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.

London life, a canal boat carnival, another lovely day and Sol Campbell for Mayor

The sun had popped back last week after a six month absence, having paid a fleeting visit to these shores, but it was blown away by winter's allied forces of wind and rain until, to our pleasant surprise, it briefly reappeared and burned away the opposition, dragging us and all London's 'little platoons' out again to Regent's Canal, this time towards Little Venice.

Here, there was great canal boat carnival under way.
An armada of Victorian looking long boats had descended on Little Venice to show off their shapes and sizes and swap tales of life on the waterways of Britain.

A build up of gas in the bilges seemed to be the biggest danger that these mild mannered mariners had to face, or absent lock keepers and rising mooring fees.
How Captain Kidd would have scoffed at these narrow boat navigators with their narrow horizons and flat waveless waters!
Captain Kidd was born in Scotland in 1645, the son of a Church of Scotland minister - things don't always go to plan do they?
By 1689 he was a Caribbean buccaneer, a pirate signed up by the governor of the Leeward Islands to fight the French in King William's war. But his piratical crew found this a bit boring and forced Kidd to sail for New York to sell their stolen bounty in the market there.
Kidd decided to become a pirate bounty hunter and set off with a new crew to the Indian Ocean to pluck the rich pickings that had already been plucked from their first owners. (who had probably plucked them from someone further back - who was the first plucker?)
King William himself had ten per-cent off this investment in plunder, and there were many other powerful and establishment investors in this daylight seaborne robbery. (Queen Elizabeth 1st - Good Queen Bess - was one of the very first investors in the slave trade. Worth Michael Gove, our staunchly patriotic Minister of Education,  reflecting on quite how proud we should be of our history.)
Captain Kidd ruled his ship with murderous violence but eventually, after taking six ships and their precious cargoes, he fell foul of his backers and was caught and sent for trial in London.
He was hanged at execution dock in Wapping on 23rd May 1701.
These were the men that built our Empire!
They sailed close to the wind and were made of stern stuff.
Were cruelty and violence essential survival techniques in a world without modern technology?
Our Industrial Revolution needed sugar to energise its working class, and that needed slavery to grow it and chop it. You can see the argument.

But it seems to be that any excuse will do - as A. Hitler and J.Stalin and M. Tse-Tung have shown, among many others, there is always a reason to massacre and blow everything lovely to bits.

Today in London, everything seems peaceful and the bounty of the earth seems to be plentiful.
But Sol Campbell, one of England's greatest footballers, points out and provides the evidence that racism in Britain is alive and well. Yet he loves this country despite its obvious disfiguring defects and crude discrimination.
Sol talks more sense than Boris Johnson and his privileged pals, who put up fantasy schemes to make their opponents look timid and lacking in vision.
It's one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Look instead at the life of Sol Campbell.
It will show you the kind of buccaneering courage, integrity and discipline we need nowadays.

We know it ain't easy, but the capacity to love outside of our own tribe is what we need now that there are seven billion of us.

And we know it will take more than love, but it's a good start, so hats off to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison when they sang 'All you need is Love' - Love is all you need.