The Great Game & its Tragic Consequences

 

In Southwell Minster, here in Nottinghamshire, positioned high in the wall of the transept there is a small, unremarkable memorial stone to commemorate the life and death of a young Nottinghamshire soldier in one of the three 19th century wars fought in Afghanistan. The three conflicts (1839–1842, 1878–1880, 1919) between the British Empire (based in India) and Afghanistan. Driven by the so called "Great Game", the strategic rivalry between the British and Russian empires for supremacy in Central Asia, Afghanistan was crucially positioned between these two empires. It was in 1898 that Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, wrote to Queen Victoria saying “I confess that countries are pieces on a chessboard, upon which is played out a great game for the domination of the world.” Curzon's private words to the Queen were brought to the popular consciousness in 1901 with the publication of Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim" and with it a rise in patriotic jingoism to fuel the geopolitical atmosphere of the time. The young son of Southwell commemorated in the Minster was one of Lord Curzon’s pawns in this macabre geopolitical game in which Britain was seeking to protect its Indian empire, while Russia was bent on expanding southward leading to diplomatic manoeuvrers, espionage, and much bloodshed. While Britain initially achieved military victories, they faced intense local resistance, leading to a disastrous retreat in the first war, partial control of Afghanistan in the second, and finally, Afghan independence in the third.

Each time I visit the lovely Southwell Minster I look at the memorial stone and shake my head – a young man, like so many others, who lost his life far from home in a conflict that was in no way of his making or of any possible importance to him or his family. And as I look I think of 17th century French philosopher Blase Pascal’s comment “Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with my ruler, though I have not quarrelled with him”. It is a damning indictment of mankind and of great powers such as Britain that 150 years after that young man died and in the 21st century these “great games” of geopolitics leading to unwarranted invasion, bloodshed and sorrow are still being played out by great powers across the world; in recent years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and now Iran and a thousand other places ordinary men and women have felt the terrible impact of the “great games” of our age. "Zar, Zan, u Zameen" goes an ancient Afghani aphorism which roughly translated means "Gold, women and land - that's why men go to war - that and God." It explains in a nutshell, the British Empire's actions, Russia's excursions into foreign lands and the USA's foreign policies; whether it is the British army protecting India the Empire's "jewel in the crown", or Russian designs on Ukrainian land and mineral riches or America's desire for unlimited oil in the middle east the result is the same - innocents get hurt and nations plundered.

I have thought much on this in recent weeks having just read a book which is both uplifting and deeply distressing in equal measure about that blighted country Afghanistan. The book is by the chief foreign correspondent for the BBC, Lyse Doucet and titled “The Finest Hotel in Kabul”. It is beautifully written, heart warming yet tells a terrible tale. Doucet has spent much of her working life covering the continuing narrative of Afghanistan during the last 40 years of conflict, she knows the country and the people well and her book operates at a number of levels. It is the story of ordinary Afghans caught up in their daily lives, with the politics, the invasions and the wars raging around them and their country but it is also a history of social and political upheaval as various power players: Russia, USA, Britain, the Mujahideen, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and a host of others have vied for power and influence to suit their own ends. Just as in the 19th century, Russia, America and we Brits have played devious games to exert influence by, for example, funding and arming groups like the Mujahideen to fight proxy wars on our behalf. From 1979 to 1992, the U.S. CIA ran Operation Cyclone, a major covert program arming and financing Afghan mujahideen providing funding and weaponry to support Islamic resistance groups, aiming to disrupt Soviet influence. And then, when this all backfires and something like 9/11 occurs as an indirect consequence of these devious and often illegal interventions then Afghan suffers again with invasions or massive withdrawals by the world’s big players, leaving the country and the ordinary Afghanis flailing in a political, economic and cultural vacuum subject to the ravages of extremism. And in the midst of the turmoil ordinary Afghans try to live out some kind of normal, decent life but are too often swept along and overwhelmed by the terrible course of events, little of it of their making; to quote Lord Curzon, they are innocent pieces on a chessboard in the great game.

