It ain't just cricket you know

Who do I think I am? Who do we think we are? What makes for loyalty, or a sense of what class or nationality or religion we belong to? The conviction that we are a certain sort of people. We behave in a certain way, we have certain rights, certain taboos - and certain values.

We see ourselves as British because we will insist on doing this, and are absolutely not the sort of people who ever, EVER, do that.

At least so I thought...

But now it becomes increasingly clear that if we didn't actually torture anybody ourselves, we did the next best thing in helping Americans, or at least profiting from their use of torture.

I know that we the British haven't had too good a record in the past on this - we apparently tortured Barack Obama's grandfather, and it's still a matter for debate whether the good we may have done in the way of missionaries, commerce, occasionally schools (not enough), stopping people burning their widows and so forth, does or doesn't outweigh the brutality we undoubtedly inflicted while keeping the Empire under control.

But by now we hoped that was all in the past, which people can surely put behind them. We're constantly told that nice young Germans are not Nazis, that people in this or that Pacific island don't eat each other any more (whether or not they actually ate only a few significant bits to partake of the strength of their enemies, or were simply after the healthful protein). What we're talking about is now.

The standard we aspire to, our only claim to be better than our enemies is that we are more civilised than they are; that whatever the provocation there are things that we simply do not do.

Torture is one of them. I can't remember who it was who said that it wasn't winning that was difficult, but winning without becoming too like your enemy. Torture certainly doesn't bring any tactical benefit big enough to justify the appalling loss of one's principles and integrity; an English common law ruling as long ago as 1783 said anything got by torture should not be given any credibility.

The United States has come to realise, I suppose, that however useful the information they got from Guantanamo Bay, it is puny and negligible compared to the massive and catastrophic damage it did to its reputation.

Ends and means

There is more than one view on torture, of course - the Michael Ignatieff view is that one establishes firmly that one does not, in any circumstances, sanction torture. But that if you knew you had in front of you the one man who had the plans and the means to blow up all London, and the question was whether you stuck to your principles and didn't use the thumbscrew - or did use it and saved London - you would have to do it, but would be forgiven.



Anthropologist Jeremy Swift, who has one of the most subtle minds I know, says no. If it was ever the right thing to do, the only honest thing you can say is: "In some circumstances I would." I don't know who is right on that one.

Until now, people like me - who have lived in the US, been inspired by its ideals, have close friends and a son there - have sympathised with them for having a Bush government that allowed things like Guantanamo and so let them in for the world's obloquy. Well, now it's us, who thought - hoped anyway- that such things were just not British.

So what is being British? It has nothing to do with knowing about Agincourt, the Corn Laws or the Kings and Queens of England, since half our allegedly educated young Britons born here do not. And certainly nothing whatever to do with cricket, or I'm a Bolivian.

For me, it comes down to two things: to be British you must speak English and respect the law. Note I don't say obey the law, as too many Britons obviously don't, much of the time. And of course there are differences between Scottish law and English.

But even burglars and swindlers still reckon they'll be hauled up in front of the courts, subject to one or another form of British law, with all its safeguards, achieved bit by bit over centuries.

Whatever the minor discrepancies, it's a question of what you consider to be the law - not thinking women should be stoned to death if they sleep with the wrong man; not thinking you can get away with murder if you belong to the right church; and certainly not thinking Sharia law, that would more or less negate all the rights that two centuries of British women have fought for, should supersede ours.

Which stands for being the sort of people who don't pull people's toenails out; who obey the Geneva conventions; who have at least an idea of fairness and honour.

Mother tongue

So where does speaking English come into all this? Language, too is a vital part of the interface between those who grew up here and those who didn't, the others, the outsiders - and it's another problem we share with the US.

They require those becoming citizens to learn English for very good reason - the constitution and all it implied was formed in English, and if you wanted to uphold it, benefit from it, you had to learn it. (A friend of mine had met a man who, as a child, had always thought that English was something that declined with age, like sight or hearing; because he spoke it perfectly, his mother pretty well but his grandmother - the original immigrant - was really bad at it.)

