Iraq and the horns of the dilemma

'Damned if you leave, damned if you don't', suggests Martin Samuel in the Times, writing that we must choose, like those trapped in the Twin Towers, between jumping now or being consumed by the fire: the ancient 'horns of the dilemma’. But, intellectually at least, there are other choices. You can challenge the question or refuse to choose a horn; you could decide to just wait for something to turn up or actively seek another option. While we remain on the roof in Iraq we still have choices; the alternative we know to be catastrophe. Surely it is better to preside over inevitable disintegration and be ready and able to intervene and shape the end result rather than to assume disaster and precipitate its happening. It is Iraqis that have already jumped and are in freefall. What we need now is a strategy that ignores hospital building and free elections, do what we can to ease the suffering, and try to get some bounce arranged. As for the soldiers, what are they for but for this?

Irritating but true

Isn’t it irritating and unjust that the people with the poshest houses in London also have the best football team.

Boris are you a man or a mouse?

In spite of his expectation of immunity through celebrity, Boris Johnson rages against being suspected of being a paedophile by a BA flight stewardess when sitting next to his children. All well enough Boris, but what strategic lesson or policy do you intend to draw from your spot hitting? The Times recently reported on the gender gap emerging in polls between men and women with the Conservative lead larger amongst women while neck and neck with the enemy amongst men. And here he is raging at the modern British man's lot of being a cipher for unfit parents, criminals, abusers and paedophiles. From underperforming at school through numbers of teachers, to suicide and cancer rates, life expectancy, domestic violence, prison population and mental illness to access to children after break ups the gender issue is ignored if you are a man – you are expected to just get on with it or you’re a wimp. Now men don’t want or need mollycoddling, positive discrimination or men only candidate lists, but the time has come that they need a voice and a champion. Boris, your instincts are right, are you man enough to follow them?

Losing interest

Rises in interest rates certainly impact on every day lives through mortgage interest rates but, from what I remember of economics, monetary policy is not purely designed to provide checks and balances on the housing market but to be a means for government to maintain the competitiveness of the UK economy in the world and so keep us all employed, wealthy and healthy. So can journalists please move beyond the narrow housing debate for just one moment and explain to home owners and others alike why rates are going up in less alarmist terms - like it's trying to keep you in your job or whatever.

On weak and feeble men

Libby Purves in the Times today fuels the men haters by listing recent men ‘too weak and feeble-willed to live with life’s little troubles, such as the wife and children walking out’ so they try and sometimes succeed in killing themselves and their children. You'd find just as many ‘self-pitying’ women doing the same if the tables were turned and there was an assumption that whatever the rights and wrongs that the father could take the home, children, ensure they never see them and meanwhile women had to pay for the favour. We live in a bizarre world where a women can say 'I'm bored, leave' and they can even add ‘or I’ll slap you again’ and the law will help the new lover move in. If there was more equality and less despair at the inevitability of the outcome there might just be fewer tragedies like these.

Realpolitik

David Aaronovitch in the Times today writes what might seem to be a fairly clear cut plea of mitigation for Saddam dressed up as a rejection of ‘Realpolitik’; that expansionist national policy having as its sole principle advancement of the national interest. If I were Saddam I would have called the US ambassador to Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney et al as witnesses. If they were so obviously complicit in the very acts of which he has been found guilty and sentenced to death how is that justice and are they not guilty themselves? Perhaps he would have just got the bath of acid and Tony and the buffoon Beckett could have cheered that instead.

Lucky boy

Birmingham drama teacher Rebecca Poole allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old student in her car on up to seven occasions and finds herself in court on three counts of sexual activity with a child. Obviously not a maths teacher then but when men have sex with 15 year old girls they are called paedophiles.

Getting ASBOs to work

The way to get potential ASBO earners off the street is to get them into work. It seems impossible for anyone under 16 to get Saturday or evening work and instead their idleness finds otherways to be filled. Instead of suggesting some sort of new national service let them find jobs. And that would also make more sense of talk of lowering the voting age.

So farewell Saddam

It is one thing to say that Saddam should be subject to Iraqi justice and to support that, and entirely another for Government ministers and the media to revel in his death sentence. If there is no crime that deserves the death sentence in this country, and we uphold this as a hallmark of humanity, then we should make it clear that that applies to the likes of Saddam too. The greatest contribution to progress in Iraq and the War on Terror would be for religious and political leaders, and certainly Christain ones, to make an open and early appeal for clemency and forgiveness for this evil man. Well done the EU and the Vatican - otherwise are we no better than his like.

Helmand update

Strategic failure + tactical error + operational success = tactical defeat for Taliban. Remind me, what are we doing there again?

Rise Sir Lostalot

The only good thing about Dave getting a knighthood is that it will end the prospect of a mediocre captain returning to the England squad. It is fitting that rather than raising the world cup Dave gets an image upgrade.