America's secret Dirty Wars are exposed in Kilburn and the Rolling Stoned cheer everyone up in Putney… what a world…..

Up in The Lexi cinema, about the size of a small suburban front room, something very big is revealed by a documentary film called 'Dirty Wars'.

Reprieve executive director Clare Algar, director Rick Rowley and Mark Pyman, director of the defence and security programme at Transparency International

We had heard of the secret Drone wars, and the frequent Drone missile attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan that attempt, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to assassinate leading Al-Qaeda members. We can see the problem - Al Qaeda, after all,  has declared war on the United States but doesn't do so from a particular state or territory. But their response is dangerous, immoral, illegal and counter-productive.The USA is waging war in lots of countries without telling their own citizens or those of the country whose citizens they are attacking.
Naturally, in the course of these attacks, innocent civilians are often killed, homes are destroyed and lives ruined - that's what war does, especially since the 20th Century, which legitimised the industrial slaughter of civilians under the banner of 'Total War'. So the United States is now creating its terroristic enemies of the future which will justify even more surveillance and secrecy and more murder and mayhem. (Russia and the USA co-operate in this endeavour, despite appearances, and this hybrid is the Great Satan that will rule the planet in the era of nuclear terror which we are about to enter.)
We are depressed and disillusioned at the thought of president Obama signing execution warrants on the lives of individuals who are presented to him on a list composed by the CIA. Has he read McNamara's memoirs called 'In Retrospect?  McNamara was Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of State. He wrote the most candid memoir ever written by a powerful politician in which he pointed out how all 'intelligence' is almost bound to be inaccurate and hence should not be used to launch aggressive operations without very careful scrutiny. It was wrong during the Cuba Crisis in 1962. A good job Kennedy didn't act on it and the recommendations of the Generals or I wouldn't be writing this and you wouldn't be reading it. But Obama seems to be the captive of his security and military elite. They tell him that the world is the battlefield and that they know who the enemy is, where he is and how to kill him. And Obama believes them whilst forgetting that the real enemy is an idea and you can't kill ideas by killing people, especially if you kill the wrong people.

Oh Lordy, if only you really were there and could pop down and bang some heads together!

Luckily, there are still people whose sole ambition is to give us a good time - and boy do we need them. Yes, at The Half Moon in Putney, London, we saw the Rolling Stoned perform their hilarious parody of The Rolling Stones. It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying themselves, letting it all hang out. Come on down, Obama, Putin and all you Taliban types and just rock with the sound. If you miss the joy of life, you miss everything. But maybe you don't know what joy feels like or looks like. See below.

Power corrupts us as we tour the Houses of Parliament, jazz revives us as we stay late at Ronnie Scotts jam session…..

Who wouldn't be impressed and overawed by the gothic splendour of the British Houses of Parliament?

Elena and her best friend, Tamara, visiting us from Arkhangelsk in Russia, and myself have joined one of the tours organised by the Palace of Westminster for those interested in the history, architecture and political origins of the Mother of Parliaments.

We are greeted by the enormous emptiness of Westminster Hall, so vast it seems almost to be open to the elements, but as your neck strains upwards and around the ancient timber roofing and surrounding stone walls introduce themselves and ask you to bow in reverence to their antiquity - they have stood since the eleventh century on this spot. Kings and Queens have been made and unmade here.

Shuffling slowly inwards, we are made humble by soaring perpendicular vaulting which rises up from slightly parted holy hands, the fingers of which touch gently together in prayer as sublimely as in any cathedral in Christendom.

But all is adorned by gold leaf and the Kings and Queens of the past are raised up as idols, so we' re reminded that it is in the service of mammon that these stones were set up over us.

And Kings and Queens and the greatest nobles are but human, which means that biology rules even they: The glorious Royal Robing Chamber has a secret closet in which The Queen, when she visits to open Parliament, is able to evacuate that which unites her with us, and St Stephen's Chapel, when it was used as the chamber of The House of Commons, had a screen behind which Pitt the Younger dashed in order to throw up after an excess of port wine the night before. Having 'yielded up his malady' he returned to the debate, perhaps with less eloquence than usual.

The story of British democracy shows it to have been a slow, corrupt and painful process. This beautiful building is propaganda in stone and art. Charles II was a greater traitor than any commoner - only a King could have done the deal he did with Louis IV of France whereby in return for a subsidy he promised to hand England over to France and abolish the House of Commons!

Ah well, he was only human, and he was a bloke, and he was broke. Like a lot of us, he just couldn't handle money but he loved wine, women and song, and they don't come cheap. Kim Philby was a commoner but he was another great traitor, and he wanted to give us to the great Dictator of the Proletariat Mr J Stalin. Busy in this work, he too showed an excess of zeal towards women and wine, befuddlement from which probably led to his blundering off to Moscow for the rest of his days just before the British establishment were about to offer him a pardon and a pension.

