working in my role as unpaid production assistant for Nadira’s next play, checking out the King’s Theatre in Ramsgate (now the King’s Church, originally a cinema) as a possible venue for rehearsals and previews in July to iron out the bugs. Nice space but currently lacks a proper lighting rig – they are in the process of looking for one. So I may have to explore further. I had offered our house as a good venue to workshop the thing because everyone can stay here (the producers are in shock – you don’t normally get all this when you hire an actress). So it makes sense to look for a theatre around here.

There appears to be a huge growth in this kind of evangelical church in the UK. As far as I can tell it is all based on a purely emotional appeal, aimed largely at the unfortunate. Rather a worrying phenomenon.

My house in Ramsgate is about three miles from Margate, and I see no way to remedy that. But this weekend sees, as every national newspaper has reported, the opening of the Turner Contemporary, which is magically going to reverse a century of decline and two decades of dumping of difficult social services and asylum cases from may score miles away, with no help or social provision.

Anyway, all the newspapers also say there will be a weekend of festival. I am not so mean as to ignore a celebration on my doorstep, so I am trying to find out what is happening. I may be stupid, but I don’t find that the Turner’s website actually helps much in telling me where to be when. And doubtless the wine and hors d’oeuvres are reserved for important people from London. I suspect this may be a fair portent of the coming relationship between the Turner Contemporary and those of us who actually live around here.

A difficult local election campaign is underway. Oh look! Cameron is making an anti-immigrant speech. What a coincidence! And is it not heartening to see this robustly liberal response from the Lib Dems:

“We use different language. But we all work in government to strike a balance to ensure Britain has a system people have confidence in.”

Cringe. Actually I do not disagree that those seeking standard immigration routes to this country should speak the language, but why English? Why not Welsh or Gaelic? Of course you cannot apply this to asylum seekers – a language test is not a sensible way to decide if someone should be tortured to death or not. In fact, I am willing to bet the effect on the ground of any of this will be limited. The core Tory is a visceral racist, and Cameron is simply engaging in a tribal bonding ritual to motivate them into the polling booths.

I need to access this article for purposes of genuine historical research for my biography of Burnes. Can anyone get me a copy?

eating Nadira’s chicken soup with Emily and Cameron

An article in the Guardian yesterday by Thalia Griffiths quite rightly pointed out the huge problems facing Alassane Ouattara in uniting and governing Ivory Coast. But the article is remarkably uncritical of Ouattara, and follows the common Western fallacy of promoting a “good guy” in a civil war when the leaders on all sides are “bad guys”.

This is the fundamental flaw in liberal interventionism. It inevitably leads to the imposition of governments like the ultra-corrupt coastal elite of Sierra Leone, like Bosnian and Albanian gangster mafias or like Alassane Ouattara. I wrote what I believe is the only genuine, full and eye-witness analysis of the truth of Blair’s Sierra Leone intervention in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. The essential advice is simple. Follow the money.

That approach leads you quickly to note that Thalia Griffiths is the editor of African Energy. Ivory Coast is newly oil rich with extremely prospective deep fields under further exploration. That is why French army tanks finally crushed Gbagbo. That is why Sarkozy put such huge effort into establishing Ouattara.

Now we must not make the reverse error of glorifying the Gbagbo side. Gbagbo clung to office and postponed elections too long. He played the ethnic card. He indulged in nepotism. His forces killed the innocent. He was one of those noble and longstanding opposition figures who becomes something of a nightmare in power. His side cheated, beat and intimidated just as much as Ouattara’s side in elections which it is farcical to claim were free, fair and properly administered, or were any kind of realistic guide to the will of the people of a deeply riven state. I hope that Gbagbo is decently treated, but do not regret his loss of power.

That said, the attempt by Thalia Griffiths to puff Ouattara is simply a symptom of the saccharine treatment he will get in future by all those connected to western oil interests, including western governments. There were massacres on both sides, but the most startling were carried out by Ouattara’s forces, by ethnic militias which Ouattara deliberately mobilised with French money, including fighters brought in from neighbouring Liberia.

