McKinnon's Extradition

Gary McKinnon is British and lives in the UK. He also suffers from Asperges Syndrome. Some seven years ago, it is alleged he hacked into top secret US defence and security computers and for this reason, the US authorities wish to have him extradited to stand trial for these offences in the USA. As I write, the Home Secretary is not opposing this extradition - unsurprisingly, McKinnon's lawyers vehemently disagree with this inaction.

For me, the interest here is the implied - sometimes stated - claim that a British man with Asperges Syndrome will not be treated as well in the USA as he would be in the UK.

Of course I am not qualified to judge the degree, if any, to which McKinnon will be disorientated by transportation to the USA and if this in will in any way prejudice the ideal of a fair trial but I am interested, on a more general basis, by yet another outbreak of that jingoistic condition which I define as "Ill on Holiday Abroad" or "IHAb".

At its simplest IHAb relates to the fact that a Frenchman who becomes ill while visiting the UK will immediately hot foot it back to the shores of France where they have the only medical teams capable of dealing with Gallic ailments. Ditto an Englishman holidaying in France.

And as the McKinnon case shows, this is not just about an almost total distrust (rarely born out by the facts) of foreign medicine but also of foreign law. I find it difficult to imagine that the enthusiasm with which US lawyers engage in litigation to right wrongs (or at least to seek compensation for them) would not defend Mr McKinnon at the highest level, should he require it. And I would hope British lawyers would do the same (as I am sure they do) for Americans and all others for whom they have responsibility.

Homage to Sebastian

I am reading, I suspect 10 years later than everyone else, Sebastian Faulks' 'Birdsong', his novel circling around and focusing on the First World War and, in particular, the Battle of the Somme. For a while, maybe for the first two hundred or more pages, I found it hard to comprehend the structure of the book with sections from different eras, linked as it were by emotion and circumstance rather than - as I thought - by a more coherent thread.

I am now beginning to understand that this is, as Faulks himself says in his introduction, an 'operatic novel' dealing with issues of love and loss, of death and survival and the fact that none of these leaves any of the players unchanged.

Faulks' description of that dreadful day, 1st July 1916, is as good as I can or could imagine. Unlike his character, Elizabeth, I have been to the monument at Thiepval on more than one occasion and I know something of the scale of the loss. But Faulks adds to this with vignette and with the broad brush strokes of a much bigger picture.

For example, I did not know that the slaughter was so great that some German machine gunners refused to keep firing, unable to accept the massacre they were inflicting. I did not know that two generals committed suicide when it became clear what carnage the day had reaped. But consider this passage on the bigger scale, and coming, in Faulks' narrative, at the end of that bloody day.

"It was dark at last. The night poured down in waves from the ridge above them and the guns at last fell silent.

"The earth began to move. To their right a man who had lain still since the first attack, eased himself upright, then fell again when his damaged leg could not take his weight. Other single men moved, and began to come up like worms from their shellholes, limping, crawling, dragging themselves out. Within minutes the hillside was seething with the movement of the wounded as they attempted to get themselves back to their line.

"'Christ,' said Weir, 'I had no idea there were so many men out here.'
"It was like a resurrection in a cemetery 12 miles long. Bent, agonised shapes loomed in multitudes on the churned earth, limping and dragging back to reclaim their life. It was as though the land were disgorging a generation of crippled sleepers, each one distinct but related to its twisted brothers as they teemed up from the reluctant earth.

"Weir was shaking.

"'It's all right,' said Stephen. 'The guns have stopped.'

"It's not that,' said Weir. 'It's the noise. Can't you hear it?'

Stephen had noticed nothing but the silence that followed the guns. Now, as he listened, he could hear what Weir had meant: it was a low, continuous moaning. He could not make out any individual pain, but the sound ran down to the river on their left and up over the hill for half a mile or more. As his ear became used to the absence of guns, Stephen could hear it more clearly: it sounded to him as though the earth itself was groaning.

"'Oh God, oh God.' Weit began to cry. 'What have we done, what have we done? Listen to it. We've done something terrible, we'll never get back to how it was before.'