At one point the flood of Spanish-speaking immigrants in California was such that they decided children should be taught initially in their mother tongue, Spanish. After quite a few years it was the Spanish-speaking parents who asked for this kind privilege to be stopped, as they realised that the children of Oriental immigrants got ahead far faster - they weren't hampered by having to learn the national tongue as a second language.

A lot of liberally minded people would say that requiring English is restrictive, makes things hard for the less brainy or more elderly. That it's more civilised to accept that we have a lot of languages spoken here, and it's only fair to interpret for them.

I absolutely don't agree, for two reasons. The first is that if you don't understand English, you can't understand what's going on - you are second class citizens and can't effectively take part in any public debate.

You can have the news and views interpreted for you - but who by? The local mullah? The head of the household - who may be very happy to have his wife unable to know anything he doesn't tell her? It reminds one of the prosecution's remarks in the famous Lady Chatterly trial: "Would you like your wife or your servants to read this book?"

Your seven-year-old son, who has learned English at school, can interpret for you - but do you want him to be the one who tells your medical troubles to the doctor?

A few years back the winner of a prize in medical communication was a pair who went around lecturing about getting through to difficult groups - deaf people, people with learning difficulties, people who didn't speak English. They had a marvellously telling film of an Asian woman consulting the doctor about pain in intercourse, using her cousin as interpreter - who instead said she had irregular periods, because that was more seemly - so the doctor prescribed for that.

And restaurant inspectors, I'm told, have given up using the children to relay their criticisms to the owners of mucky ethnic kitchens, as the kids don't want to say anything that might upset Papa.

When showing off in one of my Russian history lectures, I wrote some swany phrase to my friend. She responded to my insolence with the following quotation by Roosevelt, which sums this subject up quite nicely with relation to the US:

“We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people”
Theodore Roosevelt

Melting pot

There is no going back on the single fact that tribes and races and nations are now totally intertwined. The conflicts are not about to go away.



To my mind it doesn't matter what your meal times are, what clothes you wear, whether you keep birthdays or saints days or name days, what songs you sing, whether you think the world came from outer space, was made in six days or sits on the back of an elephant.

The nation that now has chicken tikka masala as its favourite dish can absorb almost anything - but only if it hangs on to the essentials that make it what it is - our language and above all our law. It can be improved, made more enlightened. Stripped of bureaucratic inessentials. Made fairer to both sexes, adapt to changing conditions. But keep its essential premise - that all are equal before the law. Not, as George Orwell's pigs in Animal Farm had it, that some are more equal than others.

Remember the exchange in the play A Man for All Seasons? Cranmer likens the law to trees, saying he would cut down every law in England to get at the devil. And Thomas More says "And when you have cut down every law and the devil comes after you, where will you hide?"

Exactly.

We Should Acknowledge that the BNP were democratically elected

A lot of talk has been on this subject recently, and I thought I would express my feelings about this.

Several years ago, the chances of them winning anything anywhere, would have seemed like fanciful stuff. However, like it or not, the decisions taken by our MPs has created a situation where many people have voted for the BNP. Now, I don't agree with their policies and wish they hadn't been elected, however, rather than just condemning the BNP, we need to address the reasons why a great number of people chose to vote for them and understand their concerns.

There has been much written in the papers recently about ‘Yorkshire’s shame BNP elected’ but they obviously aren’t ashamed, as they voted for the BNP. It’s laughable really

I believe, that until you fix the root cause, the BNP will continue to gain support, votes and electoral legitimacy. They now have a presence in local government as well as the EU parliament, ultimately a refection of the percentage of those, who actually voted.

If you are one like me, where you are against the ideas of the BNP, try focusing your attention on the main parties who have totally failed to recognise and address the local issues that has lead to these BNP members being elected in the first place. I have no doubt that there are many more people in the country who resonate with some of the BNPs policies though they have not voted for them to date. If the main political parties don't get their act together then we may well find them represented in Westminster in the near future as well.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that they [the BNP] obtained a considerable number of votes 943,598, compared to Labour's 2,381,760. This is quite shocking to think that a main political party like Labour who are in power could only accrue around 2.5 times more votes than the BNP. Putting it another way for around every 2.5 people who voted Labour 1 voted for the BNP, and for every 4.5 who voted Tory 1, voted BNP - extraordinary.
I think politically, there is a lot of work to be done in this country. Political correctness is an obstacle we need to combat, and the best thing is to open things up to debate; transparency. If we hold televised live debated with the political parties, who knows, we could have a Frost/Nixon situation in the near future.

