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

Moscow bus tour, the truth, Putinka vodka and Prince Harry, maybe Cameron and Clegg

Elena and I had been showing a friend around Moscow. Not knowing much about it, we decided to take a guided bus tour. The destinations and the information relayed were both eloquent testimony to what the successful tour operator, targetting Russian speaking tourists, thought that Russian citizens would like to see and know - which was what a great, vast and historic city Moscow is, a city which has borne more than its fair share of adversity, has come perilously close to extinction, a city which has always clung to God even when he was banned.
We did spend quite a bit of time at the memorial to the Great Patriotic War, which whilst completely understandable, must rate as one of the most soul - less and depressing examples of memorial architecture and public space ever constructed. We hope that the ghosts of all the 26 million Russian dead of world war two are harrying and howling at the architect and whoever commissioned and approved this monstrosity as they try to rest, and that they will be chased into their graves by the sheeted dead of the Red Army.
We were also informed, as we raced by them,of the former Soviet leaders who had lived in the various massive apartment blocks near the Kremlin, and finally the solid block of a building that is the Ministry of War was pointed out to us.
We hoped that they had nothing to do in there and that they were sitting around yawning with boredom and playing chess..........but if they were not busy with war, they were probably playing war games on their computers or watching internet pornography.

After this edifying tour, which did succeed in displaying the scale and grandeur of Moscow, which was its main aim in two hours, we walked across Red Square, past St Basil’s Cathedral, which looks as if it should be in Disneyland, to the Tretyakov Gallery.

Of the many stunning works in this treasure trove of art, one which seems so apposite for our times, is the masterpiece by Nikolay Gay, depicting Pontius Pilate asking Christ ‘ What is truth?’

We wonder how many are employed to shape the truth nowadays, on behalf of governments, corporations or celebrities or charities, or to suppress it altogether? It’s called public relations or advertising, and whilst every individual case for someone to make sure that the protagonists’ view is heard seems reasonable enough,  the total result must surely be that nobody knows what is truth anymore.
We are with John Lennon, again, on this.

Of course, as a reformed advertising man, I realise that the medium is the message, and that a lot of the time, it’s the way that you say it, not what you say, that gets results. And herein lies the problem: we are too often with our guard down, our critical faculties are on the lookout for the wrong stuff, when we are protecting ourselves from misinformation we are buying a bottle of vodka in a supermarket, and guess what?
Yes, we bought a bottle of Putinka vodka on special offer, and very good it was too!

It’s hard to imagine David Cameron adopting a similar strategy - Cameron Ale, it’s thick and rich, would be my slogan, or Clegg Bitter, will help you to say anything, and still leave that famous bitter taste in your mouth.

Still, Prince Charles manages to sell ridiculously overpriced organic food in Britain, and we reckon that Prince Harry could sell his own brand of cocktails to Russia’s new rich youngsters in their nightclubs.
It would be called Helicopter Harry’s - these will get you up there whilst your trousers remain down here - from the artist formerly known as Prince Harry.

London Fashion Week, London Buses, branding madness, civilisation and drunken London cabbies

Elena and I had tickets for London Fashion Week, so off we went by bus to Somerset House, the main venue for this year’s event.
The London bus service is a pleasure to use - we never seem to wait more than ten minutes for one to come along. They are bright, shiny and clean and they whine, whir and hiss reassuringly as they glide and jump through the traffic. 

Buses in London, were originally called omnibuses, which name originated in Nantes, France, where a man called M.Omnes punned on his own name in Latin for a slogan for his business, a shop in a terminus for public horse drawn carriages : Omnes Omnibus, which translates from Latin into ‘ all for everyone’
Londoners soon dropped the omni and it was officially dropped in the 1920’s to leave just the bus.
The London Passenger Transport Board - a bit of a mouthful, appeared in 1933 as the first regulatory body, and this name was replaced by London Transport some time later, which name was inexplicably and wastefully replaced by Transport for London in 2000.( perhaps an echo of its French roots or sheer pretentious brand consultant claptrap? - you decide.) )

Another bizarre example of wasteful rebranding is that of London Zoo, which has recently disguised itself under the new monika ZSL, which has to be translated by the stop announcers on the tube backinto the recognisable proper noun London Zoo!

Talking of names and their provenance, one that may surprise you is Hackney Cab, which is the formal name for the black cabs in London - it comes via horse drawn Hackney carriages in 16th century London and arrived there from France with the word for an ambling old nag of a horse ‘ haque-nee’ 
By the way, those little, green wooden houses that you sometimes see on London Roads that have a row of black cabs parked outside are cafes especially for the use of cab drivers - they were established by a mid 19th Century philanthropist who was concerned by the widespread and notorious problem of drunken cab drivers.

Only soft drinks are served, and there aren't many of them left.


C’est vrais!



Now what’s all this got to do with London Fashion Week and civilisation?

As we sat next to the catwalk, our hearts beating with anticipation, surrounded by the glitterati  and the fashionisti, many of whom stared at us as if we were creatures from a planet without the concept of fashion, the world around us was beatified by a sudden marching column of colourful cranes bedecked and arrayed more wonderfully than Solomon with all his riches could have been.

They appeared from the catwalk portico, behind which shone a heavenly white light, as an apparition from the clouds - “behold, these are my creations, in which I am well pleased”, seemed to sound as a sentence uttered by a disembodied designer God from somewhere skyward.
Each crane, each on its splendid and spindly crane legs, marched with eyes set rigidly ahead in military concentration, but each well sculptured face could barely suppress a smile at the brilliant irony of taking themselves so seriously as to march like a soldier and stare ahead as if heaven itself was just over the horizon, behind the camera at the catwalk end, upon reaching which they halted, wiggled their tiny hips, about turned, and marched back to the land of white light from whence they had mustered.
Each was indeed a thing of beauty, draped in crazy colours and patterns that would lift the hearts of the most wizened old cynic on a City of London street who had just lost a bonus of a million pounds.

And the civilising connection with London buses is that this fashion is rapidly available to everyone in Top Shop and Primark up and down the land, affordable by virtually everyone and worn by virtually everyone and virtually everyone travels on London buses nowadays.
So there you have one link.
And civilisation?
You need peace, industry and a big and prosperous leisured class to have a thriving fashion business that makes its benefits available for everyone.
And that means nearly everyone has to be in that class, and that means you will find them on the buses too if you invest in them and if you can stop governments from shooting at their own citizens or other governments’ citizens.

Which reminds us that one of the most important oxymorons in the world is an important pop song, and that there is one - it is John Lennon and Yokos’ ‘All we are saying, is give peace a chance’

In the week that a legless South African runner shot to death his girlfriend, for what reason we may never know, and in a world in which Russia’s Kalashnikov armaments company sells 80 per - cent of its famous machine guns to private individuals in the United States, we need to heed this message more than ever.

Good on you John, rest in peace.

Fashion is like the arms industry in that it has obsolescence built in, but even Vivian Westwood never killed anyone with her creations. Maybe Jimmy Choo did with some of his loftier heels.