The book centres upon the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and its story through the turbulent and tragic years since the 1970s as the country has staggered from one crisis, one invasion and one regime to another. The hotel, a five star place when first constructed (with British money) has been the venue of royalty, politicians, journalists (like Doucet), war loads, religious extremists and terrorists. From a glamorous venue it undergoes change after change to become a hollow shell ravaged by war but still open for business and proudly striving to keep up its status and high quality service. As I read the book it occurred to me that the hotel was almost a metaphor for Afghanistan and the Afghani people – struggling bravely on, striving to keep its culture and raison d’etre despite what the world throws at it. Doucet, a master story teller (as one would expect of a high ranking journalist whose trade is in the use of words), tells us the story of the hotel, of Kabul, of Afghanistan and of the ordinary people who work in the hotel and how they, their lives and their families are impacted by the great and tragic events going on around them each and every day. These are real people; it is not a work of fiction: Abida the middle aged lady chef, Sadeq the hotel front desk manager, Mohammad Aqa the restaurant manager, Hazrat the housekeeper and many more all of them, striving to keep their lives, their families, the career afloat, and their world together while at the mercy of powerful men in far away capitals: Washington, Moscow, London and in the remote mountains where religious extremists plan the next invasion as soon as the American marines and GIs, the Russian Spetsnaz and British squaddies leave when their respective governments get bored with the great game or count the cost, and move on. It is a story of the resilience and pride of ordinary Afghanis, who keep the hotel and their lives going despite the shelling, the rockets, the suicide bombs and occasional massacres of both staff and guests; it is both heartbreaking and heart warming in equal measure. Lyse Doucet is probably one of the world’s authorities on the life and the rich culture and heritage of Afghanistan; she has witnessed its history unfold on a daily basis. She understands the great issues at play and encapsulates it all in this wonderful memoir which despite the terrible events of the past half century in that land finds so much to inspire, applaud and empathise with. It is a book filled with compassion, love and hope, a paean to a proud but ill used people; a people who, just like us, want no more than to be safe, to educate and give a good life to their children, have food on the table, be cared for when they or their family are old, worship their God if they have one – all the things that speak of our humanity and make us human beings.

It is a book that deserves to be read. Not because it is a good story or because it is true or because it

is about real people, or even because it is so beautifully crafted and written. It should be read because it is a reminder of how easily great evil and injustice is done in the name of politics or political “games” played by powerful people and nations for their own ends. It should be read because it gives a context to our times. It allows us to remember that when we see the events in a place like Afghanistan taking place on our TV screen, or we read of Afghan people arriving on our shores seeking refuge that these are real people who have endured things that we in Britain – or anywhere else in the “comfortable” west - could not begin to comprehend and most of it rooted in the “great game” being played in our name by those we have elected. These refugees arrive on our shores often as a direct or certainly an indirect result of our actions over a century and a half until today and many in our country abuse them on social media, in the tabloid press and in our mindless and wilfully ignorant Reform party, and on our flag emblazoned, jingoistic streets while in the same breath lauding the "virtues" of the British Empire whose obscene “great game” was at the root of all this. It is a game still, 150 years after Lord Curzon first used the term, being played out at the behest and whim of politicians in Washington, Moscow – and yes, here in London. It is the story of man’s great humanity and man’s great inhumanity; it is the story of a nation rich in culture and wisdom that has been successively used and abused by others – including, unforgivably, by our own British government – for their own ends. That is why the book is important and should be read.

How did it come to this?

How did it come to this?

My first musical love is glory, the profound reverence and spirituality of Bach but I love, too, the magical musicality of Mozart, the exquisite elegance of Handel and the overwhelming power and magnificence of Beethoven; great music uplifts and inspires us, it consoles us when we are low, it reminds us of past pleasures and pains, it speaks to us of our frailness and excites our passions, it reaches deep into our humanity.

And last night, as Pat cooked our tea, I sat in the kitchen having a quiet beer and put a little music on our music player. It wasn’t Bach or Handel or Mozart or Beethoven or any other of the classical greats but it none-the-less reached into me –as I knew it would. It was an album from the early 1970s – simple pop music – and as I listened I quietly wept. It spoke of gentler times, of quiet dreams and humble ambitions, of teenage love and loss, of quiet optimism and of what it is to be a human being. And as I listened, and mumbled along with the words so well known to me, I was filled with regret for what I believe has been lost to the world in the half century since I first enjoyed this music and those words.

The music was the music of Bread, a hugely popular group in the early and mid-1970s, gentle “easy listening” music which in today’s brash and unforgiving world would probably be condemned as “cheesy” or “naff” but which in reality succeeded in having all the qualities of “good” music in that it speaks to us; it is not simply a good tune that one can whistle away to but its melodies and lyrics gently uplift and inspire, make us feel better about ourselves and the world, remind us of our very humanity. Bread, a Californian group had a string of hits: Everything I own, Make it with you, If a picture paints a thousand words, Baby, I'm a want you, the Goodbye Girl, It don’t matter to me, Look what you’ve done…...and many more. Lead singer, David Gates’ gentle voice seemed to epitomise the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, of the heady and optimistic days of the swinging sixties, of flower power and the 1969 “summer of love"; they held promise for a better future, a future of world of peace and union, a world of compassion and simple love. And last night as I listened to his voice and the tea cooked I wept for what the world has lost in these early years of the 21st century.

The music of Bread – like that of Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond – was the soundtrack to the early years of our marriage – and is so, still today. We had just bought our first house, we struggled each month to pay the mortgage, a baby was on the way, I was struggling to climb the career ladder…...in short, times were tough but good. And the music, played on our first stereo system, was part of what and who we were; it played while I tried my hand at wallpapering our new home, it echoed round the house when, if the weekly money ran to it, we enjoyed a cheap Chinese take away on a Saturday evening, it was the background to my studies as I worked towards my Masters' degree. It wasn’t just a good tune or a nice song, it seemed to me then and it still seems to me now, to be about us and who we were and where we were going in our life together. And now, here we are half a century later, in our eightieth year, and the music still plays and speaks to us.

