Leo Marsh

Choosing friends

2005-07-26T15:30:36+02:00

An aspect of the bombings is making me uncomfortable in a moral sense. It’s this.

You’ll have seen that the police are pushing for extended powers, not least of whichis their wish to extend their rights to detention without trial to three months, when they already have 21 days.

What I find awkward about this is the company I find myself obliged to keep. I’m not keen on the incitement to hatred laws. I don’t like detention without trial. I’m not keen on the removal of right to trial by jury in some cases. I deplore the removal of double indemnity, and of the right to silence. All these have been retrograde steps, in my view.

But what I dislike almost as much is that I find lunatic right-wingers such as Peter Hitchens on the same side as me. I wish they’d go away.

Comments

It depends on where you're standing

2005-07-26T15:27:19+02:00

The recent events in London are provoking a wide range of reactions. I heard ‘Any Questions?’ on Radio 4 this week. It featured people who thought that if the police need to detain suspects for up to three months without charge, they should be allowed to do so. If they didn’t need more than the 21 days they have currently – 21 days, mind – they wouldn’t ask for it, would they, the argument ran. They know what they’re doing.

Well, the mistaken suspect who was shot and killed gives one cause to doubt. It seems to me that he panicked, and the police did, too. Eight shots, seven of them to the head, does not sound to me like the response of people calm and in control.

But as I say, the reactions are wide-ranging. At one end, the Sunday Express says the accidental shooting was all the terrorists’ fault. Also, Sir John Stevens, former head of Scotland Yard, says his heart goes out to the police gunman.

Someone put this on the BBC message board: ‘If a guy who fits the profile of a terrorist is running through a subway station and does not obey orders to stop then lethal force is completely justifiable.’ A quite astonishing comment.

But in Pakistan, a well-educated family interviewed for Radio 4 at the weekend said that Britain is reaping what it sowed by invading Iraq. “The public reaction in Britain is disproportionate,” the wife of the family also said. “There were only 50 deaths.” “ONLY 50 deaths?” asked the incredulous interviewer. “There were 56.” “50, 56,” the woman said. “It is not a big number. Not when compared to the numbers of people being killed in Iraq every day.”

“The people killed in the Middle East are Moslems,” her husband said. “Moslem deaths are not as significant as those of non-Moslems. Moslem victims don’t have names.”

The old man of the family, a retired colonel, said that Ken Livingstone was the only western commentator he’d heard who pointed out that the West was reaping what it sowed in another sense: in the sense that in the 80s, it recruited Osama bin Laden and people like him, trained him and gave him weapons, so that he could provide guerrilla support in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The West should not be surprised, he said, that guerrillas such as these should turn on them.

This family has a point, of course. In fact, several well-made points. But, such is the mood in Britain right now, and such is the understandable horror at these events, that few people will regard them as anything other than cynical.

I think that’s a shame. I think it’s useful to see things from different perspectives. So, wherever you’re reading this, and especially if you’re abroad, I’d be interested to hear what local opinions are as to the events here in London.

Comments

Diminishing returns

2005-07-09T08:33:22+02:00

The bombing in London this week was dreadful - not least, to my mind, because it was so cheap and nasty.

There seems to have been a downward scale in all this. 9/11 was the grand gesture, commandeering 747s and crashing them into landmark buildings. Bali was a single bomb on a huge scale, detonated in the back of a parked truck. Madrid was a series of smaller bombs, detonated on trains remotely by mobile phone.

And now, in London, we have - what? Small bombs on tube trains, and one on the top deck of a bus. It seems cheap and mean-spirited to me.

I could be angry, and many people are. I spent an hour arguing with a slightly drunk man about it on the train home last night. But I'm not so much angry as sad - sad that people can drift into a state where they no longer see members of the public, strangers, as other people, but as an abstract representation of everything they hate. How else could they go through with it, if they did not anaesthetise themselves in this way?

