The good, the bad and the ugly in London

Elena and I agree on one thing : the Ancient Greeks were cool.

They enjoyed discussion and debate about the big question - how should we live?

They asked this question of the individual, the household and the state, and they realised that there were no easy answers. But Aristotle landed, in our view, on the importance in every sphere of activity of getting to the right balance between the possible extremes - The Golden Mean.

Perhaps people have always known this instinctively. Moderation in all things, though, is not necessarily the right answer. Different problems need different answers, and there is, as old Ecclesiatises knew, a time to laugh and a time to cry.

London carries its contrasts in close proximity, so the successes and failures in the search for the Golden Mean or whether resort is taken to extremes are often encountered.

 In Paddington Green, there is an 18th Century church called St Marys. It is beautiful, a pleasure to behold, it delights the eye of the passer by and the indiginous people are proud to live alongside it. It was designed by a man called John Plaw, who has only three surviving buildings in Britain, all circular and classical in proportion. He emigrated to Canada where he designed and built public buildings but none of them survive, which must be a shame for Canada.

Somehow, John Plaw and the worthy burghers of Paddington Green knew where to strike the balance with this building. Everything is the right size and in the right place. If you moved it to another spot twenty yards away it would probably all be wrong. It fits as exactly as a piece of jigsaw in the puzzle of Paddington Green.

Across the road from this church is a contemporary building, with a completely different function,a college of further education. It is not beautiful, but it is cheerful and inoffensive,doing its job well and being a good neighbour thereby, like a polite security guard on a reception desk, or a cheerful waitress in a Coffee bar. Although only 50 yards apart, St Marys and its neighbour Westminster College rub along just fine.  

Now look at a similar couple, who have fallen out very badly.

Westminster Adult Education Service have built what looks like a prison block about 50 yards away from St Mary Magdalene church at Little Venice, and this pair are about 15 minutes walk away from Paddington Green.

The signage on the education service building struggles to convey the meaning inherent in the words it uses : ‘Welcome’ is flatly contradicted by the square and squat shape of the building to which it is appended. The surrounding black railings are six feet tall and designed to kill anybody climbing over them - and the signage is so ineptly displayed that you might be tempted to conclude that to climb over the fence is the only way to enter the building. ( We walked around it twice before we found the way in. ) The windows are small and covered in security grills. Are they storing nuclear waste in there? or processing nuclear fuel to bomb levels of purity?

Other signage on this assault on the eyes depicts smiling and laughing individuals confident of a secure future now that they attend this institution - but the building itself says no, despair, abandon hope all ye who enter here, you won’t succeed, just sign on and take your benefits.

This building sits in amongst a cluster of other ugly buildings, blocks of flats occupied by the poor of London, the wards of state.

This building is another insult to them  - would they have put such a one in Sloane Street or Hampstead?

There is, however, a beautiful building nearby, a cousin of St Marys at Paddington Green, St Mary Magdalene church, a magnificent example of soaring Victorian Gothic. This heart lifting edifice of the soul is obscured from a number of directions by the soul destroying demon of the education service building.

These two buildings do not co-exist. They are at permanent war with each other, they stare and scowl at each other across the 50 yards that seperate them.

Perhaps these two pairs, seperated in each case by a century or two, reflect a simple and perrenial quality of human action - thoughtfulness, careful thought about the overall impact of the actions we take alongside a willingness to consider the importance of the details. It is difficult for us to know what will be good and what bad, so we must take care with every element of every project - it might as well be the tiny detail as the overall conception which turns out to be crucial for future success or failure. To recognise this is surely to have a kind of humility about oneself that makes one more likely to be the kind of human that the future will be grateful for.

More examples of the importance of careful, detailed thought alongside the big idea came to us from an orgy of theatre, a pleasure it is easy enough to indulge in London.

At the Royal Court, a theatre I love for its commitment to the new and experimental, we had to endure an experiment that failed. I still salute them for their courage in almost indiscriminantly supporting new ideas, because obviously failure and experiment go hand in hand and there is no progress without experiment, but this failure almost hurt.

