Unlike journalists of the mainstream media, I am going to read through the government’s new paper on the Prevent Strategy before I comment on it. From first glance I am not impressed, but I will read it properly and write it up tomorrow morning.

Meantime I can break the news that a major terrorsit attack was foiled today at the British Library. I went to use the reading room of the British Library to look at some Alexander Burnes manuscripts, on which I have been in email discussion with the curators. I took my passport with me for identification. But they would not let me in as I did not have proof of address. They needed to see both a passport and proof of address “For security reasons”.

I did have, as it happens, several documents containing my address on in my pockets; including a doctor’s prescription, a hotel bill and a library card. Surely in addition to my passport that would do? No, I was told, “for security reasons” only a specified list of documents was acceptable, which the police have advised the Library contain securely verified addresses. A NHS registration is apparently not verified; a credit card statement is (which is bollocks – some of my credit card statements all go to an ancient address, from which someone kindly forwards them, and at which false address I could now register at the British Library as this false address will be acceptable on a specified document)

But it doesn’t stop there. I was asked why I wished to access the British Library; I replied that I was researching a biography of Sir Alexander Burnes. I was told that I must provide evidence of that. What? You think I am pretending to be researching a biography of Alexander Burnes? That I have some obscure motive in seeking to read some of the most obscure and neglected documents in the British Library? I offered to produce the emails from the Library’s curators about the documents I am looking for. These were not acceptable as emails were not “original documents”.

I was then assured that all of this was in the interests of security, and part of the anti-terrorism advice received by the British Library from the Police. It was obviously expected by the young man telling me this that I would therefore accept that all this nonsense was both sensible and necessary.

I gave up. The British Library can no doubt be delighted that they have foiled a major Al Qaida plot to insert a sleeper cell of false Alexander Burnes researchers.

Why on earth do we put up with this total bollocks, whereby ludicrous “security” regulations, administered by half-educated low paid staff steeped in the insolence of office, are used to block individuals from going about their lawful business? Karl Marx famously wrote Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Library. He would never get in now. “Can you prove that you are researching the relationship between Capital and Labour then, sir?”.

Readers of this blog can get a £10 discount off weekend camping tickets for this year’s Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival using this discount code: elated.

It is the first and probably last time this blog has ever given anything but thoughts. I shall myself be giving a talk at the festival, and it really is a great time, as much about thinking and a way of living as the music – of which there is an extraordinary 100 bands.

I intend to be mostly in the beer tent. Feel free to buy me a pint.

I mark with great sorrow the death of my friend Miriam Karlin. Even I am too young to remember when she was at her most famous, one of the biggest stars of British television in the early 1960’s. A RADA and RSC actress of great distinction, she maintained that the same discipline of performance needs to be applied to sitcom work, and that is why sitcoms seldom do work nowadays.

Of course I knew her largely as a political campaigner, with a great interest in human rights everywhere. Her activism, despite ill health, against the war in Iraq was just a continuation with a life constantly devoted to helping the underdog, be it struggling actors or victims of human rights abuse in Palestine or Burma. Towards the end she could not do much more than compose letters to editors, but she still kept doing that.

I recall arriving in her little flat near Great Portland Street tube station a few years ago, to be met by Miriam, hobbling on her stick, brandishing a copy of The Times at me, eyes flashing with indignation. It was how I found out that David Aaronovitch had published an article calling me anti-semitic. Miriam was even more furious on my behalf than I was myself, and wrote a letter to the paper (it wasn’t published). But I won’t forget what she said; she said her own mother was an Aaronovich, and that many of their family had been killed in the holocaust, and that those who had suffered would be horrified to see their legacy perverted to a neo-conservative agenda.

I also remember her coming to see Nadira’s one woman show at the Arts theatre to give Nadira notes. There are hundreds of actors who have benefited from Miriam’s generosity with her time and experience over decades. She told Nadira to let the words paint the picture; the text contains all the emotion – just deliver it clearly, and as your character would. You don’t have always to convey the emotion other than simply and through the words.

Miriam really did live her life largely for others. I am so sorry it has ended.

