I blame the scapegoats (9 page)

17
November 2001

The
hills are alive with the sound of music! Like Baron von Trapp, the Taliban had
banned all singing, but now Julie Andrews (in the guise of the Northern
Alliance backed up by B52s) has brought the sound of music back to the hills of
Afghanistan. Now in Kabul's west end they are singing the old tunes once more:
'I Have Confidence In George Bush', 'Bomb Every Mountain', and 'How Do You
Solve The Problem Of Osama?'

Even the greatest cynics and anti-war
campaigners should celebrate the fall of the most hated tyrants since the
advent of car-clamping. Suddenly thousands of Afghan children are experiencing
the joy of flying kites once more. And then two minutes later saying,
'Actually, this is quite boring. You haven't got a Playstation Two by any
chance, have you?'

The Taliban was a regime made up of former
religious students. Afghanistan is what happens when you hand the government
over to those kids at school who actually wanted to do RE. And yet back in
Britain we are increasing the role of religion in our schools. As church and
state are being separated in Kabul, we are proposing that the next generation
of Britons be educated in a more religious environment. Let us be in no doubt
of the terrible fate that lies at the end of the faith schools road. The Middle
East will come to Middle England; militant Christians will seize power in a
religious revolution that will see Britain become the first ever fundamentalist
Church of England state (or second, after the Isle of Man).

After declaring the Archbishop of Canterbury
the new head of state, the religious students will impose an austere regime
based on the harsh strictures of their own extreme brand of English
Christianity. Women will be forced to observe a strict dress code and made to
wear long floral dresses with puffy sleeves. Men will wear Arran sweaters and
sandals and be too cheerful. A Christian mob clutching tambourines and chanting
'Kumbaya' will surround Tesco Metro, forcing them to close their doors on the
sabbath. The only shopping permitted on Sunday will be at the bring-and-buy
sale at the vicarage, where the local populace will be coerced into purchasing
little spider plants and home-made jam. Where Afghan kids shouted Allah is
great!', English schoolchildren will chant the central tenet of Church of England
doctrine: 'There probably is a god, though perhaps not in the literal sense,
more as a sort of spiritual concept maybe.' There will be no music except Cliff
Richard, so there will be no music. An exception will be made for the singing
of hymns; it will be compulsory for everyone to go to church and
self-consciously mumble their way through the second verse of 'To Be A
Pilgrim', and then sing out the last line loud and clear to make up for not
knowing the rest of it. It will be an offence to get out of bed in the morning
only because
Thought for the Day
has
just come on the radio. School nativity plays will not be permitted to edit the
original biblical text and so will go on for several days. Loose adaptations
will also be forbidden, so having the Virgin Mary clutching a plastic Baby
Annabel from Toys 'R' Us and then singing Spice Girls hits is definitely out.
Anyone breaking any of these strict Christian laws will face instant
forgiveness.

Of
course, all this is a ridiculous fantasy. Nothing so foolish could ever come to
pass. Future schoolchildren will learn about the dawn of a lasting world peace
when they study this period of history in their new faith schools. For what
could be more conducive to world peace than having all the Christian kids in one
school and all the Muslim kids in a different school down the road? Why not
stick a Jewish school in the middle and have an inter-schools jihad on sports
day? Creating new faith secondary schools now seems about as sensible as a
Taliban version of
Pop Idol.
'Well,
we don't know what she looks like and we're not allowed to hear her sing, so
we'll just have to hope for the best.' You'd think the government would have
enough problems on its hands deciding what to do with all these Taliban
leaders, without setting up new faith schools back home that'll be needing
religious heads to run them all. Oh no, they wouldn't, would they? Suddenly it
all fits together . . .

24
November 2001

It
has been decided that the time is right for the Foreign Secretary to begin
talks on Gibraltar. The weather's suddenly turned cold here and it's still
quite sunny in southern Spain. All sorts of wider discussions have been put on
the agenda.

'Look, we'll give you back Gibraltar - as
long as you take Northern Ireland as well.'

'No
thanks - we were hoping you might like the Basque Country . . .'

Meanwhile
Gibraltar's chief minister was outraged that these talks were even taking place
and gave it to Jack Straw straight: 'You have talks with Spain if you want. But
I'm boycotting them.'

'All right. See you about.'

'I mean it! Either the Spanish minister goes,
or I go.' 'Okay, bye then.'

In trying to sort out this post-colonial
hangover now, the government is brazenly flying in the face of years of
established Foreign Office policy, which is to wait until a territory is the
focus of a major international crisis involving hundreds of British troops,
with billions of pounds needing to be spent to defend a place we'd forgotten
we had in the first place. Maggie Thatcher would never have dreamed of
negotiating over Gibraltar. She would have wanted to use it as a base for
getting back the American colonies.

These old bits of empire are like
embarrassing LPs that ended up in your record collection after some
long-forgotten college romance.

'The Falkland Islands?' says your incredulous
wife. 'How long have you had these?'

And
you blush and stutter: 'Oh yeah, er, they were Victoria's and somehow I've
still got them.'

'And what's this? The
Chagos Archipelago?'

'Oh well, um, when me and India split up, I
was all upset so I refused to give it back . . .'

Gibraltar was gained during the War of
Spanish Succession, which was fought in order to bore people doing History A-level
three hundred years later. Invasions of Spanish territory by the British have
always taken the same form. Eyewitness accounts of the occupation describe how
hundreds of sunburnt English lads in Union Jack shorts, clutching Stoke City
scarves and copies of
Loaded,
stormed
the local tavernas at dawn shouting, 'Oi, Manuel! Ten pints of lager pronto.'
And the Spanish fled in horror as the victorious English struck up a chorus of
'Ere we go! Ere we go! Ere we go!' During that war Britain also gained the island
of Minorca, and quickly went about establishing another vital naval staging
post by building the Benny Hill Bar, providing Premiership highlights on
satellite TV and paella and chips with Yorkshire pudding.

