Gordon Brown: still the Machiavelli

Ha ha. Brown hasn't changed a bit. Just hours after meeting Dubya at Camp David, he's off to the Waldorf Astoria for a private meeting with Bill Clinton that never appeared on his official itinerary. With Brown, the agenda written down is never the one that's actually followed.

As always with Brown, you've got to look at what he does on three levels.

There's the top level, the one you see on TV. The first visit to George Bush, a get-together at Camp David, lots of photo-ops and handshakes on the world stage. Blair revelled in this role; Brown just sees it as something to be suffered. He doesn't really believe the public has any right to know what he's up to.

There's the level below, which websites and print media usually pick up later: what he actually DOES. In this case, the meeting with Clinton - to talk about 'world poverty' - is the stated rationale. Portrayed as a side visit on his way home, to Brown this was quite possibly the main purpose of the visit.

At the bottom, there's the most useful level: WHY. Forget world issues; meeting an ex-US president who's married to possibly the next one? Brown's just hedging his bets, making sure he's in early in the event of a President Hillary happening next year. In any case, Brown must have enjoyed talking to Clinton - an intellectual equal, and probably America's smartest president - to Bush, probably the dumbest and worst.

One point in his favour, though: Brown's performance at Camp David. While Dubya was effusive in his praise for Gordon, Brown carefully managed to avoid saying anything personally complimentary about Bush, speaking in general terms about the US rather than risking being perceived as the next poodle. And on TV, Brown next to Bush shows up the Toxic Texan in a way the lightweight Blair never could. It grates to say it, but - well done Gordon.

How to solve the Iran problem

I've been thinking about Iran recently, and I'm worried that the problems between the West and that country are... all my fault.

Or more specifically, the West's fault. The Iran standoff is caused not by fear or hatred, but by our bad attitude. I think we're getting Iran all wrong, and if we end up in a nuclear exchange, it's going to be down to us.

The Iraq invasion was based on flimsy pretexts. Iran, by contrast, IS going nuclear. Its leadership IS hostile to the West. And it IS home to plenty of mad mullahs. There'd be an excuse to attack Iran. But an excuse is not a reason.

Now I'm not exactly the person you'd approach to debate peace in the Middle East; say Sunni & Shia to me, and I'm thinking more of 'I've Got You Babe' than Islamic factions. But consider the following:

We're not giving Iran respect. Iran is discussed across the tables of the EU and USA as a political obstacle, like farm subsidies or healthcare. Journalists and newsreaders lump Iran in with Saudi and Iraq as 'Arab', not even realising that Iranians aren't Arabs (in fact, not being Arab is what makes it Iran). In the 19th century, the 'Great Game' of power and influence between Britain and Russia was played out on ... Iran's turf, without a thought for the natives.

Isn't this really, really RUDE of us?

Iran has a population of 70m+, a vast surface area, and huge energy reserves. It has democracy of a sort, its economy is functional although Statebound, and its public life has many colours besides fundamentalist. Iran deserves to be engaged with at least as much respect as ... Russia. Yet our governments and media paint it the same simple shade: evil. That's so wrong it's just disrespectful.

Leaders aren't populations. By concentrating on a president's crowdpleasing, we're ignoring the complex realities of a fascinatingly diverse country. Ahmedinejad is a bit of a livewire, certainly. But rather than being a mad Muslim, he appears merely mad, full stop. His policies are from the Robert Mugabe songbook: no understanding of basic economics and a tendency towards daft pronouncements.

But within Iran - even within his own party - Ahmedinejad does not seem to be a popular leader; the President isn't Iran.

Iran is NOT a single ideology. It's Muslim, sure, but the idea of 'ijtihad' - that Islam should be reinterpreted to suit the civilisation of the day - is active and respected. (It's similar to the Christian debate about whether the Bible is literal truth or a set of allegories for living.) The Economist gives one example: women may be worth 'half that of men' principally because they were economically inactive when the Koran was being drafted, not because they were 'worth less'. Similarly, not eating pork had a practical dimension in the ancient Middle East: pigs are genetically similar to humans, meaning there are a lot of things you can catch from them. Especially in a 14th century desert without running water or refrigeration. 'Ijtihad' discusses such concepts and their applicability to the 21st century.

The place where this 'received wisdom' is most vigorously debated today is ... Iran.

Ahmedinejad is not Iran, he's just the current gateway to talking with it. There are plenty of ways to engage Iran without attacking its prickly President, and we should be making more use of them - applying the 'ijtihad' principle to our own methods of approaching difficult regimes. As a nation, Iran is far less fundamentalist, and far more open to ideas, than our supposed 'ally' Saudi Arabia.