Bread and David Gates – who wrote many of the Bread hits - had another place in our lives. In 1972 when Pat was about to give birth to our daughter Kate, she was in the City Hospital here in Nottingham. On the evening I visited, Pat in the later stages of labour, Pat was thrilled to tell me that she was being looked after by a young doctor – his name David Gates! He was due to go off duty midway through that Sunday evening but, keen to be involved in Kate’s birth whenever it came, he stayed on after his shift ended; in our naivety and joy it seemed to us a good sign that all would be well - and it was. I wonder where Doctor David Gates is now? Hopefully he is a successful consultant, enjoying his retirement recalling all the other babies he has brought into the world, and just maybe he remembers that hot August night in 1972 when he stayed on after his shift finished to deliver a little girl to two very innocent and excited young teachers.

Back in those far of days, life seemed full of hope. Yes, there were huge problems facing the world – the Vietnam War rumbled on, the cold war was at its terrifying height, America and Russia faced each other across Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall but there were huge pluses; things to give hope: people were becoming better off, things that we now take for granted in everyday life, the law, society and politics were changing for the better: women were finding new professional avenues in life, very slowly racist laws and problems were changing for the better, the old class structures were falling and opportunities were increasingly open to anyone with the talent and the inclination. In America the legacy of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society legislation were giving hope not just to millions in America but to people across the world for everyone knew that what American does today the rest of the world does tomorrow. Here, in the UK people of my generation, lucky enough not to be born into war, were also the first real recipients of the policies of the great post war government of Britain’s greatest Prime Minister Clement Attlee – free education for all, free health care, a welfare state to care for us when times were tough, things my grandparents could only dream of; we were – as so many others across the western world – truly children of Attlee’s “New Jerusalem”. It was good to be alive and in our naivety the music of David Gates and Bread seemed to promise not just a better world in terms of material things but more important a better world for humanity, a world where love, kindness, integrity, understanding and compassion would be the watchwords.

It did not last.

As I sat at the table last night, David Gates’ voice reminding me of how I felt in those long gone days, the words of his song “If a picture paints a thousand words” fell from my lips as he sang:

If a picture paints a thousand words,

Then why can't I paint you?

The words will never show the you I've come to know.

If a face could launch a thousand ships,

Then where am I to go?

There's no one home but you,

You're all that's left me too.

And when my love for life is running dry,

You come and pour yourself on me.

If a man could be two places at one time,

I'd be with you.

Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,

I'd spend the end with you.

And when the world was through,

Then one by one the stars would all go out,

Then you and I would simply fly away

The song speaks of innocence, of young love and of promise. It speaks of virtue and kindness. It speaks of commitment and purity. It is not cheesy or naff or twee. It is about important things. It is about the things that we as humans should feel if we are to consider ourselves human. It says the things that we should all want to say to another human being. As I listened to Gates' voice Shakespeare’s great words from King Lear ran through my mind: ”…..The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young, Shall never see so much or live so long……” And, as an eighty year old – eighty one in a few days time – I think I have seen much and, I am worried about the world that my grandchildren are growing up into. It is not a world of innocence and hope that we knew half a century ago, it is increasingly not a world where virtue, kindness and promise permeate discourse or action. We live today in a world of increasing harshness, a winner take all world; a world increasingly in thrall to the acquisition of wealth, where our leaders and our neighbours rarely if ever ask if what they do is honest and decent and fair and of good report - the only questions asked in 2026 are what will work and what can I get out of it. The actions of Israel in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon bear witness to this crede as do those of America; Trump, Netanyahu, Putin. And indeed, our own politicians and media do not seek to understand the Iranians or the Palestinians but merely report on how the current actions impact upon the world's economies as the oil dries up; the old adage is correct: "When wealth and money talk nobody checks the grammar".

The world in 2026 is riven with inequality, with hate and with violence. The most powerful man in the world is a liar, a cheat, a sexual predator and a felon and the country that he leads is no longer the land of hope and opportunity that it was in 1972. It is a fractured nation where obscene wealth goes hand in hand with great poverty, a nation obsessed by its own narcissism, a violent nation that kills many of its own citizens and does not desire in any meaningful way to do anything about it, a nation that under Trump has sidelined the usual checks and balances of good government, a nation that now spews its bile and its hatred on other nations – simply because it can. America invades other nations on the pretext of “saving the world”; it recently invaded Venezuela and arrested its leader because of Venezuela’s alleged role in pouring drugs into the USA – no thought or acknowledgment was given to the fact that it is the American population that are driving the drug problem – if America solved its drug problem then the Venezuelan drug cartels would look elsewhere to sell their hateful produce.