LES ARRETS DE LA GRANDE ARMEE

A couple of weeks ago a small group of us went to see some of the battlefields, cemetaries and memorials of the Great War or World War I. I think I've touched on this subject before but I am always concerned, when I visit such sites, about a conflict of emotions.

Take the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge, for example [pictured]. Here we have one of the most elegant of monuments, erected in the 1930s and recent having undergone an extensive renovation programme requiring a long-disused quarry in Croatia to be re-opened.

The result? Something achingly artistic, filled with light, beauty and with sorrow. The central image is of Canada crying for her lost sons.

But what are we to feel about this? Is it a celebration of heroism or of waste? A sort of Arch de Triomphe or Picasso's Guernica [picture]? History is of little help here because by the standards of that bloody 1914-18 conflict, the attack on Vimy Ridge was - after long months of planning and preparation - efficient with fewer than 4,000 Canadian soldiers killed. A horrendous number but when you compare it to the 20,000 the British lost on the first day of The Somme in July 1916 ...

Of course such comparisons are at once odious and meaningless but it is interesting to speculate on the meaning viewers will attach the the statuary and, within the graveyards, the symmetry of northern France and Flanders. Will a sense of this war fade or will these many symbols transcend one conflict to be symbols of the futility of all wars? One hopes so.

In the post a couple of days ago, I received a compilation of copies of The Wipers Times (and equivalent titles) published through much of the second half of the war, wherever the editor and sub-editor (both of whom survived) were posted. To them the last word (which has little to do with anything except the humour of those impossible times):

"The following is a true extract from a return of reserve rations from a certain garrison:-
Locality - Foxhall Kemp
Map Ref - P 67 X 19-32
Commodity - Bully Beef
Quantity - 1 Tin
Remarks - Not Full"

Dinner with the Grocers

Last night I had the pleasure of dining with a small group in one of the more elevated rooms of the City of London's Grocers Hall. Our host, Rory Macnamara, a Scottish gentleman from Putney, is set next year to become the head of this august livery company and was clearly starting out - in terms of entertainment - as he means to go on.

The wine, (I gather - not partaking myself) was fine, the starter seemed to have delved the very ocean-floor to collect the diverse crustacea on the plate and the pudding - I should really say dessert - reminded me in shape of one of those hats designed by Cecil Beaton for the 'Ascot Gavotte' scene in 'My Fair Lady'.

But we also had the chicken. There was an odd college feel about the chicken: first of all everyone had a leg and given there were forty of us this must be accounted a triumph for genetic modification; secondly there was an obligatory ladle-full of gravy; thirdly, and most peculiarly, the dining-room a couple of floors below was occupied by a large number of yahoos from Oriel College, Oxford and that set a studenty feel on the whole building.

Speaking of Cecil Beaton and sartorial trends, there was an odd feature to many of the men's shirts I had not encountered before - and I don't mean the red wine stain down the front of one of the 'Oryell' men. It was that showing buttons on evening shirts seems to have become de rigeur. And they were proper evening shirts with pleats and what-not - but with the buttons in full light.

When I was first wearing evening dress, having buttons glistening on one's shirt would have been worse than leaving one's flies open.

But while some customs fade others (excluding the chicken) remain. There were a good number of pairs of patent leather shoes on masculine feet, for example, and almost all the 'lovely lydies' wore black - most accessorized by good jewels (i.e. not Boodle & Dunthorne).

Thank you to Mr Mac and the Grocers, whose premises I had not visited before but which, I can now say, are only a little less grand than the true Grocers' Livery Hall in Piccadilly of Fortnum & Mason.

Hedge Funds - The End of the Beginning?

Yesterday's announcement from London-based hedge fund managers, Bluecrest, that they're moving 50 of their (most senior) staff to Geneva is important. It suggests that the cracks already present in the London hedge fund scene - appearing largely as a result of the proposed European alternative investment management directive but helped along by the UK government's move towards a top band of 50% taxation - are now becoming structural.

In short it seems that the destroyers of financial wealth in Denmark, France and Germany are beginning to carry the day. Instead of pride that London (even today) is the world's largest financial centre - and-it-is-in-Europe - there is barely concealed envy that this centre is not to be found in right-thinking (make that left-thinking) - capitals like Paris.

