REPARATIONS RIDDLE

Those trying to follow the recent interminable wrangling between Greece and her creditors, led by Germany, were probably surprised by the Greek demand for war reparations for the crimes and devastation inflicted upon her by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Surely all that is ancient history, many must have thought, and Greek claims are a fanciful distraction from her present difficulties. The truth is much less clear-cut than that and the Greek moral case, at least, is compelling.

Nazi troops at the Acropolis in 1941

Manolis Glezos MEP, Greek resistance hero, aged 92

Raising the reparations issue was a commitment in SYRIZA’s manifesto and is in part a tribute and a political debt to iconic Resistance hero, Manolis Glezos, who electrified Occupied Greece in 1941 by tearing down the Nazi swastika flag flying over the Acropolis. Glezos was 18 and was condemned to death in his absence, but he survived. He fought against the Germans and later was a Communist guerrilla fighting in the bitter Civil War (1946-49). After years of imprisonment and exile, Glezos, like all Civil War combatants and exiles, was at last re-admitted to Greek public life by the Andreas Papandreou ministry of the 1980s. Glezos became a SYRIZA MEP and has always vowed to press for reparations from Germany.

The Germans behaved appallingly in Greece, looting the country and brutally murdering about 20,000 civilians. Greece suffered grievously although the Poles, Russians and Yugoslavs fared worse. The facts are not disputed by Germany. Some Reparations have been paid although the whole issue is a complex one in international law. Since the crippling reparations imposed on Germany by Versailles in 1919, castigated by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, politicians have been chary of pushing the issue too far since reparations were reckoned a contributory factor to the rise of Hitler, and nobody wants to repeat past mistakes. 

Germany had paid relatively modest reparations to Greece of DM 115m (then about $45m) in 1960 in compensation for Nazi oppression, which Greece maintains was a down-payment, pending reunification of Germany. In comparison, Poland received substantial German territory, notably Silesia and the great cities of Danzig and Breslau, east of the Oder-Neisse line, the new Polish frontier. Poland also received DM 13bn in 1975 and a further 4.7bn zlotys to support aged dispossessed Poles. Russia was able to loot East Germany of industrial plant and labour after the war and it absorbed much of East Prussia, the city of Konigsberg and other eastern territories from which 12m Germans overall were expelled. Yugoslavia in due course received $36bn worth of German industrial plant. The Netherlands annexed and then sold back some German territory for DM 280m in 1957.

As can be seen, there is much disparity in these arrangements and there is no common pattern. Germany maintains that the reparations issue has been closed by the “Two plus Four treaties” of 1990 when the 4 war-time allied powers (to whom alone Germany surrendered in 1945) recognised the reunification of West and East Germany, their new borders and gave up their residual privileges. Greece was not a party to this treaty and her rights cannot be overruled by its provisions.

Greece believes she was short-changed on reparations. Forgetting about the emotions released by war and human suffering, reparations are not related to body-counts but are intended to compensate for measurable material losses. One central issue for Greece is the forced loan of 476m Reichsmarks extracted from Greece at 0% to pay for the German occupation. In 1965 Chancellor Erhard said this loan would be repaid when Germany was reunified but not one cent of this has been received:  its present value at 0% interest is €11bn – at 3% interest it would swell to €95bn. The German government refuses to discuss the matter, though some Germans on the Left entirely acknowledge the liability. German finger-wagging at Greece about “a debt is a debt and must be paid” plays badly in Greece in view of Germany’s failure to repay this forced loan.

A heavily indebted country, distrusted by its creditors, seeks debt relief. No, I am not talking about Greece, I am talking about Germany, prostrate after the war in 1953. The London Debt Conference was called and was attended by the US, UK, France and many other European countries including Greece. It generously cut Germany’s external debt by over 50%, from €32bn to €15bn, stretched out debt maturities and only asked for repayments if Germany ran a trade surplus. This was an incentive to creditors to trade with Germany and the package greatly helped the German “economic miracle” of the 1950s.

Yet when Greece asks Europe for similar generosity she is told debt reduction is “impossible” – impossible for Greeks maybe, but certainly not for Germans. Nobody claimed that Germany “deserved” relief in 1953 but she patently “needed” relief. The same is true of Greece. Prime Minister Tsipras has said that Greece runs out of money before the end of April, so it is time for constructive action.