The best expression I can recall for the process describes Pharaoh's unwillingness to let the people of Israel go. He 'hardened his heart against them', it says.

That's just it, isn't it? These people have hardened their hearts. God forbid that we should do the same.

Comments

See what happens?

2005-07-06T14:01:11+02:00

The Queen promises to invite everyone round for tea, and the IOC ditches Paris and chooses London for the 2012 Olympics.

Bah.

Comments

Give your money now

2005-07-02T13:11:16+02:00

Give money to Oxfam or Medecins sans Frontieres to help make poverty history, but add 61p to your donation.

Then write to the Government, and tell them that your personal annual contribution to Royal Family finances has been reallocated.

If enough of us do it, who knows what might happen? (The answer is: nothing will happen, of course. But I can dream, can't I?)

I think we're all grown up enough now to contemplate life without a monarchy, don't you?

Comments

Phoney art

2005-06-30T19:18:34+02:00

Orange mobile users can download a game that replicates Etch-a-Sketch on the screen.

Part of me thinks this is great. Another part of me is looking at the first part and thinking, “What a complete arse.”

Comments

Di another day

2005-06-30T16:27:02+02:00

She may be gone, but she’s still in the news. All this week The Sun has been printing the revelations of some spiritual healer friend of hers. Di had sex with JFK Junior, she says. And, she says, Di had sex with her Asian doctor partner the day her divorce came through. I’ve missed one or two front pages this week, and so I’m afraid I may have missed one or two of her alleged bedmates.

Plus, Andrew Morton’s got another Diana book out.

Don’t you sometimes wish there were an alternative universe to which we could all escape? A place where no one had ever heard of The Mail, The Sun, and Hello magazine? In that wonderful world, dear readers, the pubs would always be open, but no one would ever be drunk. People would not drive while talking into their mobiles, Big Brother would be nothing more than a concept from a George Orwell novel, and Alan Titchmarsh would still be a council parks employee Somewhere Up North.

Comments

Conspiracy theory No. 1

2005-06-28T13:55:04+02:00

Petrol doesn't really exist, you know. It's all a big con.

Years ago, they figured out how to make cars run on air. Let's face it, when did you last actually SEE petrol? You go to the petrol station, put the pump in the tank, and stop when the dial reaches the amount you need. Or rather, the amount you think you need, because you don't actually see it go in.

You're paying for nothing, my friends. It's all a con. They've got us. If we don't buy petrol, the automatic cut-outs they've secretly fitted to our engines will kick in, and we'll be stranded. "Oh dear, we've run out of gas," we'll say. (Well, if we're American, that's what we'll say.)

But we haven't run out of gas. It's Big Brother.

Next week - the Big Curry Theory.

Comments

If there's one thing more depressing than watching Tim Henman play ...

2005-06-21T16:47:56+02:00

... it's the knowledge that when he finally hangs up his racket, he's going to join all the other British ex-hopefuls in the BBC commentary box.

Make room around the microphone, Mark Cox, Sue Barker, John Lloyd and Virginia Wade! Tim needs a bit of room.

And yes, yes, I KNOW Virginia Wade won the title once. I was there that day, in fact. But she beat Betty Stove to win it, and Betty was built like (and moved like) the cooking device after which she was named.

It was the semi that was Virginia's blinder - she beat Chris Evert, which was some achievement.

But if you remember that far back, you'll recall that whenever Virginia was on court, we spent most of our time not so much willing her to win as willing her second serve over the net.

Comments

58 varieties

2005-06-20T11:54:32+02:00

Heinz has bought HP Sauce. They've met on the plate for years, and now they meet in the boardroom.

I reckon traditional fears about the Americanisation of British institutions are unlikely to be realised here. Heinz hasn't messed with our baked beans, so they're unlikely to mess with HP Sauce, or with Lea & Perrins, which also comes as part of the deal.

I don't know about you, but HP Sauce and Lea & Perrins are defining characteristics of Britishness for me.

Those, and M&S underpants. Any other suggestions?

Comments