Martin Crimp is the author of ‘The republic of Happiness’, a play which wears its message on both sleeves and tattoed on every actor’s forehead.

The message is obvious from the title - we live in a consumer society in which personal happiness is up for sale and is the only standard. I am entitled to everything, and everything I think is ok because I thought it. Solipsism rules, ok?

Well, it’s not a new critique, and it was done by Herbert Marcuse in ‘ One Dimensional Man’ back in the 1960’s, so we were entitled to expect some drama alogside the lecture, some characters we could loathe or love.

But Mr Crimp, if he did think about the needs of the audience, dismissed them. He concluded that his message was more important, and that artistry was redundant if this message was repeated often enough,  loud enough, and with enough expletives.

Compare this with the production of ‘Uncle Vanya’ by Checkhov at The Vaudeville Theatre.

Now Checkhov too is a man with a message alright, and pretty much every play delivers the same message - life is not easy, there are sometimes no answers, unhappiness is built into the world, but it can still be amazing, so don’t throw it away, put up with it. 

Not very inspiring, but Checkhov applies profound thought and careful observation of human nature to his message. He adds drama, surprise, characters to love or loathe. The effect is transformative. It is the effect of art, artistry all round and in every detail.

Daniel Kahneman in his brilliant book ‘ Thinking, fast and slow’ demonstrates conclusively that we humans find it very difficult to think at all. So we don’t do it very often and find it painful when we do.

Perhaps here we have the explanation for all our shortcomings.

Perhaps here, wherever we live, Governments can find a new Jerusalem to build and every one of us can find a source of renewal that will keep us going to the end.

Let’s hope so - I’ve forgotten where I left my memory stick.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

New Years Day, London, 2013

The day dawned cold, crisp and bright.

We had not caroused late and drunk or danced until dawn, so we were up early enough to spot the weary revelers who were making their way home with legs of lead and waxy complexions,looking like straggling troops from the homeless army that camps out on London's streets the rest of the year.

At Christmas and New Year, another army, this time of volunteers, supplies hands and willing hearts to help accommodate the homeless in temporary shelters run by Crisis at Christmas and other charities, so these poor broken souls are given some respite by their sturdier brethren, leaving the way clear for the sporadic drunks of the New Year tradition, though most of these have a home to go to and manage to find it eventually.

Our first stop was at an Arabic cafe on Porchester Road which is always open and serves us a fine latte as we are stared at inquisitively by curious Bedouin from the surrounding deserts of Paddington and Little Venice.

From there, we make our way up to Regents Park, with Elena's Mum in her wheelchair, who is keen to take the invigorating air and feel the soft sun on her face.

The Park is spacious and elegant, a great green carpet laid out across the northern rim of central London, with Primrose Hill above it and the Marylebone Road below it. Wise old trees stand strong and still at respectable distances from each other and an ornamental lake plays host to a united nations of migrant ducks,herons,swans, geese and others, all of which are at peace with each other, some staring in frozen amazement at the Babylon of birds around them, others swarming around their human companions who are throwing out manna from heaven.

The strolling Londoner flaneurs of the park are themselves a veritable testimony to the infinite variety of human taste and inclination : couples straight and gay, white, black yellow and grey, single girls and guys, parents and grandparents, children seen and heard, mongrel dogs and pure bred poodles - all consort and smile as they pass, acknowledging the unsaid relief and pleasure felt : we have made it, we are alive, it is peaceful here, things will be good this coming year.

London really is a delicious dish of humanity, served up in its great parks, every imaginable flavour, sauce and taste simmers happily in the pan alongside every other and the overall effect is that you feel as if you are dining in God's intended and chosen restaurant, the one he wants all the others to imitate, with the most eclectic and palate pleasing tasting menu possible, genuine soul food, every ingredient infused with the flavour of the entire dish and the entire dish tasting the way the world should.

Yes, I'm biassed, I confess, I love London, and so does Elena. Live and let live, and if you believe this, live in London, for no other city believes and lives it like London.

Later on though, the wind whips up and starts stinging our faces - it is time to go back home and take some tea and toast.

We are due at the British Film Institute on The Southbank at 6.30 to watch a collection of Roman Polanski's short films.

