Can the Northern Ireland Conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts be compared?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

While I was in Belfast attending a Model United Nations Conference, representing Pakistan, shortly before I flew home I went on a legendary Belfast Black Cab tour.  These tours which are often staffed by former paramilitary members from Northern Ireland (NI) The Troubles era are intimate tours of the city's infamous past (and sometimes present) trouble spots.  At the first stop on the tour was the Divis Flats, reportedly the sight of the first casualty of The Troubles in Belfast; a sleeping 8 year old boy killed by a stray police bullet.  While pondering at the irony that the first victim of The Troubles was an innocent person I noticed a Palestinian flag flying from one of the Flats’ windows.   My tour guide was largely dismissive of this when I asked about it, saying that person probably displayed it just because another Nationalist did.  Even more intriguingly, further into the tour I notice Israeli flags clearly on display in a Unionist era.

This experience led me to wonder; are these two conflicts in any way comparable?   In NI a body count threshold seemed to have been reached as well as a threshold of international concern to almost lock into place a peace process which at least seems durable.  And thus the 1998 Belfast Agreement and power sharing between the previously violently conflicting parties was signed.  This begs the question; could a similar process happen in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

That both conflicts have deeply rooted historical backgrounds is not in doubt.  The oldest of those histories is undoubtedly that of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict since the Jewish Zionist movement, that forged the concept of a modern Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine, cites the Jews as a people as originating from this region.  This was well before the birth of Christ, vastly outdating the Norman landings on the island of Ireland and the Ulster Plantations being established in the north during the 1500s AD.  It is disputable how much of a difference this makes practically since the opposing sides of both disputes are as likely to mythologise events that happened 50 years ago as much as they would for ones happening 500 years ago.  But the past does not stay buried for long and both conflicts have historical baggage that will be very hard to clear up, if that is even possible at all.

For the sides of both conflicts nationalism is a very serious force, as is religion.  Religious differences trumped nationalistic ones in Ireland for many years since the formation of Irish nationalism is only really a concept that is at most a few centuries old, next to older religious identities.  Inter-communal violence has taken place in NI since at least the late 18th century when Protestant Peep-O-Day boys fought against the Catholic Defenders.  Zionism is the next youngest self-determination movement, having it’s roots in the late 19^th century.  Palestinian nationalism is even younger, coming to the fore with the rise of Arab nationalism during the post-war period.  It is arguable that nationalism, Zionist and Palestinian, merely hardened group identities and communal grievances rather than created them.  But now nationalism is present it may be hard if not impossible to put the genie back in it’s bottle in both cases.

There are intriguing similarities and differences between the opposing factions in the different conflicts.  While the Unionist governed province of the UK, NI, recognised the existence of the Republic of Ireland (and the Free State before that), much of the Irish Civil War was fought over the acceptance in the majority Catholic south about the NI's right to exist as a separate political entity.  There is a similarity to the widespread Palestinian rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan to divide Palestine up into two states, although the rejection seemed more widespread in the Palestinian case.  Differences in culture, historical background or the leadership of the Palestinian’s with the highly structured and recognised leadership of the First Dail may account for the difference, although this is far from certain.

It is worth noting that while the most prominent Palestinian political groups have been founded on the principle of armed action against Israel, starting with Fatah who formed with this specific objective in mind, nationalism in Northern Ireland has taken on two recognised moulds: Constitutional Nationalism and militant republicanism.  Constitutional Nationalism in NI seeks to improve the rights of ordinary Catholic nationalists while the majority of them push for a united Ireland, all by peaceful means.  Militant Irish Republicanism stands for pushing for a united Ireland, the perceived ultimate guarantor of Catholic rights, by any means including armed struggle.

What is interesting is that while a militant Palestinian nationalist tradition is clearly visible, it would seem that a Palestinian Constitutional Nationalism is largely absent.  In many ways this is what Fatah has become by default as the Islamist militant party and militia Hamas has stolen their thunder as the standard bearer of militant nationalism.  Unlike the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in NI which grew out from the Catholic civil rights movement, the SDLP was born in tradition, while Fatah merely found it’s way there by circumstance, in many ways much like the former militant Sinn Fein party.

The Protestant Unionist and the largely Jewish population of Israel in many ways have similarities.  The main difference is though that as bad as inter-communal violence got during The Troubles, there was hardly ever an intention to wipe out Protestants in NI as a people.  While the IRA directly called for the overthrow of the NI  State, their propaganda never reached the blood curdling proportions of Hamas who look favourably on the Holocaust and the wholesale killing of Jewish civilians.  By contrast recent evidence has revealed that while the IRA too often practiced sectarian killing, they eschewed it where they could to minimise their potential supporters becoming upset.  However in the heat of battle these differences can look academic.  There are some striking similarities between the siege mentalities of both the Israelis and the Unionists.  In many ways the former was more justified since they faced national armies challenging their existence.  At the height of The Troubles the Irish Government authorised the planning of Exercise Armageddon as an emergency measure to protect Nationalists, but this was never implemented and only conceived as a measure to protect Nationalists.  Because of this no other state forces entered this conflict apart from the UK’s.

Not all conflicts have a singular silver bullet, especially when it comes to the conflicts discussed.  When I asked an Israeli friend of mine about their opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was pessimistic that a solution would be found soon and cited a difference of narratives on both sides.  This is the ultimate link between the two conflicts.  Neither side can wholly connect with the other, in the context of both conflicts.  In NI recognition, albeit begrudging, between the two sides and their narratives have been established.  This was one of the main issues that made the difference between the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement failing and the 1998 Belfast Agreement succeeding (just).

Putting aside the different scales in the different scenarios the one thing the NI Nationalists had going in their favour more than the Palestinians was an articulate but determined Constitutional Nationalist movement that won praise by championing the promotion of civil rights over armed struggle while practising a degree of empathy with their opposite numbers.  As long as Fatah and Hamas are in a competition to look the most defiant against Israel , as oppose to looking for a long term peace, the killing will surely continue.

The Future of British Foreign Policy in Africa

“Africa was not created piecemeal.  Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe.  Africans no more, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents, deficiencies, virtues and faults”.

Former King of Ethiopia Haille Selassie

Why should the British Government and it’s people have an interest in having anything to do with Africa?  Not half a century ago decolonisation was accelerating, relinquishing large areas of Africa from British colonial control in an effort to balance the books of an unruly economy back at home.  Our foreign policy usually centres around two axis, that of security and prosperity.  In terms of the former parts of Africa continues to be a concern.  Jihadist groups have proliferated in North, West and the Horn of Africa with groups like Boko Haram and Al-Shabab becoming a part of a loose nexus of such groups in Africa.  In the wake of Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi’s demise Libya has become a land of warring militias and refugees who are struggling to get the Europe, while the Islamic State announces it’s sinister presence in the country.  Prosperity wise there are interesting opportunities.  In recent years over 10 of the fastest growing economies of the world have been African.  African economies are evolving, albeit in an uneven way across the continent, with some of them becoming more Service Sector orientated closer to our country’s model.  However various structural deficiencies in the African economies limit their growth, providing a possible opportunity for Britain to play a constructive role.  In the mean-time regional trends hint at new opportunities as well as dangers.