The IoS did a splendid job of presenting my article. But the original, before editing for space, was rather more stylish, i feel. You might also note that the passage on Libya was an addition at the resquest of the IoS. I suggest I think my headlune was rather better:

Trouble Abroad for Clegg

I recently received a circular email from a friend, a Liberal Democrat activist, a well known and respected party conference speaker for many decades, of precisely the type whose dress sense has provided cheap lines to political commentators throughout that period. He was furious that party conference delegates, elected by their constituencies, are to be required to submit their details to the police and to a private security company for vetting. He is of course absolutely right – it hardly promotes democracy for party conference delegates to be subject to police veto.

In any other decade of the last century and a half, such an arrangement would have been ridiculed out of existence. Unfortunately, the number of people who really care about such questions of liberty appears to be fast dwindling. But undoubtedly there is a concentration of people who do care about liberty in the Liberal Democrats.

Liberty is of course an universal concept, and Liberal Democrat activists, as witnessed by their conference resolutions, are distinguished by an extraordinary interest in two places – their local government, and abroad. Human rights, ethical foreign policy and support for international law are a part of the very weft of the liberal tradition.

There is therefore mounting concern that the foreign policy of the coalition government is entirely indistinguishable from that of New Labour, or that which William Hague might exercise were he not in coalition. That is likely to become a more acute pressure point for their activists than the media has so far noticed.

Let me refer to one touchstone issue; extraordinary rendition and the use of intelligence obtained under torture. Lib Dems believe that British complicity in the excesses of George Bush’s CIA
at the height of the “War on Terror”, represents a deep dark stain on the record of New Labour. In the second of the Prime Ministerial election debates, Nick Clegg startled his opponents by devoting part of his vital opening comments to this issue. Last year’s annual Liberal Democrat Assembly in Liverpool saw a full conference debate.

But the issue is a prime example of a win for the Lib Dems evaporating in delivery.

It was announced with great fanfare at the start of the coalition government that there would be an inquiry into the question of UK complicity in torture. But then the establishment clawed the ball back. It was announced, astonishingly, that the inquiry would be conducted by Sir Peter Gibson, former Commissioner for the intelligence services, who had every year in that role reported that MI6 were “trustworthy, conscientious and reliable”. Sir Peter Gibson was thus being asked to investigate whether he himself was negligent, amoral or corrupt.

Next the inquiry was kicked far into the long grass. It would not take place until the conclusion of a number of court proceedings relating to individuals who allegedly had suffered torture. As if that were not enough, it has been decided that its proceedings will mostly be held in secret. Worst of all, its terms of reference will be limited strictly to individual cases of torture, rather than whether there was a general policy of collusion with torture by hideous regimes abroad.

This particularly concerns me because I was the only British civil servant to enter a written objection at the time to UK complicity in torture. I have testified before both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe inquiries that I have eyewitness evidence that there was such a policy. But I have been warned by senior friends still within the FCO that Gibson’s terms of reference are specifically being tweaked to exclude my evidence.

So much for the inquiry. But more crucially, the policy has not changed either. MI6 still receive, via the CIA, “intelligence” from Uzbekistan’s torture chambers. They were receiving “intelligence” from Mubarak’s torture chambers until the moment he fell, and still do so from other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. An FCO spokesman even used the killing of Osama Bin Laden to justify the efficacy of intelligence gained from torture.

All of which leads to the wider question of human rights and the consistency of our support for liberty abroad. It is to me astonishing that a government with a Lib Dem component is silent about the atrocious torture and murder of pro-democracy demonstrators and human rights activists in Bahrain, and even the continuing imprisonment and mistreatment of 53 medical staff whose crime was to treat demonstrators shot by the security forces.

It astonishes me still more that our policy in Central Asia toadies still more to the world’s most vicious dictators than it did under New Labour, in the interest of supply lines to Afghanistan and future oil and gas contracts..

Still less is there any sign of an intention to address dreadful longstanding British wrongs, such as the deportation of the whole population of the Chagos Islands to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia.

The FCO still publishes an annual human rights report. Under Robin Cook, each country’s human rights record was subjected to stern analysis. That caused embarrassment by pointing up the gross double standards with which we treat Libya, Burma and Zimbabwe on one hand, and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan on the other. So Jack Straw had the format changed. Rather than by country, the report is ordered by theme, so that inconvenient abuses by allied states could simply be (and are) elided.