This by Thalia is an absolute disgrace:

Recent reports of atrocities in the west have blamed Ouattara supporters, but while conflicts over land pit northerners against southerners, it is cruel but convenient to blame Ouattara for the latest flare-up of conflicts that have existed for a generation. It is land conflict coupled with a breakdown in state security – not urban Abidjan politics – that are behind reports of killings in the west. Clashes like these are vile, but nothing new.

That is simply untrue. The massacre of 800 people at Duekoue a fortnight ago is thankfully extremely rare, and was without doubt committed by Ouattara mobilised militias. To try to lessen this is crass.

Consider this about Ouattara. He was Prime Minister to a truly dreadful African despot, Houphouet-Boigny, who was dictator of Ivory Coast for 33 years. Houphouet-Boigny moved the capital to his home village and spent US$300 million on building the world’s largest church there. He looted US$9 billion from the people of Ivory Coast. Ouattara was his ally, his finance minister then prime minister, and has never disavowed him. All that Thalia notes about H-B is that he had a policy of ethinic inclusion. That again is disgraceful journalism.

But also Houphouet-Boigny and Ouattara’s Ivory Coast was the base for both French military and CIA operations throughout the continent and for promoting the very worst kind of western interests – which is why Africans view with huge suspicion Ouattara’s instalment by Western forces.

Ivory Coast was allied to apartheid South Africa and was the sanctions busting capital of Africa. Vast amounts of goods, including but not limited to oil, were consigned to Ivory Coast on their papers and trans-shipped to the apartheid regime to bust sanctions. Ivory Coast also provided all the logistic back-up to Jonas Savimbi and UNITA and it was in Abidjan that the CIA and apartheid regime worked together to promote the terrible Angolan civil war.

It was also in Abidjan that the CIA organised the coup that overthrew Kwame Nkrumah and planned the death of Patrice Lumumba. (Again, we should not fall into the goodies and baddies trap. The CIA and Ivory Coast regime were definitely bad. But Nkrumah too had become a cruel dictator – again, read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo.)

Ouattara became head of the african department and deputy managing director of the IMF in the 1980s when that organisation was forcing disastrous structural adjustment programmes all over the continent. African nations were forced to liberalise, reduce tariffs and open up their economies when no such constraints were placed on the developing nations with which they were trading. To give just one example of how this worked, which I personally tried but failed to counter: Nigeria was forced by the IMF to reduce tariffs on imported sugar. The EU then flooded Nigeria with millions of tons of sugar, at one third of the cost of its production, with the remaining two thirds paid to European farmers as export subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy. Nigeria’s sugar plantations – which were actually very efficient – collapsed under the unfair subsidised competition from which Nigeria was not allowed to protect them. That was Ouattara. France was very happy with him.

So not only does Ouattara need to heal the deep divisions in his own population, he has to prove to the rest of Africa he is not just a western tool. That will not be easy. I pointed out in an earlier posting that there is dislike between Ouattara and Zuma; I hope that this gives you some idea why.

I have suddenly become very impressed by Johann Hari, who I used to find OK but rather trite. His piece on Dubai was really good.

UPDATE

A commenter has pointed out that this Hari article, which I thought was fairly new, is a couple of years old. Still worth reading.

which might be good for him for a few months, anyway. Why on earth does the Independent employ this talentless hack, who other than occasionally being a mouthpiece for the security services, never writes anything of the slightest interest to anyone. Today he has an article about how difficult it is to be famous, sold on his poor sister Nigella sometimes receivng less than sycophantic media coverage.

A piece asking us to sympathise with Nigella Lawson and Nick Clegg over the moderate stress associated with their earning of huge incomes is bollocks journalism. I see his article has attracted 9 facebook recommendations. As compared to 723 for my equally ephemeral but infinitely better article in the same publication on the kilt.