Some mates you have to book an appointment with. Are they worth it?

Is it just me or are people misunderstanding the values of friendship?

Exams are over and now I’m wrapped up in the world or full-time (or almost full time) work. Gym at 6am, work from 9am, home for around 6pm after a very long bike ride, food and then sports, friends, Chinese cramming. I often lose track of time. However recently a few things some friends have said to be have really echoed in my mind for a long time…

After a few things which have gone on over the past few months, I’ve decided I’m going to study at Beijing University for 2 years, instead of the original first-planned, one year long course. I’m a tad nervous, but I’ve decided to study on a 4-week extra intensive course this summer, just to give me a kick start. Plans with accommodation however fell through, Uni halls were too pricey, and so I was stuck. Until my friend, Serina made the effort to help me look for flats by posting on various internet sites, making phone calls and even planning to meet my future Chinese house mates in Beijing in order to ‘vet’ them before giving me the ‘all-clear’ to move in with them. I felt very humbled by all of this. I even felt indebted to her to some degree. Though this is what friends do, and this is why you have good friends like Serina is to me. I found it most obscure that I was mulling this over in my mind. People these days are so concerned with what they can get from each other, who they can profit and benefit from someone, that they forget how to be friends with people.

A recent conversation on the same issue made me think about this further; people don’t seem to have close friendships anymore. Not everyone, though a proportion. To some, the majority are merely drink-buddies, who call you up on a Saturday night so they don’t have to go to bars on their own. This isn’t a bad thing, as often these people are the most fun. But often people seem to have two groups of mates: the ‘drink’ mates and the ‘talk-to’ mates. If you’re making the effort to read this, think for just one second. How many friends do you have in your phonebook who you can call up and say ‘hey man, I’m feeling really pants right now, and wanted to chat?’

I think I have a handful, I’m lucky though.

I’m making more of an effort these days to keep in touch and spend more time with people, even though it is all too easy to drift apart. But there are some friends who you always have to book an appointment with. You’ll want to go to the cinema, but they’ll say they haven’t any money, yet three days later they update their facebook status with :



‘Joe Bloggs is loving the cinema with his mates’.





It makes you think why on earth bother with such people?

Olga made a very good comment to me. Blunt, but it hit the nail on the head. She said ‘Aaron, they’re your friends, and you yourself chose them’. Maybe I need to start being a little less sentimental and realise when it’s time to give up on some people.

You can have a mate a year and the friendship can be lost, yet you can have a friend a week and it be a life-long friendship.

It’s a damn shame I’m leaving for Beijing so soon. After a troublesome year, things over the past two months have gone great. I’ve never been happier, despite the occasional ups and downs. I’ve got some very good friends who have only just recently come into my life, and they’re the people who I can call for anything, the people who sort out living arrangements for me, the people who cook for me, help me move house, tell me how it really is, give a damn and the great people who actually care and make me laugh.

So Andy, Kris, Ali, Olga, Serina, Jonny, Vivian, and Gav, cheers guys. You’re all top banana (even if you do take the michael when I climb trees and pose in them) ;-)

Throwing the rattle out of the pram.

I’m in that bubble, floating down the old cold and dark gradual slope of my childhood street in Dover. People are reaching up to touch me, but they have no faces and yet in their desperation, they make no noise. The surface of the bubble ascends ever so nearer in descent towards their clasps for me but my will allows the bubble to rise back into the air, only a few inches or so from their clawing fingertips. I then wake up.

In the style of the Clockwork Orange, I’m at the perekryostok of life again. Unsure of which way to turn, which way is right or wrong, or whether there is actually a right or wrong. For reassurance I pool from the past, and turn my head and look down the path that I have crossed in order to make my next move. But with caution. I start to reflect upon the past.