While our footprint in Africa seems to be quite modest, other nations seem to have much more grand designs for the continent.  Our neighbour France has long been intimately been closely involved in Africa.  France has not always been on the right side of history in terms of it’s involvement on the continent, leading to accusations of necolonialism which had merit at least half of the time.  While France still has ulterior motives such as promoting exports from it’s arms industries in recent years it has taken more of a positive role on the continent.  On 1^st August 2014 France initiated Operation Barkhane; a 3,000 strong military deployment in it’s former West African colonies including Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso.   This was a follow up to Operation Serval, the French intervention in Mali against a separatist and Islamist insurgent takeover of that country.  The US meanwhile under the United States Africa Command has carried out missions on the continent such as drone strikes in Somalia and Special Forces raids against IS in Libya to keep Jihadists at bay.  Meanwhile US aid efforts have ambitiously taken aim at one of Africa’s biggest economic problems, lack of power generation capability.

However the big story of great power involvement in Africa in the past 10 years has been that from China.  China’s energy hungry economy has had much to gain from extensive economic links with a continent brimming with minerals.  Chinese construction and infrastructure companies have also penetrated a market desperate for development in both fields.  Research by Foreign Policy magazine has shown that the Chinese are making serious efforts to invest in skills and training in African workforces, suggesting that their interest in the continent is long term.  The Chinese Government has also announced plans to construct a military base in Djibouti, a country already crowded by foreign military base.  Many Africans and Western powers alike are unsure about China’s interests on the continent.  Since China is run by an authoritarian government it stands to reason that it has very little interest in fostering civil society in Africa, the roots of sustainable democracies.  African civil organisations in the past few years have stood against Chinese property developments that they have eyed with suspicion, showing the potential flowering of African democracy to come.

The past year has seen attitudes to liberal ideas heavily challenged.  Some Presidents of African countries such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda have sidestepped constitutional term limits with little consequence.  In Burkina Faso the former President Blaise Campaore was ousted from power when he tried the same trick.  The President of Burundi, a country long plagued by ethnic violence, threatens to plunge his country into bloody chaos over his plans to remain in power.  At the top of the African Union (AU) the megalomaniac President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is chairman.  With his encouragement African Governments, including South Africa, are pushing for AU countries to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) in preference for an AU run court.  Considering that most of these governments have made it clear that in principle they do not want international courts to put serving African leaders on trial, it is obvious that their commitment to a liberal vision of Africa is questionable at best.

Africa is currently faced by many economic challenges.  These can broadly be presented as three main problems; a lack of infrastructure, underdeveloped agriculture and the collapse in oil prices.  A lack in infrastructure hampers everything.  A lack of schools hampers training skilled workforces. A lack of railways and roads means that goods cannot be supplied to markets and security forces cannot respond to emergencies quickly, such as the Boko Haram one.  Shortages of electricity keep African economies moving at a snails pace in a super-connected and energised global economy.  African agriculture has great potential.  That sector used to make much of the continent a breadbasket until state control, war and strife squandered this.  But African agriculture needs technology transfers, skill transfers and a genuine global commitment to free trade.  European Union (EU) and American subsidies stand in the way of the latter.  Many of Africa’s fastest growing economies in recent years are major oil producers.  The collapse in oil price, which has much to do with China’s slowing economy, has hammered the finances of many of these countries.  These economies need to diversify if they are to avoid being vulnerable to further oil price shocks.  Helping to solve this dilemma is something that the British Government should set it’s mind to.

Britain should have a long term strategic interest in Africa.  The economic opportunities are massive.  Britain’s engineering expertise can help tie African countries together with infrastructure projects.  These projects should be geared towards inter-African trade, which remains shockingly underdeveloped, as well as trade for further abroad.  Britain also has an opportunity to help tackle the problem of Africa’s power supply problem, with the assistance of it’s world class university research capacity as private sector expertise.  In the former the University of the West of England has started on an interesting project to use human urine as a power source.

In terms of the illiberal turn on the African continent Britain can turn to reforming the Commonwealth to make it more trade orientated and an organisation that promotes liberal values.  If the Brexit from the EU occurs organisations such as the Commonwealth may take on a new importance and meaning.  if it remains in the EU then the UK should push for the reform of EU agricultural subsidies, so African produce can enter world markets on fair terms and ultimately reduce food prices for all. Opportunities for increasing links between our Service Sector and their young African equivalents should also be explored. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development may also want to consider having greater involvement in civil society schemes, much like how the US State Department does which trains local democracy activists.

New IRA? Old Problems?

“Let us not waste our energies brooding over the more we might have got.  Let us look upon what it is we have got.”

Michael Collins, Irish Independence leader speaking about the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty

Irish Nationalism as an ideology has always been about it’s followers having to face divisions between their high hopes and political reality.  Michael Collins, the Irish Republican and independence leader was the first to confront this dilemma and was ultimately killed by it.  He argued that accepting the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, while it fell short of the outright independence and Irish unity that he and his compatriots had fought for, was a foundation for greater freedom to be achieved.  It was ironically his main opponent in the Irish Civil War, Eamon De Valera, who after Collins’ death proved him right by taking back the treaty ports leased to the British by diplomacy and made the Irish Free State a republic by constitutional change.  But the Republic of Ireland and it’s leaders came to the eventual, if reluctant, realisation that complete Irish unity between the north and south was a long way off to being achieved.

Much like the time during the time of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, when the 1998 Belfast Agreement  was signed and ratified many Irish Republicans consented to the will of democratic process and laid down their arms.  However a minority chose to fight on with the aim of uniting the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland with the 6 of Northern Ireland, despite the Irish Constitution under the terms of the Belfast Agreement disavowing territorial claims to the north.  These rebels against the Belfast Agreement are known as “dissident” republicans and carry on their paramilitary activity to this day.

For much of Northern Ireland’s post-Belfast Agreement history paramilitary activity behind the scenes in the province had been simmering behind the scenes, but nowhere near the levels of the horrors of The Troubles period.  Unionist suspicion of Sinn Fein and their alleged links to paramilitary groups remained, but the party nevertheless consistently and vocally denounced instances of such activity when they broke out into open violence.  However changes in the fortunes and politics of dissident republicans means that the British Home Office has recently taken the position of publicly acknowledging them as more of a threat to national security.

On the week ending the 9^th May the Home Office publicly declared that the threat from a possible dissident republican terrorist attack has increased from “moderate” to “substantial”.  This is largely because of the emergence in recent years of a dissident republican group popularly known as the” New IRA”.  The New IRA was formed in July 2012 as a new group consisting of elements from Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD), the Real IRA and other miscellaneous dissident-minded individuals.  The former is a vigilante group whose professed mission of violently opposing drug dealers hails from a tradition started in the “Free Derry” era of The Troubles.  This new alignment of dissident groups only leaves the Continuity IRA as the only major organised dissident entity left, although commentators say this group is in decline due to it being riddled with informers.

The New IRA is thought to have a strong presence in West Belfast and Derry  but also operates in areas such as Tyrone, mid-Ulster and Fermanagh.  It’s leadership includes a former member of the East Tyrone Provisional IRA, an area infamously known by the British Army “Bandit Country”.  The groups attacks centre on gun and bomb attacks.  The latter was instigated in March against a prison officer Adrian Ismay who was killed by a car bomb.  This is a chilling reminder of some of the worst days of The Troubles when in revenge for authorities defying Provisional IRA hunger strikers, the group targeted prison officers and brutally murdered them.  An increase in paramilitary style assaults, by republicans and loyalists have been increasingly evident in the news in Northern Ireland in recent months.  One of the New IRA’s gruesome calling cards is the “Six-pack”, the shooting of joints in the arms and legs.  According to statistics from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), 52 bomb attacks across Northern Ireland in the past 12 months compared with 36 the previous year.