The coalition government has made no attempt to change the format or the mindset it represents.

There is a Liberal Democrat minister in the FCO, Jeremy Browne. In theory, he precisely carries ministerial responsibility for human rights. Now I have tried every internet search engine and scoured Hansard. But I can find absolutely no connection between Jeremy Browne and human rights before he was given this portfolio.

I strongly suspect that his lack of interest in the subject was his chief qualification.

Karzai has been privately assured by both the US and UK that neither will quit Afghanistan before his term of office ends in 2015 and he and his family leave to enjoy their very substantial fortune. His two predecessors as puppet rulers in Kabul, Dr Nasrullah and Shah Shujah, both met grisly ends once their sponsors departed, and the White House and No 10 both realise a repeat would make it hard to claim victory.

The greatest betrayal of liberalism by the coalition is the failure to tackle the increasing miltarism of British society, and our new assumption that war is the normal state of the nation. That great Liberal, Gladstone, was prepared to take on all the forces of jingoism headlong. While Leader of the Opposition, campaigning against the Second Anglo-Afghan War, he declaimed:

“Those hill tribes had committed no real offence against us. We, in the pursuit of our political objects, chose to establish military positions in their country. If they resisted, would not you have done the same?”
Political sophistication in this country has declined since Gladstone made that speech in 1880. It is impossible in 2011 to contemplate any mainstream politician, let alone the leader of the opposition, admitting that those fighting the British Army may have right on their side. Now our media is swamped by jingoism, and the liberals in government appear to have lost all connection with the tradition and philosophy they pretend to espouse.

Commentators have not in general considered foreign policy as an area where Clegg will face party revolt; they may be wrong.

In today’s Independent on Sunday I attack coalition foreign policy and the lack of any liberal element in it.

Given continuing technical problems with comments here, I shall respond on the IoS site to any comments there requiring a response.

Some news just wants to make you dig a hole and gibber quietly at the bottom of it. Henry Kissinger is being brought in by Sepp Blatter to advise on cleaning up corruption in FIFA! I expect Lord Triesman and Chuck Blazer to be disappeared by death squads, and carpet bombing in the Lancaster Gate area.

I was a guest at David Grace’s 60th birthday party in Cambridge at the weekend. I gave him a copy of Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” as a present. In writing it to him, I was hit with what I think was a happy inspiration:

“You are always as young as you are radical.”

I intend to hold on to that thought for the rest of my life.

I am sorry that comments are off at the moment while the Intense Debate people try yet again to load up all the comments from the old site. As the interest of this blog for me is the conversation, I apologise that I find it hard to get up energy to blog when nobody can reply!

[Moderator’s note 2011/06/01 at 9:10 pm: the comment system is disabled while the old comments are imported.  In the meantime, incoming comments will be appended to their parent article periodically.  Submit comments in the usual way; they will be copied into the original post maybe twice daily.  This is a time consuming process so please be patient; test comments and flame wars will not be supported!  Comments will only be appended to this post and newer articles; older posts will have to wait for the system to be fixed.]

[Moderator’s note 2011/06/08 at 2:40 pm: the comments system is now working again, and comments submitted since 2011/06/01 are now displayed.  The copies of comments pasted into original posts have now been deleted.]

[Moderator’s note – sorry, comments are not working at present]

After the most intense bombardment of Tripoli yet, we are now deploying ground attack helicopters to intensify the fighting in Libya. Whether all this is really going to achieve the illegal objective of regime change is open to question. What is in no doubt is that it is killing people, and it is very expensive. In April 2011, UK net public sector borrowing exceeded £10 billion for the month – compared to £7.2 billion in April 2010 and a forecast of £6.5 billion. We are closing libraries and care for the disabled. Yet we still squander billions on neo-imperial folly.

The problem is that there is no opposition. The British political system has become an uncomplicated instrument of power for a united neo-conservative class. The Liberal Democrats have been neutered by Clegg and New Labour still seeks to attack from the populist right. Our established political system is not fit for purpose – it no longer provides a forum for the airing of views very widely held by disparate groups in society, and for the fair and agreed resolution of courses of action.

