A visitor to this blog has suggested that it’s not terribly easy to leave a comment on an entry in it: "You can access the site, but the options on leaving a response are
rather limited (in that they could discourage potential readers)." Actually, it’s not that difficult. At the end of each entry there’s a link that says "0 comments", or "1 comment", or whatever. If you click on that, there’s an invitation to post (i.e. write) a comment: click on that, and there’s a space for you to write your comment. Click first on the button next to "Anonymous" (but it’s nice if you feel able to say who you are, with an e-mail address ideally, at the beginning or end of your comment). If you get a screen asking for your username and password, just click on "Or post anonymously" underneath, and you’ll get the space for your comment. When you have finished, click "Publish your comment". That’s all there is to it. Let’s have a discussion!
PS (September 2005): Since this was written, Ephems has been extensively re-modelled, and it’s now even easier to make a comment. Just fill in the brief form under each entry (at the end of any comments already there), and write your comment. It asks for your e-mail address so that it knows you’re for real, but the e-mail address won’t be shown on the comment when it appears. The comments are often even more interesting than the original entry!
Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
A friend recently expressed puzzlement that That Was The Week That Was (TW3), the old British satirical television show of the early 1960s, had done ‘real political damage’, whereas Yes Minister had not. Climbing onto a trusty hobby-horse, I replied that in my view Yes Minister, broadcast from 1980, and Yes, Prime Minister, from 1986, had done much greater and more lasting damage than TW3 – not so much to contemporary politicians in the way that TW3 had done, but rather to public perceptions of the character, behaviour and ethics of senior public servants, and of their relationships with elected ministers. Of course that damage is hard to quantify. Because it was so funny, so beautifully written and performed, and its characters were so convincing, it planted ineradicably in the public mind the image of the senior British public servant as unprincipled, deceitful, cynical, snobbish, reactionary, hidebound, disloyal to and constantly at odds with his political masters, scheming and devious, working to a self-serving secret agenda that is often inimical to the public interest (and almost invariably incompatible with the policies of the elected government), defeatist, secretive, resistant to change, and guided by an ethic whose sole principle is the protection of the unaccountable power of the bureaucracy. Even now, all these years after the series ended, everyone recognises the frequent references to "Sir Humphrey", a short-hand name for all the characteristics listed above. The description of the top bureaucrat projected by Yes Minister is grossly misleading and unjust in almost every particular, but has been absorbed wholesale into the conventional wisdom precisely because there is a grain of truth in so many of the serious accusations implicit in it, and real life experience can therefore be made to seem to confirm the portrait as realistic; the accused guilty as charged.
This has produced a culture of contempt for and suspicion of our public service which has played some part (I wouldn’t say decisive, but certainly contributory) in enabling successive governments, starting with those of Thatcher and enthusiastically continuing with those of Major/Heseltine and Blair, to destroy the political independence of the public service: its ability to give ministers disinterested and if necessary unwelcome advice without fear of adverse personal career consequences; its existence as a unified body serving all government departments with a transparent, impartial and unified salary and promotion structure; its virtual immunity from corruption; its role in providing some continuity of public policy and advice based on objective experience; its sense of responsibility for ensuring that government decisions are properly recorded and accountable – in short, almost all the benefits of the Northcote Trevelyan reforms of 1853 whose 150th anniversary we ought to have been, but weren’t, celebrating last year.
I risk sounding naive when I say that until the public service was laid waste by intermittently gung-ho and ignorant governments from about 1982 to the present day (with barely a bat-squeak of protest from complacent parliamentarians or complicit media gurus), the great majority of our most senior civil servants, and even some diplomats, were motivated chiefly by an honourable public service ethos which included:
* active loyalty to the policies of elected ministers as well as to the overall national interest;
* acceptance that after warnings and forecasts had been properly aired, it was the right of ministers to decide what they wanted to do;
* the application of serious effort to make a success of the execution of ministerial policies, whatever one’s personal view of them;
* resistance to the temptation to cut corners in a way that might be laudable in a business environment but that is incompatible with proper public accountability in the public sector; and
* a commitment to the public interest rather than to personal enrichment or material gain.