The nuclear evidence isn't quite resounding. Okay, 2000 working centrifuges and hexafluorine gas COULD produce the stuff of bombs... but unlike terrorism or biowarfare, making nukes is REALLY, REALLY HARD. It'll take another thousand centrifuges, running full tilt for a year plus, to refine enough stuff for a single small bomb. And then you've got the difficulty of tipping a missile with it (RPGs haven't got the range.)

Isn't it a basic element of our cherished legal system to give ... the benefit of the doubt?

Amazingly, there IS an economic rationale for this nuclear technology. Iran's refining capacity is so low that it imports most of its petrol, despite sitting on the world's richest oilfields. These reasons extend into the political: government subsidies for a range of goods and services are so vast, and so politically important, that Iran HAS to export most of its oil simply to make ends meet. Unpalatable as it may sound, I have a problem with lecturing other countries on proliferation when nuclear power stations dot the European landscape.

Would nukes calm the situation by evening up the sides? Brussels and Washington trembled when Pakistan and India became nuclear powers... and today, the two sides are talking, visiting, gradually learning to treat each other as respected partners. EVEN IF Iran went nuclear ... could this, just possibly, be a good thing?

Tiny Israel alone would still be able to destroy Tehran at an hour's notice. Iran having a bomb wouldn't, ultimately, increase the risk of conflict - and might well reduce it.

Might a nuke in Iran, even a little one, persuade Israel to engage its neighbours just a bit more respectfully? I like the Israelis - they're a resourceful, hardy people, like the Russians - but to be blunt, I'm sick of seeing angry Jews on the news, faces contorted with hate.

Iran's population is changing. It's a young country, and young people have different ideas to their parents. We're dealing with the old guard, when we could be engaging the next generation: 2 in 3 Iranians are under 40. They're forming the views that will guide their country for the next half-century NOW. This is the greatest opportunity in the Middle East, and we're throwing it away.

So here's an idea.

What if Gordon Brown (it couldn't be Bush) - or even 'Envoy Blair' acting on Brown's instructions (ha!) - were to play the ultimate 'Big Man', and engage Iran for what it is - a major nation to be engaged, and not a political problem to be solved?

Forget about the nukes; accept that Iran's going to go nuclear. State, in no uncertain terms, that we won't throw the first punch. Give Iran the benefit of the doubt, and take away Ahmedinejad's ammunition. Give something away, without expecting anything in return, and watch the barriers come down.

(Look at Gorbachev in the 1980s - cutting his nuclear arsenal without asking for anything back. It led to Russia's emergence from Communism. Today, while not quite an ally of the West, it's no longer quite an enemy.)

Imagine Britain, as a confident developed country, saying to Iran that its nuclear programme is okay with us. Maybe even having a bomb is okay with us. Perhaps, with such a pronouncement, Iran would never need to build one.

It won't happen. But I can dream.

Kewing for the palms

The great thing about Kew Gardens is the way that even on the first sunny Saturday in months, it never seems crowded.

Of course, the great pieces of architecture - the Palm House and the Temperate House victorian glasshouses - attract crowds, and deservedly so. But scattered gems like the new Alpine house, a small but breathtaking 10m arc of glass, are less so. And the grounds contain multitudes, built and repurposed over 200 years: an ancient Ice Cellar, a couple of galleries, the brilliant Orangery. In six years of several visits a year, there are still plenty of things I haven't seen. And new bits - like the temporary Mediterreanean Garden this summer, or the boxy modernist botanical illustrations gallery opening next year - are being created all the time. There's always something new at Kew, whenever you visit.

I feel pangs at leaving this place, which is good: it means I'm staying in touch with my London.

Inside the O2

The new O2 Dome is quite pleasant in a popcultural, hamburgery kind of way. The big tent's now home to a circular street of restaurants and cafes around a central arena, with a cinema near the top. The architects have cleverly kept the fact you're in a tent - the main point - in plain view, although with more buildings inside than before it doesn't seem to soar as much.

They've sensibly kept it free of burgers and fried chicken. The venues are lower-mid-range chains like Pizza Express and Slug & Lettuce, places the middle class can comfortably eat in. Again, nothing difficult or unexpected about it, just a low-intensity, American-style family experience pitched just right for the people who'll frequent the place.

The cinema's on the same level of experience. No ticket booths, just machines (that dispense rather overlarge receipts; there's some tree-saving to be done here.) Inside, the auditoria are big and tiered, a proper cinema experience with decent seats.

All in all, the O2 is a 'nice' place. Perfect for families, the mid-level mass-market audience it wants, the sort of people who put TV show schedules in their diaries, work 9-to-5 and own their own home. A nice, normal place. For nice, normal people.

GGGGAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Festival of costs

The Royal Festival Hall recently reopened after a two-year refit. The space inside hasn't changed much, but has improved at the edges. Better flow, more intelligently spaced retail points, fresh white paint and fluffed-up carpets. The floor's the same, the stairs are still there, the polished handrails and deep red walls as you sink into the performance spaces are the same.

So what, exactly, cost 112 million pounds here?

I mean, the refurbishment undoubtedly works. The space flows properly, instead of being crammed with a coffee and sandwich hell. Some disused areas, like the outside terraces, have been reopened and swept clean. The street frontage on both sides - previously clogged with outlets, making the building unintelligible at ground level - is now clear, and the Hall now stands as a piece of functioning architecture like the other 60s concrete mountains on the waterfront, the Hayward Gallery and Queen Liz Hall.

But I still can't see how all this cost over a hundred million quid.

I mean, that's not loose change. It's one ten-thousandth part of Britain's entire economy. And not even for a new building, but for refurbishment of one barely fifty years old. It's not even an honest brutalist box like the wonderful Hayward. The Royal Festival Hall reeks of the 1950s, most boring decade of all, twee child's building block headlined with the nastiest, cheapest-looking typeface in existence. From the outside the place stinks of boiled cabbage, spam and darned socks.

A hundred million quid to take some stud walls out and add some paint?

Part of the problem isn't with the Hall itself or its architects; in a way, it's down to the Hall's success as London's living room. The Robin Day plywood chairs - excitingly space-age in 1951 - were such a brilliant design they've been copied a thousand times, duplicated by the million in schoolrooms and cafeterias worldwide; the originals now look cheap and nasty, the sort of thing you'd pick up for a fiver at Greenwich Market. And take those 'traditional materials' demanded by the architecturally inept commissioners - who thought Britain's culture vultures would expect red walls and polished wood, as in a West End theatre. The refurb has put a brave face on them, but they still look totally out of place in what is a MODERNIST building. Layering on traditionalism doesn't turn Modernism into Postmodernism; it just makes it look silly.

A tenth of a billion pounds. Is this all we get?

And I say this as someone who visits a cultural institution at least once a week. The building has been given a fresh makeover, but I'm not sure the costs should even have exceeded seven figures.

A hundred and twelve million quid. Where's the rest of it?

Down at the V&A

I have a thing about the Victoria & Albert Museum. Going there on a quiet wet afternoon feels less like visiting a major public institution, more like sneaking around someone's very big house. It's stayed true to its Victorian roots, with many exhibits retaining the typewritten index cards and Dickensian orthography of a century plus ago. Exhibits are piled up, heirloom style: walls plastered with close-packed Gainsboroughs and Constables and halls decked with casts and models, a full-size David next to a quarter-scale Egyptian column. One room west there's nothing but silverware; another looks like a library, but when you pull out a shelf you find examples of Venetian textiles circa 1625. It's a strange and wonderful place.

Two things prompted my visit today (well, apart from having a few slack hours, anyway); the architecture hall has a corridor of photos detailing the refit of the Royal Festival Hall, and the ironworks section has a parade of watercolours of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Both are interesting little snippets of London life.

It's a crime that the Crystal Palace was disassembled; it could have been London's Eiffel Tower, another intricate structure erected for an exhibition. But the great thing about this town is that you can still get a taste of what life was like back then. For Victorian architectural ironwork, just visit the breathtaking palm house at Kew Gardens... or walk down any upmarket street and look at the railings.

My last few weeks before leaving London for a while are falling into a pleasant pattern. Mornings I concentrate on finishing up projects and keeping my business humming at a level I can sustain throughout a year of study; lunchtimes I'll head for the gym; and afternoons I'll do some pre-study, preferably in an exotic location. All with the goal of not losing what I feel for my city, however many months (or years) I'm away for.

End of days

I've a horrible feeling that we're entering the endgame for our planet.

Not in any apocalyptic religionist sense, but in terms of physics. I get the impression that the world weather system has had enough, and tipped over into something beyond complexity theory and broad-brush predictability.. and into chaos. Something truly nonlinear.

Last year Britain had the hottest summer on record. This year, the wettest, with the worst floods in history. On Sunday, there was snow in Beunos Aires. Soon the fabled Northwest Passage will actually be navigable, thanks to melting ice. (Captain Cook wasn't wrong, just early.)

I feel the 'tipping point' was reached a couple of years ago, and will start having real effects in a couple more. (The current troubles are just a prelude.) And society's going over the edge with it. The last thousand years of reasonable, survivable weather are over.