But America is not alone, we in other nations stand and watch as America, Israel and Russia ride roughshod over their perceived “enemies”; our own leaders sit on their hands, afraid to “say what they feel” , anxious not to upset these “strong men”. The innocent and virtuous words of David Gates and Shakespeare would get short shrift in the 2026 White House or the Kremlin or the Knesset or perhaps even Downing Street.

Increasingly our newspapers and wider media – undoubtedly influenced by the “success” of social media content and headline grabbing – no longer seek to raise the bar, widen the intellectual, political and social horizons of their readership, choosing instead the headlines and topics of the gutter press; even my beloved Guardian my companion of 70 years - once viewed as a “high brow”, intellectual newspaper is dragged into the fray – yesterday running an article of absolutely no scientific or social value with the roaring and titillating headline “Finally the clitoris is getting the attention it deserves” – and to its shame the Guardian runs a weekly column on “sexual healing”, the topic this week headlined: “Threesomes, rough towels and “lesbian bed death”……… The Guardian is not alone – the once prudish and conservative Daily Telegraph is equally keen to reduce all to the whims and fancies of the gutter and the burgeoning underclass. Too many of our young people now see the carrying of a knife as a mark of their masculinity and machismo and their language is one of violence too often linked to the violence and hate that is both implicit and overt in drill rap music. And their parents look on and say we can’t control them, our leaders ring their hands and we do nothing. A report published this week on the growth of misogyny in English schools paints a terrifying picture of what is going on in the minds of many of our children. One teacher said she was called a “xxxxxxx slag” by a pupil. Another said a student had made nude AI images of her, while other boys joked about raping girls, then laughed when challenged. Boys as young as 9 made sexualised sounds and gestures, which are used to humiliate and demean girls and women staff, and support from parents is often sparse. “Parents have told me if I can’t handle teenage boys then I need to ‘work in a xxxxxxx nursery’ one woman teacher was told. How has it come to this?

And our own royalty are shamed; a prince of the realm, in cahoots with a known paedophile and sexual predator who has spread his evil web amongst the rich and powerful of nations across the globe. Daily we read of politicians, TV personalities and others who have fallen from grace, their peccadilloes and dishonesties laid bare. Increasingly it seems to me we live in a world where many are unashamed of things that they once would have been ashamed of. Foul language is common place on our streets, our TV screens and football stadiums and Hollywood awards Oscars to films permeated with extreme violence, and obscenity. In short, we have lost the innocence, the virtue, the gentleness, the kindness, the basic dignities that must go hand in hand with being a human being; the ancient Greeks knew their importance, they were part of the “heroic model” of “goodness” but we have forgotten them, or rather, we have allowed the underclass to take over what was once a great civilisation. And we know how it will end – in the same way as all declining civilisations end – in violence and terrible consequences for all. What happens in America today happens to the rest of the world tomorrow and 21st century America is leading us all down this one way path to hellish oblivion.

English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described in 1651 what life is like - he experienced it - when good government and leadership fail. He famously told us that life becomes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". He was not wrong; when virtue and gentleness and kindness and honesty are overrun by the malign forces of evil - something we are already seeing across the world - societies fail. When virtue and goodness and duty and love and compassion and empathy are no longer on our agenda then life becomes subject to the law of the jungle where the strongest take all; these virtuous qualities are not just "nice things" to make life a little better and more enjoyable, they are the building bricks of society and civilisation; without them chaos is a certainty.

In those long gone 1972 days when the words of the David Gates and Bread songs were part of my daily life I regularly stood in front of 300 pupils leading assembly. We would say a prayer, listen to a story with a “message” and sing a hymn. And last night, as I listened to the voice of David Gates singing of love and kindness and gentleness and virtue the words of one of those hymns came to back to me:

Daisies are our silver,

Buttercups our gold:

This is all the treasure

We can have or hold.

Raindrops are our diamonds

And the morning dew;

While for shining sapphires

We've the speedwell blue.

These shall be our emeralds

Leaves so new and green;

Roses make the reddest

Rubies ever seen.

God, who gave these treasures

To your children small,

Teach us how to love them

And grow like them all.

Make us bright as silver:

Make us good as gold;

Warm as summer roses

Let our hearts unfold.

Gay as leaves in April,

Clear as drops of dew

God, who made the speedwell,

Keep us true to you.

Today (Sunday April 5th 2026) the American President, Donald Trump has posted on social media an expletive riddled post which takes his office to a new low; it demeans himself, his office, his nation and indeed all of us.

And I wondered what the children of 2026 would make of Trump's words, what they imply. In a world where they see on their TV screens, mobile phones and other media the graphic obscenities of war and of modern day life and they hear the abusive, violent and unforgiveable words of Donald Trump and his henchmen how, I wonder, would they square this with a teacher standing at the front of a school hall telling them that they should "treasure" the simple things of life. How might they equate and understand the simple virtues that are both explicit and implicit in the hymn with the bile that spews from the mouth of the world's most powerful man. In a winner takes all world where being strong and brutal and how much you earn and how much stuff you have defines you as a person, where being a celebrity or social media star or influencer is the ambition of so many young and not so young people what chance the small treasures of a simple buttercup, daisy or raindrop? Sadly, I concluded that it would be completely alien to those thousands of children who sat cross legged on the school hall floor as I led each assembly until I retired – and that worries me and it should worry all of us for the the simple virtues, the simple truths of life, the building bricks of society and civilisation, are being denied them.