And so it will end up being Geneva.

Caged Birds

As I write, I can see, on the window sill, one of those mechanical birdcages beloved of the Victorians and Edwardians. You know the ones, a gilded cage with a music box mechanism underneath and three or so brightly coloured birds which appear to sing - or at least tweet - and move their beaks and tails when the thing is turned on.

Why do these exist? Clearly they're meant to replicate the less convenient but truer birdcages containing canaries and their ilk that used to be a feature of a range of houses and are still to be found in places like (unsurprisingly) the Canary Islands, the Balearics and parts of Spain.

But is this replication just to make things easier? Obviously there's no feeding to be done, no cleaning out and, moreover, the birds sing on demand. Or is it a response to the guilt (rarely I think felt by our ancestors of a hundred years ago) about caging a pretty bird?

We in (most of the) west now feel strongly supportive of song birds and there are some of us (I include myself within this group) who feel there should be much greater clarity around the permissions to knock-off magpies which are a primary cause of the decline of the smaller (prettier) birds.

Of course these managed conservationist views are not universal. Indeed, I've just returned from a trip to Malta where - I gather - that anything that moves and has feathers is fair game for the pot - and apparently the smaller the better. And I would also argue that such views are also very recent dating probably no earlier than the publication of Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring'.

All of which means our ancestors did not produce mechanical caged birds for the sake of morality but almost undoubtedly for reasons of efficiency. Birds die, moult and only sing when they want to. As Ogden Nash once rhymed: "The song of canaries never varies, and when they're moulting they're pretty revolting."

More Photos from Sicily and Malta

Sicily & Malta

Less of a blog and more a photo album of images taken in late October of the trip taken by us (with Imogen and Eleanor) and Sam and Juliet Searle to Sicily and then onto Malta by way of the ferry from Pozzallo. I have to say I didn't cope with the driving as well as I would have hoped to do in Sicily and certainly the first day driving through the extremely narrow streets of Enna in the centre of Sicily (and at the highest point if you don't count Etna) I found very challenging indeed.

One of the key reasons for going to Sicily was the chance it gave us to enter Malta in the old-fashioned way (albeit never achieved by the Ottoman Turks) i.e. via the Grand Harbour at Valletta. But we were also keen following a couple of dinners I had had with Professor Graham Loud of Leeds University (a key historian describing the Norman conquests of southern Italy and Sicily) to visit Monreale Cathedral.

For my part, I was also keen to see Syracuse (where Archimedes made his mark) and also Taormina because of the great Byzantine battle which did not involve Belisarius - although it should have done had he not been back in Constantinople having his eyes put out by Justinian.

One thing I had not expected of Taormina was the looming presence of Mount Etna - covered with snow at the top of its near 11,000 feet and, to my eye, at least, seemingly out of proportion to one's assumptions of the background to the city. I must say I wondered - based on the thought the volcano was much the same size in classical times - whether the look and scale influence the builders of both Roman and Greek theatres in the locale.

While there are two or three photos of Malta in this piece, the main lot are images of Sicily. And I was trying to think what I had found most surprising or unexpected about the island. Certainly the scale of Syracuse and, in particular the fact the Greek Theatre appeared to be carved out of the living rock (as they say) but also that enormous quarries - genuinely enormous - had burrowed their ways into the surrounding countryside (a lot of which we drove around by mistake)to produce the stone to build the superstructures of the theatres, the great altar - more like an outdoor abatoir - and so on.

Also Mount Etna.

Also the extraordinarily elegant hotel (Baia Verde) north of Catania in Aci Castello where we stayed for two nights. It had a Fred Astaire feel of elegance even as the season was (very rapidly) winding down.

Also the fact that in Sicily you are either somewhere or absolutely nowhere as we kept discovering when taking the wrong turning.

Also the great sweeps of the coutnryside - much more elegant than I had imagined.

War Games

My sense that the English used to take nothing seriously and, moreover, considered war to be a game, has just been reinforced. And poignantly so on the eve of Remembrance Sunday. I was reading part of the demob letter received by a soldier in the Royal Engineers who fought at both the Somme and Ypres and some of whose effects are being sold on eBay.