Marx was completely wrong - it is not class, or class struggle, which is the motor of history. It is human nature and the struggle within it between the kindness instinct and the passionate urgings of ambition. These two wrestle each other as we stagger through life.

There is, of course, some ambition which we can't do without. Einstein's kind, or any great artists' kind, especially jazz musician's kind. We ended Tamara's visit with an evening at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club's late show.

Three of the young artists there were known to me from our days with Hot Dog Jazz, which we set up to promote young jazz talent. They are still young - 20 - but boy have they grown. They were good then, but now they are brilliant. Jazz is humanity expressed spontaneously, the kind and the cruel, but the kind always wins because you can't make jazz without listening to your fellow artists and even to your audience, and you can't do anything with what you hear unless you are sensitive to the soul, so at least for the duration of the performance you are expressing the hope of mankind. I'm serious.

So thanks be to Ruben Fox on tenor sax, Mark Kavuma on trumpet and Shane Forbes on drums, and a great pianist and bassist whose names we have lost, for being a part of that which will save us all. And thanks be to Ronnie Scott's Club.

Luxury and lunch at Muscat's most magnificent ministry....well, hotel, palace and temple

Our taxi slowed respectfully as it passed though the elegant entrance of the Al Bustan Palace Hotel.

The lawns rolled and stretched away on either side and the palm trees bowed in welcome as we slowed before the magnificent edifice before us - The Al Bustan Palace Hotel.

It was built as a palace and it remains a palace, the hotel having merely moved quietly and discretely into the vast and airy canopy and its adjacent wings without disturbing its serene cloisters and princely passages.

Inside, we almost genuflect - it is a temple too, a vast dome soars up and shafts of divine light slice through the fragranced atmosphere.

If you've been having a tough time of it, and you need a break, this is the place to come. The staff are razor sharp on every doubt and potential need, solicitous without being in the slightest bit oleaginous or Uriah Heep.

We were welcomed by Mara Isono, EAM Secretary, who introduced us immediately to Mohammed, sitting with his friends who immediately become our friends, and served us Arabian coffee and dates.

We were overawed by the infinite sense of indulgence promised in every stone and every friendly glance.

Mara led us into the gardens, which must have been sculpted by the same landscape gardeners responsible for the Elysian Fields and The Garden of Eden, with maybe a contribution from the Augustus golf course in Atlanta.

Lunch was a buffet, but that term is inadaquate to the task of conveying the exquisite range of texture and flavour that we were treated to and the genuine attentiveness of our waiter.

 The great philosopher Wittgenstein said, 'Whereoff you cannot speak, thereoff you must remain silent'.

He also said that somethings cannot be said, they can only be shown.

Until today, I didn't really know what he meant by either of these statements.

I do now.

By bus to Dubai from Muscat, the world's tallest building and biggest shopping mall loom up from the dunes..........

The bus from Muscat is a bone shaker from the 1970's - we were travelling with the people, well, a couple of Indians and an Omani woman or two. The conductor was exhausted by his labours of checking the passengers' tickets and soon fell asleep, abandoning his main job of keeping the driver awake with conversation.

The Omani desert and scrubscape is littered with half started motorway projects and half finished houses.

An embryonic freeway flyover stands starkly over an intersection, its angry steel support joints snarling at the indignity of being left naked and useless, with no sign of its connecting companions.

Oman aims to tarmac the desert and recreate Los Angeles' in the Arabian Peninsular. They will get there in the end as they seem to be as determined as los Angeleans to create a car based world of lonely isolation in which every human feeling is mediated on four wheels and all the public spaces are roads.
We fall asleep as the bus grinds and growls forward on the eight hour trip.

When we awake, we are in Dallas, Texas, or Houston, but as our eyes find their focus we realise our mistake - an easy one to make - we are in Dubai, which is Dallas or Houston or any number of US cities, transplanted to these Arabian sands. Maybe it's all the oil, but the Emir must be suffering from the same sort of affliction that has blighted America - Giantism, or mine is bigger than yours syndrome.
But we must concede - in its gleaming glass erectile style, it has an eirie beauty and efficiency that is a pleasure to experience.
The taxi's arrive as swiftly as yellow cabs in New York City, but they are cleaner and the drivers' are polite.

We arrive at the world's biggest shopping mall and, despite ourselves, we are seduced immediately, even buying a jumper for Elena, and a bag of souvenirs in a gift shop.

The fountain display comes up like a ballet and we eat a delicious spaghetti pesto and miso soup in a strange hybrid restaurant of Japanese and Italian food.

From the top of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, we are humbled by the engineering involved and the almost impious achievement of this recreation of the west as an oasis for global trade in the middle east. This is globalism, and it's for making money. It represents an Arabian vision and was realised by a global collaboration, which itself must be a hopeful sign.