And I ask again, how did it come to this? 

A Damning and Terrible Indictment Upon the world and America

 

Earlier this week Pat and I went along to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal to see Miss Saigon. We had last seen the show almost 40 years ago soon after its premier in London’s West End. On that occasion 12 of us - Pat’s family - had gone for our annual New Year’s Eve trip to the London theatre. When we arrived at the theatre - on that occasion the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - a lifetime ago we did not know what to expect; the idea of a musical about the Vietnam War seemed surreal. I knew, of course, that it had strong links with Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly but that was about all. I was unprepared for the next three hours. From the moment that Drury Lane Theatre lights went down and the auditorium reverberated to the terrifying sound of helicopter rotor blades which seemed to penetrate one’s very being, to the desperate and ill fated love story of the young 17 year old Vietnamese girl Kim and American Marine Chris, to the dreadful chaos of the helicopter evacuations from the American Embassy roof top in Saigon and to the tragic climax when Kim, in order to give her three year old son Tam a good future in America, shoots herself leaving his father Chris to care for his son Tam in America, the land of opportunity and wealth I remember sitting transfixed, heart racing; at the end emotionally drained. I know that I was not alone. On that long gone night the whole theatre sat in stunned silence as the final curtain descended, as Chris knelt on the floor holding Kim’s dead body close to him.

The events depicted in Miss Saigon on that 1990 New Year's Eve were pure theatre but they were at the same time all too real; the Vietnam War was still relatively fresh in the minds of people of my generation. I had followed the War, in my Guardian newspaper, read of the carpet bombing by American war planes, seen photographs of the dreadful burns injuries inflicted by napalm, I had watched successive American Presidents wring their hands and promise to end the war soon as the body bags filled with US service men were returned home, and I had seen on the TV the increasing unrest and dissatisfaction of the American public at what was happening in their name. When the war had at last ended in ignominious “failure”, like many others, I believed that lessons must have been learned. How wrong I was.

So, this week we went to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal to see the show again. I didn’t have any great expectations believing that what I would see would not have the impact that the original had had upon me. I knew the plot, I knew what would happen, I knew the songs, I knew many of the words……..I was prepared. And anyway, I reasoned, however good these actors of 2026 were they could not, would not reach the dramatic and emotional heights that the great Jonathan Pryce had in his portrayal of the Engineer or that the previously unknown but soon to become a super star Lea Salonga had as Kim in 1990. How wrong I was.

From the moment the house lights dimmed and the reverberating terror of helicopter blades filled the theatre and my senses I was back in time, back to 1990, my heart again racing, As the story progressed on its tragic journey, the tears streamed, my heart felt it would burst out of my chest, my fists were clenched in both terror and now rage, for I knew with certainty that the lessons of Vietnam had not been learned; the American war machine was again on the rampage. I found myself wanting to turn away from what was happening a few feet away from me on the stage, but unable to take my eyes and my mind away from what I was witnessing and what I was now knowing. This was every bit as dramatic and devastating as the show I had seen almost 40 years ago; like Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and other great dramatic works its power and message spanned the years. To describe Miss Saigon as a “rock opera” trivialises it; this is indeed high and powerful drama, musically and dramatically marvellous but now, as I sat in the theatre's darkness witnessing the events on the stage a great and sorrowful regret filled my thoughts, a rage dwelt in my heart – this was a damning and terrible indictment on our times and upon America.

Have we, has America, learned nothing? Vietnam was a lifetime ago and it should have taught America and all nations a lesson but it didn’t and it hasn’t. Over the 50 years plus since the Vietnam War ended America (and too often we its allies) have felt the need to make war or impinge on the life and government of other sovereign nations on the pretext of “saving them from themselves” or making a “war on terror”. Iraq, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan………..and now Iran. Few, if any, have gone well for anyone. As Miss Saigon approaches its terrible climax, Chris the well meaning and desperate Marine, cries out in anguish to his wife Ellen as he tries to explain to her what it was like in Vietnam and how he came to fall in love with Kim: “Christ Ellen, I’m American. How could I fail to do good” he cries “But I made a mess just like everyone else, In a place full of mystery That I never once understood”. Mmmm – most of America’s foreign incursions were founded in the hope of “making things better” and were thought through by what I might term sensible well intentioned Presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush (both of them!) and Obama and as Chris sobs “I’m American, how could I fail to do good” they, too, I sincerely believe, were "trying to do good". But all of these past, well intentioned Presidents and their administrations, like Chris in the story, never once understood the mentality and the aspirations, the “mystery”, of these far off countries and peoples – hence their failure. Had they understood, had they followed the advice of Atticus Finch in the great American novel To Kill a Mockingbird and put themselves in the “skin” of others, of Afghans or Iraqis or Rwandans or Iranians and sought to see things from their perspective, to come to terms with their life and the mysteries of those far off cultures then just maybe they might have thought twice before taking action. But sadly empathy and understanding doesn’t stand much chance in the hearts and minds of America, a nation that shoots first and ask questions afterwards, a nation that feeds upon violence, a gun obsessed nation that weekly kills so many of its own citizens on the streets, so many of its own school children in their classrooms and playgrounds, and treats its most vulnerable with uncaring harshness. We should not be surprised that what it allows to happen to its own citizens in the name of what its Republican politicians, adherents and outriders call "freedom" it can happily do to other nations across the world.