We pay a heavy price in bad decisions and lack of democratic accountability for the loss of most of these elements in our public life, and for that Yes Minister is partly to blame. We laughed at it, sure, but we also absorbed its seductive and deeply seditious message.
But it was a brilliant series, which greatly enriched our public life even while subverting it.
London, 19 June 2004
http://www.barder.com/brian/
The British press has predictably had a field-day with the forthcoming memoirs of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, containing their author’s reflections on the prospects for the Prince of Wales at last getting around to marrying Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles. "Royal tax breaks are more dangerous than saga of Charles and his mistressâ€?, said one rather mystifying headline (royal tax breaks?). "Will the public accept Camilla?â€?, asked another, more pithily. For those who couldn’t be bothered to read further than the headline there was a useful summary of the whole story: "A LEADING BRITISH ANGLICAN SAYS THAT PRINCE CHARLES COULD WELL MARRY HIS LONG-TIME LOVE, CAMILLA PARKER BOWLESâ€?. A serious broadsheet poured cold water on one enticing assertion made by some of its tabloid sisters: "Williams [Dr Rowan Williams, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, evidently recognisable to Daily Telegraph readers from his surname] ‘has not approved Charles wedding’â€?. Others focused on the spiritual dimension: "’Faith is all about forgiveness,’ex-archbishop of Canterbury saysâ€?, challenging the reader to read on for more – forgiveness of whom and for what?
Some of the media seized the opportunity to stick their tiny knives into the inviting bodies of the protagonists in the drama: for example, the unfortunate former archbishop, Dr Carey:
‘I suppose we should be used to it by now – public figures betraying the secrets of the rich and famous to pep up otherwise insipid life stories. When it comes to promoting their latest book, everyone from Jordan to Edwina Currie seems prepared to kiss ‘n’ tell. Even so, it came as a bit of a shock to find the former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey indulging in a bout of Royal name-dropping last week as he promoted his autobiography, Know the Truth. You would think that if one person could be relied on to be the soul of discretion vis-a-vis their pastoral duties, it would be the leader of the world’s Anglicans. But there he was, raking over the dying embers of Charles and Diana’s marriage, and unveiling the details of a clandestine meeting he arranged with Camilla Parker Bowles shortly after the death of the Princess of Wales. In a move guaranteed to reap him the front page in half a dozen national newspapers, he said he believed it was “natural” for Charles to marry Camilla and described the heir to the throne as “a man as much sinned against as sinning”.’
That was Dani Garavelli in ‘Scotland on Sunday’, with his intriguing ‘tax breaks’ headline.
Others were no more generous:
‘Lord Carey’s revelation that he used to pop round to comfort Mrs Parker Bowles after her affair with Charles became public (and his claim that the Prince was “more sinned against than sinning”) were [sic] almost certainly an attempt by this weak, silly man to promote his autobiography.’ — from an editorial in the Mail on Sunday.
Prince Charles too presented an irresistible target:
‘Not that Prince Charles seems to give a whit about what the Archbishops have to say on the matter. According to well-placed “sources”, he has sworn he will never marry Camilla because he doesn’t want to “betray Diana’s memory”. The idea that he should be fretting over his ex-wife’s dignity more than a decade after he inadvertently told the world how much he’d like to be Camilla’s tampon [actually, he said the opposite] is risible. What he is really worried about is how such a move would be received by the general public, but his reputation is now beyond besmirching. This is a man who, at the time of the Paul Burrell and Michael Fawcett affairs, was portrayed as a louche, indolent incompetent who employs an army of flunkies to do his bidding; a man who, if you believe the Royal gossip, is scarcely capable of squeezing his own toothpaste, never mind ruling the country. It is difficult to see how marrying Camilla could further dent his standing with his subjects, who have become inured to relentless Palace scandal and are in any case less hung up than previous generations about who marries into Royalty.’ (Mr Garavelli again.)
Nor is the present Archbishop entirely spared: ‘The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who has opposed the remarriage of divorcees when their former partner is alive (as Andrew Parker Bowles is) except in exceptional circumstances, was also – shock, horror – said to have cleared the way for the pair to be wed, but only if they expressed repentance for past wrong-doing in the presence of their priest.’ (And again.) This bit of the saga was, of course, authoritatively denied, adding to the speculation: what is really going on?