The stroll across the footbridge over the River Thames from Embankment tube was a full palate of electric colour, stripes of blue and yellow stabbing across the dark and big patches of pink and blue draped across the concert halls of the Southbank. In the background the illuminated dome of St Pauls Cathedral and to the south the tallest building in Europe, the Shard, sparkled like a Christmas Tree.

The programme of Polanski short films was disturbing - we felt that our sanity had been accosted by an evil genius. Enchanting, amusing and seductive scenes of happy life are jarringly shattered by murder and mayhem.

There are no happy endings in Polanski's theatre of life, but there is some great jazz, and the combined affect is that the horror of the world is vindicated by art alone - not a very happy state of affairs, but Polanski is not alone in concluding thus, and it's great for the drink trade, because we felt as if we had to have a stiff drink as soon as possible.

To Verragno's Cafe then, for a couple of pints of good Warsteiner Germen lager, which is odd, because it's a great Italian restaurant, and they definitely are Italian, unless they've all been to drama school to get their 'Mama Mia' and associated hand gestures and arm and shoulder movements to perfection for an audition for another series of The Sopranos.

A fuzzy journey home on the Bakerloo Line tube, we had had a perfect London day, New Years Day, January 2013.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Cecil Beaton goes to war with his camera. (The IWM London )

photo by Mark Rapley

The Imperial War Museum is what it used to be called, but ‘Imperial’ and ‘War’ are powerful but almost embarrassing words for modern British sensibility, so it is now called ‘IWM’.

Which is ridiculous, insulting and patronising, but it’s too late to do anything about it, so I’ll let it go, except to wonder if visitors to this otherwise wonderful museum were ever to ask the staff what the ‘I’ stands for, are the staff permitted to tell them?

The unfortunate fact of British history is that Britain was a great imperial power which used its power to wage war. As Charles Tilley said, ‘War made the state and the state made war’, and Britain was such a state, and in these terms, a successful one.

Nothing to do with me, or you, I wasn’t there and neither were you, so why should we feel embarrassed by those who were. As The Beatles sang, ‘We all doing what we can’, and who can say that they would have done any different or any better?

This assumption that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children seems to apply everywhere as we watch the absurd spectacle of Americans denying that they slaughtered their indigenous peoples, the Japanese denying The Rape of Nanking or The Turks denying the Armenian genocide. We all know these things happened, but because we feel responsible we dare not admit them, and this is obviously dangerous, but I digress.

Elena and I went to IWM to see the exhibition of WW2 photographs taken by Cecil Beaton, who achieved fame before the war, and after it, as a society photographer and theatrical costume and set designer.

He belonged to a different Britain that was nothing to do with me - he was born in 1904 and died in 1980, and so was, for most of his active life, a kind of courtier in a society in which Royalty and aristocratic values and culture dominated Britain.

He managed to leave Cambridge University without a degree and began his career as a photographer making excessively flattering portraits of Dukes and Duchesses and Kings and Queens and hangers on. These are included in the exhibition, just to set the scene, and they are mostly very dull to contemporary eyes which have no fascination with these hopeless characters elevated by the lottery of birth alone to pedestals below which others fawn.

But then something great happens to Beaton - the war. It makes him feel helpless and useless, but he does what he can, to get back to The Beatles, and he can take a portrait which flatters, but now he has decided to flatter people who probably deserve some flattery - the civilians, soldiers, sailors and airmen of the British war effort.

Now Beaton’s eye is properly and perfectly deployed behind the lens.

A photograph of a young girl injured by a bomb during the blitz found its way onto the front cover of Life magazine - deservedly so, for even at this distance, it nearly brought me to tears.

Beaton worked hard throughout the war, risking his neck and suffering some close shaves along the way. His work reveals a profound respect for the so-called ordinary people of Britain during their finest hours. He reveals the fear, courage, vulnerability, sense of humour and dogged determination that were necessary to get through the nightmare of WW2 - whose idea was that, by the way?

It wasn’t just old Adolf’s, a lot of other people thought wars were a good idea at that time, and they still do.

