow in May, they will meet the winner of Liverpool V Chelsea, who are playing their game as I write. It has been quite a year for English club football in the world’s premiere club football tournament. This is like the Superbowl, the World Series and the Olympics rolled together. There will be billions of people around the globe watching this game.

All four of the English qualifying teams made it to the final stages of the competition, a feat never been achieved before by any national league’s representatives. In this sport England is treated as a separate nation from the other parts of the UK, so Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own leagues and representation.

There is a special importance for me related to Manchester United’s accomplishment this year that transcends normal soccer elements such as skill, tribal passion and athleticism.

The first game of football I was taken to by my father took place almost exactly a half -century ago. My family all supported one of the great old London teams, Arsenal. They were going to take me to see Arsenal play Manchester United so that I, like them, would naturally become a fan of the Arsenal.

How were they to know that, at age 8, I was to fall under the magic spell of the Red Devils, the nickname of Manchester United. They were led by a colossus who was then aged 21, called Duncan Edwards. Perhaps one of the best soccer players in the world, ever, he was already a star of the full England team. He was capable of playing in every position of the team. That’s like being an American football quarterback who could also kick all the goals and be a wide receiver!

I was a small kid but was soon spellbound by this giant Edwards. He led this team of precociously brilliant young talent, which had been assembled by one of the best managers the game had ever been graced by, Sir Matt Busby. The team he had brought together was collectively known to the world as the Busby Babes. They were the youngest team in the top division of English football and had already won the competition the previous year. I remember watching them beat Arsenal 5 – 4 in one of the greatest games I was ever to see. I was in awe of them, as was the rest of the world. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that they would dominate world soccer for the next decade.

They were due to play in the quarterfinal of the European Cup the following week in Eastern Europe against Partisan Belgrade in Yugoslavia. The game resulted in Manchester United qualifying for the semi-final. On the way home the team’s airplane had to refuel in Munich, Germany. It was snowing and icy. The first two times the plane tried to take off there were problems. The third time the plane was destroyed.

The result was a catastrophe. Several journalists, team officials and eight players from the squad, the backbone of the team, were to die, including Duncan Edwards. He fought a long, hard, heroic but ultimately futile battle against his terrible injuries whilst his manager, Matt Busby, was read the last rites. It was the older man, forged in the tough working class of his native Scotland, who survived. He was fated to lead his club to greatness.

Within weeks the club managed to put together a scratch team, which got to the final of the English Cup, the semi final of the European Cup and a respectable finish in the League. Within another decade there was a Manchester United team winning that European Cup. The first English team ever to do so. They won it again, along with the English League and Cup in 1999, the only team to have ever won all three competitions in the same year.

The club just held the dignified memorial for the 50-year anniversary of that awful tragedy and, as fate would have it, the team has again made it to the final of the competition. Win or lose the club has already won. They are already the best-supported, biggest sports team in the world, a testament to what can be achieved against the odds.

Like the Red Devils of the past they play sweeping, attractive football, which captivates the world. Their concept is buccaneering, attack minded and based on the concept that they are simply better than anyone they ever play, now all they have to do is prove it, again!

Manchester United, the best sports team in the world.

Keeping our Nerve

My baby boomer generation is probably living in the last of the best days man has ever experienced. There have been the usual series of small, contained wars in places like Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan but nothing like the carnage experienced in World Wars One and Two. We have experienced unprecedented freedom, wealth and personal liberty and all of this whilst communications, technology, travel and entertainment have all become more available to more people than ever before.

We’re facing a very different, much more worrying world. Facing the twin threats of increasing terrorism and decreasing resources within the context of a diminishing economy will lead to major problems. We’ve seen the first signs of this. The sub-prime mortgage debacle in the States has now spread its contagion throughout the banking world. This has resulted in the juddering halt of inter bank lending which means you and I will not be able to qualify for a loan unless our name is Rockefeller or Rothschild.

This would be bad enough in normal times, but this banking screw up coincides with the general economy backfiring and the start of major food supply problems. Food riots have already happened in the past weeks in various disadvantaged countries. Oil prices have leapt above $100 a barrel at the same time as property prices begin to slump.

The planting of large swathes of agricultural land with ethanol crops instead of food, will, perhaps, have a short-term beneficial effect reducing our use of fossil fuels. However the concomitant, longer term cost in reducing the amount of land being used to grow our food is a disaster.

Economies depend on the general population having faith in the economic system, particularly its faith in banks and governments. That faith is unraveling and our leaders need to work on this as their priority or we will all suffer. We all saw the result in the UK when one of our biggest mortgage banks, Northern Rock, became a basket case about a month ago. Although bailed out by the British Government it is not ever going to be independently financial viable again. This all happened within days, almost immediately after the public realized the bank was under threat. That could happen anywhere operating from within our economic heartbeat in the City of London or Wall St.

This, in turn means that long term bonds, government backed, begin to look less desirable for some of their biggest investors. The big institutional Arabic and Chinese money won’t chase a losing concern which on paper we are. Right now they are, willing or otherwise, propping up our system.

We will be revisiting this theme more in the coming months as this all unravels. For now, the wise thing to do is to hold on to your cash, and hold your breath for the rest. The property market comparison for California is down 28% year on year. It will recover, because property is a finite resource that always will increase in value over the longer term, as long as the whole of society doesn’t crash and burn.

Common sense will prevail, and our economies will more forward, eventually. The amount of damage caused in the interim is going to be in direct proportion to the degree we all keep our nerve.

The Fault Lines

Today in Los Angeles it is over 40 degrees Celsius, which is more than I am comfortable with. I love air conditioning. This is one of the best inventions along with hats and umbrellas when it’s this hot. LA has them all. It is the idea that this place might have to live with heat like this one day in the future without air conditioning that is the subject of this posting.

The reason for fat and flabby is that you don't have to be fit and fast. We have so ordered our world that we have to now find ways to get the exercise and discipline that has always been part of our everyday lives previously. We eat too much and move too little. It hasn't always been like this, and I suspect that this will not always be the case in the future.

We, in the affluent first world have become used to adjusting our world to fit our needs. We simply turn up the heat when it’s cold, the air-cooling when it’s too hot. Too dark and on come the lights, too far away and we get on a car, train, bus or airplane to bring it within reach. This all demands fuel, and that is finite. The primary source for future wars will be conflicting demands for raw materials such as fuel and food.

Will we choose to live less well to be fair to our fellow man? I don’t think we will unless we have to. That’s called losing the next war. It’s the people who were on the losing side who get the raw deal. They don’t get to write the history, or to be at the front of the line to pick up the goody bag.

We met some friends today from the UK in the bright sunshine in the excellent Marmalade café for breakfast. They were commenting on the fact that prices in LA were much higher than a year back. I think they’re right. The dollar’s weakness is beginning to impact on the price of imported goods.

Like most people, America is living in a bubble of suspended reality. We all tend to believe tomorrow is going to be much like today but have no evidence except yesterday to sustain this assumption.
The truth is that tomorrow is never like today. Most days the changes are small but sometimes they are much bigger. It’s a bit like an earthquake fault; many tiny cracks will appear before the big bang rips the place apart. That’s what I believe is happening to the World economy. I don’t expect that we are about to collapse, but I do anticipate a lot of fault lines becoming apparent. If we don’t address the problems we will get very big, potentially uncontrollable problems.

Will we in the old Anglo Saxon alliance sit back if we can’t obtain fuel or food or anything else of substance? I don’t think we will and I believe the rest of the world should be aware of this. I am not saying this makes everything we might do in the future right. Our pragmatism means that we have almost always followed what could be considered our enlightened self-interest. Most often that has turned out to be beneficial for the World community because our moral compass has been aimed in the right direction. That doesn't make us right, but it has generally made us less bad than we might have been. This might not continue to be the case.

Being Unwell

Let me start by saying I am now fine, but one day last week was heavy. I use the term heavy because it sums up what a fright it is when you’re suddenly unwell. I have long been fortunate with my health but yesterday was scary. I will, in fact, not post this blog until a few days have gone past since I want those of you who care to know that I have fully recovered before you read this. I am, in fact, now back to normal, but that day last week was a different story.

It started normally enough, for those of you who have traveled to wonderful foreign parts in a big cruise liner that is. I awoke in my beautiful room on the Golden Princess and looked out over the Mexican town of Mazatlan. I was eager to explore it and went to the bathroom to undertake my ablutions. There was a towel on the floor, I bent to pick it up and that was when the world began to spin on its axis in a most peculiar and undesirable manner. I felt awful, and it was unlike anything I had ever suffered from before.

I nudged my wife and sought help as I collapsed on the bed. She summoned the medical staff who first told her to get me to walk down to the medical center. I was totally incapable of unaided walking, so they sent a nurse with a wheelchair. I would normally do anything rather than allow myself to be wheeled in my pajamas through a shipload of fellow travelers, but somehow none of that mattered.

After arriving in the medical center they quickly took my blood pressure, which was unusually low, as was my heart rate. I then started to feel even worse and they now wheeled me to a more complicated room, full of monitors and curious machinery. But I have to admit I was unable to focus on anything as consciousness begin to ebb and flow. I felt like being violently ill as they were taking blood samples, and started pumping me with saline and injecting me with heart stimulants. I heard them call out my blood pressure readings as I was now being attended by two doctors and a couple of nurses who were simultaneously hooking me up to heart monitors. The readings were the kind of numbers you witness on U.S. television programs like “House” or British counterparts like “Casualty” just before the slap on the electric shock paddles. It wasn’t good. But the good news for me is that they soon got everything going again.