The atmosphere between Greece and Europe is bad, partly through rather shrill Greek populism but also thanks to the visceral anti-Left prejudices of the European elite. A constant stream of toxic denigration of Greece emanates daily from Germany and her satellites - I call them the FANGS (Finland, Austria, Netherlands, Germany and Slovakia). Greece can be crushed, if that is what Europe wants, but there is a better way, given the necessary political will, which should be conducted in a mutually respectful manner:

(1)    Germany can open civilised discussions on the repayment of the Nazi forced loan.

(2)    Europe can constructively approach debt relief for Greece on the 1953 German model.

(3)    Interim relief can be given to Greece in the context of an acceleration of existing discussions between the EuroGroup and Greece.

SMD

22.03.15

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2015

THE BUD OF THE SPRING

I take a “constitutional” walk every day here in Athens, usually on a helpfully municipalised tiled, but agreeably wooded, path skirting a deep ravine, where once a river flowed to water the city centre and beyond. The river has been culverted but the ravine survives, coping with excess water over the winter. Today the birds were twittering cheerfully and I found myself humming that happy song from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, to wit, Spring, Spring, Spring.

 “Oh, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy,

And the obvious reason is because of the season,

Ma Nature’s lyrical, with her yearly miracle,

Spring, Spring, Spring!”

I suppose if I were more seriously-minded I should have recalled La Primavera from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons but in fact my encore was Sinatra’s 

“You make me feel so young,

You make me feel so Spring has sprung!”

Whatever, although it is still quite chilly, Spring is in the air. I will soon discard the heavy woolly cardigan which has been my inseparable friend all winter and I will don my comfy boots and tidy up the much-neglected garden. Here we have had freesias blooming for some weeks.

Freesias to uplift the spirits

How much I loved the unchangeable progression in Britain from those plucky snowdrops appearing even through almost frozen ground, then carpets of crocuses, (introduced by those clever Dutch), on to the ubiquitous daffodil – Spring finally confirmed – then primroses and other primulas, supplemented by gorgeous tulips. Thereafter it was every man for himself and a riot of colour. May it ever be thus!

Springtime is the annual moment for renewal. It is not always happy. There are Spring tides (nothing much to do with the season), high tides which are often damaging – goodness knows what happens to our gravitational pull when there is a solar eclipse this week on 20 March. Politically one remembers the Prague Spring in 1968 when Dubcek’s mild reforms were snuffed out by Brezhnev’s tanks. The Arab Spring in 2011 saw off fetid dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and shook up the rulers of Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Bahrain but it also gave birth to the horrendous butchery of The Islamic State, not a pretty Spring flower. 

Yet surely this Spring will bring good things - warmer weather to lift our spirits and melt our hard hearts. Maybe, (pigs may fly!), Herr Schaeuble will soon have a kind word for prostrate Greece; the British electorate will choose a sensible government in May, I dare to hope Tory, but anything as long as the wretched SNP is not empowered at Westminster.

Spring Renewal

Far more important than all those political things is personal renewal; for some benign serenity but for others new ambitions, new projects, the refreshing of friendships and family connections to stimulate and exhilarate. Most of us live well in a lovely world – make a difference, participate and enjoy the company of our fellow humans!

Spring, Spring, Spring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYV69puN4DA 

You make me feel so young:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZNIKZdoehE 

SMD

17.03.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

ANDREW CARNEGIE and SAMUEL SMILES: Famous Scots (2)

         [This is the 2^nd in a series about Scots who made an impact outside their native country.]

This piece describes two Scots who knew and wrote about Wealth. The first rose to giddy heights in the USA as a steel mogul and then flourished as a generous philanthropist; the second proclaimed the virtues of Self-Help and became a business guru, influencing aspiring 19^th century generations. They were physically similar in their bearded sagacity but their philosophies differed markedly.

Andrew Carnegie

 

Samuel Smiles

The career of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) is a classic rags-to-riches story. He was born in Dunfermline, Fife, where his father, William, was a handloom weaver. An uncle introduced him to the joys of books. To escape poverty they emigrated when Andrew was 12 to Allegheny, Pennsylvania where father worked in a cotton mill and mother, Margaret, made shoe bindings. Andrew worked from the age of 13 as a bobbin-boy at the cotton mill. In 1850 he became a telegraph message boy, worked hard, was promoted and educated himself when a local benefactor opened his library to poor boys.