Tornadoes, flash floods, extreme drought, subzero summers and scorching winters will become the norm. The maps will be redrawn, with much of Northern Europe dissolving into an archipelago of mildly interrelated islands and the Netherlands consigned to Davy Jones' Locker. The USA's Eastern Seaboard will lose the 'board' part. California will become an island state.

And worst of all, Kevin Costner will release a director's cut of 'Waterworld'.

The time of settled communities - a brief 10,000 year interlude in our species' 3m year history - is over. Man will become a hunter/gatherer again, moving between four-metre floods and drought-ridden deserts where once there were cities, living on spires and mountaintops. Hunting, perhaps, not for food and fields, but for information and communication. It will be a violent world, warring tribes battling for scarce resources, strong leaders allocating favour and influence in a ceaseless battle for supremacy. Our pattern of villages and towns will reform into violent, barely-human mobs, roaming the polar tundra of Surrey and the sunbaked deserts of Scotland. It'll be almost as bad as the West End on a Friday night.

This world will be tribal. There will be Europeans, in an uneasy alliance with the Americans, perhaps somehow holding onto to its pre-eminence due to its skills with technology. The Asian peoples will join together - but will the Chinese or Japanese triumph as their masters? Or will there be two blocs of rich and poor Asia, the parched subcontinent versus the cooler, richer East? The tribes of Africa will somehow struggle on; for them alone, life may even seem a little better, without strings-attached IMF loans or a visiting Bono to worry about. And the Muslim world will unite in a new Islamic empire, waiting only for one charismatic imam to turn it into a full caliphate. it will trade its oil for our water, holding the world to ransom in the same way the USA's EHM people did in the 70s and 80s.

Politicians, unable to act having no channels to exert authority, will fade into insignificance. The world will lack leaders, and society will belong to warriors and philosophers, those with charisma and ideas. Evolution, which modern society attempts to deny by letting the weak reproduce, will re-assert itself, and only the strong and fit and intelligent will survive.

We're heading for a different world. But I'm not all that sure it's going to be a worse one.

Weird film night

"Taxidermia" at the ICA. One of those arty 'cultural' films you're not supposed to 'get'.

Plot synopsis:

1. Nude girls in bath cause male orderly to ejaculate fire, having spent the previous hours kissing lit candles.
2. Male orderly makes love to disembowelled pig, thinking of employer's fat wife.
3. Fat wife gives birth to baby with pig's tail, which husband cuts off.
4. Pig baby grows up to be Hungarian speed-eating champion, capable of finishing 400 chocolate bars an hour (or 587 if he doesn't take the foil off.)
5. Speed-eating champion is disappointed in son for not being hugely fat.
6. Son embalms human fetus and gorilla for no apparent purpose.
7. Speed-eating champion, now an old man so huge as to be immobile, gets eaten by his giant pet cats.
8. Son embalms father as art object, shortly before building and entering machine that does the same to himself.
9. Father and son become trendy art exhibit.

Now THAT's what I call entertainment.

Descent into shame

It's that time again. The day of my ordeal has come. Once every year, I must go to a darkened place and perform a terrifying ritual.

I arrive at the Place of Shame, quivering. The doors close behind me as if by magic. I join a queue of other initiates, some of dwarflike stature standing bright-eyed in unknowing wonder, others in pairs attached by clasped extremities. A few, like me, downcast and fearful, shuffling forward to speak with the Oracle-like being who holds the key to our futures.

My time has come. I speak the words no male over 15 can say without trembling in fear and shame:

"One ticket for Harry Potter, please."

.... and now a lock

It's strangely appropriate that with a new front door, I chose this weekend to re-encrypt (recrypt?) my recently-reinstalled laptops. A fresh install of OS and apps has given me back two machines that were starting to feel creaky, and after an overnight humming with hard disk activity the combined 180GB of disk is now scrambled with AES, protected by a token passkey and phrases at pre-boot level. Not even a keystroke-recording dongle could get in if these machines are shut down; everything's locked up tighter than a drum.

In fact, the only way anyone could get into my private folders is by knowing my secret passphrase, 'She sells sea shells on the sea shore'.... oops.

The Door

Doors are cool.

My new front door closes with a solid clunk. The satinwood stain, drying after its first coat, will soon be ready for a second, the deep reddish hue become more saturated with each stroke. Right now, it's a plain Georgian oblong without even a door number, but that will change in coming days, as I fasten the furniture into place once the bare wood is safely stained.

Doors have philosophical connotations far beyond their use as mere ingress/egress facilities. And London must be the greatest 'door city' in the world. Thanks to its long history, every London door tells a story, from the comforting black of 10 Downing St to the creaking frame of Daunt Books. So many buildings in this town go back a lot further than you expect; if you're lucky enough to get past any door over a hundred years old, you'll often enter a world of gracious space and light from a bygone age.