The British security services believe that what makes the New IRA especially dangerous in addition to their willingness to use violence is their arsenal.  These services believe that the IRA has managed to acquire approximately a quarter of a ton of Semtex which is a plastic explosive originally manufactured in former Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.  This stock was sent to the Provisional IRA by the late former leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi in his efforts to destabilise the West through his sponsorship of various terror groups.  Semtex was originally used as a so called “booster” by the Provisional IRA to set off larger chemical-fertiliser bombs such as the devastating bomb detonated in the London Docklands in the 1990s.  The location of this particular stash of explosives, which was hidden in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland, was unknown to the Provisional IRA group that participated in the arms decommissioning, but known to a man who became a dissident republican and eventually joined the IRA.  The security services also worry that former Provisional IRA men, who are members of the New IRA, may use their engineering expertise to somehow use the Semtex to make armour-piercing weapons, which in all likelihood may make the group more willing to take the fight directly to the security services themselves, in addition to softer civilian targets.

What can be done?  For a start the UK Government can act on the recommendations of the former governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten who called for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to be increased from it’s current standing force of 6,500 to have 600 more additional officers.  At the same time a careful eye will have to be kept on public perceptions about the force, to avoid the poisonous public relations that surrounded it’s predecessor the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).  Sinn Fein denials about the links between many of it’s member and past paramilitary activity is playing fast and loose with the truth to the extreme.  And yet the Unionists must resist the temptation to use the party as a political punch back when it should instead welcome it’s condemnations of dissident republican activity.  As former supporters of the armed struggle, their calls for peace are all the more meaningful, and the Unionists should seek to encourage them to hold to their commitments as oppose to goading them.  It also has to be said that the Unionists have to eat some humble pie since while they wax lyrical about the failure of republican paramilitaries to disarm, a recent UK Parliamentary report clearly cites the Loyalist paramilitaries as a least as well armed as their opposite numbers.

The people and politicians should take their advice from the Torah; “living well is the best revenge”.  If a stable and prosperous Northern Ireland is built in spite of the dangers then that will be the ultimate victory over terrorism.  It also has to be remembered that as bad as dissident republicans are, the group most likely to attack the UK is still the Islamic State.  That challenge ultimately will require a deeper commitment of resources and determination to overcome.

The Changing Face of Organised Crime in the United States

“You can get more with a nice word and a gun than you can with a kind word.”

Al Capone

The American Dream is the popular American myth that any American who works hard will be assured of great rewards for their labour.  However not all elements of American society have chosen to pursue that dream by legitimate means.  Organised Crime in America has changed and evolved with societal changes that have touched the nation, from the early waves of European migration to the banning of illegal drugs.  Even war and the 1960s counter culture has left it’s mark on the mosaic that is Organised Crime in the United States (US).

The Italian-American Mafia, in particular of the Sicilian migrant origin, is perhaps the most popularly known type of Organised Crime syndicate in the US.  It’s power and ability to terrorise has been played out in popular films such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas”.  This form of Organised Crime cam very closed to being strangled at birth.  The Black Hand extortion rackets and other Italian-American gangs would of likely died away thanks to improvements in policing, was it not for one of the biggest political mistakes in US political history.  That mistake was the passing of the Volstead Act which came into effect in 1920, enforcing the 18^th Amendment to the US Constitution that banned the sale and distribution of alcohol.

Prohibition was like a shot of adrenaline to the dying heart of Italian-American organised crime and the wider criminal underworld.  All of a sudden a huge and popular illegal market was established.  Alcohol was mainly either imported over the US’s giant coastlines and land borders.  In addition alcohol was often distilled domestically, often using suspect ingredients such as formaldehyde in order to provide crude flavouring to products.  The Sicilian based Mafias known as the Cosa Nostra (our world/thing) proved to have the rigid organised structures, discipline and ruthlessness to take the most advantage of this market.

This success inevitably brought renewed interest from Salvatore Maranzano, the most powerful Mafia figure from Sicily who waged the 1930-1931 Castellamerese War in order to assert Sicilian control over all Italian-American Mafia operations by defeating New York kingpin Joe Masseria.  Maranzano won, in no small part due to Charlie “Lucky” Luciano betraying his boss Joe Masseria at a dramatic showdown on Coney Island.  Before long Luciano felt Masseria outgrew his usefulness and hired Jewish gunmen to gun him down.

After coming out of top over his boss Luciano brought about a new order for the Cosa Nostra which survives to this day.  The families in New York were organised into Five Families (Genovese, Gambino, Bonano, Lucchese and Colombo) who today have manpower of between roughly 1,500-3000 in each family.  The Commission was founded to oversee the operations of the National Crime Syndicate, an organisation accompanying the Five Families and other recognised criminal enterprises.  Luciano, having long worked with his Jewish associate Meyer Lansky rejected the narrow racism of the “Moustache Pete’s” generation of the recently deceased bosses in favour of cooperation across the races where possible for profitable business.

American popular culture has long made much of the lone motorcyclist or “biker” as a solitary misfit dedicated to the open road in films such as “The Wild One” and “Easy Rider”.  Such figures began to be seen in gangs more and more after World War Two.  The appearance of these drifter-like men after the war is no coincidence and the war veteran backbone of the first American Motorcycle clubs was reinforced by the arrival of veterans from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.  Many of these men found it hard or undesirable to fit into regular civilian life, opting for the rough and ready biker life known throughout this culture as simply “the life”.  The most well-known biker gang is the Hell’s Angels club founded in 1948.  After that time biker gangs proliferated.  They were at first treated as a kind of curiosity of 1960s counterculture.  But soon things turned sinister.

The promotion of the rough and ready "life" combined with club members needs to earn a living inevitably led to their involvement in crime as many, though not all, Motorcycle clubs became Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC’s).  OMC’s have been documented as being involved in kidnapping, drug running, contract killing and many other crimes.  OMC’s have often committed crimes on behalf of older organised crime movements such as the Cosa Nostra.  The OMC violent subculture has even spread to the club’s international "Chapters", including an episode in Scandinavia where munitions from a government armoury was used.  These days OMC’s typically adopt a structure that includes a chain of command that includes a President, Vice President, Treasurer and a Sargent-at-arms.  The US Department of Justice still recognises OMC’s as an ongoing organised crime challenge.

Illegal drugs have supercharged organised crime activity and competition to a point where there is essentially a second Prohibition era.  The Cosa Nostra have been split by the conflict between their old world traditions and their ambitions for power on the issue of drugs.  Some Mafia families chose drugs as a lucrative earner and a way to beat the competition, while others stayed away eyeing the ever harsher drug laws being voted in.  The same drug trafficking routes for Marijuana markets via the Caribbean to Miami were soon used to fuel a Cocaine market, then a Crack Cocaine market.  The Colombian cartels dominated this trade during the 1980s and much of the 1990s with the Medellin and then the Cali cartels posing as significant adversaries to US Law Enforcement.  The fall of the Colombian cartels and the heavy patrolling of the Caribbean route led to the drug market simply adapting.  A Mexican route was established through the border while Mexican drug cartels began to establish major drug distributing routes through the US-Mexican border.