Minorca
was handed back, but Gibraltar remains an embarrassment. Imagine if a
300-year-old war had meant that Clacton-on-Sea was still a Spanish colony
today. Would we demand the return of that Essex coastal resort? Okay, bad
example. Opponents of surrendering sovereignty insist that Britain has a right
to Gibraltar under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. The same treaty handed
Sardinia to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and ceded the island of Sicily to
Savoy. This week the government of Savoy was saying nothing. The settlement in
1713 also ensured that British companies had a monopoly of the transportation
of African slaves to the Spanish colonies. Only a handful of Tory MPs still
argue that these rights should be upheld today.

If people want to remain British, I know an
excellent place they could live. It's called Britain. I have never understood
why the Union Jack-waving expats living thousands of miles away from the mother
country are always so self-consciously more British than the people who live
here. If they really want to be like everyone back in England they should wear
NYC baseball caps and eat Big Macs while watching
Friends
and
Sex and the City.
Gibraltarians
have no more right to perpetuate the anachronism of the British Empire than the
descendants of Jewish settlers in the West Bank should have a right to veto a
settlement in the Middle East.

Till now it's always been presumed that
sovereignty might possibly be shared at some vague point in the future - a sort
of
^‘
manana
split'.
But the brave way to deal with this problem would be to set a definite date for
Gibraltar's return to Spain. It should be far enough away that the
Gibraltarians can't really imagine it ever coming round, but soon enough for
the Spanish to think it's not worth making a fuss between now and then. How
about 2029 - the two hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Seville when Spain
renounced its claim to the Rock after its failed invasion? But the government
must make this announcement soon before the Gibraltarians realize that they
have one very persuasive negotiating ploy left up their sleeve. What if they
were to ally themselves with other Britons living further up the Spanish coast?
Suddenly they might find their wishes being respected. Round the conference
table would be the Spanish Minister, Jack Straw and Mad Mick from Romford who
moved to Marbella in a hurry after the Brinks Mat heist.

'Well, Mr Straw, you can overrule the Brits
living in Spain if you like. But I'm afraid it means I will have to saw your
legs off and have them buried in the concrete of the Stratford East Rail Link.'

'Urn . . . yeah, well, maybe we shouldn't
rush into any decision just yet. . .'

And
the Spanish will say, 'Oh no - it's just like negotiating with Maggie Thatcher
all over again.'

I
December 2001

It's
a mistake any of us could have made - spending three years studying cows
instead of sheep. I'm always getting those two mixed up. All right, so they are
the Institute of Animal Health, but it doesn't mean they can be expected to
spot all the subtle variations between every single species; to know the
difference between, say, a bank vole and a short-tailed vole, or a wood warbler
and a sedge warbler. Or a sheep and a cow.

The
latest twist in the BSE saga is even more farcical than anything that has gone
before. In the quest to establish whether British sheep have contracted the
disease, scientists spent the last three years studying sheep tissue and
reached a distressing conclusion: the British flock did indeed have BSE. Except
the animal samples they'd been studying for three years were the wrong ones.
The creatures which they had diagnosed with mad cow disease were cows. The clue
is in the name. We shouldn't be too hard on them - this sheep/cow mix-up
happens all the time. Thousands of sheep farmers have recently realized why
they've been finding it so hard to make a living: they've been shearing cows
all this time. Last year in a packed Spanish arena, one bullfight had been
going for about half an hour, with the nervous woolly bull running away from the
matador and bleating occasionally, before someone in the crowd said, 'Are you
absolutely sure that

is a bull? Because I
can't help thinking it looks a little bit like a sheep.'

For future reference, sheep are small, with
thick white fleeces and go 'Baaa!', whereas cows are much bigger and go 'Mooo!'
I know it can be confusing, but they are professional biologists. If it's not
in any of their scientific manuals, there are some pre-school picture books
which set it out quite clearly.

This
week's report into the fiasco points the finger at a laboratory in Edinburgh,
although no one seems very sure. What seems even more incredible is that nobody
noticed for so long. Lots of us have days at work when we feel we're wasting
our time, but three whole years down the drain must make you a little bit
depressed. And all because someone got the wrong bottle out of the fridge.
That's the last time he'll be making the tea.

'Are you sure you put
milk in the mug, cos it tastes a bit strange . . .'

'Oh sorry, I must have used the liquidized
cows' brains by mistake. It's not my fault, they've both got pictures of cows
on the side . . .'

When BSE was discovered in the samples,
ministers seriously considered destroying the entire British sheep flock.
Fortunately they didn't have to take this drastic step, because all the sheep
had already been slaughtered during the foot-and-mouth epidemic a few months
earlier. The scientists' error was discovered only after a last-minute DNA test
on the samples. Well, they claim they tested the DNA - for all we know it might
have been a jar of sundried tomatoes. And now the report into the fiasco has
concluded that the standards of labelling and storage were well below
international standards. You don't say. Perhaps the description of the animal
samples was done by people who write posh menus. You could never write anything
as straightforward as 'Liquidized sheep's brains' - you'd have to write
'Cerveaux
de mouton presse a la formaldehyde'
'. One theory is that
somebody got confused about the words 'bovine' and 'ovine'. Often scientists
use the Latin names for different species, but since the Latin for sheep is
'ovis', we should just be grateful that they didn't spend three years studying
a brand of sliced bread from Yorkshire.