It has not always been like this. Even at the height of Britain’s formal Empire, major parts of one of Britain’s two main parties were actively and aggressively anti-Imperialist, and in the later Gladstonian period that included the leadership.

These aggressive wars are the most spectacular instance of the non-representation of important sections of public opinion. Involving less actual explosions and causing slower deaths, the banking bailout is a much deeper and more important example. No significant opposition was given to the lie that every single individual had to give tens of thousands of pounds to the banks to save us all from doom. As the payments are made over a lifetime – and multiplied many times in interest – the pain of realising that everyone was now vicariously paying off a very large mortgage on money somebody else has enjoyed, is only now starting to be felt. The vast mass of people did not realise what is happening, and did not do so because a united political class in the service of those taking the money from the people, conspired to mislead them and offered no alternative.

But the truth is that it will not last. A political system which has become as otiose as this one, which no longer reflects the interests of large masses of economically significant people, will eventually collpase. That process can take decades, and I am not sure how it will be replaced, nor that what replaces it will be better. But the current western liberal democratic model is looking bust. We need now to work on ideas which are both more libertarian and responsive to smaller communities which are closer to their people.

[Moderator’s note – sorry, comments are not working at present]

I was taken aback to read tonight of the apparent suicide of Catherine Hurd, wife of Douglas Hurd’s son Tom.

The Hurds and Murrays lived in adjoining identical semi-detached houses while we worked together in the British Embassy in Warsaw – we were both First Secretaries in the Embassy. Frankly, the Hurds were not very interested in people outside their own social milieu. But Catherine had her first child while they lived next door, and seemed an extremely devoted mother. They now have five children of which the youngest must still be very young. I cannot understand the circumstances and causes of this tragedy. For a mother of young children, living a life without the slightest problem in providing for them, to kill herself seems very strange indeed. I feel very sorry for the children.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted in genuine admiration of Ryan Giggs. Now Schillings have set out to destory his reputation, and rook him of several hundred thousand pounds at the same time. Guido has a good graph:

Plainly Ryan Giggs internet skills are not great, or he could easilly have discovered that would happen.

Schillings did the same thing for Alisher Usmanov, Britain’s second richest man. Schillings had written to all UK mainstream media what is known as a “chilling” letter. It stated that the Uzbek billionaire Usmanov had been in jail in the Soviet Union as a political prisoner, and had been pardoned after President Gorbachev came to power, and that anyone who published anything different would be sued. Our useless mainstream media has still, to this day, not published anything different.

In the interest of veracity I posted what I knew from my time as British Ambassador in Uzbekistan. Usmanov was never a political prisoner. He was a gangster jailed for extortion. He had not been pardoned by Gorbachev. He was pardoned by the state of Uzbekistan, under his gangster friend President Karimov.

Schillings threatened repeatedly to sue me, but they never did, because they know it is true. They threatened to sue my then webhosts, who were so scared they pulled not only my site but many others on the same server. They particularly threatened many Arsenal fan blogs, as Usmanov was trying to take over the club at the time.

The result was that millions of people worldwide, who otherwise would never have heard of Usmanov, learnt he had a conviction for blackmail as the story went viral. I have been told for cetain that the internet furore directly impacted on the willingness of major Arsenal shareholders to sell to Usmanov. Schillings caused the failure of Usmanov’s bid to take over Arsenal. If they had allowed the truth about him to live quietly in a small corner of the internet, that would not have happened.

Even though Schillings never did sue, our power-serving mainstream media has still never mentioned the truth about Usmanov’s criminal past, even when he was last month announced as Brtian’s second richest man. That is why the freedom of new media is so important, and why Ryan Giggs is wrong.

But if you have enough money, you can with effort even influence new media. The Usmanov/Craig Murray affair used to feature prminently on the Wikipedia “Streisand Effect” page linked to above. It has been edited out – when and by whom? It has also disappeared from Usmanov’s own Wikipedia page. And recently on Arsenal blogs, there have been a rash of commenters calling for Usmanov to take over, often repeating the same long comment across several Arsenal blogs. That kind of money buys a lot of trolls.

I don’t understand this.
I am a terrible father. How could he possibly turn out so well?