Doors are more than oak rectangles. I look at the oversized trio of hinges, the pair of knobs I've yet to attach, the knocker in the centre, the spyhole. Each one of these items sharing the same purpose: to denote that one side is your world, one side is mine, and whether you enter my world is my choice.

Doors are the transit points, from the busy public world of the street to the sanctity of private space.

This door is numberless. The small heap of paraphernalia lies in my hallway. Rubbery seals to keep the wind out; an abbreviated brush for the bottom edge. A knob for each side, a second lock, a chain. A pair of digits that together give my house an identity.

Such little signifiers, just two steel shapes. Yet without this social conceit I'm a lesser part of the world: can't get mail, can't assure visitors they've got the right place. Huge problems solved by two little cutouts of steel.

Doors are cool.

Applying the law equally

I'm in two minds about the Muslim fanatics jailed today.

On the one hand, it's nice to see minorities finally being held to account for their bigotry - usually being black or muslim is enough to get off with a warning or less, since, y'know, only white people are racist. Anyone from an ethnic or religious minority usually gets treated with kid gloves in New Labour's politically-correct Britain.

But ultimately these sad little people weren't 'beheading those who insult Islam' - they were just waving placards saying it. And what you say should be treated very differently to what you do. If these guys had been going around actually beheading people, then fair enough, cut-and-dried case there. But six years for just 'saying it'?

(As an aside: I wonder if there was some sort of one-upmanship involved in the placard phrases? One says, 'Behead them', another says 'Massacre them'... did the massacre guy say to the behead guy, 'What, you'd only BEHEAD them? You weakass punk!')

Forget for a moment that if I'd said equivalently insulting things about Islam in an Islamic country my feet wouldn't have touched the ground before being cut off as punishment. Britain is a liberal democracy, and we don't lock people up just for saying things. Or rather, we didn't.

Even so - my authoritarian streak is smiling beneath my liberal surface. These four silly little people, living and working in Britain (and perhaps born here), yet feeling no loyalty or gratitude for the shelter, education, and employment Britain gave them. At the very least, these guys were being REALLY, REALLY RUDE. And that's perhaps what earned them their sentences: what they were doing just wasn't cricket.

You know you're getting old when...

Searching for a copy of the Canterbury Tales, I realised that last time I bought a copy (in my teens) most editions were in the original Olde English. Today, most editions are in modern translation. Doh.

When Happy got out of bed, they all felt Grumpy

A psychologist reported in Business Week has come up with a taxonomy based where people sit around a meeting table, based on the Seven Dwarfs. (The psychologist herself would probably be called Scary, though.) I turned out to be Grumpy.

New Conservative is Labour donor

Oh bloody hell. Cameron's done it now. You've just lost the election, Dave.

How could you be - so - inutterably - stupid?

When checking a potential candidate's background for the Conservative party, shouldn't 'Not Labour supporter' be one of the first boxes to be ticked?

It sounded great on paper: recruit a well-known face, who's also an ethnic minority, to be an MP candidate for a party not known for its diversity. And in their enthusiasm to sign him up, somehow the small matter of him posing for photos with Tony Blair got overlooked.

Look, Dave, you've got to get a grip. The Conservative Party, with its ethos of self-reliance, low taxes, and respect for tradition, is not of general appeal to minorities. Just accept that. In trying to be all things to all people, you've lost your way. It's time to refocus on your natural constituency of the white middle and upper classes. Since these groups are particularly hard-pressed at the moment, you've got a golden opportunity to reconnect with all of those who gave Blair a chance last time round. And you're wasting it.

Wii zapper

Looking at the shape of Nintendo's new accessory, it's fairly obvious what kind of games they want designers to produce...

Finders, minders, grinders, and binders

Another of those business mnemonics, this one from Ecademy's Mark Lee: Finders, Minders, Grinders, and Binders.

Finders bring in business to your company. Minders manage the relationships with those clients. Grinders do the actual work that gets paid for. And Binders keep the team that delivers that work together. Fun.

Showing his metal

There's a horrifying comedy in the news that Osama bin Laden's son is a scrap metal dealer. Was 911 ultimately just a means of drumming up business for a family firm?

The Picture of Corian White

I love Corian, Du Pont's solid surface. It's a granite lookalike artificial material that, unlike granite, can be formed into seamless shapes and curves - including built-in sinks, draining boards, and splashbacks - that don't need sealing and are practically maintenance-free: ultra-durable in colours that go all the way through.