In 1850 he became PA to Thomas Scott, managing director of The Pennsylvania Railroad Company and helped the President J. Edgar Thomson. Carnegie flourished and was promoted to Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. He was included in various deals Scott and Thomson did, often via insider trading which we would now call corrupt. He started to amass capital. Carnegie was grateful and cut in Scott and Thomson to many steel deals he completed later.

After playing a leading role in military transportation for the Union during the Civil War, Carnegie left the railroads for the quickly growing steel industry in 1864 to establish the Keystone Bridge Company and later Carnegie Steel, an integrated steel producer converting pig-iron to steel using the Bessemer system. This became one of the largest enterprises in the USA. Carnegie was not a notoriously hard-boiled businessman but 19^th century US tycoons were not gentle souls. In 1901 Carnegie sold his company for $480m to J. P. Morgan who was creating United Steel. Carnegie personally pocketed $225m, an immense sum at that time, the consideration being paid in 5% bonds. Carnegie was hailed as “the richest man in the world” – wrongly, he was second to John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. He devoted the rest of his long life to philanthropy.

Carnegie, the legendary philanthropist

Carnegie, an eager autodidact himself, sought the company of the leading minds of his time and met Mark Twain, Matthew Arnold, befriended W.E.Gladstone and was a correspondent and disciple of Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a highly influential evolutionary philosopher of Victorian England who coined the expression “the survival of the fittest”. Carnegie adopted Spencerian views on the struggle between independent Man versus the ever-encroaching State and embraced the doctrine of Laissez-Faire. (In practice Carnegie was quite happy when tariffs hindered competition and he lobbied Congress for his steel industry energetically!)

But there is no doubting the sincerity of his philanthropy. He had written in an early memorandum to himself, aged 33, that it was wrong simply to amass wealth and he proclaimed his famous dictum “a man who dies rich, dies dishonoured”. In his admired book The Gospel of Wealth, endorsed by Mr Gladstone, he recommended the first third of life for education and training, the second third for making money and the final third for giving the money away.

He started his philanthropy in 1879 with public swimming baths in Dunfermline, followed the next year with a public library there. He toured Scotland with his aged mother in 1881 and over the years he was a generous donor, especially to his home town. But he was busy in the US too; he teamed up with Enoch Pratt, associate of the earlier American benefactor, George Peabody, and focussed on public libraries; eventually, Carnegie funded over 3,000 libraries. He also lavished money on universities and medical schools in the US and in Scotland; he sponsored music too, building and owning famous Carnegie Hall in New York, opened in 1891.

Carnegie and Skibo Castle, Sutherland

Carnegie wrote in his Triumphant Democracy that the American political system was superior to the British – he disparaged the British hereditary monarchy and her aristocracy. He was anti-Imperialist, in particular an opponent of the US annexation of the Philippines. He advocated closer union of the English-speaking peoples. He kept his distance from religion, but worked for World Peace with the churches and was dismayed by the Great War.

In his retirement Carnegie lived in New York and in Skibo Castle, in remote Sutherland, Scotland. By the time he died in 1919 he had given away about $350m and his executors gave away his final $30m. His philanthropy was copied by many other rich men, an attractive feature of American life.

 -----------------------------------

Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) was a less spectacular figure but possibly more influential. Born in Haddington, East Lothian, where his parents ran a small shop. His father was a Cameronian, a member of that Puritan Presbyterian sect, but Samuel was never religious. Educated at the local school, he was apprenticed to a doctor and studied medicine at Edinburgh University in 1829-32. His father died of cholera in 1832 and his mother worked tirelessly to support her family of 10. He paid her fulsome tribute in his 1871 book Character:

“Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago --nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age. She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!

And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words not to mention my features and gestures, I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more. What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers”

 

Although Smiles practiced as a doctor briefly in Haddington, he became politically interested in the tumultuous 1830s and turned his talents to journalism. He became editor of the radical Leeds Times 1838-42 and supported Chartism with its programme of parliamentary reform, but he shied away from the movement when its leaders advocated physical force. He married in 1843 but despaired of radical change, working from 1845 for railway companies.