Within a short while my blood pressure started to move towards more reasonable levels and the color apparently came back to my cheeks. To be honest it scared the hell out of everyone in the room. Even the medical staff admitted afterwards that they were very concerned, but not half as concerned as I was when they were using me like a pincushion.

I then had to stay under total observation for twelve hours as a safety measure and then I was allowed back to my cabin. We missed Mazatlan totally and then we had to stay on board when the ship berthed outside Cabo St. Lucas in Baja, California. Do you know what, I couldn’t care less as I am just thrilled to be able to write this and to say thank you to Doctor Mark Mason, and the nurses Mark and Faye who were terrific to me when I needed them to be efficient, cool under pressure and unfailingly honest throughout my small ordeal.

I shall not bother the reader with my medical condition other than to state for the record that luckily there was absolutely no damage to my heart and it was not a heart attack. I’ll still be here, writing for a long while yet.

I would like to say an especially big thank you to my wife, Avril. Without her dealing with this emergency quickly and with great determination it could have all got a lot worse. She was very brave, bright and wonderfully supportive. Sometimes we lose sight of the more important things in life, we look at the bills, or the petty annoyances and people that aggravate and forget what really makes the world go round. My father used to say you’ve got nothing if you haven’t got your health. He was right, and how lucky I am, that today I’m here and I’m back to normal. I’ll sign off by wishing you all well. Tomorrow is another day.

America - Where Did You Go?

There was a moment some time in the recent past when America started to lose its confidence. Years ago it was its friends like me who saw its superficial excellence and thought it great. Americans seemed taller; the girls were blonder, figures more perfect, and eyes bluer, their teeth whiter and straighter. American roads were straighter, longer and wider, the buildings taller, the universities more plentiful and better and more widely accessible to a bigger percentage of the population.

The rest of the world bought into this image and sought to imitate it. As a child my parents rented out half of our small house in London’s West Acton to a U.S. Army Sergeant and his family who were stationed in England. I have always idolized black Americans in uniform, like my kind friend and mentor. The special magic of the man was that he worked in the PX, which was actually the forerunner of American style supermarket culture. These Aladdin’s caves of plenty ushered forth unimagined luxuries for a small boy borne when rationing still prevailed. This tall smiling demigod neighbor supplied me with different flavors of chewing gum that I can still taste. Exotic fruits like pineapple and pomegranates passed my eager lips. I thought America was somewhere to the West of England, but on a higher plane, nearer to heaven.

My uncle Eddie was living in Los Angeles and he would send me more multi flavored gum which I chewed as I avoided the cracks in the sidewalk, dreaming of America as I walked to school. The dominant films the television and the modern music were all pouring out from that shining light across the big shining ocean. We wanted to dress, eat, talk and even walk like Americans.

This started to dissipate when America and the world perceived the Vietnam War to be a mistake. Not many remember the now reviled Domino Theory in which the American State Department declared that if Vietnam fell to the Communists then so would the rest of Asia. The American withdrew in ignominy from Saigon. This was the first time in modern history that America’s step faltered. Many foreign missteps followed, but to my mind, and those of other friends I mostly felt that their motives were honest and well meant. But for those of America’s enemies, who are many, each perceived mistake was seen as an excuse to lambaste everything American.

Now America’s emblematic currency, the once mighty dollar, is openly sneered at everywhere from South America to the Middle Eastern Kasbah. I remember the same happening to the British pound about 30 years ago. It seemed an irredeemable situation for Britain. Like many Brits at the time I thought our country was ungovernable in the late 1970’s. Along came a woman called Margaret Thatcher, and the whole world, starting with the UK, changed for the good. Soon our pounds sterling became strong again, and our economy the envy of the World. The same can happen for America’s dollar.

Based on America’s can do attitude, innate ability and it’s tremendous but momentarily repressed sense of optimism, I believe America is not yet doomed. I also fervently hope that this is the case. The World needs a successful USA to survive and prosper. This, more than any other single factor will probably result in America and the world coming through its present difficulties.

However there might well be bigger, long-term problems to come for which will need an American / European alliance to lead the way forward, out of the mess. There is nothing inherently wrong with the rest of the world but for their inexperience in taking a broader, not totally nationalistic view of our world. Both Europe and America recognize that they must lead the way forward to solve truly global problems with the kind of thinking that leads to a broader, sweeping and strategic plan. In this instance, enlightened self-interest might well be the guiding light for the rest of the world. America must not lose confidence now that the sound of the economic gunfire is getting closer. America, join with Europe and lead.

Being a Consumer

Today this is an unashamed lifestyle blog. Sometimes I think we’re put on this earth to consume. As you look around it does seem that way. Everyone is seemingly consuming food all the time. However I don’t mean to discuss the consumption of food, but the consumption of brands. Before I continue I want to make the point that I know things are just an assembly of atoms in a particular form, but that doesn’t render them any less desirable if you hanker after their particular shape or style, whatever the substance.

I am just as bad as anyone else. I find the latest brand irresistible. I look at my daughter’s IPhone and feel an incredible, almost unbearable compulsion to possess one myself. I don’t know the reason, since I already own a great mobile phone, my trusty BlackBerry, and it e mails better than the IPhone. But does it tell me the traffic conditions on the nearest freeway? No, it does not. Do I need to know these traffic conditions? No, of course not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want the facility.

It has a screen that flips from the horizontal to the vertical, how have I lived without this? I am mystified. It is truly touch screen, not a bit but totally. I think I am falling in love, and it’s the real thing.

Mind you I was equally besotted when I purchased, at enormous expense my Sony Viega 42” plasma flat screen television a few years back. Since that time I bought, for much lesser prices, various makes of LCD flat screen televisions. I know the technical arguments why the plasma screen set should be superior, but the truth is, that to our eyes, the opposite is the truth. In this instance cheaper has proven to be better.

Unashamedly I drive a car that others will consider a gas guzzling car of enormous and conspicuous consumption. It is a top of the line Cadillac CTS Sports Luxury model that makes a wonderfully satisfactory growling noise when you stamp on the accelerator, and takes off like a big scalded cat, faster than almost any other big car. When you are stuck in traffic it makes almost no noise at all, and it’s a bit like sitting in your favorite leather armchair. Of course the computer system contains a TV, DVD player and sat navigation system and does everything else you can imagine except give you a rub down with the latest edition of your chosen girlie magazine. This isn’t a good car, it’s a great driving experience. Now, don’t for a second get this beauty confused with its smaller sister, the crappy Cadillac based on its European sister company car, the Saab. This might look like a slightly smaller version of the Detroit super car, but it’s a fake with a capital F. I drove one as a loan out when my car was being serviced and it’s a travesty that the two models have the same brand name of Cadillac. If you want to drive a Cadillac in Europe insist on the import or don’t bother.

But back to my compulsion to buy the new, the flash, the must have gizmo. I did the same when Bose made their more fitted ear phones for noise reduction or listening to my magnificently designed Apple iPod. This is surely one of the great combinations for enhanced and comfortable listening designed. You can wear and listen through this combination of kit for an entire London to Los Angeles air trip and feel no discomfort. Sometimes buying the desirable is also the wisest course.

My Name is Andre

There is nothing much better than being spoiled, other than being spoiled rotten. Yesterday was one of those good days. Holiday turned into a positive pleasure when I was taken aboard a beautiful ship, the Golden Princess, by my lovely family, and dispatched to the Mexican Riviera.

Everything is very wonderful on this ship as it sails to points South except for a video show stuck on the words, “Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, my name’s Andre….” It is playing endlessly in one of the numerous bars despite my repeated requests to the ever smiling, ever friendly crew. I guess its one of those Stepford Wives kind of moments you sometimes experience on a place this well ordered and maintained. Every time I reported this problem to one of the crew they smile, tell me they will immediately deal with the problem, and then, when nothing happens immediately one soon becomes a bit agitated.

Eventually Andre stops greeting me, and it is a great relief, for both Andre and myself, and all the other people in this otherwise quieter area.

The other thing of interest, and I should be charging Apple for this, is the never ending number of people, particularly men, who stop, stare and then ask questions about my MacBook Air. It seems as if everyone wants one.

On the brighter side for those of you not here, is that the weather isn’t so great, but I’m hopeful that this will improve by tomorrow. For now its pina colada time.

Brit TV Rules America - OK?

There was a time when Britain produced some of the best television programs in the World. Everyone recognized this fact but the truth is that it didn’t sell too well in America. The BBC used to regularly pretend that it did. But the facts portrayed a different picture. Yes, “Masterpiece Theater” was on Public Service television, however it didn’t impinge on the wider consciousness of America. This audience might have been getting a diluted flavor of England’s culture from the derivatives of “Till Death Do Us Part” with the American, homogenized version, “All in the Family”, and a similar transfer occurred with “Sanford & Son” which had its genesis with Britain’s comedy classic “Steptoe and Son”. However the truth was that our cultural and programming clout in the States was minimal. We simply didn’t get their culture in its broadest sense. Even though this tradition continues to prosper with the stateside version of “The Office” it still is not accepted across America as mass market.

This changed completely within the last few years when not only did the Brits begin to hold their own on television, but actually started to dominate the TV jungle. Oddly, it was when Britain started producing real mainstream, low brow mass market entertainment television shows such as “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, and “The Weakest Link”. British telly became a totally dominant force with the advent of “American Pop Idol” and all the Simon Fuller, Simon Cowell originated shows that flowed from this inspiration. They took vertical and horizontal integration of an old Variety entertainment format to a new level and it worked all over the world, but particularly in the States.