The age of chivalry is dead. Even the harmless, indeed rather admirable Mrs Parker Bowles gets her share:
‘To my mind, Charles’s love for Camilla is one of his few redeeming features because it marks him out from your average male adulterer: while most men leave their middle-aged wives for a younger, more beautiful model, he has remained true to a woman whose physical attributes are, let’s be honest, not manifest.’ (No prizes for guessing who wrote that.)
Perhaps the oddest feature of the media coverage of this global non-event is its almost exclusive focus on the more arcane problems raised for the Church of England by the prospect of the prince marrying his long-time lady-friend, in view of its curious rules governing the circumstances in which divorcés and divorcées may re-marry (is the former spouse still alive?), and if so where (in church? on the church steps?), and how (a proper wedding? or a civil ceremony followed by a blessing?). With the prince slated to become Head (or ‘Supreme Governor’) of the Church of England, these strange worries are naturally nagging at its senior figures — and apparently at their predecessors. But why working journalists should think these theological niceties should be of the smallest interest to the great majority of their readers, very few of whom ever go near a church unless for a wedding or a funeral, is a mystery.
One might have expected more media commentators to address the several more interesting questions prompted by the story. Would it not be a responsible act by Prince Charles to resolve an inherently unsatisfactory situation before, rather than after, he becomes King? Given that the Queen’s permission would be required for him to marry Camilla, has Charles’s mother indicated that such permission would or would not be forthcoming? The prime minister’s agreement would also be needed: has Mr Blair, mindful of a famous soundbite about The People’s Princess, expressed a view? If the pair were indeed to get married, would the sweaty mob, cheered on by the even sweatier tabloids, make a terrible fuss about Camilla assuming the title of Princess of Wales, one held by many to be forever sacred to the memory of the sainted Diana? If so, could the assumption of that title be avoided, and if so, how? Even more to the point, would the same populace accept Camilla as Queen when Charles at long last ascends the throne? They might create a great fuss about it, but would they eventually get used to it, being unable to do anything to change it? ‘Queen Camilla’ certainly has an unconvincing ring, rather like ‘King Graham’ or ‘Queen Trish’, but time would no doubt in due course bestow familiarity and acceptance. Or would the government of the day, fearful of electoral punishment if it acquiesced in the royalisation of Camilla, insist on a morganatic marriage that alone would enable Charles to become King without his wife automatically becoming Queen? That would require not only legislation passed by both houses of the UK parliament, but also the formal consent of all the other countries which share the same monarch and royal family as our own. What effect would a request for Australian agreement to a morganatic (or any other) marriage have on the powerful republican movement in that country? Or on the equally sensitive situation in both New Zealand and Canada? Might it be taken as an ideal opportunity to break loose from the anomaly that each of these countries has a head of state who lives thousands of miles away, is plainly English (with a touch of the Scots) and certainly not an Aussie, Kiwi or Canuck, and indeed hardly ever even visits? What about the twelve other countries of which Charles will automatically, as matters stand, become King — Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu? Every one of them will have to agree, as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, a total of 16 governments and peoples to be asked for their consent. How many media commentators have picked up that little complication? The more one thinks about it, the easier it gets to understand why the whole issue apparently sits motionless and gathering dust in the In-Tray of the hapless heir to the throne.
London, 18 June 2004
http://www.barder.com/brian/
The UK media account of the local council and European parliament elections held in Britain on 10 June, 2004, has been pretty well unanimous in agreeing that the elections were effectively won by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a strange collection of passé celebrities and superannuated politicians with virtually no policy except UK withdrawal from the EU; that the UKIP success has gravely, perhaps terminally, damaged the renascent Conservative Party under its newish and improbable leader, Michael Howard, by peeling off from it the numerous hard-line Europhobes who can’t accept the Tory party official line that the EU should be reformed and the draft constitution rejected but that Britain should remain inside it; and that the Labour Party, having secured the lowest share of the vote for around a hundred years, can no longer be sure of a third electoral victory in the general election which, as virtually all the commentators agree, will be held during 2005.