I’ve come a long way in the past year, but lost or upset a few friends on the way through being myself albeit due to past events or natural related sort of stuff that has forged the way I am. I start to think that it is because I don’t try hard enough, and that it is all due to the fact that I am essentially lazy. University has gone well this year however; starting Polish from scratch and scoring 82% at an intermediate level, and also taking Chinese literature, something which I always failed and never understood, yet at University level, I scored 76%. These are the results I have so far. Surely this is progress. I aced my business exam, breezed through Russian language, but yet I feel I didn’t do myself justice in the thing that people know me best for – Chinese. I’m pretty sure I screwed that up. And it is just this example I am trying to highlight here. What I like, enjoy and all those showy-off things that I am about, ultimately brings complacency and hence failure. I can exemplify this with Chinese, with my gym progress and with my ex. All of the aforementioned could have done with a lot more effort and work, and I feel that I haven’t quite met the bar in ‘standards’. Instead I get myself so absorbed in the notion of the aforementioned activities, but yet do nothing to contribute to them further. I’d happily sit in a bath whilst talking to a friend on the phone for 30 minutes, yet I go in the bath another time, take my Chinese book, yet read one page and don’t read anymore. In addition, I recently uploaded some photos of my doing the gardening at my friend’s house (a person who is extremely kind, and is letting me stay rent free to help me actually get to China). Now two comments to these photos, and two of the most immediate comments, were; “where has your six pack gone? ;-)” – I used to be over 16 stones/98kg, I thought I had done rather well. The next “Put some weight on, you’re skinny, do more shoulder work”. I feel deflated and out of energy. There was me thinking I had done so well.

It is important to take knocks well, and believe me, I have had more than my fair share. However, I do know people who ‘go’ to the gym, or should I say, attend the gym and enjoy its array of health facilities rather than its weights. In the steam room, I’ll hear lines like “I’m not progressing, and I take all this protein”. Well that’s because they take their protein, eat well, buy men’s health magazine, talk to other lads about carbohydrates as a type of conversation initiator and read every food label for its fat content. In such cases, one needs to lok back on the week, as I am looking back at my crossroads or perekryostok, and each week, think to myself ‘what have I done to contribute to move forward?’. Often it isn’t brilliant. When faced with the what-have-I-done question concerning the gym this week, despite it being Wednesday, I find myself already making excuses. Well, I have worked full time every day so far doing manual work, clearning flats, sucking flood water out of carpets, cleaning, moving house, gardening etc. So, I guess I’m not lazy, but I need to push myself that little bit further.

The second dream I have haunting me is takes place in my gym at peak time. All the regular faces are there. Everyone is twice my size and suddenly a demon type entity appears and tries to kill everyone with a fire explosion. I run up in front of everyone hold my hand out, sort of like creating a reflective barrier, thus saving the day. – Perhaps I watch read too many Naruto comics, but there is this instinct inside me that wants to be protective, and that ultimately, craves significance.

I have always believed that philosophically, there is no such thing as a selfless act. People do everything purely for their own benefit, whether it be directly or indirectly. But ultimately as part of being a ‘lad’ I not only crave significance, but also want someone to protect and look after. It’s almost instinctual.

People seem more ephemeral than ever. The majority here in Manchester have no real substance to them, and are solely concerned with showing off and talking about themselves. Part of me is glad that I am moving away, but the other half thinks that after two years of being in the UK I should be sad to be leaving.

In short, I need to work harder. Maybe I’m beating myself up, and yes there is sometimes more to life and yes, sitting back relaxing is just as important. Yet, I think that there’s only so much I can do, but in realising that I’m frustrated. I’m ambitious, hard working, strong, and protective but if only I could turn up the volume on all of these qualities. The road seems uncomfortable ahead, but if I focus and work harder then maybe this gradual slope will turn into a smooth down-hill bike ride. And I need to deal less with those 6-foot tall people who are in fact 7-foot tall with their mouth open…