Here comes everyone, you might think, and they are all well dressed and well off. But globalism floats on a sea of human struggle as men and women are separated from families by the necessity to find work thousands of miles away from home. Pockets of unemployment and poverty drive millions across the skies to staff the service army recruited by Dubai and other pockets of posperity in the Middle East and around the world.

Our waiter Leo Bonillo is a charming young man from Manilla, where there is no work. His children are at home with his mother. And this story can be found over and over again, in Shanghai or Dubai, London or Moscow, New York or Mumbai. If home is where the heart is, there is a lot of heartache in Dubai.

The Red Arrows over the hot blue skies of Muscat, musings on Machiavelli and The Sultan, happiness and where it comes from....

Elena and I take a taxi from our hosts' suburban Muscat home to The Intercontinental Hotel, from where we will crane our necks up towards the dizzying blue above to catch sight of The Red Arrows jets beginning their precipitous formation dives down to earth, or just above it.

On the journey, there are Omani flags flying from the cars which also proudly display portraits of the handsome Sultan, his grey tinged beard (of formal cut) symbolising both vigour and the wisdom of age.
In the backs of cars, children smile and wave at us. Why?
They don't in London. And we would not dare to smile and wave back in London.

We take a photograph of two young men walking on the side of the road. They smile at us and wave. Why?
We have travelled widely in this whole wide world, but rarely have we encountered so much smiling. Why?
Perhaps they are pretending to be happy but we doubt that. It's not that they want anything, since we are not offering anything.

And then above us, as the red jets roar and scream around the submissive skies, we find the answer.

Love. All you need is love, as Britain's greatest musical export sang.
But this can only be one piece of the answer. If it's true that Omani's have more than their fair share of the elusive elixir of a happy life, where do they get it from?
Here is our theory: We must learn how to love from our Mother's milk and every moment of infancy upwards, by example and by precept, every single day. A long time ago, in the searing heat of the Omani desert, a tribal leader realised that the only way to survive in the barren and lifeless terrain around was to harness all the life force of all the people, and the strongest of these was love.
And so it began.

Niccolo Machiavelli, when he wrote his handbook for Princes in 1506, advised them that it is better to be feared than loved - if you cannot be both. Now nobody would pretend that Oman does not have problems and some consequential unhappiness. This is the real world, despite the almost unreal sea of good nature all around, and men still steal, cheat and thieve and the life of man would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' without the potential use of force. We believe The Sultan knows that he needs be feared and loved because the wisdom of the Sultan is not in doubt. He was very impressed as a young man by British freedoms and democracy but he wisely observed that they had been achieved over an 800 year period of evolution and struggle, including a violent revolution and a military dictatorship. Armed with this self observed insight, he began his careful work of introducing Oman to the responsiblity of freedom. We wish him well on his anniversary, and recommend Machiavelli to him. It's a dangerous world.

A modern medieval paradise of empty beaches and different degrees of freedom - Oman

Here in Oman, the laws of economics have been refuted convincingly. We observed it ourselves. Walking in the searing heat along a wide boulevard, we flagged down a taxi. We had no idea where we were or how to describe where we were going. The driver was patient and kindly. He slowed at every junction and landmark that we thought we recognised. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes of driving around in circles, we realised where we were and asked to be dropped off.
How much is that please? I asked.
No, I cannot charge you, he replied, it is my pleasure to help you, you are a guest in my country.
I could not persuade him otherwise.

According to all the laws of economics this should not have happened. Adam Smith said that it is not to the kindness of the baker or candlestick maker that we should look for our candlesticks and bread, but to their looking after their self interest.
What are we to make of a taxi driver who displays more kindness than self interest?
Perhaps culture is more important than economists have noticed.

And here the culture must have been at least partly formed by emptiness, the emptiness of everywhere. Vast stretches of beach, beautiful and deserted, stretch for miles and fringe the city of Muscat with a brocade of yellow sand and blue green sparkling sea. Beyond Muscat, empty square miles of flat scrub and desert with an occasional eruption of bright green palm trees and isolated villages. Behind this, a lunar landscape of slate coloured mountain, sharp and jagged, implacable and barely penetrable.
Of course, there are people, men in immaculate white and women in solid black, Indian migrants in clothes of many colours and westerners in their uniforms, but there is empty space between them all, even in the most populated of places. The space between them is respect, a different kind of mutual respect than we see in London because here it feels more gracious, polite and friendly.
Perhaps space itself is a form of prosperity. And prosperity provides the wherewithal of kindness, though not the motivation.

Elena and I have been spending our time on a deserted beach in Muscat. It's not completely empty. There are fishermen who wave at us and ask us how we are. There are occasionally young lads who swim in the mostly empty sea as we do, or cartwheel and cavort on the beach. And there are cars and trucks that drive along the beach, to our surprise, but most of them belong to the fishermen who use them to tow their boats up the beach.