This received wisdom however raises some questions. UKIP won a remarkable, but far from earth-shattering, 16% share of the vote in the European parliament elections , well behind Labour with 23% and the Tories with 27%, and only one percentage point ahead of the LibDems. The really significant thing about these results, surely, is that the Europhobe (UKIP) and Eurosceptic (Conservative) votes together totalled 43% of those voting, and if you add to these the Euro-phobic and –sceptic voters who nevertheless voted Labour, Green, BNP or for other minor parties, it’s probably fair to say that more than half the voters in this election were strongly hostile to UK membership of the EU, or far from enthusiastic about it, at any rate in its present form. However, on a turnout of only 38.2% (itself well up on 1999′s turnout of a mere 24%), the evidence of Europhobia/scepticism affecting more than half of those voting amounts to only around 20% of the electorate. We simply don’t know what proportion of those who abstained from voting share the anti-Europeanism of those who voted for anti-EU parties.
The alleged damage done to the Tories by UKIP’s success also needs to be seen in context. The European parliament elections gave the hard-line Tory EU-haters an opportunity to register their hostility to UK membership of the Union by voting for UKIP without damaging the Conservative Party’s chances of gaining office at a general election. At a general election, with UKIP having no hope of coming top in a first-past-the-post contest and forming a government, but with the Tories’ chances liable to be badly damaged by a big vote for UKIP, many of those who voted this month for UKIP will undoubtedly return to the Tory fold, having made their gesture. Already, according to a Guardian/ICM poll taken immediately after the June 10 elections, 36% of them are saying that they will go back to voting Conservative at the next general election; more will no doubt follow suit when they contemplate the reality that next time they vote, they will be helping to choose a government rather than simply making a painless gesture.
The general election implications of the dramatic collapse of the Labour vote, with a bare 10% of the electorate voting for the governing party – one voter in ten! — is more difficult to interpret. It’s obvious that a substantial number of committed Labour Party members and supporters are strongly opposed to the Iraq war and that most of them blame Tony Blair personally: for having got Britain into it; for his apparently slavish adherence to George W Bush, down to the last American administration folly and outrage; for having deceived the country (and probably himself) about the reasons for going to war and its real objectives; for having acted illegally and without the authority of the UN; for his part in the coalition’s failure to plan adequately for the post-war administration and reconstruction of Iraq; and for his apparent determination to send several thousand more British troops into the Iraqi quagmire. Such people were unwilling to vote Labour in the European parliament elections while Blair remained party leader and prime minister, and many of them refused to give the party the essential support in leafleting, door-to-door and telephone canvassing, tallying, etc., on which a party’s success still in part depends. Many of the people in this category stayed at home; some turned out to vote for the anti-war Labour candidate for Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, but then either spoiled their ballot papers for the other local elections and the European parliament election, or voted for one of the left-wing fringe parties, as a form of protest. The same recent ICM poll suggests that only 50% of those who voted Labour at the 2001 general election voted Labour again in the European and local elections this June. But (like those who deserted the Tories for UKIP to register their anti-Europeanism) many of these anti-Blair Labour voters will undoubtedly return to the Labour fold in the next general election, even if – as seems very likely – Blair is still leader at that time, on the simple calculation that Michael Howard and the Tories would be even worse. The same ICM poll indicates that if there were to be a general election ‘tomorrow’ (i.e. shortly after the 10 June local and European elections), the Labour vote would bounce back from this month’s 23% to a somewhat more convincing 34%, with the Tories winning 31%, the LibDems 22% (historically a good score for the Liberals), and UKIP a mere 4%. This would return Labour to office for a third term on a much reduced majority. In fact, barring some damaging drama (in Iraq? over the leadership?) between now and then, Labour is likely to make a better recovery than the June 2004 ICM poll suggests, as memories of the origins of the Iraq war begin to fade, as the party in power enjoys its traditional boost in the run-up to the election, and as more and more of the June 2004 defectors are forced to face the reality of the choice confronting them.
Moreover, voices are already being raised within the Labour Party questioning why the general election has to be held in 2005, when legally (and perhaps politically) it could well be deferred until 2006. The conventional wisdom is that the electorate punishes a governing party that hangs on until the last permissible minute, but it ain’t necessarily so.
