Daily archives: June 26, 2007
Happily Ever After
For those of you who have read Murder in Samarkand, you might be interested in an update on what has happened to Nadira, now over a year since the ending of the book.
Well, we are still very happy together. Nadira completed a course at Rose Bruford College, then last year did both summer schools at RADA and this week finishes her postgraduate acting course at Drama Studio London. Next week ahe discovers if she has passed her BA at Trinity College, London. She has obtained her RADA Bronze Shakespeare Certificate, and takes her Silver in the summer. As many actors who are native English speakers have difficulty with these, I am terribly proud of her.
But now, of course, she faces the acid test for any young actor; whetherr she can make a living in the profession. She has already had a couple of small professional parts on TV, but the next few months will be crucial. At this stage you need luck as well as talent and hard work.
Richest Man in House of Commons Joins Labour Party
Quentin Davies, former Director of Morgan Grenfell Bank, holder of numerous directorships in addition to his neglected parliamentary duties, has joined the Labour Party.
Davies, who had an undistinguished Foreign Office career ending as one of the FCO’s many hundred First Secretaries, should be right at home with New Labour. After all, under NULab the gap between the extremely rich, like Mr Davies, and both the poor and the middling, is greater than at any time in British history. Mr Davies is right – who needs the Conservatives when NuLab are the best friend unearned income ever had?
Secondly, Davies is a warmonger for whom the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead are not enough – he’s just itching to attack Iran. Doubtless some of his financial interests would benefit from the consequent massive profits to the weapons and oil sectors.
Here is “Genghis” Davies in the House of Commons on 21 February 2007:
Quentin Davies (Grantham & Stamford, Conservative)
Today’s news is extremely good. Does the Prime Minister accept that he deserves genuine credit for having kept his nerve and not withdrawn the troops prematurely, despite the strong pressures on him? We have got to the point today where we are making some real progress. On Iran, while of course diplomacy must be tried, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) is correct that we need to go for tougher sanctions, particularly if we can get them through the Security Council, would it not be utterly irresponsible not to recognise that there is a real possibility that the last thing the Iranians want or would accept is a strong, united and successful democratic Iraq on their borders, and the last thing that they will ever agree to do, whatever the pressures on them, is to give up their enrichment and their nuclear weapons programmes? Do we not seriously have to confront that unfortunate, hideous possibility and plan accordingly?
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2007-02-21b.261.0&s=iraq+speaker%3A10160#g276.2
The extraordinary thing is that such an odious, bigoted, violent, vastly wealthy warmonger can feel fully at home in the Labour Party. I think this strange weather might be caused by Keir Hardie spinning. David Cameron should cheer up – his party is better off without this dangerous nutter.
Turns Out I Was Wrong…
… in saying that it would be pointless for the Stop the War Coalition to walk around Manchester in the rain while the Dance of the War Criminals proceeded inside the Labour Party Special Conference. In fact STW got much more media coverage than the bigger demo in Manchester last year. Sky News was particularly good in its live coverage, although the later news bulletins were not so good. The Blair and Brown Corporation (BBC) was appalling as usual.
The most interesting thing about the Deputy Leadership contest was its revelation of just how tiny the true membership of the Labour Party is.
I am just back from Geneva, and flicking through the international news channels there I was very impressed indeed by the coverage of the demo. So the spectres of the dead of our wars for oil did haunt Brown’s feast. At least those abroad understand that opposition to the war in UK public opinion is as strong as ever.
Makes me all the more keen to turn up and yell at Blair tomorrow morning.