Much cheaper than drama to stage per minute, but engaging the audience with the real life “journey” of the variety of different contestants who interact with each other, the stylized jury and the voting TV audience. The jury has its villain, its fair guy and its kind Aunty and the proceedings are always watched over by an amusing and witty master of ceremonies who represents fair play for the audience.

Strange and more than a little sad isn’t it, that after all those years of elitist but wonderful Britain trying to force feed the world its high end culture it was England’s end of the pier fun, mass market entertainment that finally conquered the world.

Service With A Smile

Have you ever spent a day shopping and relaxing in Los Angeles? The rest of the world could still learn some lessons. My day started by our parking in The Grove. This is a purpose built, almost Disney type shopping experience for adults. It is so clean, efficient and excellent that you would think it would be hateful and undesirable. Instead of which we parked in the pristine parking lot, which was spotlessly clean and had a choice of descending the immaculately clean stairway, the pristine escalators or the bank of efficient elevators. I chose the escalators and passed lobby areas in which chaps were lounging on settees using the free wifi connections to their laptops.

Arriving at the bottom of the escalator I journeyed less than ten yards and there was a small group of fantastically lithe and well endowed young mothers, complete with new born babies in front of them, doing jumps on the spot. The results were so fantastically pneumatic that I found myself walking into the nearest wall before I was rescued. I quietly uttered the words, “Thank God for California!”

I ate a fantastic breakfast in the sunshine in the same kind of environment. I then went to a bookstore and was looking around when a staff member enquired if `I needed any assistance. I hadn’t bothered them about my wistful search for a book I had no right to find, having forgotten its title, author or year of publication. The ultra efficient, friendly and helpful staff would not be deterred by any of this and found and ordered me this book in a couple of minutes. This is not the service you would get in the UK, or anywhere else in Europe. We still have a lot to learn.

During the day I found unfailing courtesy in restaurants, parking lots, schools and a kids swimming lesson I attended. It wasn’t phony and it was extremely pleasant.

I visited an exceptionally good faith school and the standards were tremendously high. Every school in the UK would do well to imitate it if the children I saw were examples of what can be achieved with well-motivated parents, teachers and kids.

The swimming class was part of a business run by a five time Olympic gold medalist, attended by two of my grand children. I know a bit about swimming but I thought this swimming school was on a whole different level to anything I’ve ever seen before. I am sure there will be many future champions who will come out of this training method. The school was staffed by an excellent team of trainers who really knew what they were doing, and could communicate this to the children of different levels of ability and age that they were training.

All day I heard no one swear, I didn’t see anyone litter, and everyone I met was courteous. This resulted in making the experience of the day much more pleasant. I don’t see anything wrong with any of this and would love to see some of these aspects of life spread to Europe.

A Cold Front Coming?

I am very jet lagged having just arrived in L.A. after that long flight from London. In California the sun is shining, my family are well and even my lap top is working properly! The last time I was here, about 6 months before the sub-prime banking situation unrolled I wrote articles about what was happening, warning of an impending financial disaster of epic proportion. I discussed this with European bankers, economists and political friends, but the size of the financial tsunami wasn’t truly grasped by an of them. I think it still has not been understood. If our leaders deal with this firmly and immediately it can be kept to a recession that we can come out of in a year or two, but if it’s not managed we could tip over into a full blown depression not seen since the last world war. They are still talking about doing the right things, but are not yet doing them.

People in the USA seem, on first sight to have the same problems and worries that exist in Europe. The recession is biting. Prices on a variety of items are going up. Values of housing are going down. Businesses are not paying bills as fast as they should or they were. The results are obvious, individuals and organisations that operated nearer to the margins are going bust. People are cutting back, even here in LA there are all the signs of nervousness, and it’s in a more advanced stage of economic downtown with a seemingly steeper angle of decline.

Projecting just a little bit forward it’s a near certainty that the geographic locations that profited the most in the property driven price explosion offered by sub-prime finance will suffer the most disastrous falls. Florida and California are these places and the chickens are already coming home to roost. Within an hour or two of arrival I was told of a friend who had purchased a desirable residence at auction, previously valued at $800,000 he got the place for a little under half!

So, for every loser in a slump there are those who gain. There is an old adage that states, when America sneezes the rest of the world gets a cold. Well, to me its evident that America has a cold, does this mean we’re all going to suffer pneumonia?

Already the leaders of the world’s richest economies, the G7, have been meeting to figure out ways that they might meet this challenge. They’re applying pressure on the big financial institutions to keep money flowing but they are doing too little too late. The big banks who were all more than ready to profit from the sub prime bubble, easy credit that got us to this situation seem unwilling to do anything to help get us out of the hole their greed helped create. They are going to have to be made to do so, today, as tomorrow could be too late.

It isn’t yet a disaster for the general world economy, but we’re near the precipice.

Still Fighting

There are very few openly pro Jewish and pro Israel politicians in the UK. There are many in the USA. Is this because there are too few Jews in the UK to count politically whereas there is a critical mass of more than 6 million Jewish people in America, not afraid to make themselves clearly heard? Or, could it be, there are many non-Jewish people who would take a Philo Semitic stance based on the facts, but are scared to do so in the UK as there are perceived to be a very voluble contrary group here, namely the Muslim community?

Many people are terribly afraid to defend Israel especially when it’s been hard to do so against a rising current of hate and vitriol.

Recently there had been more than a whiff of anti-Semitism in the way some members of Britain’s Labour party had described leading Conservative and Jewish politicians Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin, particularly in their printed material.

There has recently been major political debate about Britain’s faith schools. The point has been made that Islamic schools should employ a more inclusive curriculum, taught in English as Jewish faith schools do. Of course Islamic schools could teach prayers in Arabic just as Jewish schools teach their prayers in Hebrew.

There is in Britain a commonly accepted perception amongst Jewish people that there was and remains a lack of impartiality at the BBC where it concerns Israel. Whilst we all recognise that there is some desire among certain areas of the Corporation’s leadership to correct this imbalance there is a long way to travel before our desire for the BBC’s impartial destination is reached.

We shall shortly be celebrating Israel’s 60th birthday and all those who have fallen to defend her. It is amazing how much this little country has achieved in that short time, and despite all the odds against it. We can all be proud of Israel and her people. They have done remarkably well in almost impossible conditions.

Despite this the British academics again seek to sever connections with Israel’s universities. Of course this ban is abhorrent to any right thinking person. How can anyone protect the right of the Palestinians by taking away the rights of academic congress with Israel? Even Palestinian academics have argued against this ban and were joined by every British newspaper. Even normally anti Israel papers such as the Independent have been firm in their rejection of this ban,

Ask yourself how this ban would be communicated if Israel were really ostracised. You wouldn’t be able to do so without Israeli technology in your mobile phone, nor would you be able to send an email since the processor in your computer is likely to have been designed in Israel, and a great many other technologies were produced in Israel and so on. Who loses if Israel were ever cut off from this country? Probably this country.

This type of ban and the logic for it has no basis in reality. What it’s really about is anti-Zionism and it borders on anti-Semitism. Does anyone seriously believe the spurious reasoning behind this ban? If they were then why is there no ban on academic centres in countries like China for what they did and still do in Tibet or Tiananmen Square. How about Iran, Syria, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Burma and thirty or forty other countries for their abuses of human rights, torture, arrest without trial etc?

We deal with insidious anti-Semitism posing as anti-Zionism all the time. I make it my business to fight it wherever it appears. It is awful that I have to report that this situation is worsening all the time. You would be upset and perhaps as horrified as me to witness this in all its abhorrent forms. Suffice it to say students are being victimised and bullied purely because they are Jewish. I have received threats, and I am not alone, for having the temerity to state that there is another point of view.

Even some Student Unions have joined in this behaviour resulting in a wide variety of insults, physical assaults, threats and intimidation. Remember I am not talking about pre-war Berlin, but present day Britain.

It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between extreme Islamic radical student groups; a hard left union agenda and unreasoning, unceasing and total hatred of anything Israeli. Presently there is some potential for a peace deal in the Middle East. Even some hard line terrorist groups have ceased, albeit begrudgingly and temporarily, attacking Israel; but not the AUT. They choose now to continue their attacks on Israel. What it means is that Israel can never do right in their eyes. There really does appear to be two sets of rules, one for every other country and another for Israel. In addition one feels compelled to ask if the overt racism being experienced by Jewish people in the UK today, particularly in our university campuses would be acceptable if visited on any other racial group. Sadly we know the answer. We have to put a stop to this.

Three hundred and fifty years in this country and we are still fighting.

Being a Liberal

Liberally Jewish

Most of you reading this blog are not Jewish, in fact, for sure, the majority of the group reading this are not Liberal Jews, the group I take pride in belonging to. Some call this Jewish lite. I am not a religious person. I am what I was born into, racially and tribally Jewish, but not a believer in a man or woman with flowing robes on a mountain top, bearded or otherwise. For me if there is a deity it is the good within us all, and the Devil might be the opposite.

Liberal Judaism in the UK has about ten or eleven thousand official adherents. We are small enough a group to be both vertically and horizontally integrated but big enough to be a pain in everyone else’s ideological butt.

I want to see our World being full of love and good people, even when sometimes the logic tells us that the glass is half empty. We need to steer our movement through what promises to be uncharted territory, unlike what has gone before.