Staring at the men pulling in their nets I could not but help thinking of Jesus approaching the disciples as they too pulled in their nets. Come with me, he said, and I shall make you fishers of men.
Perhaps, perhaps, the message of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, not he that came with a sword, but he that turned the other cheek, only really got through here in Muscat, where today the muezzin call all to prayer five times a day.
The citizens of Oman live with what we might think of as restrictions - drink and dress, for example, but they also live with a sort of freedom that we in the west have lost to the reduction of everything to impulse and instant gratification.
 How much can I respect you if I must have what I want now?

Handel and Mozart in London at St Martin in the Fields and George Osborne tells us to stop thinking about China as a sweatshop...

The Meteorological Office are predicting a terrible storm on Monday, and this makes us think that the gusting wind and scurrying litter are harbingers of worse to come. Dark and lumpy islands on an inky sea scud across the great canopy above London. We expect the weird sisters to jump out in front of us, gibbering and screeching about the ingredients of chaos to come.

We thank the sun, sea and skies for St Martin in the Fields, whose glorious baroque stone shines bright against all this gloom as we approach it for the concert to be given by the London Concertante: Handel, Mozart and Vivaldi, plus some contemporary composers.

As we enter the elegant, spacious and gracious commode of the church, I find the speech that George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and number two to the Prime Minister made about China niggling away at me. He said we must stop thinking of China as a sweatshop and think of it as a high tech trading partner.

The trouble is China is much worse than a sweatshop - it's a forced labour camp. In fact, China runs the biggest concentration camp system the world has ever seen, even bigger than Stalin's Gulag. Chinese companies have front companies that they show to foreign activists and investors, but behind these are political and criminal prisoners working for nothing in brutal and murderous conditions. A leopard doesn't change its spots that quickly, and China's tradition of running the country as a vast prison camp has not changed much. If you don't believe me, check out the work of Harry Wu, who after 19 years in the camps has dedicated his life to exposing the truth. It's hard work for him because it's easier for all of us to dismiss him as bitter, twisted and wrong. But the evidence is irrefutable.
Should we care?
I think so, but now the sinuous and seductive violins are stroking my troubled soul, and I hold Elena's hand and think how lucky I am..........around us is a packed church of listeners all entranced by the music. Some of them look Chinese. Would they welcome my thoughts.......would they share them?

Sometimes we just get the blues, because there are no easy answers but we know something must be done. When that happens, listening to the blues works pretty well. Try this, from Gary Clark Jr....

London tradition on the streets, we liberate Ronnie Scott's for the people...

The charming sound - clip clop, clip clop, of horseshoes on tarmac.

The bright and cheerful red and gold uniforms of the carriage drivers, the two 18th century carriages themselves, one open, the other covered. It could only be London. The Queen has sent a couple of carriages round to Queens Gate SW1 to pick up the new Iraqi ambassador to Her Majesty's Government. She wants to say hello. What a gracious way of facilitating a business meeting. It saves on petrol and is good for the environment. And it probably is very impressive, a reminder, perhaps, that Britain's now tired and corrupt representative democracy has been evolving slowly since roughly 1215, when the big Barons' got King John to agree to trial by Jury and an embryonic parliament. They achieved this by taking to arms and capturing London from him. In other words, by the threat of violence. By the way, here are the two great clauses 39 and 40 of The Magna Carta which he was forced to sign. It is the most important document in English and world history and it shaped the future of freedom in Britain and around the world :

No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor shall we attack him or send men to attack him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.

To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right of justice.

 There you go - here are the origins of consent to taxation, parliament, due process and the rule of law.

But it took a lot of trouble and strife to get from there to 1928 when Britain finally became a full democracy and women got the vote on an equal basis to men.

History lesson over, we go with my youngest daughter Charlotte to Ronnie Scott's jazz club for the late show. It didn't start until midnight, but man, what a brilliant scene it was, packed with young jazz fans and even a few old timers like me. The lights were low, the vibe was cool, then brisk and driving, the trumpet urgent, plaintive, insistent, indignant, intemperate and insolent, ingenious, then treading soft, calming, pleading........and the pianist, the bassist and the drummer listened to the trumpet and joined the conversation and they all listened to us, the audience, and created the sound and song of the joy of all life...yes, we are here, let's enjoy it because it is exciting and will only happen once!

No more war!

And we liberated this short clip from Ronnie's to encourage you all. Just click on this link below.

click here to see the video

London life: Debate, discussion and misunderstanding

The heavens are caressing London with  golden light and the trees in Hyde Park bring out their golden robes in return.
All is well in this the greatest and freest city on earth!