So, as the tears ran down my face and my weak heart pounded in the darkened theatre and the helicopter rotors drowned out the screams of people on the Embassy roof top desperately trying to reach safety I cried. I wept not only for Kim and Chris but for America and what we, the world, have allowed America to become under the malign and mad leadership of Donald Trump and his cohorts – a man who delights in talking of “obliterating” other human beings, a man who bombs Iranian schools, who lies to the world, a man who doesn’t even try to cover his evil inadequacy for his high office with at least a patina of understanding, empathy or grace. Miss Saigon is not just a wonderful, yet terrible, piece of theatre, it holds up a mirror to what it is to be human amidst the horrors of violence and war. Given America’s undoubted propensity to shoot before thinking, both on its streets and in the wider world and to not seek to understand the “mysteries” of other nations and other beliefs I fear that Trump and America’s latest excursion into gun boat diplomacy will end not just in what Chris called “a mess” but in a terrible and long lasting Armageddon for the world. As we have seen in the past, America's actions will be remembered and perhaps retribution will be sought by these injured and violated peoples - and who can blame them? And when the next terrorist revenge attack happens – another 9/11 in America or 7/7 in London - I’m afraid I will have little sympathy.

America has not learned the lessons of history and has chosen this evil, hateful, amoral and unpredictable man to lead them and are doing nothing to stop his madness. And we, the rest of the world, have done nothing, we have not said “This shall not be”. Almost three millennia ago Athenian philosopher Plato cautioned "Qui tacet consentit" (He who remains silent gives his consent) – we and our leaders have not heeded his words and have been silent, and thus condoned the actions of mad and evil men. Both Trump and Israel's Netanyahu have tried to justify this latest war by saying that they are seeking to destroy an "axis of evil"; the only axis of evil here is that of America and Israel and without America Israel is nothing. Quite frankly if we allow Trump and America to carry out these unprovoked, illegal and amoral actions against other nations, cultures and beliefs then both America and we, who have looked the other way are culpable by our silence and deserve both their anger and perhaps their retribution.

The Glory of Bach and the Grotesque Ugliness of Trump's America & Netanyahu's Israel

The glory of Bach. Can there be anything more uplifting and beautiful than this - part of the Credo from Bach's B Minor Mass, one of the defining (if not the defining) work of all vocal music.

In our contemporary race to the bottom society and in a world obsessed with hate and war we need solace and space to reflect on where we are going as a race - it is difficult anymore to describe ours as a civilization. The most powerful man in the world, leader of the richest nation in the world and aided by Netanyahu's Israel seek to reduce us all to unfeeling thugs in their own brutal image. Trump is an evil mad man - there have always been such people - and it is our responsibility and especially America's to get rid of him: if they do not then they are giving their consent to his evil and thus complicit in it. But Israel is more worrying. Israel is a nation whose Jewish population should, more than any other, recognize the evil abomination of what they are doing for they have with the holocaust and throughout history suffered great loss and injustice. But, it seems that rather than learn the lessons of hatred and crude violence against their neighbours they prefer to take on its mantle, and reproduce the sins of those, like Hitler, who sinned against them; they should not be easily forgiven for they show no forgiveness. In such times as these we need rescuing from the grotesque ugliness of Trump, Netanyahu and their evil followers and what they are seeking to impose upon mankind. We need to think of and experience great beauty and inspiration more and more if we are to survive as true human beings with the feelings and emotions that recognize beauty, truth, dignity, justice so that goodness might prevail over the evil that now stalks the world.

Bach's B Minor Mass is often the last thing I hear before falling asleep at night; listening to it and especially this glorious Credo is fundamental to my life and my being. Bach's exquisite working of the Credo - affirming the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith - is a canon, a musical form that together with the contrapuntal form Bach was and is the master. I make no apology for saying that anyone who cannot listen to this without getting shivers down the spine or shed a tear is in my view emotionally and spiritually damaged for, like so much of Bach, it speaks to our humanity and reaches into our very soul - and surely we need that in these times.