There is a common theme running through recent Jewish and Israeli history. This is that there are many terrible and unrelenting enemies of us as Jews, and Israel as a nation. I don’t want to rehearse all the well-trodden paths that most of you are aware of. I will just mention three recent happenings.

During the French riots there have been a very large number of anti-Semitic attacks that both the French Government and the official Jewish representative bodies deny are linked.

The next major incident I want you to consider took place in Bulgaria, a country that very recently joined the European Union. One of their major elected parties publicly stated that their country needed to rid itself of all its Jews. It then went on to list fifteen hundred Bulgarian Jews and their addresses on their web site. The message was clear, here they are, go and get them.

Last and by no means least there is the infamous speech by the President of Iran calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. Imagine how the world would react if a Jewish or Israeli leader called for an Islamic state to be wiped out just because it was Islamic?

When I was getting married many years ago my good friend, Rabbi Lew, told me he would like to see me more at our shaul, then in Dean Street, Central London. It was orthodox and I was the third generation of Klinger who was a member. I felt somewhat embarrassed to tell him that I felt a terrible hypocrite to arrive at the synagogue having to drive because of the distance, and then discreetly park my car. He responded by saying that he wasn’t the Lord’s policeman, but he would like to see me. It struck me as a common sense that the Almighty might well applaud.

I suppose that kind of reasoning is what brought me to Liberal Judaism. Faith coloured by common sense and a feeling for the times we live in. I believe that you will see Liberal Judaism begin to really grow in numbers and vigour. I also believe that as a paradoxical defensive reflex the ultra orthodox movement will grow even faster and bigger in the Diaspora. The real squeeze will be on the former middle ground conformists whose assimilation into a larger heterogeneous society will make them vanish. Their beliefs will result in their own demise. How can they live with the moral dichotomy of their children “marrying out” if they are not inclusive of their grand children?

I believe Liberal Judaism will continue to succeed in exporting its message of inclusiveness; involvement and engagement to the wider, surrounding community and that this will grow and prosper.

Statistics suggests that the British United synagogue membership (similar to the American Conservative movement) is fairly static, Reform numbers are in the doldrums in many respects but the Charedi is growing very fast. It has the high birth rate, the fundamental belief, and seemingly the answers that gets recruits. It looks as though these ultra orthodox people that some consider a throwback to life in Middle Europe in the nineteenth century, might well number between 20 to 40% of all those in the UK who consider themselves Jewish.

This brings one neatly to the other side of this argument. This is really the problem, the very large and increasing number of Jews who don’t count themselves as Jewish. Those that don’t belong to or contribute in any way to any branch of organized Judaism. The folks that might just join a synagogue when they’re getting a bit older and they start to think about not being buried in a Jewish piece of consecrated ground. What a great shame that they only want to be Jewish when they’re dead!

I think that we in Liberal Judaism can, does and should continue to reach out, to reclaim some living Jewish life from people who might yet welcome some of our warmth, our Jewishness, our love. There’s just the chance that being positive will find a receptive audience with a great many people who are looking to place themselves back in the bosom of their faith. Let’s welcome them home, it’s warm inside.

Chocolate Drops for Dogs

Travel used to be fun. It has become progressively less like fun, and more like punishment with every passing year. Here are just a few incidents that stand out in my mind demonstrating how things have changed. They don’t necessarily show all was sweetness and light, but at least you didn’t get shot for making a joke.

My friend Mike was returning to the States, where he had moved. The Customs man asked to see inside his bag and found a tin of “Good Boy Chocolate Drops For Dogs”. The officer raised the tin and asked Mike what the can contained, “Good Boy Chocolate Drops for Dogs.” Mike responded, “And, what exactly, are they?” the man enquired with great suspicion, Mike responded that they were “Chocolate drops for my pet dog;” quite reasonably, as this is what they were. The man was not happy and he asked again, “And what precisely are good boy chocolate drop for dogs?” Mike then made the fatal mistake of presuming that somewhere within the uniform lurked a human being, “I’ll tell you what officer, if you’re a good boy I’ll give you one.”

After Mike was arrested it was only a few hours before the confusion was cleared up and the innocent dog treats were returned from the laboratory.

There was the time I was walking through the customs and immigration at New Jersey airport with my friend, who I shall call Henry Cohen. We were talking and then I turned to ask him something as we were both at the barriers but he had vanished. It was only later, after we had both been thoroughly questioned that we discovered the reason for this separation. Both of us had lived and worked legally in the States and returned to the UK after a few years. Apparently it was unheard of for Brits like us to do this and therefore we were suspicious. It was a lot worse for Henry than me. I was simply locked in a white room and placed under a little pressure to see if my story of having moved back to Blighty checked out. Henry received a telephone call to his otherwise empty locked room. He picked it up and a voice introduced himself as an Internal Revenue officer of the Federal Government. The officer asked Henry if his name was Henry Albert Cohen, to which he responded that this was his name. The officer then accused Henry of not paying due taxes in the period between his leaving the States and the day of his arrest. Henry tried to persuade the officer that he no longer lived in the States and therefore wasn’t due to pay any tax. The officer wouldn’t listen and went on to tell Henry that as these taxes were estimate to be in the region of $600,000 they had confiscated his home in Phoenix, Arizona as a penalty. Something stopped Henry saying the obvious thing, which was that he had never owned a house in Arizona, because he just wanted to get out of the place. I remember a phone call from Henry’s jail cell in which he was advised to say yes to anything just to be able to get out of the place. They did release him and he flew back to the UK as fast as the big bird would fly him home. Eventually the authorities admitted that neither of us had done anything wrong, but as ever, the presumption had been we must have done so. I guess we just didn’t fit the pattern.

Another two occasions were linked. Again my friend Mike was involved. We were taking our small film crew, him, me and one other, down to the Cannes film festival. We didn’t have much money so we were using my car and a rented caravan to get to the South of France and carry all our equipment. Knowing the French were very officious we were careful to obtain all the carnets and proper documentation to clear through customs. It took a few weeks of running around and filling in forms but eventually we were ready to run the gauntlet. The English customs first checked we had all the necessary papers before we got on the ferry at Dover. We then sailed and were blissfully aware of the trouble to come. On landing the French customs asked to see the various color carnets for our film, camera and sound equipment, transport which we were able to show with great alacrity. They then asked for our orange carnet. This was the one color in the rainbow we didn’t have. I tried, in my best French to enquire what was the purpose of this hitherto unknown carnet. I was told it was to prevent us selling our hired equipment and leaving it in France as an illegal import.

This being a Sunday it proved impossible to get anyone from the British government authorities to explain to their French counterparts that we didn’t own the equipment and would vouch we couldn’t or wouldn’t try to sell it. The French came up with a Gallic compromise. If we were to provide a Bond for about $100,000 they would forego the additional carnet. It’s also pretty difficult to obtain a bond on a weekend when you can’t reach anyone on the telephone from a French customs hall in a remote port. Much as we tried the best we were able to do was obtain a promise from friends at home that they would do as was necessary first thing the next day. In the meantime the French authorities locked our caravan up in their customs hall, which meant we had to go and sleep without our beds or food, both in the caravan, on the side of the road outside of town.

The next morning we were able to generate the bond and release our goods and we then went on to make our film. About four weeks later we were on our way home. We stopped on the road overlooking the port, determined not to suffer any more with the French authorities. We decided to wait until the last possible moment before the ship sailed and drive at top speed onto the ferry. We executed the maneuver perfectly, arriving on board with screeching brakes, as the sailors were about to pull away from the harbor.

We were young, and easily impressed with our bravado as we sat in the bar and toasted our small victory. On arriving at Dover the British customs officer asked us if we had anything to declare. We answered in the negative but something made my colleague say, “except for the heroin in the lighting equipment.” before he finished with this poor joke the officer was ordering the stripping down of our vehicle. It was a great many hours later before we could arrange a garage to help us re-assemble the vehicle and we could leave.

For some reason my name seems to crop up on every computer when it comes to security checks. I don’t think my middle aged, middle European look could be the reason, so I checked out why I always get stopped with a friend in the security world. He came back with the response that the only reason he could discover was that there had been a female German terrorist with a similar name many years ago and that this triggered the computer programs to check me out. Every time they tell anyone to take off their shoes I am included, and every time they want to look up any spare orifice I am selected. Perhaps I have the look of the gender reassigned?

This all reached a crescendo when I was traveling back from LA to London a couple of years ago. I had received a hard earned upgrade to business class and was one of the first to walk down the jet ramp. I was just about to enter the plane when four huge security guys encircled me. Perhaps memory makes them so big, but they were jumbo size, wearing aviator shades and guns at the hip, short sleeve button down shirts and don’t mess with me attitude all over their faces. They were scary guys. The pack leader looked me in the eye and asked, “What has been the purpose of your trip to the States?” “Business.” I responded. “I’ll ask you again, what was the purpose of your trip?” Now I was feeling a bit nervous, so I slightly adjusted my response, “”Well I did see some family and friends, so there was some pleasure as well.” He sneered a bit to his colleagues as the other passengers walked past me, looking at us as if I were a senior terrorist. The officers ushered me to the other end of the walkway, where no one could overlook us. “What would I find if we were to look under your right trouser leg?” “My right ankle.” I responded with a clear grasp of my anatomical realities. “I shall ask you again, have you anything unusual on your right ankle?” I now realized they were looking for a man, who must have many similarities to me, plus something odd about his right ankle. I thought about it for a moment and bent to roll up my trouser leg but was halted in this purpose when the officer shifted nervously. I got the impression that if I didn’t do this satisfactorily I was about to get jumped on by four very big men carrying enough guns for a small war. I rolled up my trouser leg and everyone, including me, had a good look. There it was, one pale, slightly hairy leg, with no unusual markings. The atmosphere immediately lifted, “thank you sir.” He said with a big smile, “have a nice flight.” I rejoined the other passengers who were still viewing me as if my surname was Bin Laden.