I strongly support the rule of law in international affairs, and it follows that I strongly support international institutions – and particularly the International Criminal Court. I am quite content that a case has been opened against the Gadaffi family there.

But the ICC has become, beyond argument, extraordinarily selective in its choice of which war crimes to prosecute. As I write, a veritable campaign of torture and killing against the Bahraini opposition, including the murder of well known opposition leaders, is continuing and being carried out by the rulers with the assistance of foreign forces. Yet there is no chance of the slightest interest by the ICC. They refused point blank to look into the question of whether Bush and Blair launched an illegal war of aggression, despite the fact that majority opinion among public international lawyers worldwide is that they did. The evidence from the Chilcot enquiry in the UK alone is sufficient to justify a prosecution. A former Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK believes there should be one. The FCO’s Legal Adviser and Deputy Legal Adviser at the time both said in writing that the invasion would be an illegal war of aggression.

The only possible conclusion from ICC case law is that a war of aggression can only be illegal if you lose.

The institution has become an instrument of very partial justice. In Libya, they have been drawn into initiating the victor’s justice before they have actually won. As I predicted, the military attack on Libya is proving vastly more difficult than NATO expected (will they never learn?) The ICC is looking not just corrupt, but foolish.

After I protested internally and in writing about UK complicity in torture, I found myself suddenly faced with eighteen allegations against me by my employer, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including an allegation that I had criminally expedited visas for women in return for sexual favours, or to put the same allegation more bluntly, blackmailed visa applicants into sex.

My world collapsed. Like Strauss-Kahn, I ended up on suicide watch. I don’t know if DSK is innocent; he could indeed be a monster; but should he be innocent, I know the absolute hell he is going through.

After an official British government investigation, I was presented with the file of a single visa applicant, for a young lady named Albina Safarova. From her passport photo, she was very beautiful. On the back of her application, the visa officer had written “HMA [Her Majesty’s Ambassador] authorises issue.”

But if I had authorised issue, my signature should have been there; it wasn’t. What was there, was a letter from the lady’s visa sponsor, a man named Dermot Hassett. In his letter of support for the application, he stated that the circumstances of the application were known to the British Ambassador, Mr Craig Murray. On top of which, there was a letter from the visa issuing officer, Lorraine Clarke, who stated that she had issued the visa after being informed by two named British diplomats that Mr Hassett was a friend of mine.

So far, so damning. But I had never even heard of Mr Dermot Hassett or of Ms Albina Safarova. I had never met him. I had never met her. I was mystified. I eventually passed the papers on to a seasoned investigative journalist, Bob Graham. He tracked down Dermot Hassett, who told him that the British Embassy had advised him to add the phrase about my knowing the circumstances of the application to his letter of support. They said that would guarantee the visa would be issued.

I have no reason to believe that Dermot Hassett and Albina Safarova were anything other than unwitting dupes. But this application was directly and officially shown to me as evidence of my sexual inolvement in visa applications. I have no doubt at all that it was fabricated evidence to damage my reputation and lessen the impact of any potential public revelations I may make about UK complicity in torture or extraordinary rendition.

I was cleared on all charges, but that did not matter because the British government had damaged my reputation forever by promoting the allegations to the media. Those who deny the very possibility that modern western governments connive in quite deliberate conspiracies of injustice, have no idea what they are talking about. If you threaten them in any political way, they can certainly fabricate evidence against you.

I know; they did it to me.

Ed Miliband decided today to devote five of his six questions to the Prime Minister to an attack on Ken Clarke and a demand that Clarke resign over some comments on rape. It should be noted that Ken Clarke is a much more liberal and indeed left wing person than Ed Miliband. It should also be noted that Miliband is joining in an ativistic Mail and Telegraph campaign against Clarke’s attempt to move the justice system away from revenge and towards reform and rehabilitation – but that Miliband has managed to do so on a subject which brings far left and far right together in knee jerk reaction.

Those on the left who agree that we should aim to reform and rehabilitate murderers like the celebrated Jimmy Boyle, suddenly froth at the mouth with the far right when it comes to treatment of rapists.