 Smiles finally earned celebrity with his widely read handbook to success Self-Help published in 1859. The book, rejected by conventional publishers, eventually sold 250,000 copies and was followed by Character (1871) Thrift (1875) and Duty (1880). His Self-Help philosophy firmly placed responsibility on the individual to better himself, and struck a chord in Britain and America. Smiles saw a vital role for the state and inveighed against laissez-faire liberalism in an eloquent passage:

When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides. Nobody adulterates our food. Nobody poisons us with bad drink. Nobody supplies us with foul water. Nobody spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes. Nobody leaves towns undrained. Nobody fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict stations. Nobody makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards. Nobody has a theory too—a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two words—Laissez faire—Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, "Let alone" is the remedy. When Cocculus indicus is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, "Nobody did it." Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: Caveat Emptor. When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone. Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.

Smiles has been criticised as a Philistine and as a champion of Victorian self-righteousness, finding virtue in the lifestyle they happen to enjoy. But there is an honourable place in society for sturdy individualism and a determination to get on in life. Carnegie and Smiles would have approved of Thatcherism, which had a strong flavour of Self–Help with Norman Tebbitt’s unemployed father “getting on his bike to find a job” and Thatcher’s “There is no Alternative” being a direct quote from Carnegie’s mentor Herbert Spencer. What comes around, goes around, as they say.

SMD

13.03.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Walking up the East stretch of Oxford Street, London, rather a noisy area with loud amplified music and ghastly souvenir shops, I gazed up to a large imposing building and I struggled to remember what was there before. Then it came back to me – it was the splendid department store of Bourne & Hollingsworth, always known as “B&H” which flourished there from 1902 to 1983. Ladies would try on their new hats there and be fussed over by very polite shop assistants who called them “Madam”. 

B&H in its prime

Times have changed and although London can still boast of Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty's, John Lewis and House of Fraser, many other great names are now history. Retail habits of course change but it is not just the names that disappear, it is also a certain lifestyle. City workers used to throng Gamages in High Holborn for family gifts and toys for their pin-striped young: Victoria attracted eager shoppers to the Army and Navy flagship store: Regent Street had superior Dickins & Jones while Swan and Edgar was a favourite meeting place at Piccadilly Circus. Long lost to the denizens of up-market Kensington are Barkers and Derry & Toms although its famed Roof Garden survives. Provincial cities have suffered similar losses – for example Edinburgh still embraces genteel Jenners but Thornton’s and R. W. Forsyth, with its iconic globe and spire, are no more. The passing of so many stores was probably inevitable but is nevertheless regretted. Their names will in time be forgotten.

One of the great decisions of parents is what to call their young, as the names will stick for ever. I had feared that all boys are now called Elvis or Brooklyn, but I find that easily the most popular boy’s name in Britain is, er, Mohammed. Moving on to those who have an unrestricted choice, the most popular names are Oliver, for boys and Amelia for girls. Some of the older names are making a steady comeback with Alfie, George, Charlie and Clive in the frame (although Yorick and Ethelred do not yet feature!)  My dear father, born 1904, was called Herbert and I hope there is a revival of his name and future generations will be led by little Herberts. The girls too are not all Traceys nor SindyLous: sedate and emotive names like Rose, Florence, Emily, Blanche and Edith are returning, thank goodness.

I have sons but not yet any grandchildren and maybe my surname's branch will disappear in another generation. I cannot get too worked up about this. Much greater names than mine have come, flourished and departed. I leave the last word to Lord Chief Justice Crewe whose eloquent and philosophic peroration in the Oxford Peerage case in 1625 decided the matter on the heraldic claims of the de Veres. He delivered his judgment at a time when the English language was at an apogee and this is one of my favourite quotations:

“And yet time hath his revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things—finis rerum—an end of names and dignities, and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of de Vere? For where is Bohun? Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more, and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality! Yet let the name of de Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God.”

SMD

8.03.2015

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

ELGIN and the MARBLES: Famous Scots (1)

[This is the first in a series describing Scots who made an impact outside their own country.]

Scotland historically was a relatively poor and small nation but the Scots are an ambitious people. The growing power of Britain from the 17^th century onwards, the creation of a global empire and the lure of wealth in the US and overseas stimulated the Scots spirit and many had an impact well beyond Scotland itself.