So traveling has long had its complications, and this remains the case. Remember the cardinal rule, don’t make jokes with the customs and immigration officer, they have no sense of humor. Or perhaps just don’t travel with me!

Another BRIC in the Wall

What is the BRIC? It is the acronym for the four big, new economically surging power countries, the future super powers. They are Brazil, Russia, India and China. Here I am about to argue that despite economic arguments in their favor, I don’t agree that they should already be considered in this category.

All four of these countries have been growing into powerhouses throughout the latest period of global growth. Now they, like the first world, face a different scenario. In this new situation we all face decreasing growth, and maybe even a sustained recession. My bet is that we are going to have to face the latter, and if this is mishandled, it could be a whole lot worse.

There are reasons for these countries to have been doing so well during the last ten years of growth. The first world’s boom was built on explosive consumerism and the BRIC economies supplied those needs, be that the manufacturing capacity of the Chinese or the raw materials, like oil and gas of the Russians or the call centers and technological services of India. Without such need there is a concomitant decrease in demand.

There are other, bigger reasons for the problems that lay ahead for these economies and they are less obvious, but perhaps even more pertinent. Chief amongst these problems is the lack of democracy in China. How can there be economic freedom in a society lacking political and personal freedom? I am unable to name any country from history in which this has been sustained. From history you can predict the future with almost total certainty. China, in its present form, cannot be a long-term economic power. Something will have to give.

Like many others I am horrified by how the Chinese Government is treating Tibet. However it is not their behavior that surprises me. What is really shocking is how their Ministers appear on television without the self -realization that the rest of the world is horrified. Like all totalitarian regimes they are unable to see themselves in the global mirror. It is an unworkable dichotomy to imagine you can have a fault line within a country that promotes central control for all things except aspects of business. In fact, the truth is that freedom in business demands a great deal of freedom in society. The Chinese bureaucracy is almost certainly an unintended invitation to widespread endemic corruption. If there are vast riches to be gained, and they come through a state controlled tap then the controller of that tap is going to become seriously rich and powerful. Long term there is a fault line in this economic model so wide that the resulting earthquake could damage our whole world when it blows.

India is a different story. It is the biggest democracy in the world, but it is not an efficient democracy working like anything we know in the western world. It is no worse for this except where it comes to long-term efficiencies. Although there is a growing middle class in India, there are also huge social inequalities and almost feudal social economics in play. This model can work if there is continual growth in wealth, which takes everyone’s collective mind off their plight in other areas. Again, India, like China, is going to suffer huge growing pains that could well result in massive social upheaval and this might lead to breakdowns in the present social order.

Home grown consumerism can ameliorate the damage this inevitable changing of gears will cause as the world economy shudders into neutral, perhaps reverse, but it won’t make it vanish.

Brazil and Russia both have some similarities to each other. They each possess large populations of able and dexterous people but above all they are rich in resources. The Russians are prepared to bully anyone that doesn’t meet their price but that can backfire badly when the boot is on the other foot and economies contract. Some people regard Brazil as being almost ungovernable. Russia is now governed by their new Tsar, Mister Putin and has become a giant and corrupt oligarchy that he controls. It is a gangster state.

Will these BRIC economic tigers prosper, or is their flame going to flicker and die? My belief is that they are going to have to reform or they will inevitably fail in the longer term. We should do all we can to help them succeed in this process for the benefit of us all.

Faith

Faith and why we must maintain it!

In Jerusalem, a female journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Wailing Wall in to pray, three times a day, every day, for a long, long time; so she went to check it out.

The journalist went to the Wailing Wall and there he was. She watched this dignified, obviously holy man pray; and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, she approached him for an interview.

"I'm Rebecca Smith from the BBC. Sir, how long have you been coming to the wall and praying?"

"For about 60 years." He responded, “Three time a day, every day for 60 years.”

"60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?" Ms. Smith asked.

"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews, and the Muslims. I pray for all the hatred to stop and I pray for all our children to grow up in safety and friendship."

"How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?"

"Like I'm talking to a f…ing brick wall!!!"

Why We Went Full Circle

Full Circle is a film that tells the poignant tale of a son and his unrelenting investigation to find his lost father and 68 fellow submariners. “The Men of the INS Dakar – Never Forgotten”.

This is what they call a passion project, a film that has no right to exist, and should have stopped production a thousand times. It has taken me more than 8 years to make, which is much longer than films I made that were much bigger and more complex on the surface. How could a little feature length documentary be harder to make than other, much bigger films I had a role in producing like, “Gold” or “Shout at the Devil” or “The Kids are Alright?”

It’s a film about Jewish people that’s how! We Jews are, as a group, difficult, stiff necked and opinionated, and I include myself in this description, and that results in some very interesting moments along the filmmaking path. But now I am back full time in film producing I want to make films that show Jewish people as heroes, as fellow human beings, without the need for us to be caricatures or apologists for our very existence. Perhaps this could best be described as a Jewish response to the Victorian concept of muscular Christianity. I have long thought that Jews use our successes as a defense mechanism rather than as a positive example of our abilities and humanity. I intend to do my bit to change this, whilst still making entertaining films, being careful to make sure that the message is sublimated in exciting and interesting plots.

In 1968, submariner Dan Manor was lost at sea with 68 fellow submariners. Dan was returning home to Israel aboard the INS Dakar to see his newborn son Arnon, when tragedy struck. Midway across the Mediterranean, communication was lost, and a year later the Dakar’s emergency buoy washed up on the Egyptian coastline. The crew were no longer missing, but lost at sea.

We follow Arnon’s emotional, compulsive journey from London, to LA to Cyprus to Israel and then to sea. Always driven to answer questions, to close the circle. We accompany the families of the lost crew, the deep-water salvage adventure that finally returns the Dakar with her tragic history back to Israel.

The film was produced in Israel, at sea, in the USA, the UK and Cyprus. Several hundred hours of material were filmed and we the cooperation of a huge number of people was essential; most especially some very wonderful folks at the Israel Navy, their Defence Ministry, the Israel Consulate in New York and the Royal Naval Museum in Gosport and last, but certainly not least the men and women of the fantastic salvage company crew, from the Nauticos Corporation.

Whenever Arnon and I have crossed swords, and that is not an altogether unique occurrence and I threaten to quit he or I remind ourselves that we are not making this film for us, but for the men who will never get to see it, the lost sailors of the Israel navy.

The INS Dakar was originally named the HMS Totem, a World War II “T-class” submarine. In 1945 the Cowichan Tribe in Canada presented the submarine with a totem pole. As long as the small totem sailed with her, it was said she would come to no harm. In 1967, the HMS Totem was sold to the Israeli Navy, refurbished and renamed Dakar. Part of the process was to remove the totem pole.

The 9 January 1968 saw the Dakar sail its maiden voyage to Haifa via Gibraltar. Throughout transit, Dakar regularly transmitted her position to HQ - until communications suddenly and inexplicably ceased. On 27 January, a Cypriot radio station received a distress call on the frequency of Dakar’s emergency buoy. No further traces of the submarine were communicated.

The submarine’s disappearance fuelled rumors and theories surrounding the whereabouts of the crew and craft. It was believed that some of the submariners aboard were alive but being held in secret captivity based at a Russian gulag. Other theories suggested that the Dakar was attacked and sunk by Israel’s enemies. There were even rumours of mutiny, American revenge for the loss of their spy ship, the Liberty during the Six Day War, or had it been something more prosaic?


Throughout a more than thirty-year period, numerous search missions were launched extensively searching different parts of the Mediterranean. On 9 February 1969, a year after the Dakar disappeared, a fisherman found her stern emergency buoy marker washed up on the coast of Khan Yunis, a town southwest of Gaza. As a result, experts believed that the Dakar was 50-70 nautical miles off her planned route. This deduction was unfortunately inaccurate, and misled searchers for decades.

It was not until April 1999 that a search effort was concentrated along the path of the original route once Rear Admiral Gideon Raz was appointed as head of the new committee.

In May 1999, Admiral Raz hired Nauticos Corporation – the very same company who found and filmed the Titanic. Using advanced technology and a highly qualified team of forensic, salvage, and operations experts. Suddenly, dramatically, they located the Dakar in the Mediterranean Sea. She was found at a depth of 10,000 feet. In October 2000, using the latest technology the Dakar’s bridge and conning tower were successfully raised out of the deep blue sea and delivered home to her originally intended destination at her home naval base in Haifa. Now the Dakar is proudly on display and forms part of a tribute to her crew.

Dakar is a familiar word for Israelis – a large number of cities and towns have a Dakar Street, and several schools and other public institutions are also named in memory of the submarine. On Mount Herzel in Jerusalem, within Israel's national and military cemetery, there is a monument to the Dakar and her crew. Sixty-nine names are engraved on a submarine-like tomb. Dan Manor’s name is one of them.

Every year, on the Hebrew date, 7th of Adar, Israel mourns and remembers her missing soldiers, airmen and sailors. Among those who will always be remembered are Dakar's sixty-nine men.