So the only safe conclusion from these sad, complex results is that Labour remains favourite to win the next general election, although with far less certainty than before 10 June; that nevertheless Tony Blair’s previous status as a sure-fire election-winner is in doubt for the first time, and perhaps irretrievably damaged; and that there is a strongly hostile or sceptical mood over Europe in the country, probably in virtually all parties apart from the LibDems – although the fact remains that in the June elections, around 80% of those voting voted for parties which are opposed to UK withdrawal from the EU.
It is essential to remember, too, that the anti-European mood can’t be ascribed simply to the vicious misrepresentations and mendacious slurs of the Murdoch press and other tabloids: and that you don’t have to be one of what the Guardian’s economics editor recently called (in an important article) "the swivel-eyed loonies of the rightâ€? to recognise that many key aspects of the EU are indeed deeply unsatisfactory and in urgent need of repair: the Common Agricultural Policy, still largely unreformed; the abysmal performance of the EU development aid programme; the disastrously deflationary rules governing the management of the Euro and the European Central Bank, forcing even the most ardent pro-Europeans to recognise that there is no persuasive case for Britain to join the common currency at this time and under current rules; partly as a result, the poor economic performance of the principal Eurozone countries, with high unemployment and low growth, undermining the principal arguments for a strong EU; the dreadful, grandiloquent guff padding out the draft constitutional treaty whose fate is to be decided this week, and alongside it, the constant alienating demands of the Eurofanatics on the continent for "ever closer unionâ€?, implying and sometimes even stating that the EU’s final destination must be a single nation-state – a concept utterly unacceptable in Britain, with its global and especially trans-Atlantic and Commonwealth history and world-view, and probably almost as unacceptable in most other EU countries, too. The Commission appears to be incompetently, wastefully, and perhaps corruptly run, unable to accept a relatively modest role as the EU’s civil service, constantly straining to act like a government, perhaps because it is led by politicians but ought to be headed by experienced administrators. And another worry is the poor quality of so many of Europe’s most prominent leaders, including our own, and the unpopularity of many of them in their own countries. To ignore, or even to try to deny, these fundamental problems is a kind of treason on the part of those in Britain who genuinely want a strong and influential European Union of member countries in a new, unprecedented form of association, more than a free trade area but less than a single federal state, bringing economic, social and political benefits to all its citizens and to the wider world. Mounting scepticism about all these features of the EU in its current state has spread in varying degrees throughout our continent, especially perhaps in Britain and eastern and central Europe, but to a degree in its other western areas also. The results of the June 2004 elections throughout Europe represent a warning: we can no longer turn a blind eye to the pressing need for change.
London, 17 June 2004
http://www.barder.com/brian/
Latest statistics for who has been visiting my web site — should I be having sleepless nights about those six visits from the US Department of Defense and eleven from the US Government, the eight from Argentina, those mysterious three from the Faroe Islands, or the sinister single visit from Colombia? —