All organised crime is in some way financed by certain groups breaking the law to give people what they want, be it gambling, sex (by prostitution) or drugs.  Recent studies have proven that the US’s private healthcare system has exacerbated a mid-west heroin epidemic by unscrupulous doctors too readily prescribing opiates, leaving their patients curious about illegal markets in similar products.  The US has a drug problem, as evidenced by the rise of the Mexican cartels financed by American addicts (and ironically armed with Americans arms). The US Justice system also needs an overhaul.  Quite simply the system of elected judges and District Attorney’s (DA’s) has ruined the system’s chances of tackling the root causes of any crime let alone organised crime.  DA’s who are often ambitious for a political career like to make their bones looking tough by locking up minor offenders for unnecessarily long amounts of time.  This leaves them prey to the last and perhaps most insidious form of Organised Crime in the US.

Prison gangs proliferate as the US prison population proliferates.  The US prison population has increased exponentially from the mid-1990s onwards and has stopped long after the Crack Epidemic it was a response too.   In need of protection many new inmates join gangs often in order to stay alive.  The white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood started off as a prison gang to defend white prisoners.  La Eme and La Familia are Latino prison gangs that like the Brotherhood have grown massive outside criminal interests.  If the issue of US prison overpopulation is not tackled then US prisons will cease to become institutes of reform and become little better than crime colleges.

The International Brigades: My Novel

A while ago I set myself the goal of embarking on the project of writing a novel.  As a voracious reader, in many ways this was almost a natural progression for me.  In my late childhood leading into my early teens when I came back from living in the United States living and my family was temporarily living in my grandma’s house I didn’t have many distractions to keep me occupied.  I didn’t get along very well socially at the school so I didn’t have any friends to meet up with and do things with.  So I eventually started to write.  First of all there were small plots here and there followed by entire series of my beloved series Star Trek Voyager.  Eventually I conceived of an entire series of books about a bounty hunter in space who only took contracts to fight bad guys with a robot sidekick in tow.  This boy was, and in many ways still is, a science fiction nerd. It certainly passed the hours by.  And while many of those creations back then make me feel slightly embarrassed now (although they were pretty creative for an aspiring author so young) I still have a bit of pride in me for the results of my efforts. 

A few years ago I caught the writing bug again and attended first a short course in novel writing for a day then one that went over months.  I remember vividly coming into class in the evening from my latest soul destroying job.  Sharing ideas with people.  Being inspired by new ideas for my novel.  Getting excited when a plot twist idea came out of nowhere.  I decided to pursue a vaguely conceived idea of a police detective story including vampires, set in Bristol of all places.  Its working title was ‘West Sector Nine’.  It was mean’t to be like The Wire or The Shield with vampires.  Why vampires?  Well to be honest I was sick with the Twilight craze and wanted to try to bring vampires down to earth.  No more sappiness and portrayal of vampires as mysterious, ethereal and often improbably attractive and athletic looking (despite the long term deceased condition).  I wanted to seriously conceive of how the characters of vampires would change and how it would living as second class citizens to humans effected their view of the world.  Vampires I decided ultimately would be more startling in their similarities just a lot more world wise.  Some would be nice and some would be appalling characters who frankly wouldn’t care about suffering they inflict, either just to survive or to gain supremacy over their human rivals.  They would be a mixed bag of characters, much like ourselves.  But most intriguingly for a detective story they would have learned from human behaviour from many years and as a result become exceptionally skilled liars and master manipulators.

But the more I pursued this project the more frustratingly impractical and elusive it became for me.  Vampire stories have been done to death in films, books and TV series.  I could sense the cringe when I mentioned my pitch to certain people.  When I gave my pitch it was often inevitably followed by the inevitable “True Blood have already done this”.  In the end I decided to put the project on ice.  Not destroy everything, just shelf it until further notice.  My interest in the project waned and in the end I recognised that I had nowhere near the staying power of the writers of True Blood.  To the victor the spoils.

But at the beginning of this year the novel idea just wouldn’t let me go.  Perhaps it had something to do with this year being one which I began with the objective of setting myself ambitious personal goals.  I told myself I would not be in the same place career wise that time of year in a year’s time.  After seeing a documentary about the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa that moved me to tears I decided to do something I never did before and run a half marathon to raise money for the relief effort.  Two months onwards from then I was running 3 miles for my training, which was 3 miles more than I have ever ran before.  I continued on my merry way satisfying my acute hunger for reading, absorbing ideas as I went.  I mostly read non-fiction but now and then I would stumble on a stand out piece of fiction that gripped me and taught me lessons about novel writing that I will never forget.  The book “I am Legend” is a prime example of this.  More on this later.

But ultimately my ideas for novels tend to stem from contemporary debates and by observing the wonderful and god awful things that happen on this crazy planet, this latest project being no exception.  Looking at these things from a comparative historical point of view can also put an interesting light on things and can produce a goldmine of ideas.  With West Sector Nine I wanted to recall many issues that seemed to be hovering around the country at the time.  My own experiences of the abuse of police power and the shocking revelations that came out about the Hillsborough disaster made me want to pick up on the moral problem about giving individuals too much power.  I wanted to express the public’s cynicism about politics and the politician’s dilemma of being ever demonised by them no matter what they do.  Recalling from my own experience I wanted to play on the theme of lasting friendly relationships unexpectedly forming between unlikely people, which is pretty much the happy story of my life.  But the world turns quickly and before you know it the news cycle has turned once again.  A new strand of thought began.

The year 2014 saw the emergence in the world media of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  They seemed to spring forth from the ashes of wartorn Iraq and Syria, from the press's simplified perspective at least.  Here we have a genocidal horde who are so evil an ultraviolent that even Al Qaeda, hardly pacifists themselves, denounced them as being devils.  Their motto "we expand" seemed then to suit them well ( and in many ways still does) since they seemed to effortlessly take entire swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory.  But one of the aspects of this threat that seemed to chill western countries including this one was the speed with which many, but mercifully not anywhere near the majority, of disaffected Muslims sought to leave this country and join this group of religious fascists.  Britain has been left dealing with the prospect of approximately 500 and growing trained jihadists coming back to our shores once the Islamic State is no more.  There seems to be a majority consensus that those fighters who return from the Islamic State must be detained in some way or another, lest they merge back into the population and become ticking time bombs.  But what most interested me when reading into this topic was the increase in reports of Britons going abroad to join groups that are fighting against IS.  An edition of BBC Question Time seemed to capture the dilemma well.  Most of those in the audience wanted to see the British IS fighters dealt with, no surprises there, but they were more divided over what do about those that went out to fight on the opposite lines.  Much of the audience was baffled.  Who would do this?  Isn't it a bit strange to just get up and fight in some far off land when you can stay at home and change the channel?  The Tory MP guest seemed to be advocating locking up all of the returning fighters up regardless of what flag they were flying.  Then a woman put her hand up and asked something that seemed to give everyone pause for thought; "Aren't those going out to fight IS just like the brave people who volunteered to go out and fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War?"