Being Governed By The Basest Of Instincts

Tony Benn was right in 1991 when speaking of the Iraq war and his comments are just as right and relevant this weekend as America once again makes war and brings death to innocents. Iran may well be a dreadful state with terrorist links, Trump and Netanyahu may well feel they have a strong case for their actions but war is not and can never be the solution; in short it is an admission of the failure of mankind to reason, to talk, to try to understand others and incontrovertible evidence that mankind is governed by the basest of instincts - to kill to get what he wants. Even if I accept the argument that Iran and its leaders had to brought to justice I cannot condone America and Israel's war - and for one simple reason. Iran might well be a threat, they might well sponsor terrorism but if we in the west are to have any moral justification we have to be better than that. If we are not then when he sends our drones and our missiles we are no better than the terrorist acting on Iran's orders.

This would abhorrent, immoral and unjustifiable even if it carried out on the orders of a responsible president following the best advice from America's greatest minds. As it is, what we are seeing is the death and destruction of mostly innocents, a world stepping several steps nearer to the precipice, and all promoted and carried out on the orders of arguably the world's two greatest madmen playing a nightmare game of brinkmanship and terror for their own distorted ends. Trump and Netanyahu claim that this action is justifiable - I trust, therefore, that both of these gentlemen will be travelling to Iran in the next day or two to lay flowers at the graves of the innocents killed by their drones and missiles. And that they hug, empathise with, and explain the moral and political justice of their actions individually to each and every one of the mothers of dead children, and the families of dead brothers, sisters, wives, husbands and grandparents and say why their loved ones had to die or suffer such treatment; surely these "great leaders" could and will do no less - it's called being human.

Sadly, I won't hold my breath on that one, but it is what should happen, for if it doesn't it tells us much about the immorality of Trump and Netanyahu and. the justification for their actions. The peoples of the USA and Israel should be ashamed of what they have wished upon the world.

 

If we vote for clowns get a circus!

The other night Pat and I watched the excellent docudrama “Dirty Business” about the dreadful state of our privatised water system. It was overwhelmingly depressing, chillingly worrying and guaranteed to make anyone critical of those who make decisions on our behalf. The content of the programme I will leave for another time – there’s only so much rage my old heart can stand these days But sufficient to say we, in the UK live in a country where all the public utilities – the essential services upon which the nation depends have been or are being “sold off” to private companies, most of them not based in the UK. These vast financial conglomerates – hedge funds and private equity companies - are buying up our essential public services to make a profit – at the expense of all of us. The result is poorer service, higher prices and, in the case of the water industry, increasing environmental and health issues as the “family silver” – the water industry, the NHS, the railways, vast swathes of our education system and the energy industry is given into the hands of private individuals. I am reminded of the warning of the great economist John Maynard Keynes who famously told us: "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all” – and, as the docudrama showed us, there are some seriously nasty men and women indeed reaping the profits from the millions of us who pay our water bills and I suspect they have a hearty laugh on their way to the bank.

But we are where we are – and as I say, there’s only so much rage my old heart can take these days.

It was Margaret Thatcher over 40 years ago who gave the initial green light to the privatisation of water and some of our other utilities., the idea underpinning the policy was that it would remove the vast costs of running and providing these services from the exchequer and place it in the hands of private companies – the companies would profit and the government would not have to raise tax from the population to pay for the services; it was supposed to be a win win for everybody; the government is released from its obligations and the electorate get tax cuts, which, of course, as Thatcher and other politicians knew is what people will always vote for. As time has shown, however, it has been a disaster – private companies have walked away with vast profits but the nation has suffered poorer quality provision. higher prices, and increasingly been asked to fund huge pay-outs to these companies.

But it would be quite wrong to lay the blame entirely at Thatcher’s door. In the years since every government of whatever persuasion has carried on and expanded the privatisation of our basic services. At the time of Thatcher’s premiership she brought the worst out in me – and sad to say still does today, but, I will say one thing in her favour she was a serious politician – she made no concessions to the baying mob. She did what she believed in, no-one could say they hadn’t been warned. I disliked her and disliked her policies even more but she was, whatever one says, a leader, she had gravitas and hinterland; she was not the shallow husks, the playboys, the wannabes and the populists that fill the parliamentary benches and take up residence in 10 Downing Street today. Thatcher didn’t feel the need to be “liked” because she was convinced of the rightness of her beliefs – whereas today our politicians are made of poorer stuff. The nature of leadership is to make the hard decisions, not pander to the mob. Great leaders – Churchill, Attlee, Macmillan, Wilson in our country or Kennedy, Johnson and Roosevelt in America for example – didn’t feel the need to demean themselves by seeking cheap popularity – they had policies that they believed in and took the necessary tough decisions to ensure that they became a reality - whatever Joe and Jean Public said or thought.