There always seems to be someone who thinks its a good idea to make a war, doesn’t there?

Well let me say here and now, and I hope you will join me here, - No, No, No, not a good idea, never start a war, whoever you are and however good you think you are versus your imagined enemy. They are easy to start, hard to finish, and you never know which way they will go.

 Don’t take my word for it, read Robert Mcnamara’s memoirs if you don’t believe me, (he was Kennedy’s Secretary of State during the Viet-Nam war and the Cuba Crisis ) or see the movie made about him called ‘The Fog of War’. 

I wish Tony Blair had seen it.

Non-violence is the new sex, in fact, and you don’t get much sex when violence is about, which can’t be good, because everybody is too busy dodging bullets and bombs to feel like loving up.

I leave you with the news that the IWM will be closed for 6 months from January 1st, so you better get down there quickly to catch Beaton, but I also leave you with these lines from Edwin Morgan’s poem, which are just so true :

‘The Pope sent a letter to the Great Khan, saying

‘We do not understand you. Why do you not obey?

We are under the direct command of Heaven.’

The Great Khan replied to the Pope, saying

‘We do mot understand you. Why do you not obey?

We are under the direct command of Heaven.’

(The Mongols

From his cycle of poems called Planet Wave)

London on Sale in Oxford Street

‘I had not thought death had undone so many’, said TS Eliot in his poem "The Wasteland", talking of the crowds that flowed over London Bridge, and Shakespeare had ‘The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman Streets’

I was reminded of both these disturbing and vivid images as Elena and I dodged and wove our way up Oxford Street on the first day of the big ‘Sale’. We were looking for bargains and late presents and heading up from Tottenham Court Road to Oxford Circus and John Lewis department store. 

Shopping is an unpleasant chore for both of us at the best of times, but the gloomy half - dead river of corpses that flowed against us provoked reflections on the state of the times, here in London and the consumer world at large.

What could be more human and natural than to trade, to shop, to watch others buy and sell and to buy ourselves?  

source: Internet

So why is shopping at Christmas or during the sales, nowadays, such a depressing experience?

There are some obvious reasons for Londoners to be depressed - there is a recession and people are fearful of their debt carrying capacity. The credit cards are used more hesitantly, and the Closing Down sales are a reminder that what was once thriving may not be there tomorrow. 

It is, perhaps, more than coincidence that a popular WW2 Government slogan, designed to keep up flagging civilian morale during the dark days of the Blitz, is popular again on T-Shirts and crockery : -

But there is, I speculate, a profound unhappiness at the heart of our consumer culture which distorts and disfigures what should be a pleasant and necessary ritual of attendance at the market to buy and sell.

The root of this is that we are buying and selling what we are sick to death of, things which we all know we not only don’t need ( a little luxury is a necessary break from  the daily round and we accept this happily enough ), but which we are secretly appalled by precisely  because we have gorged ourselves on them.

It doesn't matter that the trinkets we buy look different, on the surface, to the ones we bought last week, or that we do get at least a momentary rush of comfort and joy when we pick up the store bag with our new piece of kit or clothing safely stashed, anticipating the satisfaction of tearing open the packaging like an infant at it’s first Christmas, it doesn't matter much because deep down we can feel our soul tissue rejecting the notion that we need any more of anything.

We are full, stuffed, replete, gorged, we've had enough, but we just don’t know what else to do so we keep calm and carry on shopping.

And our clothes give us away - we are all dressed in mourning, black, we are all grieving over something we've lost.

We've lost our souls, our taste buds for life are no longer sensitive, we can’t hear the birds sing in the trees because our i pods are switched on always, we can’t hear the chatter of those different from us because of the elevator muzak everywhere and we can’t see the stars shine in the night sky because there is too much electric light down here.

We are always on, and always off, dead and depressed, only laughing if someone presses a button or shows us a smiling emoton on a screen.