It is Elena's birthday. To celebrate we go the The Landmark Hotel on the Marylebone Road for afternoon tea: me, Elena, her Mum and one of her sons and his girlfriend. A happy and harmless crew.
The solicitous doorman is kind and considerate as he shows us how to get the wheelchair conveying Elena's Mum into the cafe.
We are seated in the voluptuous setting of the atrium cafe and champagne is served.
Elena's Mum is beaming with happiness, pride and joy.

But alas - it is fearfully expensive. I ask the waiter if we can buy just one afternoon tea and share it. We are not very hungry. The waiter must ask the manager. No, we must buy three. This would amount to £126. Surely, I persist, since the cafe is virtually empty, and we are drinking the champagne (not cheap either - at £76!), you can bend the rule for once. The manager appears and firmly insists that the rule cannot be broached. If we consume less than three afternoon teas, we will have to sit in another part of the hotel. This would mean us reseating Baboushka in her wheelchair and going up to another floor.
We decline, amazed by the lack of initiative allowed The Landmark workforce. I was tempted to ask if I would have to ask the manager if I could use the lavatory.

Still, it was a pleasure only partly spoilt, and we walked across to The Frontline Club in Paddington (The Journalists Club) to listen to a discussion about the future of Russia and the fate of the oligarch Khodorkovsky.

The former British ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton thought that things were getting better and that the rule of law will one day prevail in Russia, whereas it is perhaps a little patchy now.
We should welcome their money, he said, and that will be good for us and for Russia.
Other speakers disagreed. The money is tainted and our taking it discredits us.

Later, we are dining in the restaurant below, discussing this issue.
I take the view that it is a matter of balance, but to illustrate my point, say that we should not have wanted to trade with Hitler's Germany if the conditions were that we were not allowed to trade with Jewish people, or with Stalin's Russia if we were forced to trade with companies that employed Gulag labour.

Suddenly, a woman sitting at the table next to us leaned across.

" I would be very careful if I were you" she said, and continued, " I'm jewish, and I heard what you said"

Now of course, she only heard half of what I had said.

But that's how wars start, isn't it?

Somewhat dismayed, because she persisted in threatening me, we left.

Ah well, nowhere is perfect.

Lying London Cops get off with a caution - so did Britain's greatest traitor.

Another disorientating day in lovely London town. Damp and mild with bright blue patches around the islands of creamy clouds. Last year, some policemen that guard the House of Commons were found to have fabricated evidence against a senior politician - indeed, one of them pretended to be a member of the public who had overheard the politician swearing at the police and calling them ' effing plebs'.

But all is well in ours the best of all possible police forces. The policemen were let off with a caution by their bosses. They did not intend to lie, concluded their bosses, merely to be misleading or ambivalent.

That's alright then.

Back in 1962, the bosses of MI6 realised that one of their senior spies, Kim Philby, who ran the anti - Soviet desk, was in fact working for the Soviet Union.

They decided to have a quiet word with him to ask him to desist.

If he agreed, he could retire with a pension. The only condition being that he must not do it any more. But he bolted for Moscow before this generous package could be unveiled to him. Talking of Moscow, Beria, Stalin's KGB boss must have wished he had worked over here. The Russians have a more robust approach to treachery, real or imagined. Ask alexander Litvinenko, or his widow anyway.

The link here is obvious. In the UK, the powerful, from wherever they draw their power or however high or low they are, are usually exempt from the sanctions that underpin the legal system for the rest of us.

We are with John Lennon : just give us some truth

Strange goings on in London : Romeo and Juliet, Blue Jasmine and Woody Allen and Estate Agents in disgrace.

There is something wrong in London. The trees are still wearing their green summer frocks. Our winter jackets are out and on but only because we mistakenly think that winter is here at last. Late autumnal gloom should have settled on every soul but there are baffled smiles playing on our lips. More perplexing still is that an English film of Romeo and Juliet is playing, no, grinding, in cinemas in London and it is stultifying, tedious, ridiculous, turgid, risible, depressing, boring and painful to watch and hear.

The English are supposed to be good at Shakespeare. They are supposed to be proud of him. So we wonder why Shakespeare's prose and verse has been hacked away and replaced by bland modernisms. Of course artists are free to experiment with Shakespeare, but surely the idea is to bring something new or different when you do. If the result is that the audience begins to suffer from rigour mortise while watching it then something has gone badly wrong. The centre cannot hold......a vacuous male model of a Romeo kept pouting at the audience. He was pale, anaemic and bloodlessly vain. She was podgy and frumpy. On the big night, he kept his underpants on and she her bra and nightie. Their love lacked any heat or passion. It was literary and fey, foppish and tired. Even the soundtrack sounded insincere. We didn't care when Tybalt was stabbed. He was a pantomime baddy. Benvolio had never been in a fight in his life. A bag of flour could have been cast for all the main roles and it would at least have made us laugh.
This production didn't squeeze a single tear out of us or even the glimmer of a smile. Nurse is supposed to make us laugh, She made us wince when she said to Juliet that she '...certainly had good taste in men'

This review is written more in sorrow than in anger, but also by way of public warning : life is short, and none of us knows what may befall us on the morrow. So don't waste your time on this lifeless corpse of a variation on a theme by Shakespeare.