Sorry, Dominic, for someone with your advantages, judged by your own crass standards, you are just crap.

Eating spaghetti bolognaise cooked by my brother Stuart, and drinking Chianti. Was up very early this morning to get into London for a meeting at which I was essentially acting as Nadira’s agent, discussing with producers and director who want to cast her in a very good play at this year’s Edinburgh fringe. A really positive meeting. Sometimes you meet new people and it is exciting and life-affirming. I ended up volunteering for a number of things myself as a kind of production assistant!

So Moussa Koussa, torturer in chief, has flown to Qatar – absolute monarchy, political parties illegal, condemned by the US for slave domestic labour on a massive scale – to meet with representatives of the Libyan rebellion – assorted subsidiary torturers, racially motivated, sprinkling of mad Islamists – to discuss the future of Libya as supported by Hague/Juppe.

That sounds worth killing for. Let’s fire some more million pound missiles. Let’s turn down any ceasefire proposals – Gadaffi is a very bad man, so he must be replaced by a number of his former hired torturers. You see it’s all about democracy and human rights.

On Ramsgate beach with Nadira and Cameron, playing with the sand, wondering why I had ever wasted any of my life living in London. Emily is with us but had gone off to buy materials for her A level Art project. Jamie is up in Glasgow organising this year’s Doune The Rabbit Hole Festival. I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He has taken to bin picking as a lifestyle choice, lifting just date expired sealed food from supermarket bins. I kind of approve in principle, but it is a somewhat alarming thought for a parent.

The major titles are now held by two South Africans, a Northern Irishman and a German. When was the last time no American was a current major champion? (I don’t know the answer, but I am pretty sure not in my lifetime. I would have noticed).

The laughably called “Independent Commission on Banking” has presented the great answer to the banking collapse that has cost every one of my readers in the UK and US at least £10,000 for every man, woman and child in your family. And the great answer is – do nothing to control the bankers. Or, in the words of the report:

“Rather than pursuing more radical policies towards capital or structure, the approach outlined above is a combination of more moderate measures.”

Moderate to non-existent. Retail banking and casino banking will still take place in the same bank, but in different divisions. Retail banking will be subject to a laughably low ten per cent equity requirement – ie you can only loan out ten times the money you actually have. In fact this will operate not as a floor but as a ceiling – banks will never have more than 10% equity against loans, because despite the so-called “firewall” any capital they have in excess of 10% will be able to be invested in the “casino banking” side.

On banks paying obscene salaries and bonuses when their gambles pay off, and then going to the taxpayer when their gambles fail, there are no proposals whatsoever.

UK governments routinely nowadays slouch off responsibility for policy making to “independent” reports, which are always set up to provide exactly the answer which the government wanted. The government then hides behind them. These are simply Establishment protection mechanisms in which “safe” figures forward the vested interests of the powerful and wealthy. Browne, Vickers, Butler, two Huttons, Chilcot – we all know the form.

It is therefore an astonishing reflection on the naivety of the parliamentary Lib Dems that they were duped into demanding in advance the full implementation of the recommendations of the Vickers report, in the expectation that it would be sensible and radical. The Tories have reeled them in like a fish. Clegg of course is a Tory on economic and particularly City issues and will almost certainly have played a part in fooling Cable and his own party.

The airwaves are full of City types welcoming this “sensible” report. What more do you need to know?

I wrote this on 25 March:

As predicted, the military action in Libya is going horribly wrong. The bombs and missiles are consolidating an undeserved nationalist support for Gadaffi and motivating more people to actually fight for him. The rebels are on the wrong end of ground battles and there is precious little evidence what majority opinion in Libya actually now wants. The western bombing forces are more and more involved in ground attack on pro-Gadaffi forces, and not only armour.

Our policy in Libya is in such disarray that I confess I have no idea what the policy is. I am quite certain that the “humanitarian intervention” motivation is a ruse to dupe the public in general and stupid liberals in particular. Johann Hari is not one of those, and this may be the finest thing he has ever written.