If I say that some murders are worse than others or some assaults or robberies are worse than others, nobody will disagree. That is not to say they are not all very bad; but it is to say that there is a qualitative difference within the same category in different instances. That there are aggravating and mitigating factors, has been recognised by the law for centuries. Rape is no different. It is very horrible indeed – as bad as being stabbed repeatedly, if you want me to think of a crime of similar magnitude. But to claim every rape is equally bad as every other rape is to move into the realms of mysticism, to view the act not as a crime but as some sort of religious profanation. It is not. It is a crime like stabbing somebody – very serious indeed, but a crime.

The existence of mitigation or aggravation is recognised in the fact that lengths of sentences for the same crime vary. A wife who, in the passion of an argument with her husband, picks up a knife and stabs him, has done something very bad. But is it as bad as someone who with premeditation takes a knife, lurks in bushes and jumps out and stabs a stranger? Does society need to be protected from one as much as from the other? No, plainly not.

Equally, it is true that a boy who with his girlfriend moves, without her consent, from frottage to insertion, when he fails to control his passion, has done something very bad. But is it qualitatively every bit as bad as the rapist who with premeditation hides in the bushes to jump out and attack a stranger? No, plainly not. Or at least, if you wish to claim it is, you have to claim the stabbing cases given above have no qualitative difference either. Doubtless some witless protagonist will claim that I am saying the first case is OK. I am not. I am saying it is very bad. But I am saying the second is even worse.

Anybody who stabs someone or rapes someone deserves real punishment. But are all cases of rape or stabbing identical in quality? The notion is absurd. And the fact that a girl aged 16 years and one day is guilty of rape if she sleeps with her boyfriend age 15 years and 364 days is irrefutable proof of that (a point Clarke appeared to get slightly tongue muddled as he made it, talking of two 17 year olds).

Rape is much in the news lately, what with this, and the cases of Dominique Strauss Khan and Juilan Assange. The allegations against Assange, even if true, would not amount to rape in this country as they do not seem to involve the use of force or non-consensual sex. They are, frankly, very strange indeed, and given that rape trials in Sweded are held in secret and with no jury, I do not in the least blame him for fighting extradition tooth and nail.

The allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn are of a different order as they do seem to involve violent assault and non-consensual sex acts. Plainly there is a very serious case to answer, especially given his known highly charged sexual history.

But I have been given pause today by learning that the police have amended their accusation to say that they were one and a half hours mistaken in the time that the rape took place. Given that it was reported pretty well immediately, how can there have been this confusion about when it happened? A ten minute mistake would be natural, but one and a half hours wrong in a period of three hours?

The difference is very significant, because the police were alleging that he raped her, then rushed from the hotel to the airport to flee. They now acknowledge as true the defence statement that he actually went to a lunch engagement quite close to the hotel before going to the airport. Given that his alleged hurried running away was a major factor in not granting him bail, this seems to me inportant. I repeat – how on earth could an investigation make such a very fundamental mistake?

My feelings of unease were then increased by US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner coming out to lead international demands for DSK’s replacement – as the prosecuting authority, surely it would behove the US government to shut up until he has been found innocent or guilty? Since then I have been listening to Ghanaian radio (I am in Accra) where callers are more or less unanimous that as the woman is from Guinea, in Francophone Africa, the Sarkozy connection is to blame. That fact is certainly a boon for conspiracy theorists.

DSK deserves the benefit of the presumption of innocence for now. We just don’t know what happened yet. The failure to grant him bail appears to me completely unjustifiable – where on earth do they think he will vanish, and how? There seems something peculiarly vindictive in the handling of this – of which his bail appearance without being allowed clean clothes or a shave was a stark symbol. Ed Miliband would doubtless approve. I wonder what populist right wing nonsense he is thinking up for next week.

This blog enjoys the Eurovision song contest – it is the only fault to which I admit. I was proud of the UK last night, because we gave 8 points to a group from Moldova who played bizarre rock while wearing nine foot pointy hats; they were accompanied, inexplicably, by a girl in a pointy hat riding a unicycle. It had the peculiar innocence of an old Soviet TV special. The moment I saw it, I said (out loud – I have witnesses); “British people will vote for this, just to take the piss”. And I was right. I am in tune with the warped sense of humour of my fellow countrymen.