The Spanish Civil War broke out between the elected republican government of Spain and it's supporters known as the Republicans against much of the Spanish military and it's supporters under General Francisco Franco in 1936.  This was during the age of fascism where Hitler had been in power for 3 years and Mussolini had been in power for 14 years.  The Blackshirts in London started to stir too.  It seemed as though fascism was on the way up.  In response to this socialist, communist and anarchist parties within and without Spain called for volunteers to help form the International Brigades.  Volunteers from all walks of life answered the call such as ex servicemen and various members of the working class of different political persuasion, all united by their opposition to fascism.   Even a few now well known writers including George Orwell joined the fight. In terms of international support for the different sides of the conflict there was a power imbalance since while the Soviet Union supported the Republicans and the Fascist powers supported the Nationalists, the main democracies in Europe stayed neutral. 

So this all led me on to the idea of writing about the concept of a modern International Brigade.  My novel would explore various questions such as most notably how would it work?  Wouldn't such an organisation be essentially an illegal paramilitary organisation?  Or indeed technically a terrorist group?  What would separate the members of this group from terrorists?  Why would people even want to join in the first place?  Why is this idea seemingly less attractive now than it was back in the days of the Spanish Civil War.  I think the latter has a lot to do with the fact that thanks to 24 hours news the images of war and it's horrors are a lot closer.

In many ways this novel concept is my cheeky act of revenge against the parts of the political left who don’t fail to disappoint me.  Years after the wars in Libya and Iraq it seems many voices just can’t help themselves and say a little too smugly “I told you so”.  Those voices even go so far to talk up the leaders who came before those wars, making Gaddafi sound like Mother Theresa with a secret police force.  It is not that those people’s opinions don’t have a point about raising cautionary tales about interventions, to me what I find distasteful is the extent they take them to.  What is more frustrating is that it works more as a mental roadblock more often than it works as a practical argument when it comes to working a way out of the difficulties we face today.  For instance in a typical argument on a political forum on Facebook, any discussion about IS and what to do about them is met by the overheard “well we created the conditions that brought them there”.  Thanks for that Sherlock, any suggestions about what to do about this awful situation.  Essentially then the person espousing this view will argue to do nothing, either by referring to their initial answer described or by implying that anything we do is useless since we are ultimately selfish.  Yes the standard of debating is set that low on the internet.

But if you dwell on the concept of an International Brigades group formed for the sole purpose of fighting against tyranny and promoting democracy you find there is definitely not a shortage of tyranny out there.  In Equatorial Guinea a tinpot dictatorship has been in place longer than I have been alive.  After the not so affectionately named previous president Mad Uncle Macias was executed his nephew took charge of this tiny African nation.  After discovering massive oil and gas reserves in the country the lions share of the oil money went to the President’s family and government officials.  The President’s son Teodora is famous for spending the country’s annual education budget on luxury cars, yachts and hotel suites.  All the while the country is ruled by a climate of fear.  In The Gambia President (formerly general) took power in a military coup in 1994 and has since not left.  He is notable for making outlandish comments such as claiming that he can make herbal remedies for AIDS and Yellow Fever.  Police violence is endemic as is corruption through all levels of society.  The most well known African basket case at the moment is Zimbabwe, on which my planned novel will focus on (albeit with a fictionalised variant).  Robert Gabriel Mugabe the man once lauded as a freedom fighter and a beacon of hope has now pretty much become the complete opposite.  Betraying every ideal he seemed to stand for Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is a democratic society in paper only.  The economy is a mess.  The health system is near hopeless.  Corruption is everywhere, especially centred on the President’s family and loyalists. Democratic elections may as well be relabelled civil wars given the scale of government supported violence that occurs during them.  As one student opposition activist says “As peaceful revolution becomes impossible, it makes violent revolution inevitable.”

Character wise I am very excited at the prospect of developing the African dictatorship angle.  The dictator (for simplicity’s sake I will refer to him as Mugabe) has a lot of potential to develop as a frightening but at the same time very diverse character.  He will be portrayed as someone who is outwardly charming and polite in one on one interactions, but someone who at the same time is slowly losing their grip on reality.  He would be someone who is constantly planning ahead, checking potential threats in the immediate and long term.  He will often be nostalgic given his elderly age and at the same time persistently worried about his vulnerabilities, which are most obviously manifest in his physical ailments.  His firey and often blood curdling speeches will hide an inner addiction to violence as well as an inner insecurity, but at the same time serve its purpose to fire up loyalists.  But as his age advances he becomes more aware of his rivals; his defence minister and heir apparent and now more worryingly his wife the First Lady.  The former is an outwardly charismatic but inwardly Machiavellian character who is playing a quiet but ruthless long game for the presidency.  The latter who was before dismissed as no more than a corrupt debutant is now gaining in political confidence, destroying rivals unexpectedly at a rate that worries even her husband whom she nonetheless has a massive influence on.  As the conflict with the International Brigades gets more heated, so do the tensions between these players.

And what of the International Brigades myself?  Whose idea was it anyway?  In the novel I plan to have this most unlikely of organisations assembled by some of the most unlikely and motely collection of individuals you could imagine.  This would include hated figures in British society such as a tabloid journalist and a corrupt and flamboyant City banker (as well as his long suffering PA who loathes him).  A disillusioned Secret Intelligence Service Case officer will also lend their expertise to the project as will a South African ex apartheid-era assassin.  They will be accompanied by a less flamboyant and humble figure who is a taxi  driver by trade but also voluntary relief worker.  This taxi driver figure is based on a real life person who was tragically killed  by IS, so if this novel becomes a reality and goes towards being sold, I will need to consult his family out of respect for them.  I read about his story in the BBC News and I found his story a touching one, and his warm character one that other people would likely learn to appreciate and connect with.  As you can see some of these people do not sound like the most selfless people in the world.  It is hard  to imagine all of these people being in the same room, let alone organising a paramilitary group with altruistic intentions.  But this is when the central themes of my novel come into play. From  a personal point of view, there is no real definitive type of person I am friends with.  My friends are a humble and diverse coalition of the strange.  Some people I get on with and others I do not.  Often with the former this tends to happen with people who are from completely different backgrounds than my own.  To this end I wanted to play on the theme of a group of seemingly random (and sometimes antagonistic with the banker and the journalist) group of people, putting up with each other’s eccentricities and faults and working towards a common cause.  The theme of redemption will also be very important, with some characters seemingly against their nature trying to fight for it.  Sometimes this craving for redemption is prompted by a life changing event, such as it does with the banker, or the acknowledgement of feelings that have been building up in them for a long time, such as the case with the assassin.  With some of the originally most selfish characters, the nature of the enterprise that they are in leads them into unavoidable moral conflicts.  After all the group has been formed to create violent struggles, albeit for good causes.  This does not always run smoothly alongside their mission to make the world a better after spending most of their lives doing the opposite.

So there we have it; my novel.  Please do not ask when it is going to be done because I do not have a bloody clue.  This is not on a strict timetable and the story arcs may evolve over time into a direction I haven’t considered before.  Either way I am confident that this will be a personal challenge worth embarking on.