But NATO’s bombing has, as I predicted, only served to strengthen on nationalist grounds support for Gadaffi and the morale and activity of his forces. The vaunted ability of the rebels to sell oil will prove a short lived phenomenon as Gadaffi’s men sweep back through the oil installations.

Having achieved bugger all militarily, NATO are now out-manoeuvred comprehensively on the diplomatic front. Jacob Zuma and the African Union have negotiated a ceasefire deal and transitional government arrangement with Gadaffi, which Gadaffi has accepted and the rebels have refused.

Now, it is essential to bear in mind – which nobody in power is doing – that the aims of UNSCR 1973, from which NATO draws its mandate for the no fly zone and dubious claim of a mandate for attacking Gadaffi’s forces, are a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. These are operative paragraphs 1 and 2:

1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;
2. Stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people and notes the decisions of the Secretary-General to send his Special Envoy to Libya and of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union to send its ad hoc High-Level Committee to Libya with the aim of facilitating dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution;

Nowhere does UNSCR 1973 mandate regime change or insist that Gadaffi must go as the end result of negotiations. If Gadaffi has accepted an AU-brokered ceasfire, then he is in compliance with the UN Resolution. If the rebels have refused such a ceasefire, then they are in breach of UNSCR 1973 and it is they who are endangering civilians. It is the rebels who NATO should be attacking. Perhaps they will work out that it would be much better if they stopped attacking anybody, but I doubt it. They have chosen a side in this civil war, and military macho will propel them to continue to try to make that side win.

Let me be plain – I have no time for Gadaffi and would have been delighted if he had been overthrown by moral force, or even with a little violence, by his people, as in Egypt and Tunisia. But what we have now is a civil war in which it is by no means clear that Gadaffi’s opponents – including blood drenched senior ex Gadaffi regime members motivated by opportunism and possibly ethnicity – are going to put “good guys” in power.

NATO have no mandate to take sides in a civil war and propel their forces to victory. The aim of UNSCR 1973 is a ceasefire and negotiation.

There is no doubt that the CIA and MI6 are actively strengthening the determination of the rebels to resist a negotiated settlement, with promises of continued NATO air support and training, spotting, intelligence and other military assistance. They are therefore in direct violation of UNSCR 1973.

One sad thing in this is the complete lack of moral stature of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. He is mandated in UNSCR 1973 to be arranging negotiations, and those who enforce the no-fly zone are obliged under UNSCR 1973 to consult and cooperate with him. In fact he has done almost nothing and possesses absolutely none of the moral stature or personal charisma of Kofi Annan. Moon has no interest in anything but his stature and perks (UN staff call him the vainest Secretary General ever), and in making many millions from networking with the West for his retirement employment.

As NATO argue with complete illegality in Libya, I would call Moon the dog that did not bark. But that would be an insult to dogs.

All of which leaves Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama wedded to a policy which is completely contrary to UNSCR 1973, illegal, and still failing on the ground. They face a gigantic loss of face which can only be reversed by boots on the ground. My FCO sources tell me that they are already considering the officially unsanctioned provision of mercenary forces to the rebels. I asked whether there had been any discussion with Tim Spicer, and received a “I couldn’t possibly comment” response.

Watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, for which Cameron is the the excuse. Wonderful – Lionel Jeffries, Benny Hill, Gert Frobe…

I apologise for not blogging more last week. I had an extremely full itinerary in Turkey, and was a guest in the kind hands of others. It would therefore have been difficult to blog regularly, but with determination I could have managed it. The truth is that the rude and unpleasant withdrawal of my invitation to the New Statesman event on whistleblowing really knocked the stuffing out of me. I get severe periods of self-doubt. Maybe, they are right, and I am rubbish. Am I just a wannabe member of political society, sadly and futilely hunched over a laptop? I feel I have much to contribute, but no means to contribute. Why do I do this?