Nadira tells me that the huge pointy hats are in fact traditional in Moldova. They obviously don’t have low bridges in Moldova. Or maybe the bridges have long triangular notches cut in them above the pavements. Wearing those hats on horseback, snow must have collected on top.

Italy took part in Eurovision for the first time in fifteen years, and obviously had forgotten the rules, because they entered a jazz musician and ensemble of genuine musical talent, who almost won. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Italy was united from a series of fractured states and provinces. They thus deprived themselves of about 72 first place votes in the Eurovision Song Contest. Splitting apart. like the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, provides you with bucketfuls of interchangeable Eurovision votes between statelets. You see, Garibaldi and the Risorgimento weren’t thinking long term. They could have had Eurovision. They left only San Marino to give them twelve points. Which reminds me – why don’t the Papal States enter? Think of it – on second thoughts, I am not going there.

The whole event was very much less sexy from a heterosexual male viewpoint than in recent years. There were far less female singers and backing dancers; boy bands were a dominant theme. Those women who were on stage were comparatively demure, as were the camera angles (if Eurovision isn’t a perv-fest, what is it? It’s hardly a song contest).

Lena from Germany was an exception. Last year’s winner was demure and quirky, but she returned this year a smoking hot sex goddess. She looked as if she had spent the entire intervening year shagging. You will have noticed that I am not over-given to political correctness. But even I thought the message of her song, “Taken by a Stranger”, was somewhat dubious.

The UK again had an extremely cheap looking set and stage presentation. More disastrously, it sounded like we had the driver on the mixing desk. But we didn’t come last. I am happy to say I completely missed the existence of Blue when they were famous. I presume they used to be better?

Azerbaijan have been desperate to win for years – last year they spent more money on their entry than anyone had ever done before – and they finally made it with the most forgettable song of the evening. But they did provide attractive backing singers, so I was happy. Next year the event will take place in a country that seriously is not a democracy. I doubt Eurovision are that bothered. It is also worth noting that Azerbaijan, beyond argument, is in Asia. It is east of much of Iran.

Nonetheless, I suspect Azeri presenters may have a more comprehensible, indeed discernible, sense of humour than the Germans last night. And what was it with those dull intermissions about foreigners working in Germany? And why were they virtually all male? There was some unintended humour – they could only find a Moldovan window cleaner; and the UK was represented by a two hundred year old and improbably large rowing cox, when we glimpsed Simon Rattle in the background of another country’s feature – but mostly this was balls-achingly dull.

As was Graham Norton. He is so toned down. Ranging from silent to scarcely audible, he had plainly been told not to start taking the mickey until the voting started; the people reading the votes were effectively mocked, but why had the bands not been? Norton needs to be given four stiff vodkas before the start. Or better, chuck him and bring in Joan Rivers.

The five young men arrested for daring to be brown-skinned in Cumbria (aka behaving suspiciously near Sellafield nuclear plant) have all been released without charge – and had not, contrary to MSM lies, been taking photographs of the plant.

Their arrest was first headline in all the main broadcast media, and tabloid front page. Has the fact that they were completely innocent been reported in the mainstream media with equal prominence, or indeed in any way you might find without deliberately looking? No. “Muslims tried to blow up Sellafield” is now another lie inserted into large areas of the popular psyche, as more grist to the mill for the warmongers and those who make money from conflict.

Which is another reason that the Guardian’s contention that political blogging is dead is nonsense. Bloggers are needed more than ever to counteract the lies of the mainstream media in its cosy and poisonous relationship with the state.

Look out your lederhosen, it’s kitsch time. I heartily approve of this idea of recycling old acts rather than inventing crap new ones. Next year we should enter this:

Murder in Samaraknd came second in the Best Drama category at the Sony Radio Awards. The judges said it was:

An ambitious and bold project, which was the radio equivalent of a cinematic blockbuster. It was an incredibly important drama not only for the story it told but also for the craft of radio drama

Congratulations to the winner Christopher Reason. But I will not pretend that I am not bitterly disappointed, because the BBC have buried Murder in Samarkand with the apparent intention it will never be heard again. They have not made it available in any of their sale or distribution formats, and there is currently no legal way anyone can listen to it. If you want to listen illegally here, you can click on my link to the right of this.