"Now that the time has come for you to leave the Army and go back to civil life, I wish, both personally and officially, to thank you for the service which you have given.

"You take away with you the priceless knowledge that you have played a man's part in this great War for freedom and fair play. You will take away with you also the remembrances of your comrades, your pride in your Regiment, and your love for your country.

"You have played the game, go on playing it, and all will be well with the great Empire which you have helped to save.

"I wish you every prosperity and happiness."

Afghanistan

T S Eliot once famously criticized 'doing the right deed for the wrong reason' and this is the position in which Britain and the US find themselves in Afghanistan.

Despite an increasingly negative civilian population on both sides of the Atlantic and, I suspect, in Afghanistan, there are many reasons for western military involvement in this country. But whether many of these have to do with Brown's assertion - made in a speech this morning - that fighting the Taliban on the North West Frontier is at the same time weakening Al Qaeda and defending London (for example) from terrorist attacks, is questionable.

Brown's and, indeed, Obama's problems hark back to the 'attack anything' hysteria that swept through the US after 9/11 reinforced, in the UK, by 7/7. And Afghanistan was the focal point of said attacks. The maintenance of troups in that country therefore depends, politically speaking, on the continuing justification of the claims that the attacks have indeed reduced the likehihood of domestic terrorism.

Except, of course, that Pakistan is the spanner in the works. They - or at least what remains of their political and military structures after the past few weeks - are supposed to be on our side yet there is no doubt that British terrorists (the majority of whom hold British passports) are more usually linked to Pakistan than to Afghanistan and that Pakistani madrassas have been shown to be hotbeds of anti-Western extremism.

But with all this, we should repeat that military involvement in Afghanistan is right (if not politically right) because such involvement is improving the lives and the longer-term prospects of many of the native population and, in particular, the women. For all their failings, and the Fort Hood massacre of yesterday is a stark case in point, established Western democracies have a lot to say to tribal and/or antidemocratic government structures particularly those predicated upon forcing one set of views or religious beliefs on weaker groups within that society.

Before Tamberlaine mashed it some 600 years ago, Afghanistan was a thriving and culturally diverse region (if not country) and as the British found to their cost in the nineteenth century and the Russians in the latter part of the twentieth century, what the inhabitants these days lack in formal education or culture (in western terms) they surely make up for in bloody-mindedness.

So there's a strong populus who should be helped and supported. True Aghans don't like the Taliban. And certainly the inhabitants of Kabul do not want a quick return to the recent anti-university, anti-music, anti-female, pro-medieval punishments regime of the very recent past.

Of course the western powers (such as they are) can't involve themselves as defenders of the right everywhere despite the fact there are many countries or regions whose weaker citizens might benefit from such intervention.

But given we are in Afghanistan, let's stay in Afghanistan and see this one through even if, as predicted by former ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, it takes 30 years.

Ebury Craic

What a pleasure to be with new and old friends at a civilized lunchtime restaurant with space to breathe, hooks for coats and jackets and a level of courtesy met with only infrequently in the capital these days.

Thanks to the Ebury Wine Bar - that long term provider of quality tuck a little way west of Victoria Station and also to David Tease and the shining Lyn Brosnan (pictured) of Dolmen Alternative Asset Management for acting as hosts and Charles Macmillan for suggesting Kummel (no uncommon occurrence).

Of particular note was the roasted garlic with garlic hummus and there was also some important work done with Cumberland sausages and horseradish mashed potatoes. Furthermore, Ebury Wine Bar (and if not them, then who?) was able to supply us with a clutch of bottles of 2007 Cotes du Rhone - that Rhone annus mirabilis which is only now making its way onto tables and into gullets.

Moxon's Award Winning Fishcakes

I had the pleasure today to be presented to Robin Moxon, 20 years a fishmonger, who -with others including the delectable Frances Macmillan (pictured) - was presenting his award-winning wares at a food fair in Victoria (London) this very lunchtime.

Key among the piscatorial provender on offer were the Moxon's Roast Salmon & Dill Fishcakes which, the judges of these annual awards decided, just edged out the Moxon's Thai Fishcakes and the Smoked Haddock & Horseradish ditto. (No one else was even in the running).