Anyway, for light relief I wrote a piece on kilts for the Independent on Sunday. While not inherently noble, entertainment is no bad thing, and it cheered me up to write it. I am though feeling slightly guilty it has knocked a really excellent article by Johann Hari on Libya off the top of their “Most read in comment” chart.

The New Statesman and Frontline Club are holding a debate at Kensington Town Hall on Saturday on the subject of whistleblowing. I was invited to be on the panel, and then my invitation was abruptly withdrawn. The main interest will of course be Julian Assange, but I should have liked to have contributed from my own, very difficult experience.

What is really annoying is that, having disinvited me, they are now discussing whistleblowing without a single whistleblower on the panel. Julian always states (quite rightly) that he is not a whistleblower, but rather publishes things leaked by whistleblowers. The motion is:

“This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place”

For the motion:
Julian Assange, Wikileaks
Clayton Swisher, al-Jazeera
Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman

Against the motion:
David Richmond, ex Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Bob Ayers, ex US Department of Defence
Douglas Murray, Henry Jackson Society

Not only is there no whistleblower allowed on the panel, it enables Ayers and Richmond to portray unchallenged their views on what is practically necessary as seen from inside government. I have nothing against Swisher or Hasan, but they are general talking heads, as is Douglas Murray.

It is a complete mystery to me why I should be invited, then uninvited. This is the exchange of emails:

Dear Craig,

I am writing from the Frontline Club in regards to a debate we are organising with the New Statesman on Saturday 9 April at 5pm in Kensington Town Hall, London for which we would like to invite you to speak. It will be a two-sided adversarial debate, the motion being “The house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place”. Joining you on stage will be Julian Assange, Mehdi Hasan (the New Statesman’s senior political editor), Douglas Murray and others to be confirmed. You will find further details of the content of the debate below. Please do let me know if you think you will be available. We only announced the event late last week and it has already sold out. It is sure to be a brilliant debate and we would love for you to join us.

Best Regards,
Ryan Gallagher

To which I replied:

Ryan,

I should be delighted.

Craig

Which was confirmed with:

Craig,

Excellent news. We are very pleased to have you on board. You will be a valuable addition to the panel.

There are more details of the event here: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/debate-assange-wikileaks

It will take place between 5pm-6.30pm on 9th April and it is likely there will also be some kind of after party.

I will be back in touch soon with more details. Until then, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to get in touch.

Best regards and many thanks,

Ryan

Which was followed up with this rather strange one:

Dear Craig,

Would you be able to hold off announcing you appearance at the debate for a few days? We are going to formally announce. Sorry, I should have made this clear in my initial email.

Many thanks,

Ryan

To which I innocently replied:

oops, too late!! But nobody reads my blog any way. I’ll edit it out and hope nobody noticed. Can you not find a larger venue?

Craig

At which stage it started to become clear that I was being eased off the panel with:

Dear Craig,

Thanks for editing your blog. The structure and panel for the debate is still subject to confirmation you see, so we cannot 100% confirm at this stage because the details may change. We have sent out numerous invites and at this point are waiting on several replies before the final panel will be selected by the editorial team. We would like to have you involved, but until the format is decided I cannot say in what capacity as the decision is not up to me.

I’ll get back to you as soon as I possibly can on this.

As for the venue, we are not in a position to get a larger one. We had no idea the demand would be so great and have already signed with Kensington.

I’ll be in touch again asap.

Best,

Ryan

Not being the only whistleblower in the world, and seeing that the New Statesman were desperate to withdraw their invitation, I therefore offered to stand down in favour of another whistleblower:

Ryan,

I quite understand. if you do not include me in the panel, I do hope you will nonetheless find room for at least one actual whistleblower. Julian is the first to say he is in the position of an editor who publishes the revelations of whistleblowers. Dan Ellsberg might very possibly come – he is passionate about the subject matter and really the godfather of us all.