With these sombre thoughts drifting through our heads we pushed in to John Lewis, the Department Store that once represented a fusty middle class of accountants and solicitors, worthy but dull and reliable, never knowingly undersold, but which has given itself a makeover with the Selfridges painting set, turning itself into a theatre of brand experience, with all the flash labels and fake luxury of the so called luxury brands and their representatives, who don’t know anything about the rest of the store but everything about their ‘brand values’. But John Lewis have hung on to their fusty but pleasant past in their cafes which they operate themselves and from which they have banned piped muzak- you can actually overhear the chatter of the other customers and get a glimpse into their lives thereby, which must be good for all of us.

 And there is a perfect view of Oxford street. 

Actually, John Lewis was as pleasant an experience as it was possible for it to be, given everything I have said earlier.

If you are going to stuff yourself, you may as well do it somewhere that keeps the cutlery clean and where the staff pretend to like you.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Rainy Day London, the buses and the Blues

Elena's Mum is wheelchair bound for distances over 25 yards.

We set out on a damp, cold and rain sodden day to get her to Kensington on foot and by bus.

The experience reminded me of the connections between climate, landscape, flora and fauna and national character.

A more comprehensive assessment of the reasons for British tolerance - for there is no doubt that Britain has become a very tolerant place to be, and that this is one of its charms, if you are a tolerant soul yourself - would have to include the influence of a more spacious form of urban development which incorporates the countryside in the town, and the moderating influence of greenery on the temper.

However it arose, the buses of London and the way that they cater to the wheelchair bound and their carers are a heart warming illustration of the friendly thoughtfulness with which the overall tolerance of difference manifests itself.

We waved down the bus and pointed to Elena's Mum, Emma, in her wheelchair.

The driver, a woman, gives us the thumbs up sign.

The bus stops, and reverses a little to find a clear space for the automatic ramp to hiss and push itself down from the middle doors of the bus, which open for me to push her up.

Elena tells the bus driver where we will be getting off and the driver acknowledges this news gratefully.

We are able to sit behind Emma on the seat in the space reserved for wheelchairs and prams.

The process is reversed when we arrive at our destination stop, and once again the driver carefully maneouvres the bus into a position that will permit the ramp to bridge the gap between the bus and the pavement.

We cannot but be impressed by the expense and effort that Transport for London have put into making it easier for wheelchair users and their carers to get around - and by the consideration shown by the bus drivers. It is not perfect, but it surely reflects the effort made across whole swathes of national life to include the formerly excluded.

Not every British citizen approves of all of this, and many will agree with some efforts and not others, but overall it makes the Great in Great Britain more significant to us than its historic signifier of empire and dominion.

The rain rained on throughout the day, and the sky hung dark blue and low like a lid over london, as it often does in winter. Someone told me that the British climate has been officially re-designated from comprising four seasons to one of three months of winter followed by nine months bad weather - this might explain why the blues are so popular in the UK, despite being a musical form from the southern states of the USA.

Elena and I found ourselves sheltering from the continuous downpour in a small pub in Barnes called The Halfway House.
It was packed out, mostly with folk over fifty, men with long white hair and pony tails, plenty of facial hair of all sorts, women in denim and hippy coats and floppy hats, and the feint odour of those strong cigarettes that make you feel happy. Much promise hung in the air.

Through the crowd, which parted as before a prophet of the people, came a diminutive yet powerful figure carrying a guitar - it was Papa George, blues artist of Barnes and locale, a man whom I had heard before, a man who should be a world figure of the Blues, a man whom the drummer of The Kinks had come out on a rainy London night to see and hear, a man who had been overlooked by the lottery of life but who deserved a place, if any of us got our just deserts, among the aristocracy of music, a man who could make your blues disappear by playing the Blues, a healer, a shaman, a priest and a preacher of the way and the truth.

Papa and the band kicked off and the sonorous wailing of Papa's voice and slide guitar and the taught backing seared into our hearts all the pain and suffering of the world and by the alchemy of music made us all feel glad to be alive - in London, on a rainy night, at a free concert in The Halfway House pub, Barnes, halfway to heaven!

The last time we saw Papa George was at The Bulls Head pub, just around the corner in Barnes, a year ago, with a bigger and jazzier line up.

This was great, tonight, what with the rain and London gloom, we needed the pure distilled spirit of the Blues without the Jazz mixer, and this is what we got.
Perfect.
Thanks Papa.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Class, consumption and London life

We are back in London.