On the basis that he and a couple of his Tory mates had jacked it in, Iain Dale has declared political blogging to be dying. For some extraordinary reason, the Guardian has given him both a puff piece for his new online political magazine, peculiarly described as a blog by sixty friends of his, and a comment article about him.

I suspect the Tories who have dropped out, have done so because they found you cannot make as much money out of blogging as they hoped. As the Guardian notes, it is pretty hard to sustain £1,000 a month income. This blog operates on the principle of not trying to make money, though the odd book sale is welcome. Tory blogs like Conservative Home and Labour blogs like Left Foot Forward have full time staff paid for by the party or the party donors. But Tories who want to get rich, found blogging wasn’t the way to do it.

But this site is as popular as ever – and that is very popular. Cision ranked this blog as the 7th most popular blog of all kinds in the UK in 2010.

This is in stark contrast to the wikio blog rankings, which most UK political bloggers use as a reference – and on Wikio this blog does not score highly enough to feature. The reason is that the wikio rankings are based solely on the number of incoming links from other UK political blogs, weighted by the ranking of the blog sending the link.

This means that if all conservative political bloggers continually post links to each other, they can drive each other up the rankings. This they do, quite deliberately. Ditto other parties. Independent bloggers not involved in a mutual group link-fuck have no chance to compete.

Amazingly, the Wikio rankings give no value to the number of readers you have, nor any value to links from abroad, or from anywhere other than other UK based political blogs. In the last week – and by no means unusually – this blog has been linked from the New York Times, El Pais and Huffington Post. That would give me a wikio score of nil. But a blog getting links from the insignificant Tory Bear or Dizzy Thinks would get a big score.

Not only does Cision include foreign links, much more crucially it scores for the number of readers you have. Amazingly, Wikio pays no attention at all to whether anyone reads you in calculating your blog ranking. This blog has more readers than Wikio’s no 1 ranked blog, Liberal Conspiracy, and has a multiple of the readers of most of Wikio’s Top Ten. (I like Liberal Conspiracy and hope they will compete with my success eventually!!) Number of readers is the main reason this blog scores so highly on Cision.

Here is the Cision methodology:

Is it a “top” UK blog? Our point of departure is the assumption that a blog’s influence is represented by the amount of people seeing it and the potential for it to be referenced elsewhere (including in search engine results).

A long list is therefore compiled using an algorithm to reflect two key measures of web popularity, inbound links and traffic measured in monthly unique users (when available). For each blog these elements are weighted to achieve a balance between measurable impact to date (traffic) and likelihood of future impact (links as a proxy for search visibility). The long list is then reduced, with each entry re-evaluated according to additional metrics, notably update frequency, total number of posts and interaction between blogger and reader. However, as blogger/reader interaction evolves, we now also evaluate interaction not only as blog post comments but also as engagement taking place offsite such as on Twitter and Facebook.

We exclude blogs that are directly affiliated to print media publications, such as newspaper and magazine blogs, as the influence of the main media provides the blog with an advantage. We are currently looking to rank blogs that are affiliated with mainstream media, as well as separating commercial and individual blogs

So the answer to Iain is that good blogging is in good health. Tory drivel is in trouble.

It is no surprise that Major General Michael Laurie of the Defence Intelligence Service (DIS) has admitted that the “dodgy dossier” on Iraqi WMD was a deliberate piece of spin for war. The DIS were furious about the dossier at the time it was written, and tried to rein in MI6 and the FCO, and particularly chief lie-writer John Scarlett.

It is five years since I published in Murder in Samarkand this FCO insider account, given to me in 2002 while I was Ambassador in Tashkent:

“You’re wondering why we signed up to it? Well, I can promise you it was awful. The pressure was unbelievable. People were threatened with the end of their careers. I saw analysts in tears. We felt, as a group, absolutely shafted. Actually, we still do. You know, I think that we are all a bit ashamed that nobody had the guts to go public, resign and say that the WMD thing is a myth. But MI6 really hyped it. The DIS tried to block it, but they couldn’t.”

(p. 60 in the US edition – I don’t have the UK edition on me).

It took eight years for DIS to get their revenge and expose Alistair Campbell’s naked lies. Of course, if you read my books you get the truth much quicker!!