One such was the highly controversial aristocratic figure of Thomas Bruce, 7^th Earl of Elgin.

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin in 1788

Thomas Bruce (1766-1841), born in Broomhall, Fife, succeeded his elder brother at the age of 5 to become 7^th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine. He entered the Guards but soon moved on to diplomacy becoming Envoy to Brussels, Prussia and then Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803. While there he organised over 10 years the removal of sculptures from the Athens Parthenon and from other Athenian sites at a cost to him personally of at least £70,000. The sculptures were shipped back to Britain (after a ship-wreck of one of his vessels, from which all were recovered at much expense) and at first they adorned Elgin’s Scottish mansion. In 1816 the sculptures, known to history as The Elgin Marbles, dating from the 5th Century BC and attributed to the Greek master Phidias, were sold to the British government for £35,000 and transferred to the newly established British Museum where they have remained for almost 200 years.

Elgin was considered a cultivated person but he attracted scandal in 1807 by divorcing his first wife, rich heiress Mary Nisbet, whom he pursued relentlessly through the English and Scots courts and sued her lover, Robert Ferguson of Raith, for his expenses. He married secondly Elizabeth Oswald, a laird’s daughter, in 1810 but from 1816 he lived in Paris, where he died in 1841.  Elgin would have gone down in history, if at all, as a dim figure were it not for his removal of the Parthenon Marbles, a matter still passionately debated to this day.

At the time of their removal, Greece and all her artefacts were indubitably within the power and control of the Ottoman Empire. The Acropolis in Athens was an Ottoman fort and Elgin sought and, he claimed, obtained permission to erect scaffolding, take casts and sketches of the sculpted figures on the Parthenon (the temple dedicated to the goddess Athena) and remove “a few stones with inscriptions and figures thereon”. He said he received a Firman, a formal Ottoman document, but the original has never been found (surprising, as the Ottoman archives are extensive) and all the evidence relies on a later Italian translation of the purported Firman. There is no evidence that he had permission to remove wholesale parts of the Parthenon, which is what he did, after bribing the local Voivode (Governor) of Athens. Such bribery was then, and sadly still remains, a commonplace practice in Levantine and Balkan transactions and indeed much further afield.

The Parthenon in Athens in 2009

Elgin’s team started work as he had first described it with designers, draughtsmen and modellers taking casts of the sculptures under the supervision of the Neapolitan painter Lusieri.  Seeing his opportunity and shocked by the poor condition of the monument, he removed almost half (247 feet of the remaining 524 feet) the remaining frieze (the band of decoration above the prediments), 15 metopes (panels containing figures below the roof), 17 statuary figures and various pedimental fragments. He also removed one of the six Caryatids adorning the Erechtheum (the temple 50 yards from the Parthenon). Elgin’s workmen were crude and they damaged the structure of the Parthenon as they prised off or sawed away at the stones.

The Elgin Marbles in London

Elgin statuary in London

When Elgin tried to negotiate the sale of the Marbles to the British government, there were voices which questioned the morality if not the legality of his acquisition. Several members of Parliament, including the radical Lord Byron described the removal of the Marbles as “looting” and a Parliamentary Enquiry was held in 1816.  By 80 to 20 votes the purchase was approved and Elgin exonerated from any suggestion of dishonest practice. Much was made of his Firman but the provenance of his ownership was supported by a “dodgy dossier”, which would hardly survive a modern forensic examination. Yet we should not judge early 19^th century art acquisitions by modern standards.

Metope of Centaur and Lapith fighting

The Caryatid in London

           

A section of the Parthenon Frieze in London

Greece became an independent country in 1830 and has always been resentful of the loss of her antiquities and especially of the Elgin Marbles. Greece asserts her ownership of the Marbles and this has prevented the British Museum from even lending them to Greece as there is every chance Greece would simply seize them. Requests for the return of the Marbles to Greece have always been turned aside by the Museum and a number of arguments of varied cogency have been deployed.

(1)    The Marbles were entirely legally acquired by Lord Elgin – but there are doubts about their provenance, as set out above.

(2)    If Elgin had not saved the Marbles, they would have been destroyed in Athens as the locals then had no respect for them.  - This is perhaps true, but unprovable.