And today we clambered over and around the British class structure.

Now I know that there are many who doubt the usefulness of class as a way of analysing society today - surely we are all middle class now, they say.

I retort that the definitions of working, middle and upper class have changed and it is harder to identify members of each by clothes, accents or even occupation, but it is still possible to classify people in terms will suggest the opportunities and advantages or otherwise that they will get out of life - class can make you or it can break you.

Yesterday Elena and I began our day with a trip on the Hammersmith and City underground line from Baker Street.

At Ladbroke Grove, a young man threw himself into our carriage and spead himself out on the seat opposite us. To our right were a couple of young men and their companion, a young woman, sat opposite them and therefore found herself next to our sudden interloper.

Now all of these were roughly the same age, and all wore roughly the same kinds of casual clothes, and all had roughly the same kind of accents.

Let me relay the dialogue that ensued :

Interloper : Ullo there, is she with you?

Young Men : Yea.

Interloper : Do you mind if I chat her up?

Young Men : It won’t do you any good.

Interloper : Have you got a boyfriend,.....oh good, more of a challenge, what’s your name?

Young Woman : Sarah.

Interloper brings a can of strong lager out from his coat pocket.

Interloper : What about your second name........

Young Woman : What, why shoiuld I..........

Interloper : It will help me to find out something about you.......your antecedants ( sic )

Do you know Harry?........Prince Harry?

Young Woman : Yes

Interloper : What personally....I do....he’s well known to me....( taps his nose, knowingly ) but ee can’t acknowledge it, ees a boy I can tell you.

The young men and woman get up and leave at Latimer Road and everyone is laughing.

Interloper to us : Are you married?

He takes a swig from his lager - his mobile rings...Ello Tom mate.....know I’m fine, I’m not drunk no, I’ve got probation at 3pm....I was all over the place yesterday, I was scorchin, squiffed out mate, but no, I’m fine mate, I’ll see you soon, be there in 10 minutes.

Elena asks him if we can take his picture.

Interloper : I’m wanted by the Police, what will you do with it?

Elena : We will publish it on our blog, very few people will see it, but it might make you famous.

Interloper : Yea, people tell me I could be an actor, but I say no, fuck it, I want it to be real, I wanna be real, pah, acting, who wants to act?

Same with girls though. They all fancy me, its true.

I was going to be married, but I packed my bird in....what she did in bed, it was disgustin...I kept thinking about her doing that with other blokes, no, I thought, out, so that was that.

The train pulled into Hammersmith station and Interloper asked me if he could slip through the gate behind me because he didn’t have a ticket.

As long as you don’t get me arrested, I said.

Don’t worry mate, I’m an expert, trust me.

As we went through the barrier, a guard noticed him and call ed to him.

I’ve got a Freedom Pass mate! was his brilliant reply, and he ran off.

Is he a member of the working class, the benefits class, or what the Victorians’ called the Residuum?

He is a character, a comedian, a charmer and good company in a tube carriage on a wet day.

We wanted the picture to remind ourselves that some people add to the sum of human happiness with wit and warmth alone, no more. This man had his demons. Better this than a miserable success of a bourgeoise. And I’m still wondering what that disgusting thing was that she did to cut herself off from him? There are, after all, only so many things a girl can do to a man in bed....ah well.

We were off to The River Cafe, to treat ourselves and to watch the middle class, or the moneyed class, at play. It is a beautiful restaurant, classless in a way, not stuffy or snooty, relaxed, the food is superb - and expensive.

The photographs say it all, but the food was superb, and the entire experience was a pleasure, despite the price. The diners again were mostly casually dressed, but if they wore jeans, their jeans were the kind that cost over £200 and the intricate designs on the pockets show others that this is so.

Class designators are more subtle these days, and British Toffs no longer wear top hats and tails, except when they get married, but restaurant locations are not subtle - they indicate money at least,but you might have, like us, saved up all year to treat yourself. The Ivy, an expensive and good restaurant in central London, is filled with the happy sounds of Essex and Cockney accents that don’t usually belong to lawyers and bankers, but they might to Traders in the City of London’s financial district. But perhaps because of this, the hard core middle class have moved on, or out here to Hammersmith and the River Cafe.