Commercial (.COM) 2621 (33%), Networks (.NET) 1575 (20%), United Kingdom (.UK) 1352 (17%), Unknown (.???) 1265 (16%), AUSTRALIA (.AU) 234 (3%), Educational (.EDU) 132 (1%), NEW ZEALAND (.NZ) 65 (0%), CANADA (.CA) 62 (0%), JAPAN (.JP) 48 (0%), SOUTH AFRICA (.ZA) 36 (0%), AUSTRIA (.AT) 32 (0%), Organizations (.ORG) 31 (0%), GERMANY (.DE) 31 (0%), FRANCE (.FR) 28 (0%), SPAIN (.ES) 25 (0%), UNITED STATES (.US) 22 (0%), BELGIUM (.BE) 17 (0%), SWEDEN (.SE) 17 (0%), NETHERLANDS (.NL) 15 (0%), US Government (.GOV) 11 (0%), ISRAEL (.IL) 11 (0%), ITALY (.IT) 8 (0%), FINLAND (.FI) 8 (0%), ARGENTINA (.AR) 8 (0%), NORWAY (.NO) 6 (0%), BRAZIL (.BR) 6 (0%), US Dept of Defense (.MIL) 6 (0%), RUSSIAN FEDERATION (.RU) 5 (0%), DENMARK (.DK) 5 (0%), HONG KONG (.HK) 4 (0%), HUNGARY (.HU) 4 (0%), IRELAND (.IE) 4 (0%), POLAND (.PL) 4 (0%), MEXICO (.MX) 4 (0%), SWITZERLAND (.CH) 3 (0%), UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (.AE) 3 (0%), ICELAND (.IS) 3 (0%), ZAMBIA (.ZM) 3 (0%), FAROE ISLANDS (.FO) 3 (0%), INDONESIA (.ID) 2 (0%), GREECE (.GR) 2 (0%), CZECH REPUBLIC (.CZ) 2 (0%), CROATIA (.HR) 2 (0%), CYPRUS (.CY) 2 (0%), ROMANIA (.RO) 2 (0%), VENEZUELA (.VE) 2 (0%), MALAYSIA (.MY) 2 (0%), SLOVENIA (.SI) 2 (0%), PHILIPPINES (.PH) 1 (0%), JAMAICA (.JM) 1 (0%), BELARUS (.BY) 1 (0%), LEBANON (.LB) 1 (0%), SINGAPORE (.SG) 1 (0%), SLOVAKIA (Slovak Republic) (.SK) 1 (0%), INDIA (.IN) 1 (0%), MALTA (.MT) 1 (0%), MAURITIUS (.MU) 1 (0%), EGYPT (.EG) 1 (0%), MOLDOVA (.MD) 1 (0%), TAIWAN (.TW) 1 (0%), UKRAINE (.UA) 1 (0%), ESTONIA (.EE) 1 (0%), Int. Organizations (.INT) 1 (0%), COLOMBIA (.CO) 1 (0%), PAPUA NEW GUINEA (.PG) 1 (0%), ZIMBABWE (.ZW) 1 (0%), PERU (.PE) 1 (0%),
But why "nul points� from Monaco? Now that is a worry. Unless the Monegasque visitors were among the 2,621 dot coms, the 1,575 dot nets or the 1,265 Unknowns.
* * * * *
A highly literate friend (and he should be, as an old Times correspondent) has very gently reproved me for misusing the old cliché about a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance:
>>I fear we may still be at cross-purposes on the friendliness of Americans and customs more honour’d in the breach etc. Your meaning, I thought, was perfectly clear – namely, that while friendliness towards strangers was still the general custom in the US, it was becoming a custom more often ignored than observed by some Americans. What I was impertinent enough to take you up on was your misuse of the tag from Hamlet in support of this proposition. What Hamlet says (and the words are those of Hamlet himself, not Polonius) is: But to my mind, though I am native here/And to the manner born, it is a custom/More honour’d in the breach than the observance. (Act I, Sc. IV, lines 14-16). The custom to which Hamlet is referring is the heavy drinking and carousing that is a feature of life at the Danish court, of which he disapproves. He is thus not saying that this is a custom more often ignored than observed – if that were so he would have nothing to complain of. Rather, he is saying that it is a custom better – more honourably – ignored (as by him but not by the rest of the court) than observed, which is quite different. You are, of course, in good company. The line more honour’d in the breach than the observance, or variations on it, is now a standard leader writer’s cliché, invariably used in the incorrect “more often ignored than observed” sense. Indeed, it would probably now be almost impossible to quote it in the correct sense, because no one would understand what you were talking about. So probably best not used at all. It is an interesting example of how many Shakespearean phrases, like scraps from the Bible, have become so much part of the language that their provenance has been forgotten and they have acquired meanings they did not have in their original setting. As Kingsley Amis comments in the “Howlers” section of his The King’s English, the correct meaning of the lines is something that everyone should know “and Shakespeare could have afforded to make a little clearer”.< <
I shall know better next time -- if I remember.
* * * * *
I recently commented in a letter to the Sunday Times on the home secretary’s shabby plan to strip the militant Muslim preacher, Abu Hamza, of his British citizenship so that he could imprison him indefinitely without trial under the infamous Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, 2001, rushed through parliament in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. An old friend from South Africa commented:
Shades of the old South Africa! At least there, there was some sort of limit – 90 days or 180 days …
How shaming that our drastic security laws under a Labour government should be even more draconian and illiberal than those of apartheid South Africa in the bad old days.
London, 15 June 04
http://www.barder.com/brian/