I've just taken delivery of a shaped white shelf for my bathroom, cut to fit the corners of the space and sync with the sink, and it looks fantastic. (Thanks for the great service, Wharf Solid Surface.) And it's so easy: all I had to supply was an accurate diagram, and a few days later the finished block arrives at my door. If I had the money, I'd have a whole house fitted out in this stuff.

Somehow, Corian seems to me the essence of Modernism, the only real architectural reality, against which all other architectural styles are simply a footnote. It's artificial yet honest, a solid block of material without veneer or surface paint. It's regular and geometric. It's tough to a fault. And you can do almost anything with it, in any colour or shape. Corian is to interiors what good quality concrete is to exteriors. It's not the rough charm of dry stone walls, but rather the seductive appeal of an iPod. It breathes design and technology. Beautiful.

My list of favourite building materials: concrete, steel, glass, and... Corian.

Water, water, everywhere

It was only a matter of time: astronomers have detected water vapour on an extrasolar planet, 'just' 64 light years away. Further circumstantial evidence that we're not alone in the universe; statistically speaking, there's GOT to be life out there. Of what variety we've no idea, but hey, it's life.

The solution: killing 'em with laughter

Here's an idea. All Britain needs to do to beat Muslim terrorism is subject imported Imams to one test: they've got to be FUNNY.

Let's face it, when did you last meet a Muslim with a sense of humour? One thing that defines Britain is a mocking lack of regard for anyone who takes himself too seriously. And Muslims - of all stripes from fundie to moderate - seem to take themselves and their religion far too seriously. Anyone who takes himself too seriously tends to resent (even hate) those who aren't paying them enough 'respect', from Muslims to blacks to gays. And from that hate rises militancy and violence.

What if they could be taught to just - lighten up?

This isn't an up-in-the-air idea: breaking the problem down into parts, there's a concrete route towards this solution. The root problem seems to be imported Imams at Britain's mosques.

Most of these preachers - a major influence on young British Muslims - come from fiery branches of Islam in Egypt, Pakistan and the Middle East: many don't even speak English and are spitting their shards of brimstone uncut. In a religion where 90% of your life revolves around the local Islamic Centre, having that Centre run by a preachy fundamentalist is really going to impact how your young grow up.

Indeed, given the proportions - some 80% of Imams born outside the UK - it's amazing just how few young Muslims actually harbour ill thoughts towards the Western world (surveys put it at 22-29%, high but not a majority.)

So all we've got to do to prevent another generation of mad Muslims is: make sure every Imam can do a comic turn. Make classic comedy like Monty Python, The Fast Show, Blackadder, and Little Britain compulsory requirements for getting a visa. Make it a condition that they've got to book out a comedy club for seven nights as part of their application. Channel all their fundamentalist energy into something that can... bring people together, instead of driving a wedge between them.

As said Britain's sole female Muslim comedian: "I walked past a building site in Mecca last week. Construction worker said... "SHOW US YER FACE!""

Teaching Muslims to laugh at themselves, and take themselves a little less seriously, would be the greatest force for harmonious change since slavery was abolished. We'd have Muslims realising that perhaps there's something else in the world worth working for beyond their religion. We'd have less white middle-class resentment about how much religionists are indulged by politicians and employers. Muslims would integrate better and, more importantly, feel good about doing it, becoming part of the human race instead of forever huddling in a small subgroup.


(There's actually plenty of comedy in the Koran itself. That 72 virgins thing? The original text actually means '72 glasses of wine'. Yer suicide bomber arrives in heaven and gets his kit off, only to discover... - now THAT'S funny.)

Muslims would gain everything - respect, friendship, status - and lose nothing of Islam. (Except that killing-all-infidels bit. Which I'm not sure is actually in the Koran anyway.)

All we've got to do is learn how to laugh together.

Islamic terrorists: figures of fun

What's really interesting about Britain's Islamist terrorists is how CRAP they are.

The 21/7 terrorists - a sad bunch of losers, slackers and wasters - cooked up bombs in their kitchen, then started whining when they COMPLETELY FAILED to go off. It's not THAT hard to make something that goes boom; a simple petrol can would've done it, but no, they had to do it the same way as their 'Muslim brothers' in Palestine. All four of them failed dismally in their self-styled 'martyrdom', and were later reduced to standing around in their underpants blubbing about 'messages'. What a bunch of tossers.

At Glasgow a few days ago, apparently the burning jeep didn't make it through the doors because it was too wide. What, you're a badass suicide bombing maniac Muslim and you don't even check to see if your bomb fits through the gap? What kind of crap Jihadist are you?