Elena maintains that the concept of class has no value at all today - maybe she is right, not because there are’nt people with different life chances, but just because these now defy classification at all.

A good London pub will attract all classes - a pub is more of a temperamental thing, if you are happy to stand and share space at a bar, interject in other drinkers banter, drink, as it were, from a common well, then you will be happy in a pub.

I know Toffs who are happy in pubs, but they are probably a minority.

A pub is a communal idea, like a municipal swimming pool or golf course, or a park.

The world is moving towards private space, private clubs.

But we like pubs, and parks, and London has a lot of both, which is one of its many charms.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

The drumbeats of war?

The most important event of 2012 may well have been something that did not happen - Mitt Romney was not elected as US president.

Romney made a series of statements that revealed a reckless approach to international affairs that would have exacerbated tensions already straining the capacity of statesmen to control events.

We expect US presidents to be inexperienced on the international stage, but we expect them to choose wise and experienced advisors and the tough guy talk of Romney showed a lack of grasp of even recent history - I am thinking here of Kennedy's acceptance speech in which he said that America would ' ..bear any burden, fight any foe....in the cause of freedom' 

It was later revealed that these words led almost straight to the Cuba Crisis, convincing as they did Khrushchev that Kennedy was both green and dangerous.

But there are two really frightening developments in international affairs. They lie, as so often, at the crossroads between the middle east and US policy.

Five thousand years ago Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land - the only trouble being that the Palestinians lived there too and there has been conflict ever since.

This conflict has flared up again recently and the real reason it has is the first of my two really frightening developments : Iran and its nuclear ambition.

The Israelis want to attack Iran because they think this is the only way to avoid what they describe as 'an existential threat' to their survival.

Before they do that, they must occupy Gaza to neutralise the threat of Iranian supplied missiles fired by Hamas.

The US has succeeded in stalling this ambition so far, but it won't last because of the other really frightening event of 2012 : The oil embargo on Iran.

History buffs will remember that it was the US imposed oil embargo on Japan which led to Pearl Harbour.

The US led embargo on Iran is providing further justification for the Iranian regime in developing nuclear power and is harming ordinary Iranians, but more importantly, it is increasing the power of the hard line Revolutionary Guard in Iran ( just as the same policy did for the military fanatics in Japan in 1940 )

The Iranian regime must find a way to distract its people from the economic turmoil that their policy has brought down upon their people and an aggressive move in response to Israeli threats is a likely contender.

This combination of Israeli belligerence and the economic collapse brought about by the oil embargo in Iran will be difficult to control, especially as relations are not cordial between the two sponsoring powers of Russia and the USA.

The collapsing regime in Syria is only adding fuel to the fire, lining up the US against Russia and Iran, both of whom support Assad and the status quo.

These manoeuvres are taking place on a wider field of conflict which is seeing an increasing willingness to resort to force or the threat of force without recourse to any legal sanction.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the USA is conducting illegal assassinations using Drones or unmanned aircraft.

This sets a bad example which is likely to be followed, and is creating another generation of martyrs.

In a world of increasing fragmentation and technological virtuosity, we need international law as a codification of co-operation and compromise between state actors.

From this stable platform, the world can keep an eye out  for all the ‘black swans’ that are bound to be out there, armed to their teeth and nursing a grievance.

It is time to look again at the UN and give it some teeth so that it is not sidelined and humiliated as it has been in 2012.

If I was one of the scientists in charge of the doomsday clock, I would be moving the hands a little closer to midnight in 2013.

Fortunately it is not about London and not about Moscow.

But this news just out. "The United States expanded anti-nuclear sanctions against Iran on Thursday, blacklisting seven Iranian companies and five individuals including Fereydoon Abbasi, Iran’s top nuclear official and the target of a failed assassination attempt in Tehran two years ago, which Iran said was the work of Israeli operatives."

Unfortunately I'm sure I'm right about the US throttling Iran into aggression