You could, however, spend an enjoyable hour and a half with Woody Allen and his new film ' Blue Jasmine' - deceit, lies and betrayal are all involved, and they wreak their havoc on the lives of all of us, and Woody knows how to remind us of this with characters and a story that make us feel, phew, there but for the grace of God go I.....

We finish by hanging our heads in shame. Estate Agents in London are covertly but blatantly discriminating against Afro-Carribean applicants for rental accommodation. The BBC caught them red handed. Can you imagine how angry you would feel if someone decided to lie to your face just because of the colour of your skin and a stereotype created in the 1950's. Civilisation rests on flimsy foundations, even here, in one of the finest and most civilised cities on earth.

Even in the rain

Something good going down in Deptford, London SE, something to make you free

A wet and drizzly day in London town. The sun is tired and anaemic, its rays failing to push through the damp lid of pale plastic cloud that rests over our heads. We take so much for granted. We assume certain things are true but they turn out not to be. Life began in the depths of the earth, not in a warm chemical pond on its surface. Oil and gas are not the residue of rotting plants after all, but are mixed up in the geological furnace close to the centre of the earth. Not many people know these new things, and it will be hard for us to throw out the old ideas, but we must. If we don't know where we came from we can't get to where we are going.....ask old Oedipus about that one....

...so, we decide to go down to Deptford, where the great jazz man, rapper, hip-hopper and freedom fighter has his jazz - rap - opera The Legend of Mike Smith running in The Albany Theatre.

Soweto Kinch 

Soweto Kinch is a brilliant rapper and a great saxophonist too, and his theme is that when we are free we are most truly human, and when most truly human we are creative and good - but to be free we need to be strong, because the seven deadly sins are snatching at our souls every day, ripping away our humanity and aiming to leave only the bestiality beneath, quivering ugly and twitching naked and salacious....all this insidious intent tucked away behind the logos, brands and advertising of the so called free market.

Tyrone Isaac-Stewart

But we can be free. We can let others be free. Let them sell their wares. We just have to know what's going on and where we came from and where we want to go........let's talk about it, sing about it, play jazz about it....this should be on the school curriculum.

Ricardo da Silva, Soweto Kinch, Tyrone Isaac-Stewart at the fabulous finish of the show

A long time ago, in Deptford,  Peter the Great lived, learning how to build ships for his Russian Navy. He was there because Henry the 8th built his Navy here. These men were great bastards, tyrants of the worse sort. And Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's younger rival and admirer, was stabbed to death in 1593 in a pub here too. But now something good is going on down in Deptford. Get yourself down there to see it at The Albany Theatre.

And have a look at Deep Hot Biosphere (The myth of fossil fuels) by Thomas Gold. It will open your mind about where we came from.

Read more about East London here 

Hannah Arendt, the movie, stand up comedy in Soho and at the Conservative Party Conference

Elena and I, now married and blissful, have settled back into London life in Barnes, down by dat ole man river Thames, -  he must know somethin', he don't say nothin' he jus' keep rollin' along.

We were amazed to see that someone has made a film about Hannah Arendt, the late great political theorist and one of my heroes from an early age, well, 18, since I read her brilliant book called ' On Revolution', which I recommend to all humans interested in the fate of the world.

The film was gripping, thought provoking, moving.

There was intelligent dialogue, witty conversation, the intimation of mature, affectionate and passionate love between men and women but a complete and refreshing absence of any explicit sex or violence.

It was, however, all about violence and evil, the evil represented by Adolf Eichmann and his role as the man in charge of deporting the victims of the Holocaust to the gas chambers.

If you want to witness courage and independence of mind, and you wish to be inspired by these qualities, please go and reward the producer and director and all involved in this brave and beautiful project. It's on in London now.

Last night, by way of a change, we went to see my best friend's son, Sean Cannon, play support in his new career as a stand -up comedian.

He had a good Edinburgh, and last night at the Soho Theatre he had five funny minutes in support of the main act, which we thought was so bad we shall refrain from mentioning his name in case it offends or we just weren't in the mood for his brand of comedy.

Go and see Sean Cannon. He has his own style, a blend of memoir, confessional and observation of the culture around us that leaves you feeling uplifted as well as amused, more of a proper meal than the chinese take-away that a lot of stand - up provides.