The Labour Party Leadership Contest and the Future of Labour

The Labour Leadership Contest and the Future of Labour

It was a surreal experience.  I was waiting to board my flight to Dublin from Bristol Airport.  As I stood facing a small group of stag night lads dressed in drag my fiancé Anna kept feeding me the results of the UK General Election 2015 as they came in.  The prognosis wasn’t good but at that time the Conservatives did not have a controlling majority.  By the time we landed in Dublin they had.  The holocaust of Lib Dem MPs included many familiar faces from my time canvassing and attending Lib Dem conferences.  Even the hardworking constituency Steve Webb was chucked out of Thornbury for some young faced cookie cutter self-made businessman Tory.  I still remember the sheepish look on Steve’s face when after he accidentally stood in some drying concrete on the front patio of a person’s door he was about to knock on.  The person wasn’t happy but he at least resisted the urge to have a go at Steve or report this anecdote to some Fleet Street rag like The Sun.  Very swiftly after the results came the stream of resignations.  Lib Dem Nick Clegg, seemingly suffering from the curse of immortality having kept his seat against the odds, fell on his sword.  UKIP leader Nigel Farage resigned allegedly honouring an earlier pledge he made, only to apparently have his resign bounce like a bad cheque off the UKIP Executive.  And then there was the long suffering Ed Miliband who in a pretty moving and humble speech also stepped down.  I couldn’t help thinking that poor old Ed took it all a bit too hard on the chin in owning all of the responsibility for Labour’s defeat.  To be sure the buck has to stop at the leader, but the Labour Party is by no means a one man band and as such the responsibility for the defeat should be collectively shared.  After all it’s not UKIP.

I am a long suffering Lib Dem supporter and as such I am fully used to the knives coming out to stab the former leader when the carcass of their leadership is barely cold on the slab, but even I was amazed by the brazenness of the Night of the Long Knives that followed Ed’s fall.  Many of the leadership candidates didn’t wait long till the “I told you so” quotes started to come out, most notably from the front runners in the Labour leadership.  Their reaction to the inevitable ‘why the bloody hell didn’t you say or do anything if it was so obvious you would lose oh oracle?’ is followed by the inevitable protestations about having to maintain party unity.  OK, there is some truth to this.  To be frank the public are as brutal as they are hypocritical on this point.  I would personally argue that truth should trump consistency, but sadly I cannot speak for all voters.  But arguably sooner or later those leadership candidates who were close to Miliband or even worse closer to Brown will have to answer some difficult questions, more on this later.  The rest of this article will be about first of all assessing the Labour leadership candidates, their policy points and how desirable I see them as future party leaders and possibly future PMs.  The last part will be a general assessment of where the Labour Party should go from here in my opinion.

Andy Burnham seems to hail from a notably Old Labour tradition.  Much of his background is from the Trade Unions and he comes from a working class family in the Labour heartlands of Liverpool.  Burnham is also one of the most experienced candidates in terms of work in government as a former Health Minister.  It should be noted though that his Ministerial tenure has notable skeletons in it’s closets.  For one under Burnham’s tenure the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal broke out, which he responded with a closed government inquiry.  Pushing for a full public inquiry later on is likely one of David Cameron’s good ideas, a very rare example to be sure.  How much Burnham can be blamed for the scandal itself is limited to be sure, but the handling of such scandals has a tendency to make people measure someone up as a leader.  What is also notable is that during his tenure Labour pressed on with it’s Public Finance Initiative’s (PFIs) which are basically private contracts for specific jobs within the NHS.  Recent Tory reforms have generated a lot of public wariness about such limited privatisation initiatives.  Not only has PFI schemes in the NHS displayed varying levels of effectiveness they have in many places not only warped accountability but also lead to a lot of public money being spent, often with limited returns in value.  As for Burnham personally if I am honest I am as yet not particularly impressed by his recent media performances and statements.  To start with the positives he has in fairness raised the concept of spreading economic reform outside of London to the ‘regions’.  The only problem I have with that is that ‘regions’ often turns into just taking care of certain hyped cities or regions in the north (yes I am looking at you Manchester) that are regularly mentioned in the media or to one of the devolved nations.  Meanwhile the west country gets ignored while in the wake of the Lib Dem collapse it’s council and MP seats get colonised by the Tories for the long haul.  To be sure the north in many places needs a lot of attention, but not at the expense of other places.  I did appreciate his mention of rent to buy schemes which are basically initiatives where renters can eventually buy their homes.  Such support for these schemes is well overdue from politicians who are continuously obsessed with those of us who are trying to get mortgages.  Meanwhile those of us for whom getting a mortgage is a long way off we feel shunned like an ugly sister left in the shade.  Picking up on the whole northern angle Burnham does unfortunately have a cringeworthy way of displaying himself as an everyman northerner who “goes to the pub”.  Alright Burnham good for you.  But here is the thing, I don’t give a damn.  I wouldn’t care if you went home and donned your pipe, dressing gown and slippers and went to bed at 8pm.  If you had some ideas worth mentioning and you seem to be a well balanced leader, you could be a spotty and overweight stereotype of a comic book nerd for all I care.  I am sick to my back teeth of politicians acting like they are ‘normal’.  This is mostly in reaction to comments made by the public, so their response is to act like they are someone they are not.  My response in his position would be to say “yeah I am a strange guy, deal with it.”  Rant over.  So far so bland for Burnham.  My main concern is unsubtle whispers from Unite’s General Secretary Len McCluskey that indicate that Burnham is the ‘right’ leader of the Labour Party.  With respect to Len he should shut up or he will give another excuse for Cameron to rant on about McCluskey being the puppet master of the Labour Party.  If elected Burnham will have to prove he is his own man, and once or twice that may involve telling old Len a few things he does not want to here.

What can one say about Yvette Cooper?  Well for one she has a fair amount of experience in cabinet and shadow cabinet, but to my mind no notable achievements to credit her with.  She has kept up sniping fire on Home Secretary Theresa May, but considering how incompetent she has been in her portfolio that looks like fish in a barrel to me.  If it wasn’t for Cameron’s obstinate, at times frankly arrogant and stupid, tendency to hang on to his ministers no matter how much trouble they cause May would have left long ago.  For another Yvette Cooper is a woman.  Surprised?  No, me neither.  But for some reason she saw fit to mention this during a leaders debate when asked to make her pitch for the top job.  To my mind this was a very ill judged move since she is not the only woman running, and her rival seems to have a more compelling case than she does.  Yvette recently made the case that Labour has to be more “pro business”.  Be that as it may she in a classic Yvette Cooper way made the pitch in such a way as though she had been a pro business underdog all along, something her record doesn’t back up.  While she is not as bullish as her husband Ed Balls she has a tendency to all too often to display the self-important, vindictive and hypocritical side of Labour.  In debates on the programme Question Time she displays a remarkable tendency to answer questions without answering them at all, but seems content to stick a few customary barbs at the Tories anyway.  This is the Punch and Judy politics that is making people do stupid things like not vote or vote UKIP, simply put I want to see such cheap politics punished severely.  The thing is half the time these dirty tactics boomerang right back at her.  Take for example the claim she made that some of her rivals had “swallowed” the Tory manifesto too much.  She never claimed who had done this but everyone knew it was directed at Liz Kendall.  Demonising the Tories without direct policy arguments being used didn’t work before, why does she think this will demolish Liz’s campaign?  If anything it will elicit more interest in her campaign.  Overall Yvette has done nothing to make me shake my old suspicions of her.  I may be being hard on her, but I wish she would give me a reason not to be.