Full Circle was graced with the expertise of many talented and professional individuals. Leading the team and maintaining the documentary’s unique vision was key throughout the seven-year production process and remaining focused with teams in four different countries was no minor feat. We brought together the key elements of the why, when and where surrounding this tale. Similarly, our interviewees were crucial in the piecing together of the events as well as providing an essential view perspective of the submariner relative.

When Arnon Manor and I got to know each other almost a decade ago, the film was an unrealised lifelong passion of Arnon’s, which, I am proud to say; together we made into a reality.

That son of the missing submariner, Arnon Manor, is my son-in law. This film concludes his 32-year search for the father he never knew. As I say in the film, he searches for his father and in doing so I believe he finds himself. I am proud to have helped him take this journey. I think it is an inspiration to us all that Israel never walks away from its sons and daughters lost in that seemingly unending struggle for survival. Through it all it retains and demonstrates its humanity by never letting go, never stopping in its searching and its striving, no matter what the cost in time or money.

I did make a promise to a man I could never meet, my unknown mishboocha, that I would tell his story with and for his son, and now our common grand children. So it’s an intensely personal experience of filmmaking. I am in it to explain our extraordinary story, as is Arnon, my wife Avril even makes a fleeting appearance, as do my grand children (you will recognise them as they are spectacularly beautiful and clever!) and my beautiful daughter, Sarah. Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman have been compared to our Sarah, but Keira, Natalie, you’re lovely girls, but get serious.

Full Circle has been a tough yet touching documentary to produce, and maybe to watch. I suppose a measure of its success in the preview screenings so far is that when I turn around a great many of the audience is crying.

“We have a unique film, which works at a deeply poignant level, and that poignancy inspires the adventure. These guys really care, all of them, and you can’t help but be affected by that.”

As Arnon said, “It’s been hellish difficult at times and emotionally draining, but a privilege nonetheless. This is a story, which had to be told for all families, anywhere, who ever lost someone”.

I think Arnon’s story is for every man and woman, it’s universal, it’s about hope against all odds and all the evidence, redemption, never giving up, and finally, it’s about love.

If you want to find out more about me or the film please feel free to check out

www.fullcirclemovie.com

Lions Led by Donkeys

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?" Hillel, Pirkei Avot, 1:14

If you live in the UK do you notice that there are more holes in the road? I believe this is an indication of the whole of our beautiful island going to pot. We simply seem to have lost the will to keep up appearances. It would be funny if it were not so serious.

At first there were small indications of a general decay. You will remember them starting with the proliferation of graffiti, which, to more liberal tastes, was termed street art. It is not street art, it is someone without a brain and too much time on their hands thinking that a spare piece of wall, or a railway carriage is more fun to play paint on than a piece of paper.

The decline in the UK took other, more serious form when our once wonderful, world leading National Health Service, began to seriously deteriorate. I don’t mean that the science and the doctoring suddenly became worse, I mean that the wards were not being cleaned properly, and once spotless hospitals where you could have eaten off the floor became, instead, dirt infested germ generators. Sometimes it seems from the terrifying statistics that you’re as likely to get ill or die from the germs in the wards as you are from the illnesses that brought you to the hospital in the first place. In this instance, as in many others, it is not lack of funding that has been the problem; it is the almost ruinously bad management of the increased spending.

The same applies to other major capital projects in the UK. We just built one of the biggest airport terminals in the World, Terminal 5 at Heathrow. It looks fantastic, and it is designed to meet a capacity of an additional 30 million passengers a year or more. They built this giant edifice over a period of years at a cost exceeding $10 billion. Everything was great until it opened for business about a week ago. Immediately the baggage system, touted as the most advanced in the world did not work. There are about 20,000 lost bags. British Airways have still not reunited all the passengers with all the bags. How could this happen unless the management is awful?

When the British go to war they are regarded as amongst the best fighting men and women in the world. The British don’t miss too many wars, and their fighting men are known for their bravery and efficiency. Presently the British are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once again the service men are proving to be excellent at their difficult and dangerous jobs. What has also been noticeable is the fact that their weapons and support equipment has been sub standard and in short supply. This is clearly the result of bad strategic planning and management. As the German High Command commented of the British soldiers in the First World War, “They are lions led by donkeys.” Nothing much seems to have changed in nearly one hundred years.

The railways and underground service in London are in perpetual repair, despite the expenditure of many more billions of pounds. When will this ever end? Despite all this fixing and modernizing and re-inventing the service is still often delayed, and subject to myriad disruptions.

The roads have had huge and never-ending investment to give much needed improvements, but still we have endless tailbacks and increasing gridlock. No one you meet can remember a time when there were so many holes in these roads that were supposed to be improving. There are no days when we don’t have announcements of long delays on various roads and other means of transportation. I can name the roads today that will be accident bound next Monday, and the next day and so on without end. Monday, April 14th. 2008 I predict that there will be an accident between Junction 25 and 28 of the M25, there will also be some kind of incident on the North Circular Road, another traffic hold up between the junction of the M11 and M25, a further hold up in the road works on the M1 near Hemel Hempstead, another similar problem on the M6 and I could go on. If I can work out that these are incidents waiting to happen why can’t the management of our country? Instead of scrabbling around to patch up these obvious fault lines why not focus on getting them fixed properly?

The reasons are obvious to me. Our government is so concerned in micro-managing our lives they have lost sight of their real job, managing the running of our country. They need to get our civil service back to being civil and a service, they need to stop looking for ways to tell us what to do, how to eat, to drive and how to learn. They have self evidently got all of these disastrously wrong. It is interesting to share with you the information that there is a town in Holland called Drachten where they removed all the road signs, traffic lights, and road markings and instead of the accident rate going up it went down, so did the number of traffic jams and that can only be good. How about our government using their collective brain and following this example instead of wasting our time and money on hugely inefficient management.

Sorry

I owe my blogees an apology for my failure to post a blog yesterday. It was prepared, I promise, but my router went absent without leave and my access to the net went with it. This was worsened by the fact that I had this checked a couple of days before when I was trying to discover why my new Mac Air, on which I am writing this blog, wouldn’t connect to the net.

Yes, isn’t life grand, a new router, recently checked, a new laptop, top of the line, and the whole bloody thing doesn’t bloody work. I am thrilled. When I rang my service provider for an urgent call out they told me that would cost me more, it being an emergency. I reminded them about my warranties for the new equipment, and the fact that they supposedly had checked this equipment all out just days ago. They told me they could come tomorrow, for a regular charge, was that OK?

You probably have all sorts of replies I could have used, but in the final analysis you need this stuff to work, so you swallow hard, tell them to go ahead, and find new service providers and guess what, they will be just the same.

I shall do my best to resume normal service tomorrow, or as soon as the connections all work again, by which time I shall be on my way to the USA from where I shall be attempting to keep my blogs flowing without interruption, but don’t bet too heavily on it.

A Tribute

Earlier this week the great film star Charlton Heston passed away in his Beverly Hills home. I want to pay a small personal tribute to the man and a selected few others for their help to me when I was making my first professional film, The Festival Game. I was 19 years old, and together with my producing, directing partner, Michael Lytton, was making this documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the year that Easy Rider was released, and the whole world was going hippy and smoking joints and playing some really great music.

Michael and I realized that it was essential we had interviews with some major stars or our film wouldn’t find distribution. We were let down by a Persian banker who had his office in Paris. He vanished when I went to collect the production money. We were left holding the financial risk. The film was costing us a lot of money we didn’t have. We were desperate.

We drew up a list of “must have” stars that we would somehow get to appear in our no budget movie. Amongst them were Charlton Heston, Omar Sharif, Yul Brenner, Peter Ustinov, Malcolm McDowell, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. By hook and by crook we got the lot.

Sharif took a liking to our chutzpah, in which we had given ourselves Passes made out to ourselves as “The Official British TV New Team” and on which we had stamped, “please allow this crew total access to all areas”. Unbelievably it worked, and we were delighted to attend a very nice private tea that the Mayor of Cannes invited us to attend in his offices.

Yul Brenner, of The King and I fame was a different story. During the day he gave us a good interview and was friendly and polite, but when the evening came he tended to get drunk and aggressive. He threatened my friend with violence so I returned the compliment and he seemed to like that and was fine thereafter.

Most impressive was the genius Peter Ustinov. The man was incapable of being anything other than a brilliant raconteur and wit. He gave us an interview sitting by a sun-blessed table whilst also handling five other interviews, each fluently in a different language. I asked him if he thought that it was important to win such awards as the Cannes Film Festival. His response was magnificent, “I’m not certain if my winning the Golden Crutch at Lourdes, or the Prize of Good Humour from the Buddhist League will make an enormous difference to my career.”

Heston was always surrounded by a coterie of hangers on and PR “handlers” who seemed determined to keep idiots like us away. But I was determined. We were all in the hurly burly of the Carlton Hotel when Charlton marched off with giant and determined strides towards the toilets. I saw my opportunity and followed him. I saw the great man standing by the urinals; I stationed myself next to him. Normally I am not intimidated by anyone standing next to me at such a venue. I am of normal proportion, and with my shoes on am nearing six feet, but next to this God like colossus I suddenly felt like a little boy. It’s also very difficult to strike up a conversation at a urinal without the listener presuming that this might be some kind of attempted pick up. “Hello Mister Heston,” I began, “I’m making this documentary about the Cannes Film Festival and I was wondering…” He turned his steely gaze upon me and I stopped talking, “Can’t this wait until after we leave here?” he asked, and before I could respond he finished what he was doing and left. I couldn’t immediately follow as I was, by now, into the flow of things. By the time I was finished he had left the room. I had failed.

