Plans for the attempted coup in Equatorial New Guinea that occurred in March 2004 were know to the British government since Jan 2004. The alleged financier of the coup, a Lebanese businessman called Eli Calil, just happened to rent a flat to Peter Mandleson. Apparently they were mates but – as it happened – did not discuss the coup. Hmmm really.
The Budd report published 21st Dec 2004 decided that David Blunket did indeed speed up his lover's nanny's visa application. What's more, the email trail that led to this seems to have gone cold thereby preventing any verdict of a cover up. Fortunately, the government have now taken steps to prevent this from happening in the future. What they have done is order all civil servants to delete all emails older than 3 months, and that this is to be done before the freedom of information act comes into force from 1st Jan 2005!! Brilliant!
We feel more cautious and vulnerable as we get older because the feeling of protection and infallibility that we get from our parents diminishes with time.
Is it any surprise that racism exists across the world? For two reasons we have engrained racism into our culture. The first is a matter of human survival. Had the human race been in competition with some other life-form, our Darwinistic instinct would be to ensure that we kill them off in order that we may flourish as a race. Maybe one day aliens will land on Earth – thereby justifying all those clever American Independence Day plots – then we would have no scruples in developing a alien-busting weapon. Alien suffering would bother us no more than squashing a flee (sorry Buddhists), and extermination of the aliens is always hailed as a triumph of humanity over adversity. The equation is simple: if it poses a threat, squash it. So on one hand we have an instinct to protect ourselves.
But the problem is that our boundaries of who we are have suffered mission creep (I love that phrase). And the reason why is because we are also taught from a very young age that competition is good and is encouraged. This is also perpetuated throughout our lived from the media. England vs France in whatever sport is a grudge match and so is England vs Germany. We are actively encouraged to view the opposition as The Enemy, albeit in a civilised way, but we are told that They must win because They are English and conversely but more worryingly – They must loose because They are German. No one in the east London pubs starts cheering for Klaus Tvinkletoes of Munich just because he's having a great game! But this attitude and deliberate segregation exists not only across national borders, but across county borders (Yorkshire vs Lancashire, the War of the Roses for God's sake!) and then between city borders in Premiership football and eventually between school teams and then down different houses within the same school. Any damn excuse and we create rivalry. But at the same time we are also told that it is wrong to perceive people with different coloured skin as potential rivals. Why should this be so wrong? By denying there's a difference is admitting that there really is a difference other than that of colour. Are white people under the delusion that they are superior to black people genetically, such that its almost embarrassing. So so avoid the embarrassment, they pretend that they are colour blind whilst all along what they want to say it "You are black and you are different to me". It's the perception of superiority that is racism, not any physical, genetic or cultural difference. Could we ever have a football match between White United and Black City?