Category: Politics

‘Allo, ‘Allo Norwich

Throughout the Middle Ages, Norwich was England’s largest city outside London and, until the eighteenth century, vied with Bristol to be the Sceptered Isle’s second metropolis. The original source of the city’s wealth was the wool trade (England’s principle foreign exchange earner in those far flung days). As the industrial revolution swept through other parts of the country, Norwich slipped down the civic rankings. The city was relatively untroubled by industrialisation and avoided most of the urban blight that followed it. Much of what did exist was flattened by the Luftwaffe in 1942. The blanket bombing was a bit of threadbare affair as the Jerrys missed both the enormous city hall and Jeremiah Colman’s mustard mill. Despite the bulldozing frenzy of the 60s and 70s that disfigured too many British towns, Norwich has managed to preserve much of its charming medieval legacy.

Apparently, Jeremiah Colman was one of those rare Victorian philanthropists who were good to their workers. This goes to prove that you can get filthy rich without screwing the poor. Until recently, Colman’s was the main sponsor of Norwich City Football Club. This crown has now passed to Delia Smith, Blighty’s most famous no-nonsense cook and obsessive football fan. However, St Delia (as she’s known in the pie trade) is not a local lass. Norwich’s most famous daughter is Edith Cavell. Nurse Cavell was shot for treason by the dastardly Germans in the Great War because she helped smuggle British prisoners of war out of occupied Belgium. It caused an international outcry at the time and badly damaged Imperial Germany’s image. Well, it just wasn’t cricket and not nearly as funny as ‘Allo, ‘Allo.

Like anywhere, I’m sure it has its problems but Norwich today is a sparkling hilly liberal jewel within a flat sea of true blue conservatism. The council is Labour-controlled and the city returns two members to Parliament. The current incumbents – Simon Wright (Liberal Democrats) and Chloe Smith (Tory) both have progressive social views, including a healthy understanding of LGBT issues. Right on Norwich, here we are.

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Arrested Development

Just before we clambered aboard our life raft and paddled back to Blighty, we learned that the popular and dashing Mayor of Bodrum had been arrested by a detachment of Polis and carted off to jail, supposedly on bribery and corruption charges. Such transgressions are nothing new. A nod, wink and palms well-greased have made a vital contribution to the mad march of little white boxes up and down the Turkish coast (and elsewhere around the Med). When mega money meets meagre purse the outcome is often a foregone conclusion. Even the honest and the honourable can be led (or forced) into temptation by big business bullies or murderous mafia gangsters. As a vetpat of our close acquaintance remarked recently:

“If an ugly thug in a shiny suit strutted into your office, casually placed a loaded gun on the desk and made thinly veiled threats to you and your nearest and dearest, what would you do?”

However, there may be more to this Mayor’s rapid fall from grace than meets the eye. Rumours abound that he is a victim of trumped up charges because he refused to join the governing AK Party. Certainly, the arrest was carefully staged with the media in full attendance. Smile for the camera, Mr Mayor, you’re going to be on the six o’clock news. It’s not implausible. The current administration do not have a particularly tolerant attitude towards opposition. Locking people up at the drop of a fez is their forte. Is this evidence of a spiteful government tightening its grip on power or simply another a greedy public servant caught with his snout in the trough? Time will tell but neither outcome will do Turkey any favours.

Whinging Brits

Whinging Brits

While April showers in Blighty were supplemented by an artic snap, I basked in glorious spring warmth. Liam had returned home to deal with family affairs and I received regular dispatches from the cold front. Our Anatolian adventures will end in a few short weeks and we’ll start a new chapter; a whole new edition, in fact. Liam warned me to gird my loins for the onslaught of whinging that is washing over Blighty these days. Times are hard for many (including some in my own family). The recession lumbers on without a light in sight. Many, particularly the young, are unemployed. Those in work fret about losing their jobs. The axe man stalks town hall corridors up and down the realm and many of my old muckers are planning their exits. A little whinging is understandable. The trouble is, Brits whinge even during the good times. It’s a national pastime. Liam also warned that the complaining is liberally sprinkled with barely disguised xenophobia. It’s a toxic mix. People who feel cornered often lash out at the weak, the vulnerable and the different. Others are just racist, cornered or not.

Telegraph Jack

I flung open the closet door in the same year that ‘Going Straight’ first aired on the BBC. It was a time when the age of consent for gay men was 21* and the number of gay bars in London could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Fourth Estate – redtops and broadsheets alike – was routinely beastly to the down-trodden embryonic gay community and the police raided at will. It’s no surprise then, that my politics were a little leftish and I thought of myself as standing on the outside looking in. Now in my fifth decade, I find myself published in the Telegraph, that most ‘establishment’ of newspapers – only online, mind you. Read my Bumpy Rite of Passage. I’ve sold out for a sell-out.

*In fact it was only legal for two men to get down and dirty if they were alone in a private dwelling. Also, lesbianism was never a crime, presumably because most of the (male) public school lawmaking hypocrites not knocking off the boys on the side were rather turned on by the thought of their nannies at it.  