The passenger is so badly burned his mobile phone has become attached to his body. Not only has he failed to destroy evidence, he's actually made it easier to gather!(And let's get this straight - a suicide bomber takes along a PASSENGER? What happens if you're successful? Do you have to split the 72 virgins between both of you, or does the driver get the lion's share? Or does Muslim heaven stretch to allowing MMF threesomes?)

The Tiger Tiger nightclub carbomb (another one that failed to go booooommmm) wasn't even driven into the wall with a cry of Allah Akhbar. It was parked and the driver wandered off! Wow, that'll get you brownie points, beardie. And the target - a nightclub? The threat to the Muslim world is... teenagers dancing? Wow, there's a worthy target for your aspiring jihadist: girls in miniskirts.

Maniac Islamist terrorists are a global evil, a plague trying to bring about the total downfall of Western society. But ... you've gotta laugh, haven't you.

Americans often wonder why British people tend towards shrugs and indifference when it comes to these mad religionists, since we're a small island and there's more chance of being a victim. I think it's just a national trait not to panic; we dealt with Irish terrorists for decades before today's Islamists were knee-high to a Koran. Even on 7/7, when by some chance another bunch of losers happened to be successful, it was complete calm on the streets, people inconvenienced rather than terrified. These self-styled badasses aren't scary in the slightest.

I'll do the same as other Britons, and just continue laughing at 'em.

Back in 1 hr

I've started eating lunch again.

While this may be a candidate subject for 'Web's Most Boring Blog', it's driven me to reconsider the whole point of lunch. More than a midday refuelling stop: it's an hour or so of holiday time, a little minibreak from the rigours of the day. It breaks the day into smaller, easier-to-handle sessions, and if there's one thing I'm about, it's about breaking things into definable parts.

But for some reason I gave up lunches late last year; they just seemed to be one thing I could miss. Let's face it, unless you've got a business date and need an actual restaurant, the lunch options in London aren't up to much: the usual parade of sad Starbucks sandwiches and Costalot coffee fail to inspire. (I miss having a client in St Johns Wood - there was an amazing boxed salad shop across the street.)

When you're working at home, though - as I'll be doing the next two months, tying up loose ends before I move to Shakespeare country - lunchtime gets better. It feels naughty, like raiding the fridge at midnight. With some crusty ciabaccia, a whole free-range roast chicken*, and some rock salt and rocket, an hour's break from the desk turns into a relaxing bit of time off. And is that - whoohooo! - a chocolate cheesecake I see before me?

Hell, think I'll be even naughtier and sneak out to the O2 this afternoon! How radical is that?


* I didn't eat the WHOLE chicken, naturally.

It's all a facade

Saw this interesting scene in the City today. An entire row of terraced offices, knocked down from behind, everything except the front face of the building, presumably to satisfy heritage planning laws. A completely new office building will be built behind this facade, reducing the honesty of the building and turning it into a pastiche joke.

I like established buildings with dignity and gravitas, too. But IF you've made the decision to replace a building - knock it ALL down. Don't just keep one pathetic layer of skin to retain some veneer of history. Create a new piece of architecture, something soaring and worthwhile, proud to be part of the greatest concentration of wealth in the world: London's Square Mile. Is this substance vs form again? Perhaps the offices that were demolished are already enjoying a new life in London Below.

With one bound, Jack was free

Deep breath.... click the Submit button.... steady now... steeeeaaaaddy.....

OK, that's it. I've just paid a multi-thousand pound sum to a business school, securing the MBA place I was offered. Ten weeks of studying for the pre-entrance GMAT, crisscrossing the country for Open Days, writing admissions essays and interviewing with faculty heads have all led up to this moment. And it's only now dawning on me just how different my life over the next year is going to be.

In the next 14 months I'll go from being someone who dropped out of school at 16, to someone with a postgraduate degree from a business school ranked in the top 1% worldwide, part of a famous university in the Russell Group (Britain's Ivy League). Which I suppose begs the question: why now?

It's an edge thing.

I've always lived on the edge; it's possible to thrive there if you follow certain rules. I'm an edge person. An outrider. It can give you great freedom. But it's harder work, because here on the edge you have to make your own infrastructure, use your own resources, nobody and nothing to hitch a ride from or give you a leg up. Hence the decision.

This course will hook me into something I've never had before: a network of high-quality, ready-made contacts and support services, the kind of people I've always had to hunt down individually over my years as an 'outrider'. In a few years, when I hit 40, I'll need that network around me, since my outriding abilities will start to - not fade, but perhaps be less important to me. This course is the gateway to true adulthood. And perhaps, respectability.

With one bound, Jack was free.

Zaha-ha-ha Hadid

I'm in two minds about Zaha Hadid at the Design Museum.