I left the room to report back to Michael, my partner, and our cameraman, Austen Parkinson. Heston was now talking to a bunch of questioners who were huddled around him. He saw me and signaled me over. “Bring the camera!” he called. He had kind enough to forgive my rude interruption of his one moment of privacy and without further prompting gave us a wonderful question and answer session. He was a gentleman and will be much missed, as much for what he was, as for what he could do.

We finished the film and I am proud to say we managed to get our distribution deal for cinemas in the UK, where it went on to become the second most played documentary in Britain. Thank you Mister Heston, and all those other legends who gave us a leg up when we needed the help.

Communicating

Today there are ever more ways in which we can communicate so why are we not communicating? People e-mail, text, Skype, telephone but are we talking with each other, or at each other?

My recent experience makes me believe that we are censoring each other to suit ourselves. How many times have you received an incoming call on your mobile, looked at the name that came up on the screen and pressed the off button? Admit it, we all have. Or do you respond to the call at all if it states “unknown number” on your screen? Many of us don’t, including, I have to admit on most occasions, myself.

This all seems strange in light of the fact that we have all seen people in cars, buses, trains or simply walking along talking to others on their mobiles as if they were in a small universe of their own. Talking to someone on your mobile who is somewhere else is normal enough as a small part of life we all have to do some of the time, but is it essential most of the time as it seems to be for some, most of the time? What’s even more odd is that many times the person speaking on their handset is walking along with a companion who they are totally ignoring.

I can well understand trying to control our own time and space by using all these modern conveniences to be master of our own small universe, but it can rapidly become obsessive. There are several recent reports of blogaholics, particularly technical bloggers, who have had heart attacks trying to keep abreast of the unending torrent of new technical development relentlessly coming on stream. No one can keep up with this, and it isn’t necessary.

You can take all this to a ridiculous extreme resulting in your not communicating at all. Instead of using all these wonderful tools to communicate you use them to create a series of ever-higher walls behind which we can cower. It is, ultimately cowardice for us to filter our phone calls and e-mails and to pretend we use them to communicate when what we are really doing is limiting access to ourselves.

Remember when fax machines were the new communication wonder? I was prone to instant response to any fax I received, thinking that the fact that an incoming fax had arrived with urgency I should deal with it in the same way. My late father was a wise old bird and he told me that just because the communications came quicker I didn’t have to respond faster. I suggest the same is true with all our modern methods of electronic communication. Let everyone have access to your public platforms, but think for as long as you need before responding. Some times you will not even want to do that, and it’s entirely up to you.

But, and this is the big BUT, when that someone trying to communicate with you is your friend or family, then try and get in the same place with them, and look them in the eye and talk with each other. There is, in the end, no substitute.

Free At Last...

Free, Oh Lord, we’re free at last. These were the words heard to echo through Klinger Towers when it was belatedly announced that the British were to get three or four free to air High Definition TV channels next year some time.

In the UK, since Thatcher we have become used to never getting anything for free that we could possibly pay for. Some people call that the marketplace, I call it silly. A civilized country needs some infrastructure that works efficiently and for the benefit of all its citizens. Some might limit this to education, health, welfare, defence and roads, but others, like myself, would include my television and technological link needs. What’s the point of my purchasing the very best computers in the world if the broadband link isn’t fast enough? That should be something that our government makes certain is the best that the world can provide.

In the UK there is a great deal of confusion and rubbish talked about High Definition television. This is one of those areas of technology where Asia and America are ahead and seem not to suffer the same kind of pain and anguish.

In the States, where you know I spend a great deal of time, they already have programming made available by broadcasters, free of charge, to those users who have sets ready for HD.

Not so in the UK. The first broadcasters who launched this service a year or so back, were Sky, part owned and controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation, that also owns some other little bits and pieces like Fox TV, and Twentieth Century Fox etc. Sky are launched with a nifty set top box to enable “HD Ready” sets to show their broadcasts in HD, well sort of HD, which I shall explain later.

Sky are charging £10 per month (about $20) per home in the UK for this service, yes, the same service that in America our cousins across the pond get for free!

To make matters even worse this is not even full High Definition television. The sets on sale in the UK are HD ready, and this means that they are able to show about one million pixels on the screen. This is a whole lot better than they are presently, but actually about half of what true HD is, which is about two million pixels. Do you think Sky might decide to decrease their monthly charge to £5?

It actually does get a bit worse still. We purchased this service and settled back to be astonished. I can’t say we are over impressed. Yes, I can see the hairs on the hands of the sports commentators, and the lines on the faces of the botox free, older ladies. Yes, it’s true that I can now see the faces in the crowds of the sports events, but now that I can I am able to confirm that I never wanted to anyhow. In the nature broadcasts I can more readily discern the animals being killed and eaten, which I could do without. Maybe the answer is to watch HD without my glasses on?

While I am having a gripe I want to add that Skype, the best voice over internet protocol that I have experienced is not understood by many people. A couple of facts I want to help spread around whilst promising you I have no shares in that company.

Anyone can download Skype onto either their PC or Mac for free. You can then make free calls to other Skype users, and there are many millions of them. You can “ring” non Skype users on any phone anywhere in the World for the price of a cheap rate local call. Why aren’t you already on Skype?

Journey of Harmony?

Yesterday “The Journey of Harmony” took place in London. This was the name given to the relay running of the Olympic Flame by the Chinese Government. It was routed from Wembley Stadium, through several parts of our fair city to the O2 arena, in Greenwich. It was not a harmonious journey.

There were various protests for the length of the run. These were on behalf of the people of Tibet. There were counter demonstrations on behalf of the Beijing Olympics. As I wrote in a previous posting I support these democratic protests and I support the Olympics. There is a better leverage on China if we participate than if we were to withdraw in protest. What we mustn’t do is allow ourselves to be used as if we agree with the Chinese Government’s repressive actions against Tibet.

I also think its obvious that we should be debating a new, different form of Olympics in the future. The 2012 venue is in London, and it is going to be a vast show, as is this year’s mammoth event in China. The Olympics has become an impossibly large pumped up and self-important circus.

Why don’t we examine the possibility of making this event truly global whilst pricking this big balloon?

We could hold the swimming in Australia, the boxing in the USA, the football in Russia, the weight lifting in Japan, the yachting in Brazil, the cycling in England, the rowing in Germany, and so on. That way no one gets to spend too much money, we could even mutually support, say, the athletics in a poorer African country. No one country gets to pretend that they are superior to any other because they are hosting the whole thing but everyone gets to participate.

We could easily switch these individual sports venues between countries every four years without any of the chosen countries bankrupting themselves with empty nationalistic ego driven grandiose political gestures. One sport in each country wouldn't bankrupt any country nor would it allow anyone to turn a sporting event into a political advertisement for their system of government, whatever it might be. Our television networks could link the events into an Olympic whole and it would bring down the component parts to a more human and natural scale. It might just bring the Olympics to the people of the world for everyone to enjoy, or isn't that the idea?

The Media Pipe

I recently had a fascinating couple of conversations with people in Los Angeles. One works for a huge, leading mobile telephone platform and the other for a giant film distribution company, now part of a conglomerate.

The message from both seems to be that the days when you had people with passion and commitment at the tip of the spear has long gone. Even the days when a movie company was led by ex talent agents, lawyers or accountants had to be preferable to one where marketing gurus from unrelated industries took over. How can a person who markets soap know or care about getting some market space for a film that you might care about. Their only passion is to use franchise movies to grab market share as effectively as possible. It might make short term sense if you don’t consider that the guy or girl making that small but perfectly formed passion project is the same person who might one day make the future blockbuster.

Just a thought, wouldn’t it be great for everyone if they hired someone who knew about creativity to run a studio…

A related industry is telecommunications. The reason that it is related to the creative, production of product is obvious and simple. There is no point having a big pipe with nothing to pour through it. The days when all you needed was the pipe itself, are gone. The ownership of the pipe, formerly a monopoly, or thereabouts, has now become a competitive business, in which you have to provide a service. That service is the package of entertainment you are perceived to provide the consumer via that pipe.

So telecommunications has become part of the entertainment industry and faces a future in which the giant platforms, who purchased their place at high table for many billions of dollars, will not be able to generate enough returns to meet that investment from the use of their phone systems for speaking. Why would someone pay for calls that will be soon available generally, for free, on their mobiles via the internet?

The guy I met from the telecommunications company asked me how I would define his job. I answered, in my most polite fashion, that he was the Chief Executive for a major platform provider. His response was that this was incorrect, as he would define himself as the CEO of an entertainment company that was simply using broadband technology as a means of delivery to an ever increasing, and hungry public.

So entertainment and creativity is where it’s at, and that’s where you come in.

Being Jew...ish

There is something re-assuring about belonging to a club. It doesn’t much matter how good the club is, we all think, because we each know best, that our club is the best club. Surely if we are in the club, it must be a sure sign of its superiority. This goes for our fitness clubs, our football clubs, our golf clubs, our gentlemen’s club, in fact almost any kind of club except one. It seems as if my club, one of the most exclusive in the world, is not much in demand amongst my own. I refer to the Jewish club.