Talking of comedy, impossible not to laugh at the sight of David Cameron, our Prime Minister, trying to look and sound as if he has a dream, a vision for Britain that he feels passionate about. He's on the side of hard working people now, (because they will pay back the bankers' losses faster), so he's going to kick you if you haven't got a job, and that's going to make the country great again, full of hard working people, a land of opportunity for people who work hard enough to send their children to private schools, the sons and daughters from which run the country.
We have  Conservative aristocracy, a Labour aristocracy and a Liberal - Democrat aristocracy, and we get a choice every five years as to which set can have the time of their lives running the affairs of this wonderful country, its wonders being made by everyone here except that lot who pretend to be in charge.

Ah well, easy for us to criticise.......

Kate Middleton about to birth an heir, a bad film, a bad and good culture, robot drones......

Only in London - A Sikh in an antique with female accessory photographing Elena photographing them!

The night air was warm enough to cook up a riot and we decided to take refuge in a film at The Coronet, on Notting Hill Gate. It was Tuesday, which is discount night, so we got in for seven pounds in total. It didn't matter what the film was, or so we thought, but it was so bad it did matter.
A film director should never bore the audience but Sophie Coppola managed to induce rigour mortice in us.
Superficial, over - privileged inarticulate American teenagers feeling sorry for themselves - not a pretty sight or sound. We were forced to listen to them speak: Cool, oh my God, check it out, I love it, like, so cool, shut the .........up bitch. And that's it, honestly, plus the names of their Gods, the brands of clothing they robbed the homes of celebrities for. Then we were forced to watch them break into one celebrity home after another and drool over the contents before they spirited them away in a cloud of cocaine and dope.

If there is hope for the world, it is not with these soft headed victims of consumer culture. Perhaps we should protect children from the dark arts of advertising and publicity? These kids didn't stand a chance against the endless bombardment of their empty heads and loveless hearts with brand propositions posing as a reliable route to the pursuit of happiness.

But America is not just a moronic inferno - Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and space entrepreneur is a dynamic refutation of everything the feckless and feral youth of this movie represent. He is determined to rescue the human species by making it possible to colonise Mars. He is already on the brink of supplying re-usable space rockets to get us there and has done what everybody thought was impossible by succeeding with private space travel.

The same culture encouraged both of these extremes. The worry is that Elon, or Steve Jobs and the other titans of computer code need this vast and vulnerable army of semi-conscious consumers to keep the system afloat while they prepare the rescue plan.

Meanwhile, the drone robots continue to practise as the policemen of the future in the skies of America. One of them went badly wrong yesterday, crashing as it landed in Florida. These are real robots. They are not flown by robotic humans from a basement somewhere. They fly themselves. and when they finally get the hang of it - watch out. The skies will be full of them, and some are bound to malfunction and missile you out. Game over.

Patriots patronise St Mary's Hospital as Kate labours to produce an heir. The Royals are allowed to spend more time in maternity wards than their subjects! A woman we spoke to wanted to know why Kate didn't go to her own hospital instead of filling up ours. Good point.

Back here in Britain, the nation is agog at the prospect of Kate Middleton's imminent birthing of an heir to the throne. It seems that most people though, want this unfortunate infant - you can't choose your parents - to get a proper job when it grows up.

This priceless image free from the internet. 

 Bad luck. Surely this marks the end of the line for the mystery that is monarchy. Behind all mystery and privilege lies mendacity and malfeasance. They don't want you to look in because if you do you'll find something unpleasant, like Prince Charles and his 'voluntary' tax contributions and non - payment of corporation tax on his 'Duchy Originals' - I don't like the sound of them myself. Organic underpants, no thanks!

A sausage roll on another sunny London day, then a few pints and something strong to smoke......

For us, the day got off to a good start.

The sun blazed down from on high and we rolled and rattled along on the Hammersmith and City line to Hammersmith, on our way to Brentford, where way back in 1642, during the civil war, the parliamentary forces fought like devils against the royalist cavalry of Prince Rupert. Our boys - parliament - were eventually beaten back, but no matter, as the royalist fops were thrashed the next day at Turnham Green and democracy won in the end.

How different it all is now.

Back then, muskets, pikes, cannon and swords were weapons that mangled us at close quarter.

Now, the mighty US of A sends its Drones across the skies to search and destroy, firing their missiles down on houses far below in hapless Pakistan, without knowing who is within.

Yesterday it was reported that a Drone had killed seven ' suspected' militants in a house in Waziristan.

'Suspected' but not certain. Why is there no outcry from us, from Cameron or Clegg or Miliband?

Nobody cares that's why. There are no votes in it. These men are not statesmen. They are pastry chefs, serving up delicacies to their overweight people - it was Aristotle who characterised democratic politicians thus. We're beginning to think he had a point.

Meanwhile, and before the Drones from Iran or somewhere arrive over our usually cloudy skies, life must go on, and life is better with a good sausage roll, and there is none better than Patrice Lardon's.