I should not wish to participate in any capacity other than one of the main speakers in the debate. You will perhaps understand that in my position it would be difficult for me to accept that my views on whistleblowing, if on nothing else, should command less respect than those of Douglas Murray or Mehdi Hasan. It would, I think, look pretty strange to the audience too.

Craig

To which they replied:

Craig,

Good to hear from you. We have already been on to the wonderful Daniel Ellsberg but it is his 80th birthday that weekend and he is celebrating in the states. Your email will certainly be noted and I completely understand where you are coming from.

I’ll try and get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Best,

Ryan

But they never did “Get back to me”. Then yesterday they published the final panel for the debate, not only excluding me but excluding any actual whistleblowers.

I phoned Ryan Gallagher from Turkey and said I thought it was impolite of him not to have contacted me before they published the panel. I also suggested that it was very strange to have this debate without any whistleblowers. He said that they were anxious that whistleblowers should not be excluded, and that one or two whistleblowers might be invited to make a statement.

This really is pathetic by the Frontline Club, an organisation for which I had a fair amount of respect.

In the short term, military force might be able to install Ouattara as President of Ivory Coast. But the ethnic and religious divisions of the civil war have been reopened, and deepened. Ivory Coast desperately needs a healing figure, somebody who is not Ouattara or Gbagbo. Having been imposed on Abidjan by force, Ouattara will only stay there by force. The future looks bleak.

Many thousands have been killed in the last week. The massacre of 800 civilians at Duekoue is only the worst individual event. It was carried out by fighters from the old LURD camp in the Liberian civil war, brought across the border by Ouattara with French money. That money has also brought in Burkinese and Senegalese fighters for Ouattara.

This is a tragedy for Africa, because it devalues democracy. Ouattara, with a strong personal push from Sarkozy, secured international recognition for his election victory. In truth it was an extremely dubious election, with no freedom for Ouattara supporters in the South or for Gbagbo supporters in the North in a poisonous contest. It would have been better for everyone if Gbagbo had accepted that he lost and left quietly. But the truth is that both sides’ claims of victory are fallacious. This was nothing like a free and fair election. Somehow the UN and the international community finds itself in the position of imposing by force, fighting alongside the perpetrators of massacre, the “democratically elected” victor. This denigrates democracy.

Nor should it be forgotten that Gbagbo’s forces had been responsible for plenty of killing of innocent civilians, particularly among the Ouattara minority in Abidjan itself. The international community should declare that both men have shown they are unfit to rule, and disqualify both from new elections.

This afternoon I visited the family of Cengiz Songur. Cengiz died, age 47, when he was shot in the chest from point blank range by an Israeli soldier on board the Mavi Marmara. Cengiz was unarmed. he had never been armed in his life.

Cengiz lived in a small but clean apartment, occupying the middle floor of a three floor tenement, in the suburbs of Izmir, Turkey. He is still a tangible presence in his small living room, as I drink the tea and nibble the cake his daughters have prepared. His books still line the bookshelves. There is a Koran and some collections of the Hadith, and a few books on Islamic culture. But there are also encyclopaedias, atlases and – most of all – scores of well-thumbed novels. Cengiz loved to read.

He also loved to help people. He had been involved in a number of charitable enterprises his whole adult life. I should make plain that I came into his world not entirely as a stranger – my Turkish friends were friends of his, and I know that as a group they have been involved in charitable work in places as disparate as London and Somalia, Haiti and Sierra Leone, to name but a few.

Cengiz had a little textiles shop. He had six daughters and just one son. The ladies of his household wear a colourful headscarf, covering the hair but none of the face, and are not segregated. A religious family, but not in any way that is unusual in Izmir. Cengiz’ brother and cousin have also come to meet me, and they are very friendly. They know who I am and thank me for my work in Uzbekistan.