We Jews number about .001% of the global population, so seeing how snobby we can be, it is more than a bit surprising that so many of our number apparently don’t want to belong to this club. After all we are disproportionately successful in the media, in winning awards be they Pulitzers, Nobel Prizes, Academy Award Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, etc. We also do exceptionally well in academia, in politics, banking, finance, and in Israel we have proven adept at agriculture, technology, engineering, chemistry and matters military.

So, having reached these heights why is there such marked reluctance to belong to our club?

This statement is evidenced by the fact that you hardly ever hear of a prominent Jew who simply states that he or she is, without qualification, prevarication, excuse or some form of mitigation a Jew.

At best you get the Jonathan Miller self-description, that he is “jew…ish”. The list of Jews not making much at all of their Jewishness is seemingly endless. In fact, in the recent past, outside of the gilded pages of the Jewish Chronicle, the only people claiming some link to our gang are the Kabalist Lite brigade, led by her Supreme Madgeness, Madonna (aka Esther) and her gal pal Demi Moore, whose Jewish name I don’t know, but might I suggest Dora, like my late grandmother. If, for no other reason, than for the ironic connection of there never having been two women who were less alike.

The funny thing being that it’s really hard to understand the reluctance of claiming one’s Jewish heritage, lifestyle and culture since it is actually quite admired. Well perhaps it is. If you saw the London or New York presentations of Mel Brooks show, The Producers you would agree with the mainly Gentile audience that the Jewish experience is a funny, warm, appealing and attractive life style. Or perhaps we missed the point. Perhaps the Gentiles in these audiences take Jewish humour and situations in an American context as if they were American lifestyles and situations.

Of course, both statements are true. Jewish humour is American humour. The experience of upwardly mobile children and grand children of immigrants is the common experience in America. The difference here is that we Jews are still the others, the outsiders, the somewhat exotic and different from the norm. Perhaps that remains the reason that so many Jewish people do all they can to become invisible in the United Kingdom. As other minorities are sometimes keen to point out, “well if you’re black or brown there’s no point in pretending you’re not, you simply can’t hide”.

It may seem easier to assimilate and become invisible. I have heard those very close to home tell me how old fashioned I am when I point out that anti Semitism is alive and kicking, that there are still plenty of bogey men out there, and more than at any time I can remember, it doesn’t matter what you think you are when the bad guys think you’re a Jew, you’re a Jew.

What’s so frightening and different now is that we have a who’s who of Jew haters that other than hating us have nothing but extremism in common. We have National Socialists, (Nazis in all but name) the Hard Left, the Anti Israel rejection Front (this includes the Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas) and the Muslim Fundamentalist terror groups. Never before has there been such an array of Jew haters in this country.

These people use any pretext to express their hate, contempt and venom of Jews. One of their prime targets is Israel and everything Israeli. I am not putting forward the view ‘our country right or wrong’, since that’s nonsense. I am putting forward the view that all countries should be treated with equality. Why do these hate groups only single out Israel for such total and utter condemnation? The answer is in the book by Alan Dershowitz, ‘The Case for Israel’ (currently available in all good book shops and highly recommended). There, argued with the precision of one of America’s leading legal professors you find the truth boils down to some old home truths, about anti Semitism, perversion and re-writing of history, international political and media bias.

Perhaps that’s why so many of us are nervous to say ‘yes I’m a Jew and proud of it.’ Perhaps they are just scared, and my belief is that they’re wrong. The big bad man doesn’t go away if you’re scared, he just gets bolder and bigger. Our strength comes from not hiding our light; we are better than that, and we need to again demonstrate that communal will and resolve that has served us so well through all the travails of the past. It starts by us making a simple commitment to ourselves and to our community. We are what we are and we have every right, indeed a duty, to be proud of ourselves. Yes I’m Jewish and I’m happy to be Jewish. You don’t have to be religious, you just have to be happy in your own skin. Try saying it for yourself, I think you’ll like it. For those of you who are not Jewish, what can I say to you, how about, hug a Jewish friend. We need to know you care.

Don't Make Us Into You

I once walked past a Jewish beggar outside one of the gates to Jerusalem. He extended his hand to me, palm up, in the universal gesture and said something to me in Ivrit that a companion translated. “He grants you a blessing direct from the Almighty as he allows you to give your gift to him in return.” It was a concept that I hadn’t been aware of previously. I was to be the beneficiary of a blessing from God because I was allowed to give this man some of my money. It’s a great concept, and puts our relative giving a new perspective. It’s another take on the eternal balance of life, for every action in the universe there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Today we are faced with two implacable enemies that many are too afraid to name. One of these foes lives in our homes, and the other is both at home and overseas. The first enemy is the rapid disintegration of the fabric of our Western values. We have skyrocketing drug use, teenage pregnancies, violence and general social decline. Strangely, this is set against the highest general levels of education, wealth and leisure ever known. We have never been better fed, lived longer or better, but our culture seems to have lost its way. Perhaps this is largely due to the breakdown of the family unit itself. So many of us are divorced, separated, unmarried or living in hitherto unconventional groupings it may have removed the underpinning of our social structures.

To fix this social problem will be a generational issue for which there is no simple solution. I know it is not going to be solved with money, or quick educational fixes. It starts with self respect, and then permeates every part of our lives. It has to include respect for our elders, and looking after them when they can no longer look after themselves. We need to understand and return to core values which relegates the pursuit of money and self gratification for their own sake. We must restore our faith in our tarnished institutions and then the realization might come to us all, that although we have an imperfect society it is the best there is in the world.

The other great threat is international Islamic fundamentalism. Let me be plain, I have nothing against Islam or practitioners of that religion. However within that religion lives a poisonous rage against me, for being a Jew, and me for being British, and for me being a Zionist, that I just can’t reason with or tolerate. This is not meant to imply that they don't hate you just as much for being whatever you are. If you are not a practitioner of their particular form of religious xenophobia they want you subjugated, and if that isn't possible, they want you dead.

Many people have been bullied or persuaded that Zionism equates to racism, or some form of apartheid, and neither are true and are, in fact a blood libel on this worthy aspiration of which I am proud to proclaim my support. For the record let me define Zionist, it simply means that the Jewish people have the right to settle and live in the State of Israel. Some would add it is the duty of all Jews to live in Israel, both those that love the country, and those that hate the Jews might agree on that aim for their different reasons! Whatever your view, why is it wrong for the Jews, alone in the world, to have a place to call their own?

How many Protestant, Catholic or Muslim countries can you count with their huge populations and yet the world questions the legitimate aspirations of just one group of people, the Jews, to a state of their own with a population of about 7 million? By the way, about 20% of the population of Israel is Arabic.

I’m not suggesting that Palestinian Arabs of any religious persuasion shouldn’t live within the borders of Israel. But if the Palestinians who left Israel during their War of Independence want to return, how about the equal rights of the equal numbers of Jewish people, to their places in the Arab countries they were driven from?

There are two sets of rules, try being a practicing Jewish person and living openly in the Arab world. Even the mighty Christian church is legislated against in that world. The only reason we stand for this inequity is because we lack the self-confidence to demand equal treatment. Presently the Catholic Church is understood to be negotiating for the right to build some new churches within the Arab world. Show me a town or city in the UK that does not have at least one mosque. The liberals amongst us are always quick to demand equal rights for all, well how about equal rights for us, the Jews and Christians as well.

I shall share my real fear. It’s only a matter of time before an Islamic fundamentalist / terrorist commits another huge atrocity in a Western democracy. This could result in a tipping point, when the more loony local population will react with such ferocity that a firestorm of supposed “revenge” would sweep our once peaceful streets. Then the majority of the peaceful Muslim population will suffer for the sins of the minority of maniacs in their midst. Already mosques and individuals have been attacked with increasing regularity throughout the non- Muslim world. I don’t want to contaminate this argument by saying that this would be largely their micro society’s own responsibility. However to counter this real likelihood the indigenous Islamic community must act, now, to cut out the cancer of sheltering the illegal, irresponsible murderous maniacs in their midst. There can never be any excuse for turning a blind eye to people who plan to murder and maim other people, however much you don’t like them. It is past the time when the moderate Muslim majority, which I am confident is the apt description, drive out and expose the fundamentalist from their midst. If they don’t do this we are left with the inescapable conclusion that the majority is quietly supporting the maniacs and are therefore living in our country as its enemies.

The truth is that like many other threats to society of this or any other era, the Muslim fundamentalist fanatics, whatever their proportion of the Islamic population are, in fact, doomed to fail. They don’t have the numbers of the armies and armadas that have confronted us in the past. They don’t have the ideas that will appeal widely in the world. Theirs is the doctrine of hate and murder, and that will not appeal in the more developed world. In the end we have more of everything that matters, including raw power, but especially we have a more appealing culture.

Right now there are Islamic preachers spouting hate in our countries, against their hosts, us. The Islamic congregation knows who they are, but clearly they have, so far, largely left them in place. They must get rid of them, now. They must tell the police, now. They mustn’t listen to the poisonous rubbish being spouted from within the supposed sanctity of your holy places. They mustn’t allow the rabble-rousers to further inflame their children with their mad schemes to create a Caliphate over our countries. The green flag of Islam will never fly over 10 Downing Street, however much these fantasists hate our Western democracies. Ultimately this group of losers will find the same fate as all the others who dreamed of World domination. Just like the Nazis and Communists their madness will find its natural place, in the small dustbin marked, “historic footnotes”.

I don’t want your anger to overspill and make me and others over-react, We are happy to be us, don’t try and make us into you.