Patrice is as French as French can be - straight out of central casting : jolly, happy and helpful, he makes the best sausage rolls in London, and a range of other pastry type delicacies. Check him out on Facebook under Lardon's Catering.

Later, we take refuge from Obama's foreign policy at The Star and Garter, the best pub in Soho, a fine and proper London boozer, no grub, no cocktails, no waitresses, just good beer and spirits.

Out friends let us smoke their unusual home made cigarettes.

We experience pleasant feelings of a vaguely out of body type and float home like a pair of drunken drones.

Summer's here at last and London lives outdoors again..tattooed and talented

Elena's Mum enjoying her day out in the sun on the way to the Russian Orthodox Church nr Hyde Park

The sunlight streaked across the streets, instantly transforming every building, plant, tree, flower and face. Once there were frowns, now there were smiles. The leaves on the trees waved back at heaven saying thanks be to thee, to thee, and we felt ourselves just carried along on the running tide heading down to Hyde Park.

There, people were peopling, canoodling, cuddling and playing. Families were happy families, lonely people felt as if they belonged after all and children saw how young their parents were and how even younger were their grandparents.

It was impossible not to feel like the luckiest people in the luckiest place on earth, this demi-paradise, this sceptered city, this London of all the peoples.

And it was sad to think that in that other great city, Cairo, they are shaping up for a fight, unable to find a peaceful way of solving the endless argument : the ways of God or the ways of men. God seems to have left economics alone, but his spokesmen on earth have a plan anyway. It doesn't seem to be working, though, for the men that have to make it work, and they want to be listened to. We hope that skulls won't be cracked and that peace prevails. Come on God, intervene, don't just sit there!

The Russian Orthodox Church in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge.

And then came Kamila.

Kamila Pavlova has a head turning tattoo on her back which tempted us to ask her about it, but we ended up discussing her business plan for her new career.

Kamila is a surgeon, from the Czech Republic, and she has been working in the great hospitals of London : Guys, St Thomas's and Bart's, putting ordinary mortals back together again with plastic surgery.

We bowed down with deep respect.

But alas, the labyrinthine structure of the NHS, its tortoise promotion scheme, it's Ariadne's thread that must be pulled through to get a promotion, has left Kamila frustrated and she will leave to go into private practise soon.

Check her out (no pun intended) as she is as charming as she is skilled and clever, and she will make you whole again, using all the arts of the plastic surgeon.

Latvians in London in Russian restaurants, a big night out as Snowden hides out in Moscow airport

Our good friends Jim Archer and Janet Tweedie know how to have a good time, so we knew they would enjoy an evening at Sobranie, a Russian restaurant in Victoria.

We pre-loaded at The Jugged Hare on Vauxhaul Bridge Road nearby, in which an eccentric elderly Englishmen danced in front of the bar clad in over-tight lycra sports wear, revealing the morphology of his manhood, and most unfortunate morphology it was too.

On the TV screen, the news came through that the whistleblower Edward Snowden is in Moscow, holed up somewhere in the airport, protected by that well known friend of freedom Vladimir Putin.

Why anybody is surprised that the US and UK governments read our e-mails I don't know - how else can they catch the people that want to blow us up, or hack us to death in the streets. We'll soon moan if they don't nip a big one in the bud. Poor old Obama just can't win, but Julian Assange is a naive fool and Edward Snowden has made a strategic blunder of lifetime proportions. We only get one run at this life, as far as we know, and Edward has blown it. Don't take on Uncle Sam - you don't stand a chance, and Uncle Vlad probably won't be much help for long. The Guardian, who got and ran the exclusive story of Edward's 'revelations',  won't be much help for Edward either, despite him helping them out with something to fill the front page.

But what can any of us do about these things?

You know our line: we must love one another, while we can, and non - violence is the only acceptable strategy of change and protest. Enjoy life and you will learn how to enjoy people. It's much nicer than killing them, honestly!

Look at Jim and Janet here - they are your role models: people who know how to make you laugh, good kind people who look after each other and their families.

In Sobranie, our waiter Denis was another role model of courtesy and helpfulness.

All the way from Latvia, he loves life in London and has decided to settle here.

He is certainly conscientious beyond reproach - he tried to stop us ordering an entire bottle of vodka, suggesting a half bottle instead. Who is he working for? The NHS?

We were having none of it and insisted on self destruction with a full bottle of Russian Standard, on top of the several shots we had warmed up with and the pre-loaded pints. Wise move it was too, as the food and conversation both were excellent and needed the heart warming thirst quenching vodka to keep them properly paced.

Home and to bed in a blur!

We hope Obama decides to forgive Edward - he's only a young boy, led astray by Julian Assange - he's the one you want! Or Sweden wants.

Constables camping it up at Victoria station
probably staying at the YMCA