I've always defined my favourite architects by imagining what they'd do given a cardboard box and told to model a building out of it. For example:

Frank Lloyd Wright = put lots of little folded-paper chairs and things inside the box and call it his building.
Frank Gehry = crumple the box into a random blob and call it his building.
Norman Foster = replace the cardboard with clingfilm and only reuse the staples.
Le Corbusier = shrug and say the box was already a complete building.

Now if you're being cruel, you'd say Zaha would leave the box alone and instead paint a picture of it. For decades, she was the architect of the greatest buildings that... never got beyond a design study. But in the last five years her portfolio has exploded. The new exhibition (once you get past the vibrant paintings of a Hongkong building that never was) concentrates on her built work, almost all of which is 21st century.

So now, what Zaha would do, of course, is make you look at the box through a distorting lens that played around with its perspective. She occupies a conceptual space somewhere between Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry: smooth sinuous forms like Gehry, yet with a whimsical nod towards homespun materials like Wright. Her furniture looks like something from a 70s sci-fi movie, yet it's plain MDF with a lacquer coat.

Yet the exhibition left me strangely unmoved. Hadid's creations are undoubtedly great buildings, and a credit to our planet's built environment. Yet there wasn't enough (in this exhibit) of her buildings in situ, showing them as real moving parts in their city-machines. Too many idealised models, not enough interaction with the business of the world. Not enough proof to answer the basic question of any piece of architecture: does it work?

I'll still enjoy the Leipzig BMW building, the Zaragoza Expo bridge, the London 2012 Aqua Centre (bastardised as the design has been.) But I need more proof before acknowledging Zaha as more of a great architect than a great artist.

Cause and effectivenesss

Pre-reading for my upcoming MBA studies, I've hit an amusing problem. To 'learn' anything I have to see its underlying reasons for existence.

For example: macroeconomics is easy. I just imagine capital flows as rivers gushing between nations, interest rates and inflation as dams and locks, narrowings and widenings in the river. (And occasionally bends.) Macroecomics has cause and effect, and is therefore derivable from first principles even without a textbook. Things are 'pushing against each other' and causing things to happen.

Finance, however, is hard. Ultimately it's just about debit and credit - and I've got a good head for figures; remember that 760 GMAT practice score?! - hardly higher maths. But because finance isn't derivable from fundamental principles - depreciation and amortisation are just accounting conventions - I find it hard. There's no answering the 'why'. (Substance vs form again.)

Success on this course will mean one thing: I have to stop asking Why? and start accepting What Is.

Scarlett does NOT have a big bum

It really makes me angry when tabloids start making stories out of things that just aren't there. I mean, LOOK at her! The classiest girl in Hollywood doesn't have anything remotely RESEMBLING an oversized rear end; in fact, it's a terrific, shapely ass that's all woman (and I say this as a man whose natural taste is for anorexically thin women). Of course, where else could such an article appear but the Daily Mail - bastion of foam-flecked Little Englander outrage, which hypocritically intersperses lofty ideals of equality and intellectualism with 'gotcha' pics of celebrity cellulite. The worst newspaper in the world ... isn't taking it up a notch.

Microsoft 'saves' National Archives

Britain's National Archives, with 161bn gigs of new documents a year, has struck a deal with Microsoft to make sure older documents remain readable. But hold on - how generous is Redmond really being here?

Apparently the NA gets access to 'previous versions of Microsoft's Windows operating systems and Office applications'. So the deal is all about... giving the National Archives a few copies of Word 95?

Isn't it far more likely that this deal is really about RESTRICTING the availability of old docs - by keeping them in a proprietary format, the terms of which Microsoft can change at any time. (Business has rebuffed Microsoft's efforts to move to a monthly subscription system, but it keeps trying, and bit by bit it will succeed. A penny each time you open a Word doc? Technically possible, and commercially attractive if you own the closed format.)

There's only one way to truly preserve documents long-term: keep them in an open format like XHTML, and make them freely available in multiple places. Any time value accumulates in a single domain - whether it's proprietary formats, legal ownership, or a physical location - there's an incentive to monetise it. Nothing wrong with money, but that doesn't seem to have been the objective at the NA, so I don't think its goals have been answered.

Hey, I've got NINE lives, not a hundred

Giggle of the day: a cat who survived a ride next to a V8 engine has been adopted by the driver ... who hopes it'll get along with his four Rottweilers?!!

The year it rained forever

When's summer going to start?

I mean, the wettest June since 1980 (it's just started pouring for the fourth time today) and a wet July expected too. It's made my corner of London unusually verdant and fresh (with a building site nearby the air usually has a bit of a dusty tang) but I like sunshine, and we haven't seen any since April.