Life now is something of a struggle; Cengiz’ business did alright, in a small way. But now he is gone, and although the extended family are rallying around, six is a large number of daughters. I am astonished to learn that, despite the governmental show of nationalistic outrage at the Israeli killings, the family have not received a penny by way of compensation, award or pension. Attempts to start a legal case have been buried in the legal system. They tell me that twice the courts have “Lost the papers”. From their point of view, the Turkish government is desperate to forget the matter and get relations with Israel back to normal. There is, they tell me, a “small Israel” in Turkey which is able to control the key organs of the state.

In this regard, they told me something which seems to shed light on a loose end which had been bothering me. The attack on the Mavi Marmara occurred in international waters. In that case, the jurisdiction over any crimes committed on board is held by the flag state, ie the state in which the ship is registered. Shortly before sailing, the registration was switched from Turkey to the Comoros Islands. This exempted Turkey from the responsibility of jurisdiction. It also made discussion at NATO much easier for the US; if the Israelis had attacked in international waters a ship flying the flag of a NATO state, that would have been a much more difficult thing for the alliance to ignore.

It turns out that the change was made at the insistence of the Turkish Ministry of Transport. They carried out a number of inspections of the Mavi Marmara prior to the Gaza trip and made repeated demands for changes: mattresses and cushions had to have more modern, fire resistant foam. Internal walls had to be upgraded for fire resistance. Whatever changes were then made, the Ministry found new faults. In the end, the Ministry had said that the Mavi Marmara would be impounded unless it changed its registration, as it could not meet the safety requirements for a Turkish flagged ship.

The strange thing is that the Mavi Marmara had been Turkish flagged for years, and hade been running tourist cruises out of Istanbul. None of the faults the Ministry found resulted from any changes, yet none had apparently been a problem on past inspections. The family told me that, before the Mavi Marmara sailed, they had been in no doubt the Turkish government had been deliberately obstructive and had forced the change of flag. But they had no idea of its significance. Indeed they still did not understand why it could be important, something I tried to explain to them. Of course, set beside their personal loss, it did not seem that interesting.

None of the family had even the slightest thought that Cengiz was risking his life in going. He had told his son that he thought they would not get in to Gaza. He had expected the ship to be impounded. He also thought that he himself would be imprisoned. But the thinking was that, after a month or so, international pressure on Israel would build until the prisoners were released, and Israel would be shamed into sending the cargo on to Gaza.

Cengiz was a kind family man, trying to do some good in the world. He did not deserve to be murdered. I do hope those readers who follow a religion will pray for him.
,

After a tiring trip from Accra to Izmir via Frankfurt and Munich (in which I discovered Lufthansa incredibly do not offer a wireless connection in their business class lounges) I arrived in my hotel last night and put on BBC World to catch up on events before getting my kip. Imagine my horror on hearing “Now for a half hour report on the highlights of this week’s preparations for the royal wedding.”

This morning it happened again. The BBC ran a report on Nazarbayev’s “re-election” in Kazakhstan with 95.5% of the vote. Without a hint of conscious irony, they then morphed into a straight 15 minutes of absolute propaganda, in which among other lies we were told that New York is agog with “Royal wedding fever” and that Kate Middleton is “an ordinary girl about to become a Princess”.

It is 33 years since I published in Annasach, the Dundee University student newspaper, that to enter St Andrews University you did not need good A Levels or Highers – they were more interested in whether your daddy owned a Range Rover. That has become ever more true, as useless and thick but rich English people are dispatched to a dismal, distant, misty neuk where they can be embarassingly dim, invisibly.

St Andrews is in Scotland but is no longer of Scotland. It actively discriminates against Scots. Less than 20% of the students are Scots. Let me say that again. Less than 20% of the students are Scots.

I have no objection to the existence of a finishing school where the Anglo-American super-rich can send their offspring to pretend to study a non-subject like “Fine Arts”, while hoping to contract an advantageous marriage alliance. But I have profound objection to it being financed by the Scottish taxpayer.

St Andrews University should be privatised immediately. By privatised, I mean cut off without another penny of taxpayers’ cash. The money saved should be distributed among Scotland’s real universities.