Robin tells me he is committed to the retail market and sells neither fish nor prepared food to restaurants. His three outlets (i.e. fish shops) - Clapham, Lordship Lane and South Kensington, are, apparently, quite enough to keep him and the team occupied.

The one weakness of today's Moxon's offering was that, with a few other hardy traders, they had to be outside while whimpy numbers from Jamaica and a host of chocolatiers (some of doubtful percentages) simpered within.

Fish, however, has always been a tough business.

Stick your baguette where the sun don't shine

Does anyone remember the last time a British government minister made a specific and offensive attack on the policies of a political party of another country? It's not as if there haven't been temptations. France's lily-livered aproach to the Afghanistan conflict for example; Germany's certainty that the financial crisis was exclusively prompted by the 'Anglo-Saxons' (actually I thought many Germans were Saxons) that is now coming home to roost with the likelihood of mass job losses from Opel.

But this hasn't stopped the llaughable Pierre Lellouche, the France's Europe Minister attacking Cameron's plans for Britain's relations with Europe. And attacking these in the rudest terms. 'Autism' !?! - oh really.

I am increasingly coming to the view that interesting though the European experiment has been, the older-fashioned Churchillian notion of the Union of English Speaking Peoples, is simply better. We don't need the City of London (frankly the dynamo of the British economy) torn apart by continental European regulators; we don't need our fishermen to be deprived from working their home waters to allow space for foreign trawlermen who ignore their own rules; and we don't need to be insulted by a diplomatic dunce like Lellouche.

Question, would you prefer to ally with Obama - politically as well as militarily - or with that vertically-challenged Sarkozy or that flag-carrier of haute couture Angela Merkle?

Scuffle

I would like to introduce you to my Kerry Blue bitch - Scuffle - whose picture I first saw on the Battersea Dogs Home website about three years ago when she was a little over one year old.

I plan to post more and better photos of Scuffle who remains the enthusiast she was when I first saw her in the flesh, dragging he minder out of one of Battersea's doors to get to the fresh air and have some fun.

Even now as I write (and we're very much indoors) she is dropping a tennis ball at my feet, clearly hoping I'll throw it or kick it. And not any old tennis ball, you understand, this is one actually played with at this year's Wimbledon Championships (they sell them off cheap after using them for nine games or so).

Anyway, Scuffle lights up the world and seems to make fans wherever she goes even among that sad group of peole who don't like friendly dogs. And it seems she'd had a couple of owners like that before she came to settle down with me. The first couple who owned her split up and chose to keep the children and send the dog (then called Peggy) into Battersea (go figure). The second owners decided after three weeks or so, she was 'uncontrollable on the lead'. I must say I felt that last comment to be unlikely but given my size and weight I felt I could hang on to Scuffle if any strange happened (and nothing ever does).

Anyway, thank goodness she came to us.

FISHCAKE

Tomorrow - prize winning fishcakes in Victoria and a visit (I hope) to the Ebury Wine Bar.

Keiron Root

Today I had the sad pleasure of attending the memorial service for Keiron Root, long term editor of What Investment magazine (London) that took place at St Bride's Church in Fleet Street. (Funnily enough I was married at St Bride's once in a day but that's another story). Keiron died too young (47) but was well supported by a church packed to the pews by relatives, friends from university - including one of the priests officiating at the service, by members of his cricket club and the amateur dramatic society he supported and, unsurpsingly by a good number of the London-based (investment ) press and by PRs.

It was a fine event and, as always with St Brides, the choir were excellent and led the congregation in three rousing hymns including Jerusalem as well as singing sonmgs such as 'If I were a Rich Man' from Fiddler on the Roof and Flanders and Swann's 'The Gasman Cometh'.

I have to say the post-service session in the pub (The George on Strand) wasn't all it might have been due, it seemed to a misunderstanding of the numbers likely to descend on this hostelry at 12.30. There was one heroic barmaid serving and the beer ran out almost immediately which would hardly have pleased Mr Root who was, among many other tributes, known for his enthusiasm for real ale.