The wild card in the deck of candidates is of course Jeremy Corbyn.  Corbyn is a dying breed in the Labour Party who a part of me can’t help but root for.  It is remarkable how old Labour warhorses like him still have their seats.  That they still have them seems to be among many things due to the strong and honest convictions they have and their dedication to their constituency.  During the awful election of 2015 Old Labour MP Dennis Skinner aka the Beast of Bolsover increased his majority by 20%.  Such figures are a call back to Tony Benn a man, and I say this as someone who isn’t a socialist, who I believe could have made socialism work.  Corbyn seems to go through the usual Old Labour tickboxes.  He is a member of Stop the War, is in favour of nationalising the banks and is thoroughly against austerity.  But one of the things I first noticed about him is the directness of his delivery.  He has a rare and refreshing sense of no nonsense about him which I and I imagine a lot of other people admire in a politician.  And yet people like Corbyn seem frozen in time.  It is almost as though him and his late friend Tony Benn went to sleep in the 80s and didn’t witness their leader Michael Foot going down in flames.  Don’t get me wrong I do not fully trust the Blairites for falling into line with Thatcher’s legacy just a little too readily.  But when I hear people like Corbyn speak I get the unmistakable feeling that a part of him or perhaps all of him respects ideological purity over truth.  One example of this is a video I saw in which Corbyn gave a speech to the Anti War movement.  In the video he described the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “social reformers.”  I think in the end Corbyn is better served either in the cabinet as a balance against the Blairites or within the party as a backbencher doing the same thing.  Either way it seems to be a shame to allow an honest and hardworking  if misguided soul like Corbyn be ignored.

The last candidate is also the most controversial; Liz Kendall.  Now I have had my eye on Liz for some time.  Usually the Labour Party send some hack on Question Time like Rachel Reeves or, even higher on the hack-metre, Yvette Cooper.  But now and then Liz has made an appearance on the show and what I have seen of her impressed me.  For the most part she nailed questions instead of tip toeing around them with fluffy and meaningless rhetoric like Cooper.  She also subtly but firmly puts down Dimblebys’ casual sexism as well as that by occasional sexist Cabinet Ministers, such as Hammond who insisted on calling her ‘Rachel’.  In any case starting as she has mean’t to carry on Liz has not minced her words when talking about Labour’s defeat calling it a !catastrophe”, which it bloody was.  Cooper et al by contrast seem to show a faded disappointment like they have just missed a bus or a train.  The programme that Liz seems to be outlined looks notably Blairite, that is very centist.  Free schools are here to stay she says.  Some cuts will have to be accepted she says, which while I partly agree with her on this I am still a bit nervous about whether she and I see eye to eye on where they should fall.  For instance not many political figures have had the courage to call for state pensions and associated benefits to be reformed and means tested, for fear of losing the grey vote.  Her approach instinctively tries to woo the soft UKIP and Tory voters an general undecided who for the most part went to the latter during the election.  To my mind going after the latter two is a lot more important than going after the former since I sense UKIP will collapse into factional bickering soon after they have lost an EU referendum which will take place before the 2020 election.  Who knows maybe the refugees from that disaster will drift to the Tories and reopen wounds that have not healed since the Maastricht Treaty?  One can dream.  Speaking of Europe Liz seems to be wanting to play an intriguing game of harrying on the Tories to get a solid deal before any referendum.  Such a move may increase pressure between the Tory cabinet and back benches, but it does beg the question how this would ultimately effect Labour’s positioning with regards to the EU referendum (ie would a weak deal lead to Labour campaigning for ‘No’?)  I still need a lot of clarity on Liz’s plans before she gets my endorsement (which I am sure is very sought after by her).  She recently seems to have shored up her left flank by pushing for the minimum wage to be raised to the liveable wage, which is long overdue in my perspective.  She has also specifically pledged to overturn any anti union laws that the Tories introduce, which in these days of electoral revenge in the face of broken pledges won’t be easy to back down from.  She also backs keeping Defence spending at 2% of GDP which I thoroughly agree with, although I would prefer more tough talk on Russia and IS.  You may gather from this that my instincts are leaning towards Liz as my candidate.  Things may turn out that way, but whoever takes over the leadership of the Labour Party has big shoes to fill.

I remember watching the TV when the results came in back in 1997.  I was too young to understand the implications of the win, but I got caught up in the excitement bordering on ecstasy all the same.  What happened since then?  PFI contracts.  Two shags Prescott.  Millennium Dome fiasco.  Mandelson Scandals.  Cash for honours.  Greasing Bernie Eccleston’s palm. Detention without trial.  Torture Flights.  Record spending.  Hubristic boasting about curing capitalism from it’s ills.  And then there was the Iraq War, which with me the jury is still out.  But alongside this we have the many good elements of those 13 years including the Good Friday Agreement, stopping ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the minimum wage and support for former nurses going back to work.  To be sure memories of New Labour are mixed at best so the question remains if we go back it’s legacy as Liz Kendall seems to be leaning towards, what should we take away from it?  More importantly what should we leave behind in the past? To my mind the Labour Party while keeping it’s eye on the centre ground needs to look back on it’s past with more pride, not embarrassment.  Too many times I have talked to Blairites who talk about the Corbyn’s of this world like they are their drunk uncle’s who one can find lurking at the back of the room during a wedding.  Like it or not they allowed Labour to get where it is and it’s identity today does owe something to them, even if their stake on it is more tenuous than it used to be.  While I recognise New Labour/Blairism’s advantages I am worried that it’s most devoted followers are not aware or willfully ignorant of it’s limits.  PFI schemes in particular are starting to look more like an embarrassing legacy.  Sooner or later too there will have to be a reckoning between Labour and it’s earlier worshiping for the money lenders in the temple of the City of London.  Holding those vested interests to account is not the same as advocating socialism and Blairites should not run away from tough but constructive regulation for fear of scaring away a few voters here and there to the Tories.  Our economy cannot indefinitely rely on this one lucrative though fragile sector, the reckoning needs to be faced and not postponed again.  It is not enough for the followers of New Labour to think they can mimic Tory policies indefinitely.  Sooner or later genuine innovation will have to take hold and the private sector won't hold all of the answers.

As for me I have a big decision to make.  Do I stick with the shattered remains of the Lib Dems or do I cross the aisle to the Labour Party?  This is not an easy decision for me.  I have invested a lot of time with the Lib Dems, and met a lot of good people who I cannot bring myself to think ill of.  Despite the smearing (and it is for the most part smearing) by Labour and other people with an axe to grind against the Lib Dems after the coalition, I still believe they went into this arrangement for the most part with the best of intentions.  Being incredibly naïve is not the same as wanting to cause harm and this view of mine won’t change regardless of the outcome of my decision regarding my political allegiance.  On the other hand I can’t ignore that the Lib Dems have been hit hard and won’t be back on it’s feet for many years if at all.  That is too long for the people who will be effected by the policies of this government.  I feel a need to be in the main fight and not knipping at the heals.  I have no illusions about Labour’s faults.  The party is far too arrogant, centralised and machine like  by far.  It is too willing to trade off precious civil liberties for the cause of security.  The recent clampdown on peaceful protesting started under Blair and has got worse under the Tories.  And yet I feel like after many things my party supported in the coalition a need to atone for hardship caused by among other things this ill conceived and unethical crusade known as welfare reform under Ian Duncan Smith.  Something will have to give.  I will make this decision with a heavy heart shortly.