(3)    The British Museum has looked after the Marbles well. - Sadly, opinion is divided on this, as the great art entrepreneur Lord Duveen in 1938 had the Marbles cleaned using scrapers and chisels to make them white in the mistaken belief that that was how they were in ancient times. Most of the Marbles irrevocably lost the mellow golden “patina” they had beneath the grime.

(4)    The Marbles have been seen by millions at the British Museum and Athens cannot display them appropriately. - This was once true but in 2009 Greece opened the new rather splendid Acropolis Museum within easy sight of the Parthenon, with reserved space for the Marbles.

(5)    The Marbles cannot be restored to the original monument and returning them to Athens only substitutes one Museum with another. – There is merit in this argument although the Greeks argue that the Marbles are unique symbols of the Greek spirit and their right place is in Athens gathered with the other revered Acropolis antiquities.

(6)    The Museum says that returning the Marbles to Greece would open a Pandora’s Box to other restitution claims against many national museums. – There is are various precedents already and the Greeks are limiting their claim to the Parthenon Marbles.

 

This controversy will run and run but public opinion in Britain is moving in favour of restitution. The Greeks can be rather shrill on this sensitive subject. Glamorous actress Melina Mercouri emoted huskily for restitution in the 1980s while she was Minister for Culture but she was diplomatic. 

Melina Mercouri

Her campaigns were to no avail and when Tony Blair’s office was asked in 1997 whether his new government would return the Marbles to the Greeks some wit replied that it was as likely as returning Measles to the Germans! Views are changing and I guess in my time an historic injustice will be rectified.

So the 7th Lord Elgin passes out of history. His son James Bruce, 8^th Earl of Elgin, was a well-regarded Governor General of Canada and Viceroy of India. The predatory Elgin gene however surfaced when he led a punitive action against the Chinese in 1860 during an Opium War and ordered the looting and destruction by fire of the Summer Palace in Peking. No doubt in time there will be a new storm of the Elgin Ming Teacups!

SMD

2.03.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

ROUGH EDGES

I was rather heartened by the news that retired Pope Benedict XVI, President Obama and LibDem leader Nick Clegg enjoy an occasional cigarette – beneath the veneer of perfection they have their little shortcomings after all. Well, smoking is the tiniest of vices, unless you are a health fanatic or Green – though precisely what Green policies are could not even be articulated by the Green Party leaderene Natalie Bennett in her “excruciating” interview two days ago.

We are none of us perfect and we all have our rough edges. It is part of life, an unavoidable factor in la condition humaine. Most of us strive to be good, kiss babies, listen to the wife and pat the dog, but Old Nick is not easily repelled and we are fatally prone to get out of line from time to time. The Book of Common Prayer makes us confess that we err and stray like lost sheep but goes much too far in characterising us as “miserable offenders”. We are actually blithely happy offenders savouring what Dr Johnson called “the gust of sinning”. 

We know we do wrong but our civilisation has long ago found ways of skating over this sad fact. Our media is often consumed by hypocritical bouts of morality and expects an unrealistic perfection from those in the public eye. We like to draw a discreet veil over our peccadillos, and discreet veils are necessary, but they are ripped asunder. We need to sweeten the pill with white lies, and white lies are civilised devices, but they are exposed. We commit follies, and our follies are endemic, but the world believes it has the right to know about them. I cannot believe our lives should be judged by the inconsistent standards of the Press.

Which brings us back to politics. Malcolm Rifkind has made a fool of himself and probably broken parliamentary codes by allegedly offering to help a bogus company gain access to the powerful in return for a fat fee. He was taken in by a media “sting”, has damaged his Party and will resign. I hope that will be the end of the matter and he will not be pursued any further. In these cases a certain generosity of spirit is called for to forgive a false step. I do not expect, nor want, my politicians to be without a few jagged edges, to be smooth and blameless and probably useless. I want them to be blood and flesh sinners, like everyone else. 

An old song tells us we should avoid anything if “It’s illegal, it’s immoral or it makes you fat”. I naturally go along with the illegal bit: immorality is a regrettable mistake but unless it is of Strauss-Kahntian magnitude, it is a private matter and, as the man said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. I am sure eating cream cakes makes you fat and is imprudent but how much innocent pleasure is dispensed by that delicious first bite!

It makes you fat (and happy)

SMD.
25.02.15.
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015