We as a nation are desperately in need of grown up, serious thinkers, people with both intellect and the moral fibre, like those I mentioned above, to do the right thing for the common good. Instead, we have been let down by a series of intellectual midgets, political dwarves and morally bankrupt wannabes as prime Minister: Blair, Cameron, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer and these have been backed up by hundreds of low quality MPs from all parties, all on the Westminster gravy train. The only PMs we have had since Thatcher who offered something approaching true leadership were John Major, Theresa May and Gordon Brown – and there’s the rub. Each of these three were vilified by many in their own party and by the wider electorate, they didn’t relate to the “common man”, they didn’t always say the right things, they pointed out that hard choices had to be made, they didn’t try to be everyone’s friend; in other words, they were leaders and not just panderers, anxious to curry favour and be popular with Joe and Jean Public. I’m utterly fed of hearing that Keir Starmer is a good guy because he pulls on his fake England footy shirt and plays 5 a-side footy with his mates and that he supports Arsenal. I don't want a man baby who refuses to grow up and be a kid again playing footy with his mates - I want a serious adult who has put childish things away and entered the adult world. I’m not interested in people like Tony Blair who, in his desire to be loved, told us "Call me Tony" and extolled the virtues of various pop groups to impress the mindless mob.

In 1997 on the night Blair won his landslide majority I sat up to watch the results come in – I went to bed at just after 2 am depressed and horrified as I watched Blair and his fan club singing a cheap and tuneless pop song “Things can only get better” on the steps of Downing Street. I was delighted at a Labour victory but it all reminded me of football terraces, of drunken louts in a city centre and it seemed to me then and does even more so today to be a metaphor for the death of serious politics and serious politicians in this country.

And I wept for Neil Kinnock, a serious politician, who had been Labour leader before Blair; who had made the necessary and difficult changes to make Labour electable again and brought a hinterland, a dignity and a pride to the Labour Party after a difficult interlude. Kinnock’s background music to his political meetings and conferences was not a cheap drunken pop song as favoured by Blair but the uplifting and powerful 3rd movement of Brahms’ 1st Symphony. But 21st century Joe and Jean Public don’t want “uplifting”, they don’t want dignity, they don’t want hinterland, they don’t want leadership, they want happy clappy, dumbed down, easy politicians with cheap and mindless sound bites, they want razzamatazz, they want everyman – not boring fuddy-duddies who can actually do the job and make the hard but right decisions. In our flashy media driven celebrity world appearance is everything and staid middle aged thoughtful people like Gordon Brown or Theresa May just don’t cut it when good old Boris with his gags and his daft haircut are around or Peter Mandelson is schmoozing and whispering sweet nothings in Joe Public’s ear – and look where that got us! If we choose inconsequential and trivial people to represent us then we must suffer the consequences.

So I don’t blame Margaret Thatcher entirely for what has happened or is happening to our country. True, she started many of these balls rolling but we have had plenty of time to reverse the direction of travel and we have failed. As an electorate we have increasingly, through our voting in of poor quality “leaders” and representatives of all parties, taken the easy way out. We have, through our votes, and just like Esau in the Bible, sold our birth right, our family silver, for a mess of pottage – for tax cuts, for cheap food, for the massive cuts in the “red tape” and the bureaucracy which protect us and makes life more sustainable, pleasanter, fairer, more decent; we have traded these aspects of the common good in favour of the low cost government promised by the snake oil salesmen of all parties. So, when you next complain about the potholes in your street, the waiting time to see your GP, the time your Granny spent lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor, the dreadful water supply, the cost of train travel or its inefficiency, the cuts to provision being made in your child’s school, the lack of job opportunities for our young people, the morally bankrupt policy of student loans, the poor response of your depleted and underfunded police force, and all the other ills that our society faces ask yourself how it has come to this. Don't blame the Labour Party or the Conservatives - it's not the party; political parties are made up of people and it’s the poor quality of the people we have voted for who are to blame; we preferred representatives and thus leaders who drunkenly sang and told us “Things can only get better” (they lied!) or that we should give approval to a middle aged man who might be a decent well intentioned guy but is too anxious for us to see him running around a 5 a-side pitch in his wannabe England footy shirt rather than be intent on his job as a leader, taking the hard decisions needed in the national interest and for the common good.

Today, the Green Party won a by-election and rightly celebrated. The newly elected MP, Hannah Spencer, is an ex-plumber who celebrated by eating fish and chips outside the local chippie and was photographed taking a selfie beside her cheering supporters. I'm sure that Ms Spencer is a splendid lady with many virtues and the best of intentions but I'm not convinced she has the gravitas, intellect or the hinterland to be an effective leader charged with making the right choices on our behalf. 

In the end she was and is like so many of our political class concerned with image (her own) rather than substance, hence her desire to portray herself eating chips and taking a selfie - it's what impresses Joe and Jean Public in 2026 Britain. The moral in this sorry tale for today is that in the end we get the leaders, and by extension the country, that we vote for; in short, if we vote for clowns we don't get serious grown up government and leadership, we get a circus. And that in turn allows the sort of criminal activities depicted in the docudrama "Dirty Business" to flourish.