Zac's Top 10 Video Games Part 1

1.  Deus Ex

2.   Half Life 2

3.  Grand Theft Auto Vice City

4. Fallout 2

5.  Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

6.   Civilization V:

7.  Grand Theft Auto IV

8.   Max Payne

9.  Bioshock

10.  Mass Effect 2

1. Deus Ex

Deus Ex is a giant bowl of Science Fiction nerd nectar.  There is an obvious Blade Runner influence about the dark and paranoid world you inhabit.  Most conspiracy theories out there are referenced in the storyline including the Illuminati, Men In Black and Majestic 12.  While this game that was made in 2000 looks crude by today’s standards it delivers well on 2 fronts: 1. Rewarding the player in exploring places off the beaten track. 2.  Reminding the player that choices have consequences that are not always obvious.  Both of these mean that hacking a certain computer in a locked office or befriending a certain character can make the difference between a hard gunfight with a boss or destroying them instantly with their unique ‘kill phrase’.  The choices that you make in building up your character’s skillset also determine the kind of game you play.   As a cyborg the possibilities are open to you on the one had deploying a drone that can knock out enemy robots with an EMP, or giving yourself a set of lungs that can allow you to breath underwater.  A compelling and constantly twisting storyline makes you constantly uncertain about your alliances and the choice you make.  And in the end there is no set way to complete the game.  There are 3 possible endings encouraging you to embark on the adventure all over again.

2.    Half Life 2

Half Life 1 was scary at the best of times.  A quiet day at the office as a Theoretical Physicist ended with you accidentally opening a door to another dimension, turning your mundane work environment into a living hell littered with vicious aliens out for your blood.  Talk about a bad day at the office.  The crude graphics were made up by the nightmarish sounds you heard as you roamed the blood stained halls of your workplace.  Around each corner is another nightmarish scenario that can’t be tackled in the same way as the last one.  How do you top that?  For a start Half Life 2 explodes the size of your world to many times the size.  This world is full of many different environments from the dark and disturbing zombie infested town of Ravenholm, to the terrifying calm of a sandy beach wear a wrong turn can summon aliens from underground who will tear your face off.   Throughout these places ingenious environmental puzzles block your path, effectively making this game a puzzle game as well as a First Person Shooter.  These environments are also filled with non-player characters who you unexpectedly bump in to, smoothly and somewhat informally moving along the story, which makes a difference from the direct approach of many games (making it more believable).  But to my mind this game’s unique selling point is the believability of it’s world, from the remarkably life like facial gestures the characters shoot you, to your cold introduction to life under a totalitarian alien regime as soon as you step off the train.

3.     Grand Theft Auto Vice City

I admit it!  I was under 18 when I played this which obviously explains all of those hookers I beat to death.  It must be true, I read it in the Daily Mail.  What this game has in spades is style from the 1980s soundtrack to hurtling down a highway into the sunset on the back of a motorbike………….until you crash into the back of a truck and die a bloody death.  When I got into my first car (one of the few I obtained by peaceful means) I could hear Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’ on the radio, and I knew that this was a confident game full of swagger. The premise is quite simple; you are a mobster Capo sent out to Vice City (basically Miami in the 1980s) to start and empire for your boss back home, inevitably your empire outgrows your boss and the story advances accordingly.  Film references are everywhere from Carlito’s Way to Scarface and the satire is full on and darkly funny.  GTA games to not encourage perfect driving or even careful driving.  A fun challenge can be to see how many vehicles you can get through to get from one end of the city to the next.  But if you cause too much mayhem the cops are on you.  This is followed by more cops, the plain clothes vice cops (like Miami Vice), the FBI and then finally the Army.  Missions range from multiple assassinations, frantic races, blowing up buildings with remote controlled helicopters and dropping advertisements for a porn film from a seaplane.  It is incredibly silly and often offensive but the engaging world and multiple things to do keep you locked in.

4.      Fallout 2

Fallout 2 is the definitive cult game.  Newcomers look at it with and it’s fans with  hints of curiosity and confusion.  Why are people so into this incredibly crude looking game?  And indeed it is crude looking, the game may have been made In 1998 but it’s graphics make it look a lot older.  And yet this game pretty much wrote the rule book of how to make compelling, challenging and awesomely entertaining Role Playing Games (RPGs).   As the name of the game suggests it is set in the context of a post-apocalyptic world that has survived a nuclear holocaust.  You are your tribal village’s ‘Chosen one’, the descendant of the ‘Vault Dweller’ from Fallout 1, your quest is to leave the safety of your village in order to save it.  Between that main quest there are many settlements and sites to see, loads of weird and wonderful characters to meet and tons of side quests.  Sometimes places you go to play on contemporary topical themes such as Broken Hills, where interracial tensions between humans and Super Mutants.  Do you heal the rift and allow Broken Hills to thrive or spread racial tension to the point of pogroms breaking out?  In a mafia infested New Reno do you join one of the mobs and rise to the top or ignore the families completely.  Or you do as I did and rise to the top of the ranks to gain experience and loot, and then come back to New Reno once you have ridiculously powerful armour and weaponry……..and massacre all of the families without exception.  The script in your interactions range from an incredibly silly burping competition to a tense stand-off with the President of the United States who is disturbingly arguing in favour of ethnic cleansing.  The turn based combat promotes careful thinking, making you feel like a chess player armed with a Gatling Laser.  Careful strategic planning allows you to get out of some very sticky situations with finesse, while simultaneously rewarding you with some goofy and spectacularly ultraviolent death animations.  The sheer scope of the game encourages replayability, never mind the parts of the world you never quite find the time to explore first time around.  Only in Fallout 2 can you become a Boxer, Made Man, Porn Star, Grave Robber, Karma Sutra Master and a Muck Digger all in the same game.

5. Assassin’s Creed Iv: Black Flag

The third Assassin’s Creed was not what many people expected or even wanted.  A part of the problem was that the bar had been raised so high by Assassin’s Creed 2 and it’s follow up Brotherhood.  The main character from the third one was pretty boring, no one really had the patience for the economy system on the homestead and no one particularly cared for the hunting element.  But the idea of naval combat was introduced in the third instalment and players were only disappointed that it didn’t feature more than it did. So Ubisoft listened and the natural follow up as an Assassin’s Creed in which naval combat ran through most of the game.  And so Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was born, putting you as a pirate captain in the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy; the period immediately after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession from 1715 onwards.  You play Edward Kenway a pirate who stumbles upon the long running conflict between the Assassin’s and the Templars (standard-bearers for freedom and order respectively).  Along the way in this tale you meet legendary pirate figures such as Edward Thatch aka Blackbeard.  But ultimately the story reveals that you are in the present day a test subject for a multinational corporation owned by the Templars, making you explore Edward’s ‘genetic memory’ allegedly to make an entertainment product.  In reality you are a pawn of the Templars who are hoping to use what you experience to accumulate more power.  But Black Flag’s ultimate selling point is it’s genuinely convincing and accessible approach to making you a pirate.  Fighting ships and raiding them is very fun and swift with some quick and smart thinking.  Long voyages between destinations are lightened up by your crew singing genuine sea shanties (including my favourite ‘Drunken Sailor’) that you can collect more of.  Violent storms at sea can turn up the tension when you are facing off against multiple opposing ships, some of which are only barely visible by their cannons roaring into action on the top of a towering wave.  The frantic pace of the action and the score of activities and places to explore means that you can get a lot done in a very short amount of time.  In fact busying yourself by doing your own thing can be much more fun than following the story.  The fact that you have to acquire materials for upgrading yourself and your ship by raiding and exploring means you have every excuse to get lost in the vast expanse of the Caribbean.