Home Office Consultation on Marriage Equality

I’ve just responded to the British Home Office consultation on same sex marriage. As I understand it, the original proposal was to make us all equal under the Law by allowing same sex secular marriage (replacing and/or supplementing civil partnerships) and to enable those religious organisations that wished to conduct a religious ceremony for same sex couples to do so. The Quakers really wanted their oats on this one: our Friends were at the forefront of agitating for reform. They will be disappointed; a collective ‘tut, tut’ will echo around the polite meeting houses of Blighty. Why? Because the proposed statute will introduce civil marriage equality but will also enshrine in law the notion that religious marriage is between a man and a woman only. Presumably, this typically British fudge is a concession to the meddlesome priests who think they have the divine right to call the shots. This is absurd. Where’s Henry the Eighth when you need him? Either there is marriage equality or there isn’t. A religious ceremony isn’t right for me but to deny it to the religious isn’t right either.

If there is to be a two-tier marriage system can we also have a two-tier tax system where I pay less for fewer rights? A kind of citizen-rights lite.

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Same Sex Marriage in the UK

Scratch the surface and stupidity lies beneath. The lunatics have taken over the asylum at the Turkish Living Forum. What is the subject that’s got the bigots crawling from underneath their stones? Why gay marriage of course. All this tedious religious claptrap from tossers who take their bible like they take their software – jump to the bottom and tick the ‘I accept’ box. They are in good company – kiddie fiddling priests, the British National Party and religious fundamentalists who talk in tongues and still murder witches. Where are the forum moderators? Running for cover and hiding behind some corrupt notion of free speech.

Personally, I have no wish to get married in church. Unlike the hettie hypocrites who keep the chapel tills ringing with their white weddings and solemn vows that only half will keep, I won’t pretend to be religious. No priest is going to make a phoney out of me. Liam and I have a Civil Partnership. That’ll do us for now. However, I would never deny the right of others to marry whoever they choose. It’s an equalities thing.

Let’s keep a sense of proportion. The proposed law in Blighty will simply give those religious organisations (the Quakers, primarily) that want to perform a marriage ceremony for same sex couples the freedom to do so. So really, what is all the fuss about? The bigots are fighting a losing battle. Don’t want to treat me as equal? Then don’t take my taxes. The days of second-class citizenship are over. Almost.

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Turkey v Fergie

Bad Hair Day

I assume we won’t be seeing Fergie slumming and beach-bumming it down Gümbet way any time soon. Not unless she wants her collar felt by a teenage paramilitary conscript and a stiff sentence from an un-amused Turkish beak. The ill-advised ex-HRH was foolish to embroil herself in a clandestine filming raid on a huge Turkish orphanage for disabled children in 2008. Poor Fergie’s a loose cannon at the best of times. She’s not cut out for investigative journalism and neither is my foster home. She’d do better earning her living more honestly and less controversially. Apparently, she’s to be prosecuted for violating the rights of five Turkish children and damaging the reputation of the Turkish State. I humbly suggest that Turkey’s reputation is best served by the dropping the whole thing.

Gaddafi’s Last Stand

I awoke to the news that mad Gaddafi is dead. I would have preferred him to stand trial (a fair trial that is) but I understand why they put the old dog down. I went right off him when cocktails with the captain on board HMS Cumberland were called off at the last minute because the ship was diverted from Bodrum to Libya to evacuate foreign nationals. There was no rum punch or frigging in the rigging for us. It was enough to make me want to topple a dictator. As the Arab spring rolls into winter will Assad be next? I hope so. But, what of the medieval monarchs and mad mullahs in the rest of the Middle East? Their iron grip is likely to hold a while yet.

I wish all Libyans, Tunisians and Eqyptians genuine democracy, pluralism, secularism and respect for individual rights. Will I be holding my breath? Probably not.

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Remembering 9/11

You’d have to be in a coma or living in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea not to know it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11. There are a number of momentous events that have characterised modern history and changed our world forever – Waterloo, the Great War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Hiroshima and then the Twin Towers. These events define the age. Almost all involved brutality and slaughter – man’s inhumanity to man. Few will forget that fateful day. Most can remember where they were and what they were doing. I know I can. I watched in silent horror. This changes everything, I thought with typically restrained British understatement. The Cold War may be over but a new ideological conflict was about to start in deadly earnest.

Not since January 1815 when 1,500 British troops attacked a thinly defended American battery on Georgia’s coast* has any foreigner attacked the American mainland. To be sure there had been terrorist atrocities before but the scale of the aerial strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were of an entirely different order using two of the most potent symbols of western technological supremacy – the passenger jet and the skyscraper. It’s made America jittery and defensive. Moslems across the West are vilified as the new reds under the bed and the loose talk of jihad and crusades makes our fragile and fractious world an infinitely more dangerous place. Be afraid.

*The British then proceeded to sack the nearby town of St. Mary’s and burn its fort before departing just weeks later. The hostilities marked the last invasion and occupation of the U.S. mainland by foreign troops. The fighting was all the more remarkable because the War of 1812 (when the British tried to burn down the White House) had ended a month earlier with the Treaty of Ghent. By the time the invaders pulled out, even Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans – often considered the final battle of the war – was history. It had taken a month for word of peace to make its way across the Atlantic to both British and American forces.

Source: The Archaeological Institute of America

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Defiant Blighty

The nasty riots that raged across London and other cities seem to have thankfully abated. There’s been a lot of easy talk about Broken Britain and knee-jerk reactions from here today, gone tomorrow politicians with their silly sound-bites who play to the gallery. What’s broken can be fixed but it takes everyone to do their bit. The indomitable spirit of the overwhelming number of Brits of all hues will overcome those who trash their own.

This is an incredible amateur video of a brave woman who challenged the rioters. If you don’t like swearing then I suggest you don’t watch this clip.

Normal Pansyland service resumes tomorrow.

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